Do You Really Want To Know The Horrible Truth? Or Do You Want To Read Comics? Comics!

I always liked that scene in the Simpsons, and it seems apropos, given the release of the Mitchell Report on Thursday. What a waste of 409 pages that turned out to be. A bunch of "he told me he sold that guy x,y,z", though I guess if they actually do something because of it, then it might have been worth the $20 mil MLB spent on it. It's their money, I guess.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about today, or I wouldn't have altered the quote. Matt had a link to this entertaining site. Having pored through the essays there, I went hunting through the links section, and wound up here. This must have been around for at least six years, but I think this is the first I've seen of it, and as I've already briefly described my affection for the Scarlet Spider here, you could probably guess a series of posts talking about the storylines that involved his return ascension to Spider-Man, and eventual death , and the discussions and thought processes that lead to those, was pretty interesting.

Interesting, and a bit depressing when you get to the parts where the marketing guys are trying to make the writers stretch out 2-part stories to 4, then 8 parts, and how the ultimate goal keeps changing. First they want to make Reilly the real Spidey because he's single, then they want to bring Peter back, and make him the original again, but he needs to be single again at the end, so then they have to get rid of the baby, but Bob Harras wants the fans who liked the idea of Peter and MJ as parents to think there's a chance they might find their baby, except there really will be no exploration of that possibility whatsoever. You know, I'm sure Bob Harras meant well, but he comes off as a guy that was really not putting much thought in how to get from Point A to Point R, just demanding that it happen.

But it really is fascinating to read about some of the proposals to resolve the Clone Saga that got shot down, and how writers had to keep rewriting their stories because the end result kept getting changed on them. I think the one I was most amused by (besides the idea that suggested Judas Traveller be an angel and Scrier be, you guessed it, Mephisto) was the one that suggested we find out both Ben Reilly and Pregnant MJ are clones, as both of them melt into puddles before Peter's eyes (it's discussed at the end of Part 20). Then he finds the real MJ in some stasis tube, where she's been since the original clone story, which is five years ago to them. Viola! No clone, no marriage, since MJ and Pete were a long way from getting hitched when she would have been captured. I read that, and shook my head, then stopped and said, 'It's sounds better than what I've seen of "One More Day" so far.' True, that's damning with (extremely) faint praise, but you take what you can get.

That's all I've got for you today.