Previous Post 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.

...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!)