So what the hell else happened to me?

[Rollo Tomassi]

The whole conclusion of the Clone thing seemed rushed, ill thought out, and like the left hand didn't know whose johnson the right hand was rubbing. And from interviews on the subject by those involved many years later, they were backtracking everything, but it seemed they wanted an out later on. The whole thing was a clusterfuck, but they should've collectively manned up and owned up to it by being creative. instead of whistling and looking up in the sky every time somebody brought it up. Candy asses.

[anarky]

I recall admiring them for having balls when the Clone Saga began. Ha ha ha ha!

[Rollo Tomassi]

The other really REALLY sad part is that this ONE editorial mandate has dominated the entire Spidey line of comics for an unbelievable amount of time. Its like they were all hung up on this ONE aspect of the comics "mythology" and we've all been subjected to some shitty subpar comics for 15+ years because of it. First off, The Clone Saga. Which totally got blown out of proportion. Was an attempt to make Spidey single free-wheeling carefree guy again. Except the attempt was so convoluted, and fresh off of reading it, I can tell you, having "Ben" explain what was going on, issue after issue in his caption boxes was just a confusing epic failure. And in the end, fans weren't buying it. They really DID intend for Peter to be the clone, and Ben to be the "original". but fans hated that (I wonder why) and so they had to backtrack and recant and wrap it up. The only way of doing so was to bring back Norman Osborn?!? WTF?

THEN, Howard Mackie and John Byrne took over the reboot, and THEIR solution was to KILL MJ in a plane explosion!!! Again, this went over like toast I just farted on. Seriously, nobody except a handful of inept comic writers had any issue with Peter being married. So they had to backtrack on THAT.

Then JMS came along, and he had no problems with the marriage as far as I can tell. Hell, he even outed Peter to Aunt May in one of the greatest single issues in Marvel Comics History. I defy you not to tear up reading that one. So we had eight blissful years (not that there weren't some turds in JMS' sling. The Osborn/Gwen twins? Ugh. Barrff.) of happily married Parkers.

Sadly, all this came to an end, when again all the writers got together and whined to Joe Quephisto that writing Spider-Man was so hard and difficult because he's married and any story we write automatically sucks with him married and we want you to fix it so we can be awesom ewriters again..WAAAAAAHHHH WWAHHHHHHH!!!

And then we got the one two ass ramming of OMD and OMIT. And in between BND. Which by the way, I didn't read a single BND story that was contingent on Peter being single. Not a one. Every single story could have been told if he were married. Every villain could've been fought with a ring on his finger. So apparently the entirety of the group "writer's block" was psychosomatically contingent on Peter being freed of the horrific ball and chain of Mary-Jane Watson.

And the worst part was Joe Quesada character assassinating MJ in order to justify the split. It was like "Ohmigod! Look what a horrible bitch MJ is! Look what shes saying! Look how shes acting!" Yeah. Fuckstick, you wrote those issues. You put those words in her mouth. Everything up til then she was a very different person.

Ugh. Y'know, I give Joe Q a lot of credit for revitalizing Marvel and I still think overall he was a great EiC, trying new things and making the books exciting again. But he totally fucking dropped the ball huge on that shit.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I'm in the middle of reading the post-reboot issues of ASM and PPSM. Howard Mackie was writing both series for the first 20 issues or so, and his shit wasn't very good. He gave Peter a brand new job at a thinktank called Tri-Corp (very reminiscent of what Slott is currently doing at Horizon, but Slott is doing it much better). Mackie then had Peter NOT show up for work for like 14 months in either title, before he gets fired. So THAT subplot went nowhere. then he killed off Mary Jane in a plane explosion. I think they were testing the waters to see if readers would accept her death before commiting to it fully. They really jerked it around for a good long while. Then eventually they brought her back, saying she was kidnapped. There was also some subplot involving the brother of George Stacy and his two children. Yeah, I guess thay had a editorial meeting about how to recapture the feeling of the old series. Sombody brought up Capt. Stacy and Gwen. And since they couldn't bring them back (what, they couldn't be "convalescing in Europe" like everyone else?) they instead made up George's (twin?) brother Authur. And his daughter, Jill, as a Gwen surrogate. So, scraping the barrel there.
Arthur also had an asshole son who hated Peter. I'm not sure who he was supposed to be a surrogate for. And there was the Mattie Franklin Spider-Woman (woman? She was 15 years old...) who got her own ongoing series around this time. You might actually rethink your stance of the Spider-Clone Saga being the creative lowpoint for Spidey after reading these books.

Eventually, JMS took over ASM, which I bought and read years ago.
And Paul Jenkins and artist Mark Buckingham took over on PPSM. Now, lately, I've kinda dissed Jenkins because his recent stuff has been, well, dull. And his Hulk book from the same era was dull as well ( he gave Banner ALS and then magically cured him. Uhh..what?) But I gotta tell ya, this run on PPSM is pretty dang good. he had a couple nice 'flashback' stories with Uncle Ben that were quite charming. His silent 'Nuff Said' issue was hilarious. And he's thrown in just the right amount of absurdity, like the two monks in their "monkmobile VW" or the next door neighbor's dog.
I'm about to start the original Jenkins/Ramos story arc in issue 44. I used to hate Ramos' cartoony style, but I've softened on it since then. So its a chance to read it with a more objective perspective. Jenkins and Ramos went on to do the new Spectacular Spider-Man vol.2 series which I picked up and said "ew barf" to the art. Funny what ten years can do.

[vynsane]

Also, I just went to WallCrawlersWeb to see what his checklist looked like compared to mine, and I think I found two more oneshots to add to my list. One was a Kingpin issue and the other was 101 Ways to End the Clone Wars. I don't think I have either one, and they for sure weren't on my master list of books to find. See? These books are like fuckin' rabbits. More keep popping up everytime I turn around.

and it's not nearly complete, as i've neglected that site like hell.

Then JMS came along [...] we had eight blissful years (not that there weren't some turds in JMS' sling. The Osborn/Gwen twins? Ugh. Barrff.) of happily married Parkers.

the osborn/gwen twins weren't his idea - originally they were going to be PARKER/gwen twins, and Joe Q. shot that down, saying peter had to be a virgin until he was married or something, so that couldn't happen.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Because retconning Gwen into a slut with poor taste in the guys she DOES fuck is so much more appealing.

[vynsane]

Because retconning Gwen into a slut with poor taste in the guys she DOES fuck is so much more appealing.

ostensibly.

[jjreason]

After getting six issues of Erik Larsen's run via my brother (had them shipped to his place again, shipping to Canada is stupid these days) and filing them, I confirmed 238-441 of volume 1 complete this morning.

I have very few issues leading up to 238 - very few. The next step in the process will either be finishing 200-237 (of which I likely need 35/38 issues that will run anywhere from 12-20 bucks each, and 200 might be a fair bit more than that) OR trying to snap up issues 2-23 of the relaunched title which I bowed out on. Oddly enough, both of those runs will likely cost around the same amount of money.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Congratulations.
Having just read most of that 2nd series' relaunch, I would advocate going for the earlier run.

[vynsane]

nice! i'm basically working on a run of ~150 onward. i have a smattering in the 40-69 range, nothing between 70 and 120, ratty copies of 121 and 122 and then the makings of a good run of 150 onward. there are quite a few gaps towards the front end of that span, and i have a few earlier issues as well, but i feel like 150+ is a more attainable goal unless i start making some magnificent scratch, then i'll set my sights on 50 onward (still attainable but more demanding a comfortable level of income). it would appear i'm missing 103 issues between 150-441 (not counting variant covers) according to the cover gallery view of the title at wallcrawlersweb (since that's basically all my collection).

[Snigtad Flornbi]

SO WOT?

U WON'T A BLOW JOB?

HA HA HA, I NEW U WOOD! FAGG!!!

[jjreason]

Could have just called it "completed runs", that would have given us all a chance to chime in. That same load of books helped me finish off a few other sets I've had partially done, many for years on end:

X-Men vs Avengers

(Marvel Team) vs Mephisto

Avengers Forever

(Alan Moore's) Top 10 vol 1

Watchmen

(Warren Ellis') Global Frequency

ALL finally done, readable & ready for boxing. That's good work right there (and yes I've read Watchmen over a few times, in tpb format though).

[Rollo Tomassi]

I've just been doing that in the "Big Score" Topic.

I just picked up Spider-Man:Blue for free. Well, free in a monetary sense. I had to dick around with some asshole seller on ebay for a month to get them. On May 31st I won Blue for $2.56 and Marvel Team-Up 8-25 for $3.86. I tried winning a couple other auctions from the seller and didn't, so I paid on June 2nd. At which point, the guy left me Positive Feedback saying something the the effect of "OMG SUPER FAST SELLER A+++++++" or whatever. And then marked the items shipped on the 2nd as well. Well, the shipping notice said anywhere between such and such a date, and the latest date was like the 25th. So even though most things I order take less than a week to arrive, I've had the occasional seller take longer. Life happens. One guy was in the hospital. That's fine with me. I can wait on receiving books. but when they didn't show up on the latest date, I contacted the guy. At which point he said "he hadn't received the paypal notice from Ebay and could I send him the paypal transaction number. Which sent warning bells off to me. If he had just said "oh fuck, I forgot tho ship them" I would've been fine. but he was inimating I hadn't paid yet (even though he had left feedback and told ebay that he had shipped them). And besides that, wouldn't you either contact the buyer and say "why the fuck haven't you paid me?" after a couple days? Or weeks at least? So I got him the info and basically said its strange you need this info since you supposedly already sent them, but whatever. Now, out of pure pragmatism, I opened a Case before the deadline for opening a case came about. Because, hey, I can trust you once when you say you shipped something, but not twice. I need some assurance. Anyway, the guy flips out and says he put BOTH auctions in the mail on July 2nd and I didn't need to open a Case. HE's a POwer Seller, has 100% Feedback etc yadda yadda. Saying I'm fucking with his Fast forward to the following week. I get a package and it has SM:Blue in it, but not the 18 issues of MTU. Which the guy had e-mailed me ANOTHER confirmation of shipping those. So then I had no choice to open a SECOND case specifically for the second auction, because now the guy had claimed TWICE he had shipped these books to me. So, in order to close both cases and not have his "Power Seller" rating besmirched, he just fully refunded both auctions. I never got the MTU books, but I ended up getting the SM:Blue series for free.

I gave him negative feedback anyway. There goes your 100.00% douche.

[anarky]

Funny, it would seem someone who sold enough to be a "Power Seller" and had 100% positive feedback would not fuck around like that.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Ironically, after all that drama, the books weren't even that good of a read. I'm glad I didn't have to pay for them.
Also, because I was so furious at not getting the MTU books, I bid on an auction for the entire 25 issue run this weekend and won it for less than $20. So, with the money returned to me from the other guy, I basically only have to pay for shipping on the new set.