JMS's Amazing Spider-Man

[Whofan]

For nearly a decade J. Michael Straczyski(of Babylon 5 fame) wrote The Amazing Spider-Man. For a while, he was credited with returning the title to greatness after the troublesome Bryne and Mackie runs, and of course the infamous "Clone Saga".

But of course like with Morrison's X-men, eventually the hype died down. I think part of the problem was that JMS tried to make the stories a bit too dark and serious, when that didn't really fit Spider-Man (Not that SM can't do dark and serious-'darker' stories like Kraven's last hunt and Gwen Stacy's death were extremely popular and well done). This is the guy who after all concluded his run by Spider-Man striking a deal with Marvel's devil.

There were some other issues with his run as well-the retconning of Spider-Man's origin, which revealed that Spider-Man's powers came from the Spider itself and not the radioactivity (So much for Radioactive blood) and others had similar powers. Or something weird like that.

Then of course, there's Sins Past and One More Day, one which ruined Gwen Stacy, the other erasing the Spider-Man marriage from the comic continuity. Oddly enough, JMS's run began when Spider-Man was seperated from Mary Jane (After a storyline in which she was presumed dead).


Of course there were some good moments here and there as well- Aunt May finding out about her nephew's identity (This was of course retconned by One More Day as well) was one of the highlights, as was Peter's brief career as a school teacher.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Too dark?

You must have read something else because it clearly was not JMS's ASM. Perhaps you are mistaking it for the Paul Jenkins Spider-Man that ran concurrently, which was actually dark.

There were some other issues with his run as well-the retconning of Spider-Man's origin, which revealed that Spider-Man's powers came from the Spider itself and not the radioactivity (So much for Radioactive blood) and others had similar powers. Or something weird like that.

I think you missed the entire point of that storyline.

 

[Mr Light]

I generally enjoyed JMS' run on ASM but it absolutely had some big faults. He repeated himself YET again by changing Spider-Man into the pawn of ancient god-like beings. Sins Past. One More Day (but this was done against his wishes).

 

[coolghoul]

^ One More Day was NOT done against his wishes. ie. he was onboard with the retcon and also that it be the Mephisto spell. It was *how* it was achieved which led to the fallout.

I kinda liked JMS' run on Amazing Spidey - some of his speechifying can get a bit intense (you end up going - is this the same Spidey who would make the cracks like crazy) and wordy as anything but *I* liked it.

 

[Hound of UIster]

^ One More Day was NOT done against his wishes. ie. he was onboard with the retcon and also that it be the Mephisto spell. It was *how* it was achieved which led to the fallout.

One More Day was never intended by him to be permanent. Whatever Mephisto did would have been undone presumably through the intervention of Loki and Doom who both owed favors to Spider-Man.

 

[Christopher]

I liked JMS's run quite a bit, though it did have its weak points -- too little use of classic villains with the "original" villains being too derivative, too much emphasis on Spidey's brute strength in the action sequences, too little use of the supporting cast beyond Pete, MJ, and May. I'm ambivalent about the mystical stuff -- it's not a direction I would've taken the character, but there was value in forcing Peter to deal with something so far outside his comfort zone, and it was left ambiguous enough to be easily retconned. But the character work was great, and having Aunt May learn that Peter was Spidey and become his supporter and advisor was the best thing that's ever been done with the character (it's a tragedy that they undid it). JMS did other terrific things with the characters too -- getting Peter and MJ back together (and portraying their relationship very well), having Peter get into teaching and helping inner-city youth, having MJ stretch herself by pursuing a career in the theater.

Heck, I even liked "Sins Past." I don't think it "ruined" Gwen's character so much as adding dimension and complexity to a character who was rather bland while she was alive and has been little more than an object of hagiography since her demise. I think it empowered her by making the story of her death actually be about her rather than having her be just a passive prop in the battle between two men.

Where JMS's run began to suffer was when it fell prey to Marvel's self-destructive obsession with huge annual Event stories, both in Spider-Man itself and in larger Marvel-Universe stuff it crossed into. Since the storylines tended to run around 6 months each, we barely got a new status quo established before it was upended. And so a number of promising story directions (and some less-promising ones) got nipped in the bud before they could really get anywhere.

And then it completely went off the rails with "Back in Black" and "One More Day." Those were just horrible. I'm not sure how much of that is on JMS and how much is his editor. Either way, though, I don't think it should overshadow JMS's entire run. It was a small part of a generally excellent body of work.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I enjoyed most of JMS's run except for "Sins Past" and "One More Day". I think his latter run suffered from his editorial clashes with Joe Q. I loved what he did with Aunt May and thought the Ezekiel story arc was bold and risky. Spider-Island is apparently going to touch back to this arc. I don't thinks run was dark at all. He seemed to understand what the character was all about.