“Brand New Day” Gives Me a Brand New Fuzzy Feeling

Categorized | Nicholas Johnson, comic books

“Brand New Day” Gives Me a Brand New Fuzzy Feeling

Posted on 24 March 2008 by Nicholas Johnson

Spider-man has been the Marvel cash cow for some time now. With three mega-successful movies, various animated TV shows, countless licensed products, oh and multiple comic book titles, it’s hard not to have immediate recognition of the Spider-man brand. Spidey is iconic, transcending, and loved for being the ultimate confliction of responsibility versus reward. Unfortunately, throughout the 90’s, it had also become a little tedious and a little absurd. This is not a knock on any of the writers or artists involved in producing the comics. This is a direct stab at all of the people involved that took Stan “the Man” Lee’s vision and started distorting it back in the early to mid 1980’s.

While many writers and artists were given the thumbs up to take Peter Parker in all new directions, the editors failed to keep it within reason. Many of the readers, me included, loved it when Todd McFarlane introduced Venom into the Spider-man continuum. And nobody can act like they didn’t love the black suit, regardless of if it was the alien symbiote or the copy that Peter dons on occasion (i.e. the Back in Black storyline). I think we can all agree that the clones and the symbiote sagas were a bit too much.

However, through all of the various writers, artists, clones, aliens, costumes, civil wars, acts of vengeance, and various incarnations of the Avengers…..since the Amazing Spider-man Annual #21 (1987) Peter Parker has been married to Mary Jane Watson-Parker. That’s 21 years. Granted, in the world of comics, that’s only like 4 months, it’s still a lifetime. To put this in perspective, if you were born on the day that MJ and Peter were married, you’d just now be able to “legally” go out and get a beer. BLACKJACK YEARS! As some of you all know, I didn’t start reading comic books until 1989 and my first comic was ASM #318. By that point, Peter and Mary Jane weren’t even newlyweds. They were, at least in the eyes of a kid from a broken home, the coolest married couple ever. I have a natural attraction to redheads and I am pretty sure that it’s all based on McFarland’s version of MJ. 21 YEARS! And by the final panel of ASM issue #545 it was over. Not so much “over” as “never having happened”. In the course of a 4 issue arc (One More Day) the 2nd greatest couple in comics (Lois Lane and Superman/Clark Kent/Kal-El is 1st by a landslide) was erased from existence.

If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend picking up the graphic novel or the individual issues (ASM #544-545, Sensational Spider-Man #41, and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24). This story will remind you of why you like to be in love, why not all break-ups are bad things, and show you that not all comic books have to have a tragic death to break your heart. Not that you needed another reason to pick up this story, but it is the end of a beautiful run for J. Michael Straczynski.

Straczynski has been writing the Amazing Spider-Man since issue Vol. 2 #30 (Vol. 1 #471, they started playing with the numbering back in 1999 and switched it back permanently a few issues before #500). That is 75 issues, not including other Spidey titles. Throughout his run, JMS didn’t do anything that totally disturbed the Spideyverse. What he did do was bring it all back to “reality”. All of the Spider-man titles spent the better part of the 1990’s exploring the fantasy of the franchise and were in need of serious grounding. JMS was only 6 issues into his run when the events of Sept. 11, 2001 happened. He and John Romita, Jr. produced one of the most touching tributes to our everyday heroes in Issue #36 (#477).

Let’s put it this way….Marvel let the “teenagers” run wild for too long and when it came time to clean up the mess, they called in “Daddy” to fix it. JMS oozes a pheromone that should be bottled and sold under the name of “Classic”. He currently is in the midst of the relaunch of The Mighty Thor (one of my absolute favorites) and in seven issues, he has done more to make me want to buy this comic than had been done in the last 15+ years. Don’t worry. I’ll give you a big write-up on all things Thor in the very near future.

On the other hand, ASM has taken a new turn. Now swinging to action 3 times a month under the Brand New Day heading, it’s like an all-new comic book. Without Mary Jane, Peter Parker is able to take new twists and turns in both his private life as well as the life of your friendly neighborhood Spider-man. The books now remind me of why I first picked up my first issue. They haven’t quite reverted back to the old style where every story starts and finishes within the same issue, but they have that fast paced high intensity feel. While this doesn’t quite work in a title like Daredevil, it definitely works here. That is the beauty of franchise titles, most people know the history of the character so well that they don’t need to have the plots developed and redeveloped every other issue.

The one thing about the craziness of the 1990’s Spider-man titles was that it was always fun. Brand New Day is a throwback to those days, but is still keeping JMS’s realistic perception of the world of Spider-man alive. And in a day and age where comics are getting grittier and more hardcore, it’s nice to be able to pick up a comic and just have fun.

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