In this installment we will discuss the controversial retconning of the Death of Jean DeWolff story arc, including whether or not it was a retcon in the first place.
How could Brock’s article have been released in time?
In Part 1 I brought up this oft mentioned criticism of ASM #300:
- Brock’s origin story involves rewriting events from the Sin Eater storyline to facilitate his fall from grace
The thing is this aspect of ASM #300 (like so many others) is more misunderstood and not nearly as much of a cheat as people think.
Before we dive deep though go back to part 1 or ASM #300 itself and re-familiarize yourselves with Brock’s accounting of his origin, specifically the pages mentioning the Sin Eater.
In ASM #300 Brock claims the public learned of Sin Eater’s true identity as Emil Gregg upon the publication of his news story outing him as such. This followed at least one article Brock wrote where he told Gregg’s story which the latter had confessed to him.
In the actual ‘Death of Jean DeWolff’/’Sin Eater’ storyline though Emil Gregg was (apparently) identified as the Sin Eater upon his arrest by the police which followed his invasion of the Daily Bugle.
As J.R. ‘Madgoblin’ Fettinger put it in one of his articles:
Why didn’t anyone interrogate Brock about the Sin Eater before he was caught?
I will admit there is a flaw of to all this though.
If prior to Gregg’s invasion of the Bugle, Brock had published an article where he claimed to know intimate details of Sin Eater’s identity why would Spider-Man or Daredevil not seek him out as a source of information. After all according to Brock’s story the police apparently did.
The simplest answer would be that both men live such frantic and hectic lives that they simply didn’t catch wind of the news, especially when both were so focused upon catching the Sin Eater themselves in the first place.
Peter and Matt Murdock had both lost people to the Sin Eater’s killing spree so this naturally might’ve made them not think entirely logically, or ignored certain news outlets given their emotional states of mind.
This is practically explicit in Spider-Man’s case. The events of the storyline served to deeply affect and unnerve Peter, causing him to act in ways he wouldn’t normally.
- His friend Jean DeWolff had out of the blue been violently murdered.
- He learned she’d secretly been in love with him.
- The killer was not a larger than life costumed criminal but rather a mere man with a gun who was nevertheless profoundly violent in a way Peter hadn’t typically dealt with.
- Such violence from normal people had served to anger Peter earlier in the story when a group of young hoodlums assaulted an innocent old man he and Aunt May knew. They later walked free.
- Peter was beaten in his initial encounter with Sin Eater and admitted to being shook up from Jean’s death and learning the Sin Eater was the one responsible for it.
· His dodging the killer’s gun blasts resulting in civilians being hit instead.
These events served to, more than once in the story, unnerve Peter and make him angrier and act out of the ordinary for his character. This is exemplified in three key scenes in the story. The first is when Spidey acts friendly towards a criminal in front of other crooks, thus making him a potential target to get to him through.
Secondly he brutally attacks and almost murders Stan Carter when he threatens Betty Brant.
Thirdly he almost allows Stan Carter and Daredevil to be murdered by an angry mob because he’s so out of sorts due to the events of the story.
Under such circumstances it is not unreasonable for Peter to have not paid too much attention to the news (or at least all of it) and thus missed Brock’s initial Sin Eater article(s). This would be especially true if these initial article(s) had been published only shortly before the one outing Gregg as the killer.
After all ASM #300 does not outright state the gap of time between Brock’s initial article and the article that revealed Sin Eater’s identity, it merely states that it caused the Daily Globe’s circulation to soar which could have happened at any time.
It may have been the very next day or possibly even later in the exact same day, published as a special edition. Alternatively one could argue that Peter upon learning of Brock’s article(s) was planning on finding Brock whilst attending the Daily Bugle, moments before Gregg’s invasion, rendering that course of action redundant.
Further evidence
So the events of the initial Sin Eater arc and Brock’s origin are not truly irreconcilable or an example of a hard retcon. As I’ve stated before in this essay series it was more something poorly explained and conveyed to the reader than outright poorly conceived. It makes sense when you think about it but it isn’t obvious at first glance and that is the biggest weakness of the writing in regards to this aspect of Brock’s origin.
I truly believe that neither Michelinie nor anybody else intended to imply that Brock’s outing of Gregg was the incident that directly led to his capture. ASM #300 itself actually never states anything like that all, merely showing us that Brock published an article claiming Gregg was the Sin Eater and that this was a follow up to another article/articles about Sin Eater.
In fact ASM #300 even has an editorial note outright stating the events Brock is describing happened ‘between the lines’ of the original Sin Eater storyline, not actually in the Sin Eater storyline itself.
Given that the subject was about Venom’s origin it is unlikely the two men did not discuss the specific way in which Brock’s backstory would tie-into the Sin Eater arc. And it seems equally unlikely that the writer of the story (and an exceptionally talented one at that) would not point out how having Brock reveal Gregg’s identity irreconcilably contradicted a pivotal moment from his story.
Unless of course their idea was that it in fact did not contradict the story, hence the editor note specifying that Brock’s involvement happened ‘between the lines’ of the arc. Indeed if Brock’s article was what led to the capture of Gregg that would be such a vital plot point to the original storyline that it would not warrant the ‘between the lines’ statement in the editorial box, as opposed to simply saying the events happened in the respective issue(s).
Not to mention it is really quite mind boggling to presume many writers, including David Michelinie and Peter David, could be truly so incompetent as to make such a huge oversight in contradicting a dramatic and pivotal plot point from a highly popular and relatively recent storyline; in particular when Peter David was the original author of said storyline.
So really the Sin Eater element for Brock (though not conveyed as well as it could have been) is really not a story killer the way some people make it out to be. It is merely a case of performing a relatively simple No. Prize attempt. It isn’t like you need to write your own fanfic to make things make sense.
Next up we will begin addressing Brock’s personality and motivations.
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I’ve gotta agree with Alex. I mean, Venom tying into the Sin Eater storyline is obviously a retcon. And you can make all kinds of arguments about why tying Venom into the Sin Eater story was a bad idea or disrespectful. However, to say that it doesn’t work simply isn’t true.
Alex has logically explained how it could work. And in some places, you might need to stretch logic to make it work, but that’s what most retcons do.
Lastly, as Alex has hinted at in the comments here, Brock is not a reliable narrator. Now, he may not have started off as twisted or as crazy as he becomes after he bonds with the symbiote, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a twisted world view.
There are a lot of selfish people out there, who even when they do terrible things, view themselves as the victim. And keeping a (supposed) serial killers identity secret when he’s on a murder spree, until the police force the identity out of you… that clearly shows not everything is right with Brock.
So, a lot of what Brock is saying can be regarded as unreliable, and that isn’t bad writing, it’s part of his character.
As for Brock’s motivations I’d ask you to be patient as the rest of the essay series addresses that aspect of the story and in fact touches on some of the things you pointed out.
As a light spoiler you said Brock was ‘likely a reasonable person’. But I would just like to raise the question of…was he though?
You said that based upon Brock’s own telling of his origin. But again I’d like to raise a question to that. Should we completely trust Eddie Brock word?
You said he’d have to ALREADY be mentally unstable to make that leap in logic back during the Sin Eater story. But…aren’t we being told this information by an already mentally unstable person after the fact.
You said that it’s unlikely someone as unstable as Brock is depicted in ASM #300 could be a well respected journalist. A few more questions for you.
Again who is saying that Brock was a respected journalist? Eddie Brock is.
Who said Brock was AS unstable back then as he is depicted in ASM #300?
I won’t dive into the issue of ho Brock could function as a respected journalist if he was mentally disturbed here. But again I’d ask for patience because I DO talk about that in future articles.
The same applies to your comments regarding Brock’s statements about Sin Eater retiring. This is all talked about I promise and dives deep into Brock’s psychology.
As for your statements about Michelinie changing Venom at the eleventh hour I addressed those several parts ago concluding that it really doesn’t make any sense at all.
I would ask you to please keep an open mind and consider the possibility of changing your opinion of ASM #300 when you’ve read the full essay series. If you still feel the way you feel then…I tried *shrugs*
You are neglecting a few things there Hornacek.
To begin with technically as the pages above showcase we never ever get the indication that the Bugle DOESN’T know about Brock’s article. We follow Peter’s POV and he only just about gets to Robbie’s office before Gregg bursts in. So the Bugle could be aware of Brock’s recent article but Peter himself is not and gets no indication the Bugle at large is aware of it.
In addition you mentioned the article being published earlier in the day but there are two things to consider with that. Firstly what time of day does Gregg invade the Bugle and secondly exactly how much time has elapsed between Brock’s article and that event?
If Gregg invaded the Bugle in the morning and Brock’s article had only hit the streets within the hour then the Bugle (or more importantly Peter) wouldn’t necessarily be aware of it. That interpretation would also jive with the asterix from ASM #300 that said the events occurred ‘between the lines of’ the Sin Eater arc.
And as I stated up top Brock’s article could’ve gotten published during or very shortly AFTER Gregg’s invasion of the Bugle and consequently became a sensation from that. After all between calming everyone down, getting the police there, getting Gregg arrested, taking statements from the witnesses and so forth it’s likely that:
a) The Bugle staffers wouldn’t have had time to get anything to print about the invasion
b) They wouldn’t have been able to deduce or confirm WHO Sin Eater actually was, and
c) Word would likely spread to the Globe prompting them to publish Brock’s story ASAP before they got scooped. Like I said above it would’ve taken time to actually ID Gregg. He wasn’t wearing his own clothes and was unconscious and with 1980s tech they weren’t going to be able to figure out exactly who he was without a piece of identification or a statement or confession from anybody. Yes there are finger prints but not everyone is on the police database and more importantly…fingerprints as ID doesn’t even work. It’s pseudo science.
They would’ve basically had to taken an unconscious Gregg back to the station and then revived him somehow and gotten a statement from him as to who the Hell he was and then gotten that information out to the public before the Bugle or any paper besides the Globe could make a move.
In fact in thinking about it for the sake of this discussion with you I’ve only just noticed that ASm #300 ALREADY brilliantly addresses your very criticism and I totally missed it. Can’t see the woods for the trees I guess lol.
Brock says his article was a sensation for about 90 minutes (an hour and a half). Then Spidey caught the real Sin Eater. This means that Brock’s article was actually only released approximately 90 minutes before the police showed up to Jameson’s place and arrested Stan Carter.
Let’s say we upscale things ridiculously to 3 hours. And say that it took 90 minutes from the publication of the article for it to become a sensation and then the article enjoyed another 90 minutes in the lime light of said sensation. In other words we’re being incredibly literal in interpreting Brock’s statement that the article was a sensation for 90s minutes but not taking that to mean it was published 90 minutes before Carter was taken into custody.
That’s a perfectly reasonable amount of time to elapse between Gregg’s invasion of the Bugle and Carter’s arrest. Unlike Gregg, Carter is very well known and Daredevil and/or Spidey could’ve given a statement as to who he was. This means the word as to WHO the real Sin Eater was could’ve gotten out far more quickly especially if we consider Betty and Marla would’ve been in quick contact with the Bugle and probably would’ve clued into who Carter was. Gregg though is a different kettle of fish. He lived a low profile life that gave the impression of a recluse. He had no ID on him when he was captured, nobody on the police force or in the Bugle could’ve identified him on site and he was knocked out meaning it would’ve taken some time for the police to have come, taken him to the station, revived him, gotten a statement from him and then gotten word out to the press.
For Brock’s article to have been released during all that and become a big deal is more than believable especially since Gregg obviously doesn’t seem groggy or anything during his interrogation in Spec #109, implying a fair amount of time has elapsed for him to have recovered. Remember he was knocked out when a solid piece of cylindrical metal hit him in the side of the head after being thrown by a guy who can bench press a tank. I think he’d have needed at least an hour to recover his faculties.
I’ve enjoyed the previous entries in this series. I haven’t agreed with some of your points, but others have made sense. This time though is where I have to say that somebody’s straining to do some explaining. Sorry, I don’t agree with pretty much everything said here.
The retcon of Brock publishing Gregg’s story and it fitting into TDoJD just does not fit at all. Even in the 1980s, if a special edition of the Globe had been released earlier in the day before Gregg storms the Bugle as the Sin Eater, there is *no* way nobody at the Bugle hasn’t heard this story. This would be the number one story in New York that day – everyone would be talking about this as soon as the Globe published. It would be all over the radio, and everyone at the Bugle would have heard about it. The idea that no one at the Bugle knows that their main rival has published a story identifying the Sin Eater is laughable.
And then there’s Brock’s motivation for blaming Spider-Man. From his own telling of his origin, he was a well-respected journalist and likely a reasonable person. He made a mistake believing Gregg, but there was enough in Gregg’s communications with Brock to convince him that Gregg was the Sin Eater, so I don’t think it was any incompetence on Brock’s part. But then blaming Spider-Man for proving the Sin Eater was someone else makes *no* sense. Brock would already have to be mentally unstable for him to make this leap of logic. And even if you think Brock is describing his previous life with rose-colored glasses, Peter recognizes Brock’s name and knows he’s a reporter for the Globe. It’s highly unlikely that someone as unstable as Brock is shown to be in ASM #300 could be a well-respected journalist. The idea that Brock wishes Spider-Man could have left the Sin Eater case alone and *maybe* the real killer would have just stopped is inane – again, not something a well-respected journalist would come up with.
As you said, TDoJD was a very well known and well regarded story from just a few years previously. The fact that Micheline retconned Venom’s origin into it so wrongly is, in my opinion, either lazy or just poor writing. Knowing what we know now about Venom’s original identity, it would make more sense if he had already written ASM #300 and then the editor said “Venom can’t be a woman, change it to a man” and Micheline had to rewrite Venom’s origin overnight. THAT would be more believable than what we got.