Um, Amazing Spider-Man, I’m Sorry…I Love You and I Always Will

[Deep breathe…you can do this.]  Listen, baby, I’ve got something to say.  I’m sorry.  Four months ago I said I wasn’t really digging you.  I said you bored me.  I said you were turning into a bland retread.  I was thinking of…oh my gosh, it’s so hard to say.  But I started this li’l tiff in public so I need to reaffirm my love in public too, awkwardness be damned.  I said I was thinking of breaking up with you.  There!  I said it!  But I’m so sorry.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  Every single issue since that post went live has been amazing.  It’s some of the best Spidey I’ve ever had in my entire life!  So Amazing Spider-Man, I’m sorry.  I love you.  Can you ever forgive me??

Um, Amazing Spider-Man, I’m Feeling Trapped…and a Little Unhappy

Part of me didn’t want to write this post.  Then a bigger part of me didn’t want to share it.  It feels inappropriate.  This feels like talking about problems with a significant other in public when it should be handled privately, just between the two of us, and behind closed doors.  But I keep wrestling with it and I write a blog about comic books (and, you know, other stuff) so I figured it was time to just be out with this.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll glean some insight here.

The Symbiote Makes the Man: Thoughts On Loving Venom

Apparently the Venom symbiote gets around!  When I was a kid, it was only ever bonded to Peter Parker and then Eddie Brock.  But during my time away from reading comics the Venom symbiote has bonded to Eddie Brock’s wife Anne, Angelo Fortunato, Mac Gargan, Flash Thompson, the Red Hulk, Flash again, Otto Octavius (while in Peter Parker’s body), Flash another time, Groot, Rocket, Drax, Flash yet again, the space pirate Mercurio, once more with Flash (big surprise), Peter Parker (again (for a bit)), Flash a final time, and Lee Price before finally coming home to Eddie Brock.  Whew!  With the “Venom Inc.” crossover winding its way through my regular read The Amazing Spider-Man, I’ve found myself thinking back on the ultimate Spider-Man villain and coolest antihero of the 1990’s. 

Spider-Man: Worldwide – I’m Finally, Fully HOME

This is an important post for this site.  Well, it’s an important post for me I guess, that’s a better way to put it.  It doesn’t have a strong, driving social justice message.  It isn’t a call to action.  It isn’t a heavy analysis or anything like that.  But for the first time in almost twenty years, I’m finally reading The Amazing Spider-Man again every month.   For someone who’s always loved Spider-Man as much as I do, this is important.  It turns out, being back in the current life of Peter Parker means even more to me than I thought it would.

The Superior Spider-Man : Confronting the Darkness Within

Of the many tropes to regularly wind their way through the Spider-Man comics over the years, the one that always wears on me is when some chain of events cause the “friendly neighborhood” attitude to drop from Spidey’s modus operandi and we see Peter become a dark, serious vigilante.  What can I say?  I like my Spider-Man to be a light, happy, inspiring character.  If I wanted glum and grim I’d read more Batman.  However, Dan Slott (who I’m learning more and more is nothing if not an inventive writer (who really loves Spider-Man)) upended this approach with The Superior Spider-Man.  One of the many things to happen to the web-head during the nineteen years I wasn’t reading his comics was Doctor Octopus stole his body and life for a time.  With Ock wearing the webs, we find our angrier Spider-Man but wrapped inside a tale of transformation and redemption.

Fitting Spider-Man and the Spider-Verse Inside the Multiverse

This post marks a personal milestone!  For someone who loves Spider-Man as much as I do, I haven’t really explored Peter Parker’s current exploits since returning to comic reading.  I’ve followed his adventures with Deadpool, read a lot of Miles Morales, and flirted with vow renewals…but no Amazing stories.  THAT CHANGES NOW!  I’ve taken my first real steps into the world Dan Slott’s created for Peter Parker over the last ten years with his “Spider-Verse” storyline.  To make this occasion as special as it should be, I figured I’d read Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos and see if there was any connection between Spidey’s multiverse jumping and what actual scientists are exploring in regard to multiverse theories.

In Love With Spider-Man In Love

Do you remember that classic SNL skit with Will Ferrell and Alec Baldwin?  They’re doing Inside The Actor’s Studio and Will Ferrell (as James Lipton) tells Alec Baldwin (playing Charles Nelson Riley) that the English language lacks a word capable of describing just how great his performance is.  As a result, he invents the word scrumtrelescent to describe that level of perfection.  Well after work yesterday, I finally treated myself to the trade paperback of Dan Slott’s Secret Wars tie-in series The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows.  Do you know what I learned?  IT WAS SCRUMTRELESCENT!!!