Preview of Alpaha and AMZ 692

36 Comments

1. @ #1: “(and by the way, nice fetishizing of the “librarian hot” Asian girl by the blonde-haired, blue-eyed white boy, Slott)”

   So glad I wasn’t the only one with this problem. I started reading ASM since the Spider-Island stuff and as a whole have enjoyed things so far. The writing hasn’t been exactly the fanciest or edgiest, but has been enjoyable from a good popcorn movie perspective. Alpha’s whole bit as a “meh” character that doesn’t fit in to any demographics just seems to make readers push him into the hipster category which automatically makes readers hate him that much more.

   Broadening my scope a bit, I really didn’t like his whole internal monologue about how he has the hots for the one Asian hottie in the school. Yes, it’s fine to add some people of color to a mainstream series like ASM, but you have to consider how tastefully it’s done. I personally really liked how we were able to find out that Parker’s boss at Horizon was gay from a simple offhanded comment in his dialogue. That was tasteful. This on the other hand is just insulting. To have a middle class white teen complain about his problems is already eye-roll worthy, so to have him ogle at the Asian nerd in school is just… ugh. Just saying that there are infinitely better ways of incorporating people of color into mainstream comics. For the most part I was fine with how Ultimate Spidey did with Miles, so I know the peeps at Marvel are at least somewhat competent in handling it.

   This just seems like a mess so far, though.

2. Marvel uses summer events, teasers, and plot gimmicks to goose up ASM’s sales. There is so much invested pride (in a bad sense), they do not examine the over-all architecture of the series (the Mephisto deal hanging like a permanent shadow over everything, MJ shoved off into a “buddy” role, Daily Bugle gone), and they do not examine their string of characterization botches (“man-child” Peter Parker, Carlie “Poochie” cooper, Curt Connors cannibalizing his dead son, Kraven resurrected into a sort-of undead state, etc.).

3. In the words of Bertone: Okay. Okay. Fine. I give up. A teenage sidekick? Fine, just fine. No problem. In the words of me: What?!!?

4. ….yeah this will last. pfft…

5. @#32

   Common sense… tingling!

   @#28

   I see what you did there…

6. “I’m shocked that the majority of posters here would bash the hell out of this before reading the issue.”

   If Marvel doesn’t want us judging stories based on previews, then it must stop releasing previews.

   The only reason anyone has ever released a preview for a story, in any genre or medium of storytelling in the whole of human history, is because they WANT people to judge that story based on that preview.

   If you are saying to yourself, “This looks like it could be good, so I’m going to spend my money on it,” then you have judged this story based on its preview, by DEFINITION.

   If you or Marvel are upset that we’re not judging this story POSITIVELY based on its preview, then that’s MARVEL’S fault, and NOT ours, because Marvel specifically chose to release these pages to MAKE us draw conclusions about the rest of the issue.

   You don’t get to have it both ways.

7. this really looked stupid to me from the beginning. If people want a young Spidey, they have Ultimate SM. I decided to check out this thread after reading the ASM 688 reviews and reading the book and having hope that ASM might actually start to be good again. Then, this news. This idea made me throw up in my mouth. This is the suckiest thing that ever sucked.

8. Peter as a wse-beyond-his-years young adult (as we saw in the JMS years, for example) works well as a mentor.

   That said, he did not metor Black cat or Prowler. Both were contempoaries and he teamed up with them briefly. On those rare occasions he does act as a teacher-suchj as wih Hope Sommers or Franklin ichards-I think it’s quite within his character to do so. Peter, when written well, is a sypathetic character who cares about people.

   But that’s the adult Peter5 Parker, not the unsympathetic man-child we’ve been force fed the past few years. When we do see the adult Peter Parker, it’s invariably outside of his own title, which is sad. The problem here is twofold:

   1. There is nothing about a comfortable, WASP slacker who’s content to coast through life on “C’s” anybody can relate to. Inded, comics are rpelete with Andrew Maguires already, and nobody particularly likes them.

   2. Marvel is contradicting its own mandate that a young Spidey is a relateable Spidey. Marriage ages him, but giving him a “Stepson” of sorts doesn’t? If Marvel just said, “Hey, we’ve decided to break from formula and try something new, because the old direction isn’t working,” that would be something I could respect.

   3. Despite what Steve Whacker has been averring, we know Marvel is grooming Andy to be the next Spider-Man, the new al-youth, all-edgy, all-hip webslinger-It’s just been telegraphed far too broadly and far too transparently. Marvel is hoping a “Knighfall” style transition til Peter returns, will boost sals-and I’m sure there are those at Marvel who hope to make the transition to Andy-as-Spidey as long term as they can, in the continuing, forlorn hope of luring that comics El Dorado, the youth Mass Market, which is surely just one more publicity stunt away (this time for sure).

   So forgive me if I sound cynical. I’m used to enjoying Spider-Man. I miss that.

9. High five Lex

10. Ofcourse we complain about OMD, it was the worst comic ever and we were promised so much. I mean everything. They never explain their stuff anymore and that’s unprofessional. We are supposed to forget about it and just accept what they did. Despite the fact that they kept mentioning it and did another terrible story (?) about it.

    The person who should complain the most is Dan Slott. He has to deal with that stuff. I think sales would be much higher if they had just given the book to him and those other 20 guys they hired for afterwards. Even if they had made Peter single, they’d been judicious about it. As long as we didn’t get the Unmasking, OMD treatment it could of worked.

    Wait, if he’s Alpha, Whose Beta… Max? 🙂

11. You guys probably know a Schwarzeneiger quote I have in mind for this one

12. Hated the idea originally but this doesn’t look all that bad. I quite liked the homages to Amazing Fantasy 15 and the subtle differences. I’m this kids age and could actually relate to Andy in a way. The end wanted me to read more so that’s not a bad thing. Admittedly ‘Parker Particle’s’ is bad but everything else I rather liked. Even the art.

13. @22. MOST people still are unhappy about OMD five years later and rightly so. The majority. Don’t look for that to change in the forseeable future either.

14. Jeus Christ….”watch out Radioactive man!!!”..FFS:(:(:(

15. I’m pretty sure its a joke. Only explanation, no one can seriously endorse this nonsense.

16. I’m shocked that the majority of posters here would bash the hell out of this before reading the issue.
    I’m lmao at the fact that some people STILL bitch about OMD five years on….

17. I felt Marvel gave up on consistency. So the Magic SPIder-man is different from the guy before a bit and the new Spider-man is like Deadpool. NOw, I like Deadpool Spider-man way better than Magic Spider-man because Magic Spider-man was a guy who apparently would sell-out the universe so his Aunt could live five more minutes. But the pre-magic Spider-man. was the best. Especially before the reboot they did. I don’t care about JMS, he got to do insane things in Spider-man books that made no sense. So, the new Spider-man stuff looks great by comparison. Imagine Spider-man being beaten to death by a traditional villian like Electro or Doc Ock. Now, that would be a death. Heck, the Ultimate one died pretty well and he doesn’t even count. So, to some up. Alpha = Speedball. They better make him a teen alcholic or something. I can’t remember the last time we got a story like that.

18. BTW… Andrew Maguire?!?!?

    This character fails by default!!!

19. Boring kid is boring…

20. “Fans across the globe have been asking, “Who Is Alpha” ”

    lol… no they haven’t.

21. I’ve just really noticed that the Spider-Man being written today is not the Spider-Man that was written during the JMS era. This Peter was truly an adult, I feel, dealing with all of his problems in a very adult way. Now, again, he’s like this unlikable man-child, and the tone is more ‘light.’ Staying off the book for even longer now. I dunno when I’ll get back on. Maybe not ever.

    I don’t mean to bash this idea, but the idea seems tired. Invincible did the sidekick already, and continues to do it, very very well.

22. I kinda like the fact peter seems to be getting smarter now that he has his own lab. And the publicity thing makes sense. Stark does the same thing with less of a reason… but then that might just be because he’s Tony Stark. Horizon’s generally been portrayed as an open lab albeit with lots of restricted parts so a field trip isn’t a super stretch either. The doctor sabotaging the system doesn’t bother me as much either given how many crazy ass bastards live in that world. The fact that he could do so so easily kinda does. Mainly because there’s been so many issue with Horizon security already you’d think it’d start getting better given the potential for disaster. Kid doesn’t grab me much but I’ll give it a shot. I mean I thought Ultimate Spidey was a great big tool when during his first issues but by the end he was just friggen awesome.

23. @11…

    “Forget the contradiction that, for five years. marvel has been justifying this train wreck of a atstus quo by appealing to Spidey’s youth factor and yet Alonso is saying Spidey is now grown up enough to need a sidekick (effectively negating the whole argument that marriage “ages” the character-because if marrige ages a young man in Marvel’s eyes, what do they thing a p[seud “son” is going to do?”

    Spidey has mentored characters before, from Black Cat to Prowler. Hell, Ultimate Spider-Man mentored characters and was still obviously a teenager. Mentoring a kid doesn’t age him.

    “Forget that Marvel is telegraphing, with all the subtlety of a Sherman tank, that Our Boy Andy will very ikely be the new SPidey on 701….And Marvel wil frantically backpeddle when this goes over like the Hindenburg.”

    If they make Alpha into Spidey, it will clearly only be a temporary storyline like Knightfall. He’ll prove unstable/unsuitable and be gone within a year. And that will have obviously been the plan all along. And, no doubt, some people will still say Marvel are “backpedalling”.

    “This is so painfully bad, it just smacks of sheer desperation, as Marvel seems to finally, reluctantly be admitting that the past five years of their “let’s make Spidey like he was back in the 70′s” campaign, starting with OMD, has failed—and want to make it all better with (surprise, surprise) yet another Big Event.”

    It’s the same creative team continuing the same story arc (Spidey’s elevated hero status, Horizon Labs, etc) that they’ve been doing since Big Time started, I don’t see any admission of failure here. If Marvel were really to decide the last few years of Spidey had been a failure, they’d surely bring in a new writer at the very least.

24. Thanks! 🙂 Typos and all? 😀

25. Boomstick: I want to marry your replies. 🙂

26. Pardon my typos, gang. I lost a contact lens, so my vision is dreadfully one-sided.

27. When I first read this, my hjaw jut dropped. there’s chutzpah and then there’s chutzpah.

    Andrew….Maguire. Forget the painfully obvious pre-movie smashup of Tobey Maguire and Andrew garfield. Forget that he’s another WASP kid who’s supposed to be “cool” and “edgy” (and is, in fact, such a painfully obvious cliche.

    Forget the contradiction that, for five years. marvel has been justifying this train wreck of a atstus quo by appealing to Spidey’s youth factor and yet Alonso is saying Spidey is now grown up enough to need a sidekick (effectively negating the whole argument that marriage “ages” the character-because if marrige ages a young man in Marvel’s eyes, what do they thing a p[seud “son” is going to do?

    Forget that Marvel is telegraphing, with all the subtlety of a Sherman tank, that Our Boy Andy will very ikely be the new SPidey on 701….And Marvel wil frantically backpeddle when this goes over like the Hindenburg.

    Forget the fact that the premise of teen sidekicks doesn’t work (when I was a kid, it was the main hero we all wanted to be, not some star struck kid following him along).

    This is so painfully bad, it just smacks of sheer desperation, as Marvel seems to finally, reluctantly be admitting that the past five years of their “let’s make Spidey like he was back in the 70’s” campaign, starting with OMD, has failed—and want to make it all better with (surprise, surprise) yet another Big Event.

    Jumped the shark? Hell, Spider-man just jumped Seaworld.

28. According to my buddy who quit ASM after the Clone Saga, Spidey’s first sidekick was the Gibbon.

29. Well, thanks to Axel Alonso’s “Spider-Man is a grown-up” comment as their justification for why they’re giving him a kid sidekick (and really, wasn’t part of the reason why Stan Lee created Spider-Man was because he hated the idea of the “kid sidekick” and thought “why does a young person have to be a sidekick when they can be the hero?”), this has pretty much made Tom Brevoort’s whole “Spider-Man is about youth” argument that he and the folks at Marvel have been making for the past five years to order to justify One More Day to be complete and utter BS. After all, Spider-Man being married or being a teacher made him “too old” for the readers to identify with, remember?

30. Is it rather presumptuous to assume that this story is dumb based on the preview alone? Because I think this story is dumb. K-box pointed out exactly why Andy completely fails to be relatable, and like Jack, it’s incredibly dumb that Tiberius gets away with so obviously removing the failsafe.

    Whether or not Peter is fired for this, I’m sure he’ll have his job back once it’s revealed that Tiberius caused the malfunction.

31. Couple of things: isn’t it supposed to be Liz Allan, not Allen? Also, that last page with the ray blasting through the kid who becomes Alpha – shouldn’t he be dead? Looks like it blasted a hole through his body. Also, if Peter isn’t fired from Horizon Labs for this, for SHOWING OFF TO HIGH SCHOOL KIDS no less, I’ll be shocked. I’ll also be surprised if no one figures out the kid who got nuked by Parker Particles (man, that’s painful to type the words “Parker Particles”) suddenly shows up playing hero as Alpha. I still could see Marvel ultimately deciding to kill off Peter and have his sidekick take over as Spider-Man, since they’ll have what they want Spider-Man to be in their heads after all these years: a young teenager, single and with relatable problems.

    I also think Tiberius looks an awful lot like Bruce Banner did in “The Incredible Hulk” #1 from 1962, complete with orange shirt, tie, glasses and lab coat. Anyone else seeing that resemblance or is it just me?

32. And of course, when Poochie shows up in his superhero outfit in public, maskless and displaying powers that we’re told will rival those of Spider-Man, absolutely no one is going to connect that to the kid who looked exactly like him who got zapped by strange rays at Horizon Labs in front of an audience that included all of that same kid’s peers and (as Slott noted in the expository dialogue of the preview pages) the assembled press corps.

33. Peter’s new catchphrase has now become “ALL MY FAULT”, and the idea that he did this to show off makes me wanna slap someone.

34. Jack Brooks: Agree on all counts.

    Also, I’m just going to cut-and-paste the following quote from a friend on Facebook:

    “Obviously Slott’s playing off the opening pages of Amazing Fantasy #15, but given how Quesada-era Marvel has acted towards Peter Parker, it comes off less as an allusion and more as an aggressive repurpusing of how they would prefer Spider-Man to be.”

35. This doesn’t look interesting, because: the new kid character is a total cypher with no sympathy factor, unlike the original (real) Peter Parker; a high-level scientist who could get a high-paying jo just blatantly sabotaging the equipment with the boss standing right there next to him is absurd; the idea that a big, dangerous piece of equipment like that wouldn’t have 4 different fail-safes is equally absurd; the idea that Peter is so childish, emotionally, that he would endanger a bunch of kids is more of the same BND regressed-boychild Peter that Wacker and Slott keep jamming down on everyone.

36. Pop quiz: Why am I supposed to identify with, relate to or care about a comfortably middle-class suburban straight white boy whose only real problems can all be traced to the fact that he has absolutely no drive to take any risks, or even do anything that requires any effort whatsoever, and is perfectly content to skate through life on straight-Cs?

    Thanks to the narrative hammering home his crush (and by the way, nice fetishizing of the “librarian hot” Asian girl by the blonde-haired, blue-eyed white boy, Slott), the story actually manages to make even his spur-of-the-moment life-saving self-sacrifice seem like an ultimately selfish act (if he’d pushed the generic jock out of the way instead, we’d see that there’s more depth and decency to this character than even he realizes).

    Not only are there already too many characters like Andy Maguire in comics and other media, but there are too many Andy Maguires in the audiences for those media, whose wants and opinions are already being catered to at the expense of far too many others.