Random Insanity Alliance Forum, Mark V
Cactuar Zone => Random lnsanity => Topic started by: dester55 on November 14, 2008, 12:47:01 pm
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12) Spider-man Kills Mary Jane with his Radioactive Semen, Spider-man: Reign
Spider-man: Reign is a four-issue mini-series by writer/artist Kaare Andrews that is forthrightly an attempt to wedge Spider-man into the equivalent of a Dark Knight Returns dystopian story. How forthright? Why, there is a character named “Miller Jansen” featured in the book. It seems that at no point did anyone involved sit down and think about whether or not grim n’ gritty Spider-man was at all a good idea, or what the point of such an endeavor would be. Somebody at Marvel just wanted old, dark future Spidey.
Where DKR is a trailblazing classic, Reign is a derivative little ball of failure. The plot is at heart a generic “Spider-man’s villains team up to kill him” story drenched in ridiculously maudlin post-9/11 fear-mongering. Set 35 years in the future, Reign has a hilariously ancient J. Jonah Jameson push an over-sixty Peter Parker into becoming Spider-man again. It’s all part of a bizarre, nonsensical scheme to defeat a fascist government that’s taken over New York. Along the way there’s nonsense involving robot zombie Dr. Octopus, a laser killer death web projected around New York, and an impossibly stupid Dubya stand-in who works for Venom-as-Dick-Cheney.
What makes Reign memorably stupid instead of just forgettable is the truly, fantastically ridiculous backstory the whole thing hinges on. Throughout the book, our aging Peter Parker keeps having deranged visions of his long-dead wife Mary Jane. Later we find out that it’s not enough for him to be wracked by guilt because he was out fighting crime when she died of cancer; no, he also had to cause her cancer. Specifically, Spider-man gave Mary Jane cancer by tragically shooting her up repeatedly with his horrible radioactive Spider-Semen. His horrible radioactive Spider-Semen.
(http://www.toplessrobot.com/Reign03-11.jpg)
That’s not tragic. That shit is fucking hilarious. In fact, Reign could have worked really well as a Spider-man DKR parody, sort of in the Marvel Zombies vein. I mean, there’s a scene where Spider-man punches his way out of a coffin while singing the lyrics to his own '60s cartoon theme. A bit where J. Jonah Jameson is the pastor of a weird religion that believes in masks and bells. Peter even confesses his angst to Mary Jane’s corpse while a Doctor Octopus that consists of a rotting corpse attached to still-sentient robot arms looks on! That is totally the stuff of wicked black comedy. Unfortunately, Reign was content to be a shitty, dead-serious action showpiece with the concluding issues given over to stupid brawls, and the whole plot is resolved by Spider-man getting hold of a detonator that lets him blow up a building that is conveniently full of all the bad guys. This symbolizes, uh… freedom? Something? Fuck.
source: http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/11/the_12...besides_the.php (http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/11/the_12_dumbest_spiderman_stories_ever_besides_the.php)
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HILARITY.
BTW, Marvel Zombies was hilarity as well.
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HILARITY.
BTW, Marvel Zombies was hilarity as well.
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lol @ double post