BrianWilly
Disciple of Whedon
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2003
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- 13,275
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We're not slandering. Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel
.
[/JJJ]
One of the inherent flaws of doing an "alternate universe" story like this is that since everything's going to be undone in the end anyway, where is the emotional impact? Why should we care about any of this if it's all fake? Yes, the number of mutants is disastrously reduced -- which is a frikkin' stupid idea in its own right -- but that doesn't affect the Hulk, or Captain America, or Daredevil, or any person in the Marvel universe that's not a mutant. Characters like Luke Cage and She-Hulk get to stand around and think "Whew, that was trippy!" but now things are back to business as usual for them. In effect, we have an 8 issue miniseries where nothing of lasting emotional significance happens beyond mutant reduction, which itself was an out-of-left-field curveball that only happened in the last two pages of the second-to-last issue. So unless the only emotional impact you wanted to get out of this entire "Big Event" was the reduction of mutants, there is really no impact at all.
So far the only non-mutant holdover we've seen from the House of M is that Peter Parker gets angsty again about Gwen. Okay, here is the reality: Gwen Stacy died decades ago, and Peter is happily married to MJ. We all appreciate the fact that she's an important part of his history, but literally digging up her corpse and forcing more drama from a dead horse -- no pun intended -- does not a good story make; really, it just violates the character more than anything else. I've said this before and I'll say it again: writers desperate for cheap drama love to mess around with Gwen because she's sacrosanct. They love to try to bring her up over and over again and maybe even try something controversial with her because they're not supposed to. A long-dead first love? It's the ultimate forbidden fruit. But Gwen's story is done. She's had closure. She's had finality as a comic book character. There is no reason to keep making her relevant other than, as I said, cheap drama. The fact that a sort of storyline has been done before does not automatically make it bad, but the fact that a specific storyline has been done before does. Spider-Man has fought killer robots before and will probably be fighting killer robots many more times in the future and yet there are still ways of making that interesting; on the other hand, the "Who does Peter love more, Gwen or MJ?" ship has sailed over and over again, and it's not gonna get any better or worse, just more desperate.
[/tangent]
.[/JJJ]
One of the inherent flaws of doing an "alternate universe" story like this is that since everything's going to be undone in the end anyway, where is the emotional impact? Why should we care about any of this if it's all fake? Yes, the number of mutants is disastrously reduced -- which is a frikkin' stupid idea in its own right -- but that doesn't affect the Hulk, or Captain America, or Daredevil, or any person in the Marvel universe that's not a mutant. Characters like Luke Cage and She-Hulk get to stand around and think "Whew, that was trippy!" but now things are back to business as usual for them. In effect, we have an 8 issue miniseries where nothing of lasting emotional significance happens beyond mutant reduction, which itself was an out-of-left-field curveball that only happened in the last two pages of the second-to-last issue. So unless the only emotional impact you wanted to get out of this entire "Big Event" was the reduction of mutants, there is really no impact at all.
So far the only non-mutant holdover we've seen from the House of M is that Peter Parker gets angsty again about Gwen. Okay, here is the reality: Gwen Stacy died decades ago, and Peter is happily married to MJ. We all appreciate the fact that she's an important part of his history, but literally digging up her corpse and forcing more drama from a dead horse -- no pun intended -- does not a good story make; really, it just violates the character more than anything else. I've said this before and I'll say it again: writers desperate for cheap drama love to mess around with Gwen because she's sacrosanct. They love to try to bring her up over and over again and maybe even try something controversial with her because they're not supposed to. A long-dead first love? It's the ultimate forbidden fruit. But Gwen's story is done. She's had closure. She's had finality as a comic book character. There is no reason to keep making her relevant other than, as I said, cheap drama. The fact that a sort of storyline has been done before does not automatically make it bad, but the fact that a specific storyline has been done before does. Spider-Man has fought killer robots before and will probably be fighting killer robots many more times in the future and yet there are still ways of making that interesting; on the other hand, the "Who does Peter love more, Gwen or MJ?" ship has sailed over and over again, and it's not gonna get any better or worse, just more desperate.
[/tangent]
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