Read the title, then discuss.

*clasps hands behind head*

*leans back*

*waits*

 

 

I used to buy his SM comic religiously. Always liked his art, personally.

 

I think there's a maximum number of characters allowed per post.

 

It wasn't him. It was the stupid...stupid...stupid... Clone Saga!

 

I blame John Byrne, personally. MJ's baby may as well have never happened. Aunt may was alive again for no good reason. Ben Reilly was killed off and promptly forgotten. It was a complete cut away from years of continuity and it was largely crap.

The Clone Saga was a huge mess, no denying it. But it really did start off with noble intentions. The 90s Spidey was becomeing too angsty and was losing the wit and humor he'd been known for (something which is generally blamed on McFarlane, yes). Bringing in Ben was supposed to fix that. Unfortunately, the execution was incredibly bad, most of the fans hated the idea of change, and the story itself dragged on far longer than it had any right to. Still, bringing back the fun-loving Spidey was a good idea in theory.

I'm still actually a bit angry at Marvel for totally killing off Ben. Sure,t hey wanted to get Peter back as Spider-Man, but they didn't have to kill Ben. They definitely didn't have to kill Peter and MJ's baby, either. Although technically, they did make it look like Norman stole her, but no one has done anything with that storyline since.

Really, now that I stop and think on it, the 90s in general was a really bad decade for Spider-Man. You can't totally blame McFarlane for that, though.

 

Though I'm not exactly one of the Toodler's biggest fans, he gave us one of the best Peter/MJ scenes of all times.

It's in Spider-Man (no adjective) #13, pages 4-5.  

 

care to elaborate?

 

Is this forum PG?  

 

nah, Amazing Spider-man was actually pretty good during Todd's run, it was the never-ending Clone saga that put him in the crapper... for an incredible history of what wwent wrong, check out http://www.newcomicreviews.com/GHM/specials/LifeOfReilly/ it's actually a pretyy amazing story (and it took me over 2 weeks to read here and there) has commentary from many of the creators involved...

 

The problems may have started in the 80's when they decided to have Peter married to Mary Jane. While I'M fine with that, Marvel later felt that an unmarried Peter would be unrelatable to new readers, and consequently, you had things like the Clone Saga (Ben was supposed to be the new "unmarried Peter") and the Byrne/Mackie Revamp (MJ was "killed" to make Peter single).

(Now, I know that the other thing some of these people claim is that "Peter married to a supermodel is unrealistic!" Well, why not solve it by NOT making Mary Jane a supermodel? It's not like she was a supermodel during the Clone Saga and Pre-Revamp, or even in the comic strip Stan Lee was writing during the 90's.)

 

For anything, McFarlane reinvented Spider Man for the better. He made Spider Man have webbing that actually looked like webbing and managed to put him into poses that would tear the crotch muscles of any normal human. His art managed to put more emotion into the story as well.

 

I've never really understood all the Peter's Married Hate i see on a lot of boards... it's part of what i've always liked about Marvel, Characters grow and Mature and change Pete graduated High School, Went to College, got married... it made sense...

 

Anyway, about McFarlane:

I think he DID give Spider-Man a lot of attention. SPAWN wouldn't have been that popular if McFarlane's run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and SPIDER-MAN weren't also popular. His style certainly influenced 90's Spider-Man comics (the big eyes and spaghetti webbing seemed like they were near-mandatory up until the past... five years or so) His art style might've worked well because a part of it was Ditkoish and a part of it was something that hadn't been done with Spider-Man often.

Personally, though, after reading the old early 90's comics I think Erik Larsen does a far, far, FAR better job at writing and drawing a story than McFarlane (and I still do like some things McFarlane drew).

 

I went to several different comic book message boards five years ago and most of them preferred Peter and MJ married. Of course, this was during the time that Mary Jane being "dead" didn't go over well.

I think the mentality here is that having Peter married would "age" him and make him unrelatable to new younger readers.

 

Holy shit, I have that comic. Or had. Isn't that one of the issues with Venom?