Life Update – A Break

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

I know the gap between my las post hasn’t been that noticeable, but it’s been long enough for me to come clean about a few things. I’m going to be taking a little break from posting on Chasing Amazing. How long? Could be a week or two, or maybe a month or two, I’m not 100 percent sure yet. All I do know is I’ve hit a little bit of a wall creatively and I need to work through it at my own pace.

I’ve been doing this site consistently for well over a year and of course I haven’t succeeded in my “chase” yet, so of course I’ll be back. In the interim, if Twitter is your thing, I suggest you follow Chasing Amazing as I’ll be checking in over there and I’ll definitely let you know when I decide to get back to work here. We can also talk about Ends of the Earth, and anything else Spider-Man or comic book related.

Hope nobody gets too upset here and thinks I’m throwing in the towel. Like Spider-Man, I’ll always be back, just need to work some things out on my end.

Reading Experience: BLACK WIDOW! And Spider-Man’s Girl Troubles

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

Though I often complain about the cynical nature of comic books, I thought I would take advantage of all the “Avengers-mania” connected to the new blockbuster movie (in theaters today!) and do a post about a featured character in that movie, Black Widow. Of course, I have an ulterior motive in talking about Black Widow – as what I really want to do is talk about feminism in comic books.

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Are you still there? Great. If I already didn’t scare you away on Wednesday when I promised not to talk politics in connection to ASM’s “Obama issue” in 2009, then I guess a little chit-chat about the portrayal of female characters within the Spider-Man universe isn’t going to totally turn you off. Or maybe it will and you can leave me some angry hate mail at my gmail account or something (or in the comments section. Why does the comments section on this site always run so hot and cold?).

Anyway, the timing of this topic du jour is actually quite fortuitous, as I honestly had forgotten all about the events of ASM #86 despite the fact that it marked a significant character transformation in the form of the Black Widow updating her costume to the sexy black leather get-up that some percentage of the site’s audience may recognize as the outfit they’ve mentally undressed off of Scarlett Johansson. Regardless, probably because this comic book was sandwiched between a couple of major ASM storylines at the time – the ongoing “tablet” mystery that seemingly went on for issues, and then the death of Captain George Stacy and its appropriate fall-out which kicked off in ASM #88 – I don’t remember ever reading this issue cover-to-cover before. As a result, a recent ASM-reading marathon brought about by my somewhat crazy desire to do a “best of” series this summer to coincide with Spidey’s 50^th anniversary (we’ll see if I do it) reintroduced me, or maybe just introduced me to the contents of this issue.

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Remembrance of Comics Past: Amazing Spider-Man 583

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

On the topic of real-life political figures being featured prominently in comic books, I decided this week’s spotlight will be about the grand-daddy of them all, Amazing Spider-Man #583, aka, the Obama issue.

Ah, the Obama issue. Remember when the Obama Administration was in its infancy and it didn’t cause a national $H*#storm for Marvel to feature a historic president who was also an unabashed nerd and comic book fan on the cover of Spidey title? Fast forward about two years and you had political commentators ripping apart the concept of Miles Morales, Latino Spider-Man as some kind of Obama brainwashing of America. Good times. But this isn’t about politics – or is it?

I’d be remiss in mentioning that in my first two presidential elections, I cast votes for Al Gore and John Kerry, so the 2008 Election marked the first time I placed my bet on the winning horse. That has to have significance. I don’t really want to get into the nuts and bolts of Obama’s first four years in office – I will say I hope he gets another four years this November. Regardless, that early November night was a truly exciting one for me. The only thing missing was the company of my wife, who sadly was out of town on business – in Tennessee of all places, certainly not a “Blue State.” I just can’t look at a picture of Obama, cartoon or otherwise, without thinking about that twinge of disappointment I felt because the one person who means more to me than anything else in the world, wasn’t around to share in my jubilation.

Still, trying not to make this about politics (I’ve tried and failed about three times already. My guess is, if you voted McCain, or plan to vote Romney this November, you’ve already stopped reading). When word got out that Obama was going to be a featured character in an updated short Spider-Man story, it was one of those serendipitous world’s colliding moments for me. Sure it was totally gimmicky – perhaps Marvel’s most nefarious gimmick yet. Rather than putting a foil cover or a hologram upfront to try and attract new readers, Marvel decided to capitalize on a historic event and a politician who was enormously popular when he first came into office. Not to sound cynical, but at least the death of a major character like the Human Torch takes some storyline development (and effort) to pull off. Marvel just needed to flash a drawing of Obama on the cover and then put together a silly short story about the Chameleon not being able to dribble a basketball.

But this post isn’t about the storyline either. What makes this issue significant to me (besides the politics, but this is not about politics) is this is the issue that has come to encapsulate why I’m glad to be a subscriber to Amazing Spider-Man. Sure, you’ve heard me kvetch in the past about the delivery time for subscribers (I’m still waiting on ASM 684, Marvel) and subscribers don’t get certain comics like pointes ones and annuals that are otherwise part of the same continuity as the main series. But one thing being a subscriber does guarantee you is an actual copy of Amazing Spider-Man. And considering just how many copies the Obama issue sold when it was on the newsstands, I’ve always felt very fortunate as both a collector and a reader to get a coveted “first edition” of this comic (which actually doesn’t feature Obama at all on the cover). After being burned in recent years in trying to get my hands on comics such as the first Miles Morales, or the death of Human Torch, I was very happy that my acquisition of ASM #583 involved no drama. It just showed up on my doorstep one day, I opened up the envelope, gave it a read, chuckled at the Obama story, and slipped the comic into a plastic bag with board to exist in its short box for the rest of eternity.

I told you this story wasn’t about politics.

New Issues: Amazing Spider-Man #683

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

Amazing Spider-Man #683, the second part of the Ends of the Earth storyline, left me with two totally separate impressions. So while I usually try to put together one broad “thematic” post that sums up the issue each time out, I have to apologize in advance in my thoughts come across a little disjointed this time around.

As for impression number one – as I mentioned regarding ASM’s recent use of time travel for storyline, my suspension of disbelief has weird and funny triggers when it comes to my comic book reading. So with that in mind, I can’t eloquently explain why but I had a very difficult time with the use of real-life political figures in ASM #683. It’s just something – outside of the Obama inauguration issue a few years back, of course – that has usually been avoided in Spider-Man. And if it has been used, it’s always felt more like a throw-away line than a substantial part of the plot (a quick Google of Ronald Reagan and Spider-Man for example shows that the Gipper is “mentioned” in ASM #158). Historically speaking, comic books that have used active or recently active political figures in their plotlines have done so explicitly support the plot and themes of the story. How can one talk about Frank Miller’s, The Dark Knight Returns series and not understand why it had to be Reagan that set Superman out to subdue Batman? In that case, you had a political figure who through rhetoric and actions came to emblemize the rebirth of “America” as in, America, the superpower, aligning himself with the ultimate American Icon in Superman (not to mention, the ultimate representation of America’s power). The use of Reagan there really advances the story.

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Reading Experience: Do you Trust this Alien?

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

Just as an addendum to my post earlier this week about the Venom symbiote not belonging anywhere near a supergroup of superheroes like the Avengers, I thought I’d look back at the issue of Amazing Spider-Man where we discovered that there was, indeed, something a bit suspicious about that black goo Peter Parker picked up during Marvel’s Secret Wars miniseries.

Given what a significant role the symbiote has gone on to play in the Marvel universe since it was first introduced in the mid-1980s, using hindsight, I feel like the build-up to this big reveal in ASM #258 could have been done better. The new black suit is introduced seven issues earlier and right away Spidey speculates that maybe he should let Mr. Fantastic take a look at this foreign substance that seemingly responds to his mental cues. But instead, it’s business as usual until ASM #258 when after a few incidents of the suit acting peculiarly, Peter is like “oh yeah, Mr. Fantastic wants to take a look … to the Baxter Building!”

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Spidey Spin-Offs: Venom #15 and the Over Avengers-ization of Marvel

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

As someone who has admittedly not read many Avengers-based comic books over the years (even the recent iteration of the “New” Avengers which features Spider-Man as part of the group), this statement may be coming from a place of ignorance, but I find the involvement of the Venom symbiote in any kind of superhero group to be extraordinarily off-putting.

I understand that the Avengers are notorious for grouping together superhero personalities that don’t always seem to make sense – heck, the ultimate loner, the Incredible Hulk, was one of the original group members, and in a number of the teasers/trailers for the new Avengers movie, group discord seems to be one of the studio’s selling points. But seriously? Venom? I don’t care if it’s Flash Thompson, Eddie Brock, Mac Gagan or really anyone wearing that suit. Venom is not a superhero. And while that’s been a major theme of Rick Remender’s since they launched this Flash as Venom series last year – how do you define a hero? – I would think an assembly of Earth’s “mightiest” heroes could at least understand that anybody who relies on a symbiotic alien known for sucking the life out of its hosts does not belong in any kind of a supergroup.

What’s worse from my vantage point is that this bizarre premise isn’t even saved by Remender’s set-up. That being Flash/Venom is officially part of the team, but everyone is a little suspicious of his relationship with the symbiote. So rather than cut off Flash’s contact with the suit completely, the Avengers plan to keep the symbiote on lockdown and Flash will be able to access his powers with a simple phone call instantaneously. So he needs permission from his “parents” to get his costume, but access is still pretty seamless? Sure. That seems failsafe.

Additionally, we get the million-dollar question floated and then promptly ignored (though I’m sure it was designed to be more of a teaser to be answers in a future issue than anything else) but “who’s going to tell Spider-Man?” You know, I have problems as it is with Spider-Man as a member of the Avengers for reasons that I’ve mentioned far too many times for people to care about anymore, but you got to think that upstanding guys like Captain America and Hank Pym would have thought about Spidey’s feelings before bringing aboard an alien being that’s essentially based on destroying him for more than two decades in real-time history. It’s the little things.

Other than that, I realize that the fact that Flash/Venom is so WRONG for the Avengers is precisely why Marvel wanted to add him to the group, but I still find the “Avengers-ization” of the Marvel universe to be a lazy approach to storytelling and conflict. It appears like whenever Marvel hits a dead end with a character, one of their solutions is to throw him on one of the Avengers teams. That certainly describes how Spider-Man finally made the cut in 2005. Beyond that, I also find what Marvel is doing a cynical way to get people to buy more comic books. By co-opting essentially every major superhero/character with a little bit of popularity, Marvel is forcing people to buy more comic books every month/week in order to keep with their favorite characters. There’s no other explanation to explain how guys like Wolverine, Daredevil or the Thing could possibly be involved in a group like the Avengers. Now you can add Flash’s Venom to the list, despite the fact that it really makes no sense.

Remembrance of Comics Past: Amazing Spider-Man #298

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

People will say timing is everything. Yet sometimes using the power of 20-20 hindsight, timing doesn’t always seem to add up and make sense.

Take the story – or better put, non-story – of my acquisition of Amazing Spider-Man #298.

For those unaware of your ASM history, this issue is notable for two main reasons – it’s the first Spider-Man comic with artwork from future industry superstar Todd McFarlane, and it features a shadowy first-ever cameo from major Spidey supervillain Venom (his first “full” appearance was famously marked in ASM #300).

While neither McFarlane or Venom were household names at the time of this issue’s release in the late 1980s, I was always struck by the fact that this was not one of the issues my 7-year-old self picked up at the newsstand when it first came out. People who have been following my blog for the past year and change, should note that my first two issues of Amazing Spider-Man were #296 and #297 and I have distinct memories of picking up issue #300 at the newsstand (and subsequently reading it and destroying it, forcing me to spend a lot more money on a collector’s copy years later). But ASM #298 (and while we’re at it #299) did not come into my possession until I acquired the famed “big box of comic books” years later. Given the timing of when my love for Spider-Man comic books was born, I always found this fact to be very odd.

Maybe I actually did own this issue when it first came out, but given I was merely 7-years-old and had little to no understanding of comic book collecting, nor could I possibly have had the foresight to predict that the first-time artist of this particular comic book would go on to be one of the biggest names in the world of collectibles, that I casually tossed this comic book into a garbage can after rifling it through it a few times.

About 7 years after the comic first came out, when McFarlane was a semi-household name for geeks due to his success with Spider-Man and then the Spawn franchise, the aforementioned scenario of childish ignorance crossed my mind. At that time, I was gathering up every issue of Amazing Spider-Man that I could find throughout my house and filing those comic books into one centralized location, thus officially kicking off my ASM collection and quest. Armed with a copy of the Wizard magazine/price guide, I remember my eyes bugging out a bit when I saw that the two of the earliest copies of ASM in my collection, #296 #297, were barely worth a couple of bucks a pop, and then the next issue sequentially in line – which was of course, missing from my centralized pile – was worth a decent chunk of change to a teenager.

Even as a small child, I had a fascination with numbers and completion – I remember getting a box of Topps baseball cards as a kid and trying like gangbusters to complete the entire set of 792 cards (at 17 cards in a pack and 36 packs in a box, I would fall just short every time, but perhaps buying a few additional packs of cards would put me over the top). So why I wouldn’t have picked up ASM #298 and #299 after picking up the two previous issues just seems like a major oversight, even for a second-grader.

Spidey Spin Offs: Carnage USA

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

After reading the first installment of the Carnage USA miniseries by Zeb Well and Clayton Crain, I waxed poetic about why I was never much of a fan of Carnage, the character. However, I wanted to give the mini a chance because so many people seemed to enjoy the last Wells/Crain Carnage series and because I was curious to see if now was finally the time where someone was going to do something entirely new/different with Cletus Kasady’s serial killer symbiote.

Alas, the remaining four issues of Carnage USA produced more of the same from Carnage – plenty of blood and guts with little to no character development or evolution. Not to pick on any of the other fantastic Spidey-universe bloggers out there, but while reading the letters page in Carnage USA #5, I noticed one known symbiote-fan praising the Carnage/Venom showdown in the series for (paraphrasing) “bringing us back to the 1990s.” And yes, while that might float some of your boats out there, that’s precisely the reason I really didn’t go for this series, because it’s just more of the same stuff I’ve read in every other symbiote story from around 1992-1998 at 4x the price on newsstands. If I wanted to relive Carnage/Venom battles that felt fresh and exciting, I could just boot up my complete ASM DVD-Rom and go back and read issues #361-#363 not drop $3.99 for an update.

Not that there wasn’t potential to do something new here – at least on the Carnage/Venom front. With Eddie Brock now trying to save the world as Anti-Venom, and long-time Spider-Man bully turned U.S. Army covert-ops specialist Flash Thompson donning the Venom symbiote, there was a new dynamic that could have been potentially explored with Kasady and Thompson. Instead, we have Carnage mocking Flash as a cripple and a battle between two legless people on the killing room floor of a factory farm. Yes, we did get the twist of Flash deciding to spare Kasady at the end – primarily because Spider-Man told him “no one dies” and Spidey is a hero of Flash’s – something Venom/Brock always refused to do. But nothing else happened in the five issues of blood and mayhem that made me think that if Kasady and the Carnage symbiote ever get back together again down the road, there would be an entirely NEW story to tell. And that’s more or less my problem with every Carnage story. At the end, you have nowhere to go with the characters except recycling the same old ideas (Spider-Man has a moral dilemma, the symbiote affects some other super-powered character like the Silver Surfer or the Avengers, Venom or some other rival symbiote is called in to take care of business, Carnage leaves behind a path of destruction).

With Eddie Brock supposedly coming to the side of good, perhaps he would have been an interesting character to bring into the mix, or maybe we could have witnessed a real power-struggled between Flash and the Venom symbiote once he had Carnage on the ropes, since the symbiote has come to hate Kasady with every fiber of his being, and Thompson just wants to make his teenage-idol proud by not killing his enemy.

Granted, those around the interwebs who enjoyed the series are praising it for its dark tone and horror-imagery, and yes, I guess from that standpoint Carnage USA is the kind of comic book that’s very unique from other books that are out on the newsstands – certainly a lot different from anything else Marvel has put forward in the past year. But just because there’s a stylistic difference in terms of presentation, doesn’t mean that this Carnage story is any different from all of the other Carnage stories Marvel has churned over the years. Just because this one has people getting impaled by meat hooks and children being taken over by the symbiote, doesn’t mean that this series is suddenly an exceptional case of storytelling. Considering some of the brilliant stories Wells is churning out on Avenging Spider-Man, I don’t think it’s over-the-top of me to expect more from this series.

New Issues: Amazing Spider-Man #682

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

What I’ve consistently loved about Dan Slott’s work as head writer on Amazing Spider-Man is his ability to take risks while simultaneously telling a story that feels connected to the heart and soul of a superhero universe that is approaching its 50^th birthday this summer. Here, in the first installment of Ends of the Earth, Slott kicks off a story that, just through its title, implicates an apocalyptical scenario, and yet he has the stones to play off the sympathies of a near-death Doctor Octopus by suggesting, that maybe, possibly, if you listen to anyone else by Spider-Man, Ock is really looking to SAVE humanity for his final act on this planet, not destroy it.

By casting doubt on what Ock’s endgame is, Slott creates conflict over the idea of whether or not there’s real conflict. And I think that’s brilliant. Whereas last summer’s Spider Island was a true joyride from start to finish, the clear and present danger was always clear – Manhattan acquired a Spider-Man virus which turned people into giant spiders. Something needed to be done about this, and ultimately it took Spidey, Mary Jane, Venom, the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Anti-Venom, Kaine and others to band together and utilize their strengths to overcome the Spider Queen and the infestation. With Ends of the Earth, we end the first part with a new-suited Spidey walking into Avengers mansion and asking his teammates to assemble, yet prior to his arrival, the group is debating the merits of whether or not Ock and the Sinister Six are an actual threat.

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Remembrance of Comics Past: Amazing Spider-Man #20 (volume 2)

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Mark Ginocchio

While there are a number of things about the universe I don’t pretend to understand, one specific item that has confounded me for years was the seemingly exorbitant price for certain copies of volume II Amazing Spider-Man comic books.

Actually, I never truly understood why Marvel even decided to create a “volume II” for ASM, but that’s a topic for another day. When I became fully determined to restart my lifelong quest to own every issue of Amazing Spider-Man less than a decade ago, one of things I first needed to do to reestablish myself was to fill in the gaps from the mid-to-late-1990s when I had stopped buying comic books altogether. Considering I quit collecting at the peak of the comic book industry boom, I expected that the bulk of these missing issues would be relatively easy to track down and cost pennies on the dollar – you know, the cost of pretty much every single early 1990s comic book save one or two really special ones that had a limited circulation.

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