Comics Sins Past, The Other, The War at Home, or One More Day - Which was the worst?

[Electro UK]

Its a simple question really. 4 recent, horrific Spidey arcs, all with terrible things happening to the character love(d). Let's recap on the arcs (Spoilers for all arcs):

Sins Past: This arc ruined Gwen's memory, saying she slept with Norman Osborne and had 2 children, that were destined to become new goblins. Only one did, the Grey Goblin, and he was a mediocre waste of time that will probably never be seen again. (Unless the guy on the cover to one of the upcoming issues of Brand New Day is him).

The Other: A tale promised to be one of the best Spider-man stories of all time (yet again), turned into a complete disaster, ruining Spider-man's origin even further than the totem pole crap, and turning him into a weird man-spider thing, eating the head of Morlun before dieing. It butchered the character with the crappy new power of bone claws, and left little light in Spidey fan's hearts.

The War At Home: Featurning an unpopular new suit that turned Spider-man into a flying Doctor Octopus, this infamous arc destroyed Peter's secret identity, revealing himself to the world. Arguably the worst thing writers have ever done to Spider-man, especially considering the reasoning of being proud of yourself. Peter magicaly forgot why he didn't reveal his identity, something he'd rehearsed every 5 issues or so. As a result, everything he had feared (and forgotten) become true.

One More Day: The latest monstrocity sees Peter and Mary Jane agreeing to surrender their marrage for the life of Aunt May. Several positive things came as a result. Web-shooters return, as does Peter's secret identity. The down side is the loss of a character most fans have come to consider a core part of Spider-man, and the obliteration of around 20 years worth of Spider-man comics.

So there are your choices, what do you choose, what do you choose?

 

[spider greg]

I'm no longer interested in the worst, because after reading the BND preview, we're getting the best.

 

[Electro UK]

I didn't expect Sins Past to score alot.

 

[Themanofbat]

The Other was simply terrible... not saying that the other options were good, but The Other just seemed so... pointless.

 

[Spider-ManHero12]

One More Day was the worst because they actually ended a great 20 year marriage.

 

[shinlyle]

One More Day...the other three arcs were meant to screw up the book so much so that there would have to be a total retcon, which was worse than the other arcs it was meant to erase....hence, One More Dumbass gets my vote.

 

[Themanofbat]

One More Day was the worst because they actually ended a great 20 year marriage.

The snapping of Gwen's neck back in 1973 ended a potential long-term marriage right there, yet it's considered a great story.

And BY NO MEANS am I comparing those issues to OMD... OMD clearly sucked donkey balls, but The Other just seemed like a 4 month, 12 issue complete waste of time...

 

[Spider-ManHero12]

The snapping of Gwen's neck back in 1973 ended a potential long-term marriage right there, yet it's considered a great story.

And BY NO MEANS am I comparing those issues to OMD... OMD clearly sucked donkey balls, but The Other just seemed like a 4 month, 12 issue complete waste of time...

Gwen Stacy dieing was tragic and wasn't a selfish act. It just fits the billl perfectley. Peter & MJ's marriage splitting shouldn't have happened. It just defenitley wasn't needed.

 

[shinlyle]

The snapping of Gwen's neck back in 1973 ended a potential long-term marriage right there, yet it's considered a great story.

And BY NO MEANS am I comparing those issues to OMD... OMD clearly sucked donkey balls, but The Other just seemed like a 4 month, 12 issue complete waste of time...

Good points all around. The Other was so painful...especially watching Peter inexplicable grow stingers, fangs, and learn how to eat the souls of predators of his species. Oh wait, spiders will be able to do that one day! BEWARE THE SPIDERS!!!!

 

[The New Kid]

I'm bored so I'll give my opinions on each one and you guys tell me if you agree...if not I would like to hear why not. but I think the majority will agree...

Sins past...whether it would have been Peter or Normans kids....why? I mean...why would Joe Q. destroy the memory of a good character that died?
that clearly shows he has no love for spidey...I honestly don't think that it was made to simply give us crap and destroy the marriage....from a certain stand point JMS turned in a great story...were this to be with a cast like Superman. Lex likes girls...and it's obvious. Norman has never had a relationship during the whole series. they've never written it into his character for him to be a womanizer in any brand of spider-man. so why is he suddenly so easily having sex with Gwen when peter himself did not? Norman and Gwen were rarely if ever shown together in the same room. bad continuity + bad established characterization = bad story.

The Other: In my opinion is the WORST story of this group it made me stop buying spidey comics. i do not acknowledge that it happened...alot of bad things happend to it...and with Joey Q's thank you note...that seriously added insult to injury... the only good thing it accomplished was making me go on the great donald thomas' spidey site and read wonderful back issues! t:
there were alot of plot points that were never resolved...and made no sense...
Spidey is sick...of what? and more importantly...why?no one knows. morlun is back from the dead...how? no one knows....he was a pretty good bad guy until this arc. the arc he died in was a perfect send off..and really raised the question about how far spidey would go. Jms never forced the totem crap before until the other...he is a great writer and i am dissapointed in how he easily shoved the other down our throats at joey q's request...not only that but he copied the death and return of superman in a sick way. and he had spidey kill someone. conscious of it or not...its stil wrong. the other gave spidey some new intresting powers i could have gotten used to...but stingers? what does that mean? your a real role model for kids now spidey! go stab some more guys and eat there heads! I will discontinue the review of this arc before I start cursing...lol.

The war at home.
I thought this was pretty interesting...seeing the reaction of everyone knowing spideys true identity j.j and flash in particular....but at this point it wasnt that bad to me...considering just about everyone already knew minus the normal people and non important bad guys....how they reached this story really upset me though...the fact that he only had to register was pretty straight forward...stark suggested but never forced him to unmask...so just registering would have been no big deal everyone in shield knows who he is anyways...but going the whole 9 yards didnt bring others towards him...it put his life in even more danger and especially his family that he "loves so much". waaaaay outta character for spidey. intresting story...bad means of getting there.

One More day...the big one.
a plot long in the making...it was the final thing that completely destroyed spidey....retcon or not spidey should never make a deal with the devil...especially when there is always a catch. and to give up his wife over a person that does not want to come back? cmon...the art was pretty good. and the dialouge was pretty solid until mephisto said. "i want your marriage..." that was sooooo embarrasing. and shows that 4 part story only served one purpose...and the way I see it...if they wanted a single peter...they should not have let him and Mj become the most famous super hero couple since superman and lois lane. Mj is in so much media these days that there is no way fans new or old will totally accept a new love interest...

so to me the ramifications of all stories were pretty stupid. good art dialouge. (mike deodato is such a good artist)....The other is the worst story to me over all...not only did it tamper with spideys character origin is screwed up new useless out of character powers. but it tampered with peters character also. i agree with joey q. that peter makes people like spiderman not the other way around...if he had diffrent powers but same stories...theres a good chance he'd be likeable...but yelling at aunt and killing someone shows that Joey Q. may like spidey but he truly does not understand how he works....

 

[farmernudie]

OMD was clearly the worst of that list, because it isn't a self contained arc. It is the foundation and directl leads into BND. It is the premise that leads into that.

It destroys 20 years of marriage, that now DIDN"T happen, and it quite absurd, even more so than the once Super-Boy Punch, which was lame, yet somehow Joe managed to top it with devil-dealing Pete.

Worse yet, Joe has incorperated cheesy sayings to explain it that make it lamer and don't explain anything (well, it WAS an agenda, so there isn't much to explain.

"Sliding Doors, not back to the future"

"It's Magic, we don't have to explain it"

Arghy...OMD/BND are the same thing and a MESS...IMO. They (marvel writers under joe) basically threw their hands up in the air, and admitted they can't htink of anything creative (new) and needed to go back to the past with all things we've seen Pete do before to make it good. Wow.

 

[Blader5489]

Worse yet, Joe has incorperated cheesy sayings to explain it that make it lamer and don't explain anything (well, it WAS an agenda, so there isn't much to explain.

"Sliding Doors, not back to the future"

"It's Magic, we don't have to explain it"

That first isn't a saying, it's a comparison; the second may not have even been said by Quesada. And could you stop incorporating the word "cheese" into every one of your posts?

My vote goes to The Other. It may have been better if JMS was allowed to go with his original plan (though 2 full years of The Other may have gotten tiresome), but the end result was definitely a pointless story. And when all was said and done, the only parts of that story that even mattered were the organic webbing and Peter's stronger friendship with Stark. The rest was unneeded and, in most cases, even detrimental to the character. You could rationalize the plot twists in Sins Past and OMD, but The Other doesn't even make sense in of itself.

And just for the hell of it, I rank the stories as:
War at Home > Sins Past > One More Day > The Other

 

[Kirk Langstrom]

The Other, for me.

Despite the mis-use of Gwen in Sins Past, and the Deal With The Devil in OMD, for some reason, The Other just pisses me off to no end. It was just embarassingly silly ( Aunt May in one of Iron Man's old suits of armor) disgusting (eyeball for lunch), and pointless (death and revival of Peter).

God, i hate that story.

 

[USMC]

OMD, hands down the WORST Spider-Man story ever made.

Completely out of character, useless, and agenda driven.

The WORST kind of storytelling. Period.

 

[The New Kid]

ahh...Farmernudie...I've seen your posts from time to time and I really respect your views because they are much like my own and they tend not to be bias...

However...I accept the other as being the most poorly written story....12 comics of nothing that needed to be added. Pat Lee's arc sucked
and Reginald Hudlin...while i love most of his work. clearly didnt know what was going on AT ALL. he came on spidey at the wrong time...and i highly doubt he'll be writing for him again...I mean you can't really blame the guy when the premise was supposed to be a guy bitten by a radioactive spider. and than they tell you write a story about him being a magic spider totem bitten man. so i forgive him lol.
as for one more day....it was a forced story. yes. it destroyed 20 years of marriage. yes but at least it lasted only 4 issues. and it didnt get really bad until issue 4. Joey Q. says that they are now known as a couple and it doesn't affect much.....so why is harry still alive if they were still together through all the stories we read? this is so confusing that I will stop here...I dont want a headache...I just hope BND writers don't ignore these things...because one more day will cause ALOT of problems...especailly if you read back issues...so on a personal level i chose the other being the worst. because it made me stop buying these books.

 

[Sloth7d]

So, we're comparing one arc that completely destroys the core character of Peters first love and turns her into a **** with evil babies. Another arc in which he kills somebody, gets a bunch of useless powers, gets killed in the lamest way which doesn't even make you feel sad, gives his will and body to the Spider-god, he is dying of magic apparently because you don't need to explain that, and what's worse is this arc is stretched out for 12 issues. Yet another arc where he unmask willingly, which is very out of character for him. And lastly an arc where he makes a deal with the devil, Mespito goes from bad-ass to ass-bad marriage fairy, 20 years of continuity is altered, and Harry is retconned to never have died, yet the stories we've read over the past decade are supposed to be the same even though if Harry is alive that's really impossible.

Frankly, I would not put the war at home on this list. Even though it involved Peter doing something entirely out of character, that arc is Shakesphere compared to these piles of trash. Personaly, I'd take that off and put The Gathering of Five up there. Then you'd have a complete list of Spider-man stories all guilty of being garbage in the first degree. However, if I had to choose the worst one it would easily be OMD. Making deals with devil, Harry's retconned death, noone in the MU being able to save an old lady from a gun shot wound, and Mespito's name being dragged into all this just makes for bad story telling. Actually, we've seen from interveiws that this wasn't story telling, it was an agenda. Sins Past is close, but OMD is just the grand daddy of bad stories.

 

[The New Kid]

I agree with you...The war at home really isn't a bad story. the only thing people are upset about is the out of character unmasking....
YES! the gathering of five...T.E.R.R.I.B.L.E. story telling.
and you made very valid points...but right now...I honestly consider OMD and the other as Equal...sure the continuity and characterization was much much much worse in OMD....but I actually spent money on the other which is why I was so mad about it...lol.
ok well besides that the other was just poorly written...everything about it was pretty stupid and now none of it matters at all....if peter has none of his "the other powers" than it obviously never happened...and now I feel like I wasted my money even more than I did after Iread the final issue...

 

[farmernudie]

Blader: That first isn't a saying, it's a comparison; the second may not have even been said by Quesada. And could you stop incorporating the word "cheese" into every one of your posts?

Would you stop incorperating mindlessly gooey spidey cheerleading into all your posts!??

haha.... ....Actually...I'm glad we're BOTH exactly who we are and have our various opinions. It's what the makes the board interesting.

And in all actuality tonite, i enjoyed some pepperoni, CHEESE, and crackers with my wife. Yum. My favorite.

On top of that, we had a bunch of friends over, breaking the no supporting cast rule for married people, (i know!) ....played some Halo 3 and even some board games. Fun night with a good group of friends!
I am just sorry Marvel doesn't have writers that can incorperate THAT.

Night all.

(oh, and welcome to the forum there New Kid, nice to have you around!)

 

[YJ1]

Arghy...OMD/BND are the same thing and a MESS...IMO. They (marvel writers under joe) basically threw their hands up in the air, and admitted they can't htink of anything creative (new) and needed to go back to the past with all things we've seen Pete do before to make it good. Wow.

YEP, that's why One More Day has to get the vote here. It's on-going awfulness beats one time crap shots like Sins Past.

an arc where he makes a deal with the devil, Mespito goes from bad-ass to ass-bad marriage fairy

That made me laugh out loud.

 

[Blader5489]

OMD, hands down the WORST Spider-Man story ever made.

Completely out of character, useless, and agenda driven.

The WORST kind of storytelling. Period.

That dubious award goes to Howard Mackie's Gathering of Five/Final Chapter. Talk about out of character and agenda driven, including the absolute worst retcon ever in Spider-Man history: the Aunt May that died in ASM #400 was DNA altered actress. I don't have enough eyes to roll at the sheer thought of that story.

Nothing beats Mackie's "The Final Chapter" as the worst Spider-Man story ever. Nothing.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

OMD was just a mistake and Joe Quesada is a complete and utter moron now...

 

[Spec Spider-Man]

Omd.

 

[The New Kid]

Would you stop incorperating mindlessly gooey spidey cheerleading into all your posts!??

haha.... ....Actually...I'm glad we're BOTH exactly who we are and have our various opinions. It's what the makes the board interesting.

And in all actuality tonite, i enjoyed some pepperoni, CHEESE, and crackers with my wife. Yum. My favorite.

On top of that, we had a bunch of friends over, breaking the no supporting cast rule for married people, (i know!) ....played some Halo 3 and even some board games. Fun night with a good group of friends!
I am just sorry Marvel doesn't have writers that can incorperate THAT.

Night all.

(oh, and welcome to the forum there New Kid, nice to have you around!)

Thanks Farmernudie...
its getting pretty late so yea...I think I'm going to eat some CHEESE and hit the hay so I can make foolish out of character choices for myself tommorow and so that I can trade the devil my girlfriend for an old lady that doesn't want to be revived because maybe she realized her time was up more than 10 years ago . (oh don't worry guys....we've only been dating for 6 years now but im more of a good guy when i can mess around with more than one girl! soap opera is good for the soul...)....Lord RETCON... I mean...Joe Quesada would be so proud...his vision has reached a 19 year old this fine day....

 

[3dman27]

OMD was just a mistake and Joe Quesada is a complete and utter moron now...

i concur with you and USMC

 

[the_ultimate_evil]

i'll say it again i didnt mind sins past, could it have been better written hell yes, could it have been plotted out better of course. but to me it actually made me interested in what i always considered to be the most over hyped boring and dull character. i never understood the fandom around gwen. this at least in my eyes gave the character a bit more depth and layers. though still badly done.

i do like the diea that norman can say that not only did he kill the character of gwen but that he destroyed the memory of her