I Come Not To Eulogize, But To Insult The Assembled

*Note: This post is not particularly coherent. It is also mean, and downright condescending towards people at times. But it keeps me from taking a pickax to my car as a way to vent my fury at other things, so it's for the best.*

Spider-Girl is being canceled. Yes, again. This time, issue #30 seems to be the end of the line. I'm unperturbed about this. First, I'd seen rumors months ago that with its sales the book was only guaranteed up to #30, and I follow the sales figures online, and well, they hadn't gotten any better. They weren't getting much worse, but they weren't in a position where that was sufficient. Also, we've heard this spiel before, and then, surprise!, it's back again. So until I actually stop seeing new issues on the stands, and stop seeing solicitations for the title, I've adopted a believe it when I see it attitude. Third, the book hasn't been particularly wowing me lately. I haven't disliked it (I could have done without a Clone Saga), but I was enjoying it considerably more a year or so ago. At this point I found it a solid book that at least had enough going on each month I felt I got my money's worth. Fourth, 130 total issues is pretty good in this day and age, you know? There are a lot of people online that love Blue Beetle and Booster Gold; do you think either of those will make it to #100? Or Immortal Iron Fist and Nova, for that matter? The book had a nice run, and Mayday will apparently carry on in Amazing Spider-Man Family, so that's something I'll have to look into I guess.

I'm not going to jump on Quesada about this, if you're expecting that. I am curious about a sales decision. When they announced they would be restarting Spider-Girl as Amazing Spider-Girl, DeFalco said he'd been told the book was getting a second chance because it did well outside the direct market. I kind of figured Marvel was talking about those digests they release every so often, the ones that are the size of a manga volume, with six issues for about 8 dollars. To my knowledge, since they started Amazing Spider-Girl, they haven't released any of the stories in that format. I don't figure standard trades of Spider-Girl would do that great on the direct market where the book does not excel, or outside of it, so I wonder about the reasoning behind the lack of digests. But I don't know who made that decision or why, so there isn't really anyone specific to lambast. The online commentators, on the other hand. . .

I see people complaining that they found the book too tame and conservative. OK, I'm going to guess that they mean the book was very old style superhero comics, nothing new or innovative about it. If I were less charitable, I'd assume they meant the book wasn't "edgy" or "extreme" enough, with it's lack of sex and decapitations. either way, I think I would have to tell them *speaks very slowly, very loudly* YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT! I don't recall Spider-Girl or the MC2 Universe in general being marketed as some brand new style of storytelling, never before seen around these parts, that would be sure to kncock your socks off with how NEW it was. At most, it was going to establish a sense of legacy to the Marvel Universe, while telling classic style stories about some "new" heroes doing heroic things and overcoming villains, characters struggling with self-doubt, and the occasional redemptive arc for villains.

If you were looking for something never before seen, well, I'd suggest stepping outside Marvel & DC, and going into the creator-owned realm. I have basically zero experience with the material you'd find there, but I'd imagine the creators are (hopefully) doing things as they please, with regards to story structure, characterization, or whatever it is you felt was too tame or conservative about the MC2 line. If, on the other hand, you were hoping for "extreme" stories, then kindly lift your computer monitor directly over your head, and drop it. If you have a laptop computer, close it, hand it to someone nearby, and tell them to 1) strike you across the face with it, then 2) toss it callously atop your prone form. You want "Extreme"? There's the Ultimate Universe, have a blast. Jeph Loeb is doing extreme with the Ultimates. He's simultaneously doing "incomprehensible", but with the sex and Hawkeye's suicidal tendencies, it wasn't that noticeable. Or better yet, since the 616 co-opted the Ultimate universe's techniques in an attempt to copy their commercial succes, just read some of the 616 stuff. Try Wolverine. Millar had a spider-lady (a spider-girl you might say) knock a guy's head clean off by swinging a gun like a bat. That's certainly not tame or conservative.

That kind of storytelling is all over the place at Marvel and DC. Spider-Girl and the like probably stand out a bit just by not going to those wells so frequently. If you wanted that, you don't have to look hard for it, and not everything needs to be alike, because that would be boring, don't you agree?

Also, can I say I love the person I saw stating that because they hated everything of DeFalco's they've read, that they can't imagine anyone being engrossed by his writing style? What's that? I did just say it? Well, good. Let me further state, if you can't even imagine that, your mental capactity must be severely hampered in some way. We're not asking you to envision development of life on a planet in a binary star system, where one of the stars is a white dwarf putting out intense levels of gamma rays, and the other is a blue giant nearing supernova. All you have to do is picture other people having different tastes in writing than you. That's alright, take your time. I don't know why I'm surprised by that comment honestly, you see variations of it online all the time. I'm sure I did it at some point. "OH, I hate this, so it must be terrible, and no one else could possibly like it either!" It's astoundingly imbecilic. And yet, I can't look away. Does that make me a terrible person*?

That's all I have. I don't know quite where it leaves me, though. Stuck in the middle, you, say? Well, it could be worse. There's clowns to the left of me, jokers to right, so here I am. Stuck in the middle with you.

* This is the point where, if we were on House, Cameron would walk by and tell me that yes, it does make me a terrible person. Hopefully, I would be able to operate the crash cart and give her a nice jolt of electricity to the heart, to see if it would send her flying into the elevator like it did Chev Chelios. So it's for science, you see. Perfectly innocent, and not at all a reflection of my distaste for that particular fictional character.