doop posted the following panels from Amazing Spider-Man #553 on scans_daily.

The short version is that Dexter Bennet, the new owner of the Daily Bugle (now named the DB), has hired Peter to take unflattering photos of Bill Hollister - father of Lily, who is Harry's new girlfriend - since Hollister is about to run for mayor, against the candidate that Bennet supports.




The joke here is that this is the first time that Bennet has ever correctly remembered Peter's name.

See, if I was Peter, and I was under-employed by a newspaper whose new owner had ordered me to do something that I considered unethical, from both a professional and a personal standpoint, then instead of worrying about keeping a dead-end part-time job that I hate anyway, I might instead choose to ... oh, I don't know, quit, and make public the unethical instructions I'd received from Bennet, thereby making my friend and his new girlfriend happy, gaining a powerful patron in the form of my friend's girfriend's father (tongue-twister, I know), and possibly even discrediting Bennet so much that he'd have to sell the paper back to Jonah, thereby alleviating the guilt that I feel for my responsibility on that score.

Trust me, Peter, if you told Harry that you quit your job because your new boss was asking you to betray the father of the woman he loves, he wouldn't care about you paying him back. Then again, if these stories were being written in a world that was populated by functional human beings to begin with, Harry would have already told Peter not to worry about paying him back, now or ever, on account of a) Harry and Peter being friends, b) Harry being rich, c) Peter being poor, and d) and Peter only losing the money that Harry gave him because PETER GOT MUGGED. Instead, we get Peter behaving inexcusably idiotically and unethically, AND thinking about stealing his friend's girlfriend in the process. I'm sorry, is this someone I'm supposed to sympathize or identify with, much less relate to in any way?

Here's the deal; I actually work as a reporter for a newspaper IN REAL LIFE, and we recently got bought by new owners, as well. Now, my situation is a lot better than Peter's - I'm a full-time employee, I tend to enjoy what I do for a living, I'm fairly well-regarded by my bosses and the community I cover, and obviously, I'm not juggling my job with a secret identity as a superhero - but I can certainly relate to being overworked and underpaid. That being said, my new publisher seems like an okay guy so far, but if he were to assign me to cast a certain subject in an unflattering light, especially if it was to serve his own interests, I would be out the door, even with the student loan and car payments I have left to pay off, much less the fact that I'd have to crash on someone's couch until I got hired by someone else, since my savings are nonexistent, because if you consider yourself a journalist in any way (and yes, photojournalists like Peter count every bit as much as those of us whose journalism is more about what we write than what we shoot), then you should know that intentionally biased coverage is just plain wrong.

I don't consider myself an exceptionally clever or heroic guy, so it disappoints me to see a supposed "hero" failing to live up even to the reasonably achievable standards that I somehow manage to meet in my own life on a daily basis, especially when it's a superhero whom I used to connect with so closely.

"I don't go to sleep with no whore and I don't wake up with no whore. That's how I live with myself. I don't know how you do it."

- Martin Sheen, Wall Street.

Peter used to sell photos of himself in action as Spidey all the time to J Jonah Jameson, photos the publisher would use to attack the Wall Crawler and distort the facts of whatever was going on.

How is what you're complaining about any different?

More than one person has asked me where I stand on this matter.

It's a valid point of contention, but at the risk of sounding like I'm trying to weasel out of its more troublesome implications, I see it as a matter of degrees.

Peter took photos of himself, without divulging his dual identity, but he knew full well that those photos would be used to attack his alias, rather than to glorify it.

Yes, it's still outside the bounds of what I'd consider acceptable journalism in the real world, but the only person who was being libeled by Jonah's presentations of Peter's photos was Peter himself, through his own alter ego.

Indeed, if I was bucking for my No-Prize (and if Marvel even awarded those anymore), I might argue that one of the reasons why Peter seemed to prefer to deal with Jonah over the years, even when he got screwed out of those deals more often than not, was out of a sense of guilt over the dishonesty of how he was earning that money.

This, however, is a hugely different situation.

Here, neither of Peter's personae are at any risk of being vilified - so long as a) his new boss, Bennet, remembers to attribute the photos to his altered name, and b) no one in the Marvel Universe is clever enough to figure out who "P. Parkinson" might be - but he is knowingly participating in the defamation of another person's character, in a way that he expects will also hurt his friends.

The first practice is definitely questionable, but probably forgivable within the bounds of a) a Marvel-style superhero genre story, and b) Peter's editorially mandated status quo, but the second choice is not acceptable under any circumstances - not even in a world where Peter must remain forever young and unmarried - not in the least because, as I've already pointed out, it's not even a necessary alternative.

Moreover, the fact that Peter's primary concerns, while carrying out this course of action, are a) his own welfare, and b) how hot his friend's girlfriend is, are merely gravy.

I defy anyone to give me any reason why Peter shouldn't have taken the high road I suggested before, unless the explicit intent of this story is to portray him as both stupid and unethical.

... Now, with all of that being said?

This question is one of the reasons I was very happy to see Peter move out of the photojournalism field altogether during Straczynski's run (yes, the man did do a few things right), with the other big reasons being that working as a high school science teacher a) emphasized his scientific mind more than his photographer's job ever could, b) returned him to a high school setting, and c) kept his wages at a "working class" level, since as I know from my mother, who has worked for decades as a public school teacher, you don't get rich in that career field.

In that sense, this issue is largely a microcosm of everything that's wrong with "Brand New Day" to begin with, because if we were talking about a 15-year-old Peter Parker who was still attending high school, and who still had limitless options open to him in the future, his thoughtlessness, aimlessness, and utter inability to either make the right choice or get it together, would be a lot less off-putting than they are when they're being exhibited by a 25-year-old Peter Parker who's graduated both high school and college, but is still living with his Aunt May, and has no hope of ever becoming anything more than the sad, lonely, limited post-adolescent that he's been forcibly cast as, by editorial mandate.

Peter goofing on Jonah by selling the Daily Bugle photos of Spider-Man is genuinely cute and clever when he's just a kid, but it's a lot less novel or endearing when he's still doing it as a grown adult.

When the teenage Peter Parker of Ultimate Spider-Man is more mature in his thoughts and deeds than the 20-something Peter Parker of Amazing Spider-Man ... well, you do the math.

I think if you try to overthink something in a comic book you're just going to ruin it for yourself.

Case in point: you accept the idea that its ok for Peter to let JJJ use his photos to villify Spider-Man because he's only libelling himself. However, when you think about it, by damaging his own reputation as a hero Pete's making it harder for him to his own job. The public is less likely to trust him, the police waste valuable man power tracking him down instead of going after real criminals, etc.

Who knows how many lives were lost by making Spidey a less efficient hero because Pete was willing to sabotage himself all for a story conceit?





Simple: he's caught between the proverbial rock and hard place


Since doing that takes away from the entire reason for having the Bugle and cast around to use as story conceits, I thought making Pete a science teacher was one of the worse ideas they had.

Unless this is part of a big "Peter learns a lesson" storyline which includes a "Peter goes to extraordinary, heroic lengths to do the right thing" scene, then yes, it's poor.

And here's why.

> I think if you try to overthink something in a comic book you're just going to ruin it for yourself.

Hey, I'm not the one who's writing Peter as a paparazzo to make him seem more "modern" or "realistic," so don't blame me for bringing these issues up in the first place.

> Case in point: you accept the idea that its ok for Peter to let JJJ use his photos to villify Spider-Man because he's only libelling himself. However, when you think about it, by damaging his own reputation as a hero Pete's making it harder for him to his own job. The public is less likely to trust him, the police waste valuable man power tracking him down instead of going after real criminals, etc.

I absolutely agree with you, which is yet another reason why I was glad to see Straczynski shitcan all of that bullshit during his run. I'll accept that it was "okay" when Peter was younger (and dumber), for the purposes of not having to retcon countless past stories, but bringing back such a contrived, cliche-ridden status quo in the current comics is nothing short of creatively bankrupt.

> Who knows how many lives were lost by making Spidey a less efficient hero because Pete was willing to sabotage himself all for a story conceit?

And now you see why I've had serious problems with that particular story conceit ever since I started reading superhero comics, although Spider-Man isn't nearly bad on that score as Superman, whose secret identity drama I found so totally intolerable that it made me quit ALL comics, superhero and otherwise, when I was EIGHT YEARS OLD, and I stayed quit so firmly that I didn't return to comics until college, when I glanced through a few issues and saw that Lois Lane had finally found out Superman's secret identity, which she SHOULD have known ALL ALONG.

> Simple: he's caught between the proverbial rock and hard place

Except that NO HE'S NOT, for all of the reasons that I cited in my FIRST POST. Taking the solution I suggested would create a more creative and in-character story, and the ONLY reason something like that isn't being used is because editorial mandates are driving the character, rather than the other way around. In other words, he's behaving this way because he has to in order to serve the needs of the story and the status quo that Quesada and company want to stick him in.

> Since doing that takes away from the entire reason for having the Bugle and cast around to use as story conceits, I thought making Pete a science teacher was one of the worse ideas they had.

Quite frankly, unless he's young enough to still be working a part-time job where he's treated like shit, and have that be his primary source of income, without coming across as a total loser (ie. while he's still a student, at either high school or college), I've always really disliked the Daily Bugle as a setting, because it reduces Peter Parker's civilian identity to a Clark Kent variant. Like Venom, Jonah is a decent character, but he's best in small portions, because otherwise, writers will feel compelled either to a) take his established characteristics to ridiculous extremes, or b) try and create "depth" in the characters that, while interesting, really can't be reconciled with any of their previous behavior. If Peter Parker is smart (and he IS, or at least he SHOULD BE), then let's see more of him in an environment that SHOWS this. And if he must remain a "working class" hero, he obviously can't use his big brain to become the next Tony Stark or Reed Richards, so let's put him in a profession that requires smarts AND doesn't pay terribly well.

His webshooters have either jammed or run out in every single issue - no, literally, in EVERY SINGLE ISSUE, if not two or three times PER issue - of BND, and when asked by fans at a panel when Peter "will finally start showing some smarts again," editor Steve Wacker said, "Well, really, what WE prefer to show is Peter making MISTAKES."

Wacker is the same guy whose entire summary of how he perceives Peter is, and here I quote, "He's the guy who messes up and annoys everyone around him, more and more, until they finally just start yelling at him, like Jonah always does."

I don't know where it's going, but it does have a sour taste to it.

Regardless of the ethics of journalism (and there's a big difference between tabloids and "real" papers... and Peter has always been seen working for a very biased tabloid), it comes down to a simple principle for me: I can find a prostitute's situation tragic, but not a pimp's.

There's a big difference between what a person is willing to subject themselves to for money (especially when it's shown that the money is going to noble purposes) and what they're willing to subject *other* people to for money. Knowingly making himself look bad for a buck is one thing (and even then I don't recall him staging the photos so that it looked like Spidey was as reckless and dangerous as possible), but knowingly making someone else look bad in order to make money off of it seems extra sleazy.

Well, there are almost always story conceits, and while everyone has a different tolerance level for them, you can always find reason to pick something apart.

I'm not sure how this is an attempt to modernize Peter, as the photography job has almost always been an aspect of his character.



I didn't read any of it, so I'm probably not one to talk, but while the science teacher idea seems to make a great deal of sense, it sounds like a horrible idea from a pure entertainment standpoint.

It gives Peter a job that roots him in one spot for the entire day, with an extraordinarily limited sphere of influence. Admittedly, he had some of that as a student, but if we're going to apply the realism brush to the photographer job, then it should have to apply to this one too... and teachers put in more of their day to school than students do. Further more, it seems like it was a horrible choice for Peter to endanger his students, as he always seemed to have severely crazy psychopaths chasing after him. Plus, by rooting the source of drama back in a classroom, it ups the coincidence factor necessary to tell stories. From Peter's younger days, one would think that a good 80% of the population of New York must suffer tragedies that lead them to become villains, heroes or just plain dead... especially since it happened to everyone Peter knew in High School.

Yes, a journalist career does harken back to Superman... but it's a well thought out choice for adventure comics, as the job puts the hero in the right place at the right time far more convincingly than most any other civilian occupation would.

I can't see Robbie putting up with this garbage for long, if at all. Unless Robbie's sticking around to help Jonah get the paper back, I can't see why he wouldn't quit. He's quit on Jonah before for similar things.

~Hat~

... I'd agree with you, but as it stands, Bennet has already treated Robbie worse than Jonah did (and you're right, Robbie has walked out on Jonah for far less). I mean, for fuck's sake, Bennet asked Robbie to fetch him his fucking coffee when he first arrived at the Daily Bugle, and I'm sorry, but regardless of the circumstances, if you say bullshit like that to any middle-aged black man, much less one who's worked his way up the ranks of his profession to become as well-regarded as Robbie has, then you should expect (and receive) an unimaginably violent beating, for being a blatantly racist fuckstain.

This is a big part of what I was trying to say in my follow-up ...

> There's a big difference between what a person is willing to subject themselves to for money (especially when it's shown that the money is going to noble purposes) and what they're willing to subject *other* people to for money. Knowingly making himself look bad for a buck is one thing (and even then I don't recall him staging the photos so that it looked like Spidey was as reckless and dangerous as possible), but knowingly making someone else look bad in order to make money off of it seems extra sleazy.

... But I get the feeling it was lost in translation somehow.

I'm guessing the "Jonah can't be racist, he treats everyone like garbage" defense doesn't work for Bennet? I'm not reading ASM so I have no idea.

~Hat~

And I am right, by virtue of being me.

> Well, there are almost always story conceits, and while everyone has a different tolerance level for them, you can always find reason to pick something apart.

The problem, in that case, is that it's this story itself that's not only deliberately calling attention to the problematic nature of its own conceits, but is also exacerbating them. As many issues as I had with Straczynski (and I was far from his biggest fan), if he had started a story like this, I'd suspect that it was being used to highlight the moral compromises of Peter's past behavior, as an excuse to get him going on a new track. However, since Tom Brevoort's "Spider-Manifesto" (no, really, that's what he called it) explicitly outlined what Marvel wants Spider-Man's status quo to be from now on - ie. forever fixed in a state of emulating the '70s and '80s stories in all aspects - I can say for a fact that this will not lead to any lessons learned, or bad behavior changed, for Peter.

> I'm not sure how this is an attempt to modernize Peter, as the photography job has almost always been an aspect of his character.

Marvel's press releases and creator interviews have gone out of their way to compare Peter's new method of practicing his photography to that of the more aggressive modern paparazzi who stalk celebrities, with one promotional blurb outright stating, "Who's the scummiest paparazzo in New York City? That's right; it's none other than Peter Parker!"

> I didn't read any of it, so I'm probably not one to talk, but while the science teacher idea seems to make a great deal of sense, it sounds like a horrible idea from a pure entertainment standpoint.

It certainly wasn't perfect (Straczynski wound up writing a couple of stories that read like ABC After-School Specials), but I found it one hell of a lot more interesting than anything I'd seen at the Daily Bugle in decades.

> It gives Peter a job that roots him in one spot for the entire day, with an extraordinarily limited sphere of influence.

So does almost any other job, which is why so many superheroes tend to do the majority of their superheroing between the hours of 5 p.m. to 9 a.m.

> Admittedly, he had some of that as a student, but if we're going to apply the realism brush to the photographer job, then it should have to apply to this one too... and teachers put in more of their day to school than students do.

Straczynski managed a partial patch on this one by making Peter a substitute teacher, which made his schedule slightly more erratic, while also emphasizing his money troubles. As for the realism, I guess my biggest problem here is that the current stories seem to want it both ways, in that they're portraying Peter's photojournalism in a more deliberately sleazy way in order to seem more "realistic," and yet, I guarantee you that, if they ever respond to anyone calling them out on it, they'll say, "Geez, it's a superhero story! Lighten up! It's not supposed to be realistic!" And in that sense, once again, this is a microcosm of everything that's wrong with Marvel (and DC) right now, because as with Civil War (and Identity Crisis), they want it both ways, so that they can be applauded for their "real-world relevance," without actually being judged by any standard of storytelling higher than that of your average Super Friends episode.

> Further more, it seems like it was a horrible choice for Peter to endanger his students, as he always seemed to have severely crazy psychopaths chasing after him.

I thought this was precisely what a secret identity was supposed to prevent, though? Because, you know, if dangerous people are going to target those around your civilian identity, regardless of whether they know that identity or not, then there's really no point in having a secret identity to begin with. Indeed, one of the things I hated about the ending of the first Spider-man movie was the idea that, even with a secret identity, Peter could never have a life of his own, as long as he was a superhero. What a horrible message to send to kids.

> Plus, by rooting the source of drama back in a classroom, it ups the coincidence factor necessary to tell stories. From Peter's younger days, one would think that a good 80% of the population of New York must suffer tragedies that lead them to become villains, heroes or just plain dead... especially since it happened to everyone Peter knew in High School.

The fact of the matter is, no matter what a superhero's primary setting is, it's going to seem hopelessly contrived, by modern storytelling standards, to have even a statistical majority of their enemies coming from that same place (in retrospect, setting up so many of his characters in New York City is probably one of the worst things that Stan Lee ever did, especially since he was knowingly tying them all together as a "shared universe" of characters from the start). Now, you can either hang a lampshade on this state of affairs (Buffy fought so many evil forces in Sunnydale because it was the site of the Hellmouth), or you can have your character go out looking for trouble, which pretty much renders their primary setting irrelevant from that standpoint anyway.

> Yes, a journalist career does harken back to Superman... but it's a well thought out choice for adventure comics, as the job puts the hero in the right place at the right time far more convincingly than most any other civilian occupation would.

The problem, though, is that there have already been so many superheroes who work as journalists, including the founder and most famous archetype of the entire superhero genre, that if any superhero other than Superman is going to be a journalist, he'd better have more of an individuated reason than, "Well, it seems to have worked out for so many other superheroes," because by resorting to that logic, you're actually giving me less reasons to read about that particular superhero, rather than more.

... Of treating everyone around him horribly, there were certain lines he knew better than to cross.

Granted, Bennet is supposed to be so much worse in that regard that he actually makes Jonah look good by comparison, but I'm socially inept as hell, and even I know that certain words, phrases and behaviors which are (perhaps only marginally) acceptable around white people are WAY unacceptable around black people.

For example, if you call a young white man "boy," he might think you're a condescending prick, but that's likely as far as it'll go, but if you apply the term "boy" to a young black man of the same age, you're basically inviting him to tell everyone he knows that you're an evil fucking racist, because of the extremely societally charged history of that term, as it's been applied to black men in the past.

Now, so far, Bennet has been an asshole who's treated everyone around him like dogshit, I'll agree, but the thing about guys like that (having spent way too much time working for and with them) is that they don't last very long, unless they're smart enough to know how much of that bullshit they can get away with.

After all, there are plenty of ways you can maintain the glass ceiling over your female employees' heads, to the point that they know full well how sexist you are, without giving them something tangible that they can use against you, to substantiate their accusations of your sexism, but if you start telling them that they should wear shorter skirts to show off their legs more, you're going to wind up with your dumb ass in court.

Now, Bennet's comments to Robbie were not quite on that scale, but even as a white guy who was reading this (online), knowing ahead of time that this character only exists to be a dick, that scene made my jaw drop, and made me say to myself, "Holy SHIT, that's racist."

And if I'm noticing that, as a WHITE guy ...

I can blame you for repeatedly harping on a subject to the point you lose all perspective though, right?

They changed his job from one that doesn't really offer story opportunities other than "Oh my god, my favorite student is bing menaced by her abusive father/a street gang he was once part of/feelings of alienation/Venom! What do I do!" to one that worked for the character for decades, and putting an interesting new twist on it. I fail to see the problem.






For someone who joneses so much for the Silver Age, you have a great deal of animus towards contrivance and cliches.



Really, if such a simple plot point took you out of enjoying the genre of superheroics, I have to question what, if anyhting, you liked about it.



Sure he is. Its right there in its four color glory. You might not like how he got to that point plotwise, and can argue "Oh, his millionaire buddy could get him out of his money problems" but that defeats the point of the character.

Pete's a shmuck. He's not supposed to have money. He's not supposed to get the girl. He's the guy who has to do crappy things (like letting people down) in order to ultimately do the right thing as Spider-Man.

... But we'll get to that later.

> I fail to see the problem.

The problem is that the "interesting new twist" makes him seem like a scumbag that I want to punch in the mouth.

> For someone who joneses so much for the Silver Age, you have a great deal of animus towards contrivance and cliches.

As with any set of cultural traditions, from Native American tribal practices to American methods of practicing democracy, there was a lot that was great about the Silver Age of superhero comics, but there was a lot about them that was also unambiguously bad. As artifacts of a past era, I'm more than willing to forgive the flaws of those works, as long as they're acknowledged, but the idea that, if you like something, you should keep it frozen in amber, is anathema to me. Regardless of genre, storytelling should always be evolving and improving. This is why I love the early output of the "grim and gritty" period, with Moore on Watchmen and Miller on The Dark Knight Returns, and hate the majority of what followed, because what was once innovative became calcified into something as staid and conventional as the previous movement that it was rebelling against. Whether a story reflects the aesthetic of the Silver Age or the "Dark Age" that came later, it should be a launching pad for new storytelling directions, but instead, both eras' aesthetics are all too often used as an excuse to stick the characters into hamster-wheels, spinning endlessly in place.

Plus, in the interests of full disclosure, I started wearing glasses in the first grade, and while I could believe that a man could fly, I had no capacity whatsoever to believe that anyone could fail to see past a pair of glasses.

> Really, if such a simple plot point took you out of enjoying the genre of superheroics, I have to question what, if anyhting, you liked about it.

The powers. The costumes. The mind-broadening sci-fi and fantasy concepts. The otherworldly settings. The larger-than-life personalities. Heroes who were bot admirable and accessible. Villains who were, by turns, dramatically absurd and seriously fearsome. The friendships, the grudges, and the loves that SHOULD have been. The juxtaposition of impossible characters, doing impossible things, against a backdrop that could so closely resemble the world which I knew as real. In short, everything else about superheroics. Here's the problem, though; in any given comic starring Superman, when I was growing up, 90 percent of what I saw was, "I'm Lois Lane, and I'm too stupid to see past a pair of glasses," and, "I'm Superman, and even though I love Lois, and she loves me, I'll never tell her I'm Clark Kent, because she couldn't handle it." Even as a grade-school-aged child, such portrayals were offensively sexist to me, and since I had no interest in reading about the most powerful man in existence essentially cock-blocking himself for no real reason whatsoever ... well, there you go, and there I went. I have never found unresolved sexual tension to be interesting or entertaining as an permanent state of affairs, and when it comes to my optional-expense entertainment, I've always had an exceedingly low tolerance for anything I don't like about a story.

> Sure he is. Its right there in its four color glory. You might not like how he got to that point plotwise, and can argue "Oh, his millionaire buddy could get him out of his money problems" but that defeats the point of the character.

No, it just defeats the point of this particular story. There are plenty of ways to give Peter a tough life, without turning him into an unethical, self-pitying, clueless jackass, and just because a story is written doesn't mean I have to accept it. After all, all of the current stories are built upon a foundation of declaring the past 20 years' worth of published stories to be invalid, so it's a little late in the game to be saying, "Okay, we just retconned half the character's history, but from NOW on, everything that happens MUST be accepted as sacrosanct." Then again, I've always had a slightly adversarial relationship with storytelling texts at best, to the point that I've become pathologically incapable of simply accepting anything I'm told without testing it by challenging it first. I believe that I have an obligation, if only to myself, to confront even the stories that I like.

> Pete's a shmuck. He's not supposed to have money. He's not supposed to get the girl. He's the guy who has to do crappy things (like letting people down) in order to ultimately do the right thing as Spider-Man.

I'd modify it and say that Peter should suffer from misfortune and his own mistakes on occasion, but I firmly believe he should come out on top at least as often as not, both in costume and in civilian life, because otherwise, why would I want to be him, and why would I want to read about him? If he's DOOMED to be a loser, then he's Charlie Brown, and Charlie Brown has always been one of my least favorite characters ever, because if I'm told that someone will ALWAYS fail, and that literally EVERYTHING will go wrong for them, no matter what, then that implies a fixed fate for them, and I refuse to accept even the possibility of such an inescapable destiny, whether in fiction or in real life. As a kid who often felt powerless, I absolutely rejected the message that such a sense of powerlessness is something that you just have to learn to endure and accept. Even on into adulthood, I've never accepted it, and I never will.

On that note, irrelevant personal anecdote time, so please feel free to skip:

As a socially inept nerd growing up, I was no stranger to being beaten up, from grade school, through middle school, on up to high school. When I'd come home, with my clothes torn, my glasses broken, my body bruised and my nose bloodied, my mom would call the school and say, what the fuck? In response, she'd be told that nobody ever saw me being beaten, so there was nothing they could do, and besides, they seriously doubted that students who had distinguished themselves as exceptional athletes would beat up one of their peers (apparently, the fact that I'd distinguished myself as an exceptional academic didn't count for shit, reputation-wise). At first, I wondered what I was doing wrong, to earn myself these beatings, so I changed my behavior, as many different ways as I could, but it never mattered, because somebody always needed to take a beating, and as one principal told my mom to her face, when she marched me into his office with my eye swollen shut, "Boys will be boys."

You know how it finally panned out for me?

I learned how to swear, and how to throw insults, and how to laugh in someone's face, even after they'd just punched me in the gut. I'd get pounded, and all the while, I was calling the guys who were punching me cocksuckers, and telling them that the size of their fists was inversely proportional to the size of their dicks. The same school officials who claimed to be unable to punish these other boys for beating me now started trying to punish me for talking shit to them while they were hammering me (although, as soon as my mom threatened to go to the superintendent about that little bit of hypocrisy, it quietly went away). I never won a single physical fight. Every time those fuckers came after me, I wound up eating the floor. And yet, I never stopped laughing at them, and making fun of them, not even when I had to laugh to keep from crying in pain.

And finally, they left me alone, after that last time, back in sophomore year, when Brian Fargen was standing over me, yelling "SHUT UP!!!" And I told him I wouldn't. I told him that I would rather be dead than give in to him. And yeah, he kicked me around a little bit longer, but when I kept laughing, he finally just gave up and walked away.

And after that, a little bit more each day, I found myself more accepted, and more free to be myself, and by the time my senior year rolled around, I was elected class president.

I'm willing to accept a LOT in my fiction. Flying guys, fruity outfits, "science" that could in no way exist in the real world, all sorts of goofy bullshit. But, yeah, when it comes to telling me that there are certain things in this world that we just have to sit back and take, like medicine? Yeah, that's one thing I simply don't have the stomach for. Not now, and not ever.

That's all well and good, and everything, but what does that have to do with a kinda-lame and particularly minor plot point from some issue of Amazing Spider-Man, again?

...but, you know, it's superhero comics.

I read the first six issues of the Brand New Day Spidey online, and I have to say, it's not as mind-bogglingly terrible as I thought it'd be. Hell, it's almost worth buying, you know, if it wasn't a nine-bucks-a-month expenditure. As much as I hate hate hated the idea and execution of the Peter/MJ marriage dissolution, the new guys have done some interesting things with the title, introducing dozens of new plot points, some new baddies and supporting characters, and trying their best to take the storytelling engine back to a time when it actually worked, while also throwing some small changes into the mix. Basically, they're doing what every superhero comic should be doing at its basest level, which, sadly, is something you rarely see anymore.

Heck, I consider Slott and Guggenheim to be mediocre at best, but they had me mildly interested in Spider-Man, something I'd thought impossible to do anymore unless it was being done by Sam Raimi. I find Spidey to be boring as hell, as they drove him into the ground again and again over the last ten or fifteen years, but these comics are almost good enough for me to give a crap again. I imagine, for fans with less elitist tastes than mine, they're all excited about Spidey again. So that's probably working. (And hey, they're exploiting the fanboys too, what with having the "important title" come out three times, as opposed to one "important title" and two or three "not-so-important ones" that no one bought. Take that, compulsive purchasers!)