Run the Reviews: Spider-Man by J. Michael Straczynski, Part 1

Alright, so here's this thing. This is going to be me, hopefully, getting back to my "roots" where on a semi-regular basis I threw a couple thousand words at my first and most consistent hobby passion, comic books. Also continuing here will be an old tendency of mine to use pop culture references I don't actually understand but occasionally see "the kids" using on the "social medias" and think it has a ring to it that works. So, named after the only main stream musical act to emerge in the last decade that I know anything about and kind of like, I'm calling this "Run the Reviews," because when I find the time to I'll be doing just that: Going over comic book creative runs that that I've been able to get in rereadings of while the world is on fire and that had a big impact on me and/or on the world of comic books, for better or for worse. Examples I have on the forefront of my brain are the recently ended and properly epic run of THOR by Jason Aaron (y'know, once that WAR OF REALMS omnibus finally hits), the Greg Rucka/Ed Brubaker piloting of the Batverse in the early 2000's, and maybe, possibly, I'm not sure how I feel about it because of the fuckery perpetrated by one half of the creative crew, but I may do the seminal Warren Ellis and Darrick Robertson work, TRANSMETROPOLITAN, because it is an election year (ugh) after all. Again, though, I really, really don't know how I feel about giving the former of that team any attention given the accusations leveled against him earlier this year as the comic book industry had itself a "Speaking Out" movement by a lot of women in the industry being mistreated by a cavalcade of dipshits in its halls. If anyone actually reading this wants to chime in whether they think that would be in bad taste or if the work deserves some attention given the political zeitgeist going on out there, especially since I would both emphasize repeatedly in the piece as I will here, fuck Warren Ellis for treating people that way, then maybe I'll go through with it if the interest is there. But, there's plenty of other stuff to talk about regardless, and I'm going to start with an era of comic books that is special to me for many reasons; the Spider-man run by Babylon 5 creator Joe Michael Straczynski that kicked off the 2000's for the beloved wall-crawler. 

Now, I do have a bit of history with this book to start off with here. One, JMS was a HUGE factor in rekindling my love of comic books back when I was college aged. I spent a ton of time and allowance money from ages 11-15 reading comic books whenever I could, but eventually the 90's being the 90's drove me away. My funds were limited so I couldn't keep splurging for the endless crossovers that were becoming an annual norm in all my favorite books since I read mostly Spider-man and X-men comics and they were always driving the money train that was a twenty-part crossover every summer. On top of that, I may have been young but I wasn't (totally) stupid, and I could tell that material like "The Clone Saga" and "Onslaught" were all of not good, derivative, and just an endless churn of generic to the next big storyline. So I quit. I decided to fuel my video game and Magic: the Gathering habits instead of funneling my errand-earned cash into funny books. A few years later when I was old enough for "real jobs" and making more than the few bucks my parents handed me in a week, I stumbled into a new comic shop that had opened up in my small town looking to see if they had Magic cards. They did not, sadly, but what they did have was an ear to my plight with comic books line those outlined above and a guarantee that, given the way I was talking and the maturity level I appeared to have, that they would find me some comics that were more my speed and devoid the tertiary bullshit that ran comics into the gutter in a 1990's decade that was rapidly ending. So I had no less than seminal works like WATCHMEN, PREACHER, and THE SANDMAN trade paperbacks thrust into my greedy little hands, but also some stuff fresh to the stands that fit that "mature readers" bill, like the newly launched AUTHORITY, 100 BULLETS, and the first foray into comic books by J. Michael Straczynski, RISING STARS. 

And I loved all that stuff. Couldn't get enough. I loved how they were comic books that dealt with big philosophical and morality questions, something I appreciated in those highly formative years, and that they didn't talk down to me or try and manipulate me into buy eighteen more comics in titles I wasn't already reading. But I especially liked the books that turned super heroics on their head, being a big fan of those big, bright, and inspirational figures growing up, but now at an age where cynicism was taking hold, for better and worse. So when I saw that JMS was going to take his brand of outside the box thinking and put that stamp on Spider-Man, hands down my favorite comic book character during my first tryst with comic books, that was a big move to getting me try Big Two supes books again for the first time in half a decade. I was willing to put a lot of trust into a writer that blew my mind and rekindled my love of comic books in general, and it was a move that... well, let's just finally get to the nitty gritty. 

So, near twenty years on from that run originally being published we've now got two volume omnibus collection of it that I decided to pick up because I'm both a whore for big hardcover collections and I wanted to see how the run held up to time and memory. Opening these books up and letting that nostalgia wash over me I can immediately say this; no matter some of the commentary I'm about to make on this run as a whole, it took not even an issue of it to remind me that this is pretty much hands down the best rendition of Peter Parker I've ever read and may ever read. At least to start. JMS did truly just "get it" when it came to his presentation of the twenty-something genius loser and responsibility addict that was Peter Parker. How the character just quite could never get a break and how that left a stamp of cynicism on him because he just always kind of expected something bad to happen in the back of his mind, but he always, always, always worked his way back to the positive. The grit was always there. He would get beat down and get back up and do the work with a quip in his mouth and a plethora of ideas in his head to tackle whatever obstacles were ahead of him, even if they did beat him down to a pessimistic fugue he'd have to battle back alongside whatever villain was tormenting him that day; lather, rinse, repeat. But it was just the full boat of why Peter Parker/Spider-Man is one of the all-time greats as a character, put on full display against an unstoppable nightmare of a new foil in the form of Morlun to kick off this run. 

I don't really plan on getting into any great super detail about these runs when I cover them, I want them to be kind of a broad strokes of character handling, greater themes, artist work alongside the scripts since it'll probably be rare that it's a pure one-to-one writer/artist collaboration. But with this Spider-Man run here there will be a lot of plot dissection because, holy hell, did JMS and his collaborators go beyond the norm to shatter some of those institutional values with this run. The foremost being the vampiric being known as Morlun and how he represents a shift in the Spider-Man lore, moving the source of Peter's powers from a highly coincidental bite from an irradiated spider to being a fated bite from totemic power to make Peter the representative of that (super)natural force for his generation. Yup. Comic books everyone! I personally don't remember how controversial that was at the time; I think one thing comic book fans have come to reconcile over the duration of their fandom is that sometimes big profile runs are going to happen where a writer decides it's time to fundamentally shift something to their own needs, and this was a HUGE one, except at the same time it wasn't. It both kind of took the randomness out of Peter getting his powers and made it more "special" that he was fated to be the inheritor of this kind of power, but then again the randomness of fate is pretty integral to the character. It's that "shit happens, you swallow it and move on" battle against the chaos of the world that made Peter who he was in many ways, from the death of his parents at a young age to the "natural 1" die roll that is his failure to stop a burglar that so happened to be the same one that murdered his beloved Uncle Ben. So, I don't recall if there was a fervor against this approach or not when it hit the stands two decades ago, but, in the context of reading this run now so long since, it works in that it was very much a shift in that it "changed everything we knew" about the character and was a focal point for literally years to come, but it could have been an awkward way to leave things for writers who followed Stracynski's run, had it not ended in such a character altering way. But we'll get to that, many many words from now. 

Back to Morlun. Morlun was introduced almost immediately into this JMS run and may still be the most definitive thing about it. He was a vicious, remorseless, absolutely terrifying force of nature that was as casual about the death he caused as he was sitting down to have brunch. He's the complete antithesis to everything about Spider-Man's regard for life but he was an amazing "unmovable object" to the "never say die" attitude that defines Peter Parker and his alter ego. Honestly, as someone who would consider myself a big Spider-Man fan in that I've read several hundred issues of the character but not such a "super fan" that I'm collecting his every issue and have his webbed face on my boxers right now, it's in my opinion one of the most iconic encounters I've ever seen the character have. JMS and artist John Romita Jr., for this part of the run, created a monster that, yes, deliciously played to everything that makes Spider-Man great as he proceeded to throw everything at the character from pure physical abuse to playing to his regard for human life as he would drag Spidey back to battle by taunting him with civilians he considered less than chattel. Say what you will about this "Totem era" of Spider-Man in complete hindsight, but if you focus on this opening arc and climactic battle, this is an all-time great.

The Totem material also gave us the character of Ezekiel, who was every bit a potential parallel to Peter as Morlun was an antithesis. Bright and jovial and chock full of spider powers of his own, but also wearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, Ezekiel was essentially the "Ghost of What Peter Parker Could Be" with how he used his intelligence to build himself a company and a fortune instead of using every last penny in his wallet to make web fluid. Really, that's another theme of this run that has stuck over the years and I've never figured out if it was divisive or not; the idea that Peter Parker could be, y'know, a super genius and not dirt poor. Yes, JMS for about half his run on this book depicted Pete still as a character pretty much rubbing two pennies together for warmth - on a teachers' salary this time around not a freelancer's - but as he had Pete and Mary Jane reconcile and then the DISASSEMBLED era of the Avengers started to beat at Pete's door, it was very much obvious that the thought processes of a man with Peter's intelligence who was, y'know, married to a supermodel turned aspiring actress living on a shoestring budget didn't make much sense. Between Ezekiel being the model for it and then his transition into becoming Tony Stark's apprentice a couple years later, this was very much the era of admitting that Marvel's marquee "everyman" character was anything but that and opened a can of worms with Pete/Spidey that ran it's own course during his run and that Dan Slott ran with heavily for the decade he touched the character.

Those first couple years of this run were absolutely fire though, as far as I am concerned both currently having reread this and was then originally reading it. JMS was running with this Totem material as the primary focus and for me it worked. As I said above, while Morlun was pretty much the high mark, the rotation of unstoppable "primordial forces" antagonists gunning for Peter were properly daunting. The newly revamped mythos of JMS' on the character also played well with his history of many animal themed villains, Ezekiel was great as a relatively fun loving example of what Pete could be and also a little bit of an Uncle Ben fill in, and the primary relationships of Peter between his Aunt May (who discovered Peter's secret after his overcoming of Morlun) and his revitalizing of his relationship with Mary Jane were as emotionally fulfilling as the fisticuffs were properly energizing. I can't say this enough either; as much as I'm not so much an overall fan of John Romita Jr.'s art, for his something like three year tenure on this run with JMS, his style was a perfect match for the storytelling therein. It was impactful when the punches were landing, there was a lot of great emotion and character work going on in his facial expressions and body language, and it had the perfect balance of grit and "cartoonishness" to juggle how JMS' scripts were equal parts "jaunty" and harrowing. 

For three years this one-two punch of what JMS was putting out there with his character work and mythos rewriting and JRJr's pencilling ability were creating possibly one of the best and defining runs on the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man that we had ever seen. 

And then "Sins Past" happened.

In short, I absolutely despise this story. It completely took me out of the run seventeen years ago and it made me do a simple "oh, yeah, still terrible" and debate cancelling this whole reread when I made it to this story arc this time around. This story, quite frankly, should not exist. The Crib Notes premise of this story arc, for those who do not know, is that two super-powered people who look awfully like Peter's deceased first love, Gwen Stacy, and Peter himself come gunning for Peter's head. As the story plays out we find that these two kids were the love children of Gwen and... Norman Osborn(??) from several years warped into believing Peter was responsible for their mom's demise and their current state of genetic disrepair (their DNA is unraveling because of the messy chemicals they inherited, hence the quickened aging as well). The original pitch of this tale called for this to be a story where Gwen and Pete did indeed hook up in their youth and Gwen hid the children from Peter for reasons, and then those kids were found out and raised by Norman to hate Peter/Spider-man. But instead, shot down from on top, JMS instead still ran with the story and made their father Norman, because Gwen felt sorry for a creepy old millionaire twenty-some years older than her once upon a time. It is, quite frankly, abhorrent. If in its original form, there could have probably been something here, I guess. There could have been something about the revelation of Pete having kids that could have pulled at his relationship with MJ, there would have been something extra sadistic and next level malicious about Norman turning the kids on Pete; as much as it may be a step too far on futzing with the history of Spider-man it would have at least made a more functional stance. 

As is, though, man this story should have been abandoned like the kids were. The justification that is presented as to why Gwen would fall for an even then shifty and unbalanced Norman Osborn are laughable at best, gross at the least, and to what greater purpose the kids even existed in the first place I'm still not sure. They don't even survive the arc! So why were they even introduced?!? To show that Osborn is as despicable a villain as could be? He'd already had plenty of that over forty years at that point. If, assuming this story had been told in its original form, it was just to flesh out the idea that, yes, two teenagers gave into their hormones and indeed did the humpty dance it... what? Makes Peter and his relationship somehow deeper than his one with MJ, who he had been married to for something probably like five-ish years or so (because it's so hard to gauge actual comic book time passage) and they hadn't even taken that step? To serve as an educational tale of why you should wrap your web shooter? I have no idea what purpose this six issue excursion into the sex life of Gwen Stacy would perform in either version of it other than just make Osborn a bigger bastard than ever before, which is both kind of boring and further pointless in that Osborn barely even shows himself in the rest of JMS' entire run, so there's not even any sort of extended payoff! This not only runs through territory of Peter's past that no one was really calling to be mucked about with, but it was a substantial tone shift in what this run had been up to this point, one that still had an overall very jocular sensibility to it despite the stakes it occasional raised through the roof, and it absolutely never fully recovers. 

There is some solid storytelling in this run after that "landmark" tale, but the damage really was done by that point. A good bit of the characterization remains strong. Peter and MJ dive deeper into what makes them work even though there's always tension. Aunt May gradually accepts a world where her dear nephew is always in such danger but is always so selfless, even if he gets hatred for it nonetheless. The couple arcs after "Sins Past" are enjoyable enough and play with that idea I mentioned earlier of a Peter Parker whose life isn't always just wasted potential and living paycheck to paycheck. There's a story where he's visited by an old high school buddy who is desperate for financial success and praise from the scientific community for a project he has been working on for years and he asks Pete to help him keep moving by talking to Tony Stark for him. Hijinks ensue and the character (of course) biffs his experiment up and becomes like a Molten Man variant type character that Pete smacks down in a couple issues, but not before the guy destroys both Pete and MJ's apartment and Aunt May's house. But the point of that story is it shows the level of brilliance Pete could have been playing on that this unstable friend of his, who still wasn't playing on Peter's intelligence level, was just a couple steps away from monumental scientific breakthrough. The character is and has always been too bright to just be some dude slinging photos for a living, and I do agree with this assessment of JMS' and how he made that a major point of dispute with his run.

Likewise, the following story is about a now homeless Parker family getting settled into Avengers Tower as he had finally made the big leagues and became a member of the team during the Brian Michael Bendis take on the book. Again, another decent story here, Pete gets in to some shenanigans involving AIM and some makeshift evil Avengers they had created to cause havoc around NYC, and he really proves his worth to the team and starts gaining confidence playing on a new level with all these living legends around him. He also starts getting more into an "understudy" role with Tony Stark, May starts seeing more of the life he lives and getting some catharsis by becoming friendly with Avengers butler and confidant, Jarvis, and MJ... well, okay, MJ just kind of gets tossed in some awkward story blip where its insinuated she's going to Stark Tower at night to hook up with Tony and she keeps pursuing her acting career. Not the best use of her, though JMS does continually beat home how much of a rock she is to him in these strenuous times. Regardless, these are solid moments with some decent character work and that continue themes that JMS had been playing out well the entire run. And then "The Other" and "Civil War" happened and, yeah, that was the last time I could label this run as "enjoyable" with "passable" being the most praise I could heap on the remaining stories to be told under the pen of Joseph Michael Straczynski. But I'm going to get into that in a second post because this is becoming a MASSIVE endeavor and, yeah, I'm going to have some wordy-ass thoughts on that stuff.

Hopefully this has all been entertaining enough. As I do them more and more of these I would imagine I'll start figuring out if I'm taking the right approach to this kind of coverage with how much of the material I'm calling out, if I'm analyzing the right thing, what amount of detail needs to be put where, etc etc. But yeah, this is my first run and I should be wrapping this in the next day or two, even though I could, quite frankly, shit on "Civil War" as a concept for probably half a novels' worth of words. But thanks again for trying out this lengthy endeavor and, yeah, take care. Cheers...