snap judgments

NEWSARAMA.COM: TEN YEARS LATER: ONSLAUGHT REBORN

You heard it didn’t you? A thousand voices, crying out in terror? Or just one lone little girl in Santa Barbara, CA. I didn’t even read it at first, just let it wash over me. After all, this is the semi-joke issue of Wizard magazine, right? Since when do they have honest info anyways?

But there it is in bold colors on Newsa-FREAKIN’-rama. Quote the Liefeld, “After Civil War fans can take a deep breath and then strap themselves in for this rollercoaster.”

OH! OH CAN WE? CAN WE PLEEEEEEASE???

But I will give Liefeld this, that the word ‘rollercoster’ is an apt metaphor for Marvel Comics these days. But not in an ‘exciting up and down’ kind of way. Ever been on ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ at Disneyland? ( I say Disneyland since I’m not sure if the ride is the same at other parks). Now, at the last part of the ride, they drag your little boat up this great steep incline and when I first rode it, I forgot that the ride took you down to begin with and assumed that this upgrade would lead to another some other big drop and kind of psych’d myself up for it. Big incline (when you’re small), the tick-tick-tick of the ride’s tracks, I was all set for some big splash at the end of it… and then found myself right back where I started.

Welcome to Marvel Comics. The moon has been promised these days. One HUGE event right after another. House of M had The Other right on it’s heels which in turn has Civil War on the next page plus two side events (Annihilation, Planet Hulk sorta) and now we’re getting the Return of Onslaught and possibly the Be-freakin’-yonder in the middle/end of Civil War! I can understand the idea of keeping your readers on the edge of their seat. I can understand that yearing need to compete with their Distinguished Competitors and their big extravaganza, but this… this is ridiculous!

With Big Events following each other so closely, there’s no breathing room, no time to settle into the new status quo and no time to go back and fill in blanks that might have been left out of the bigger picture. House of M had Spider-Man’s greatest wish fulfilled as being married to Gwen Stacy and not Mary Jane. There were hints by the folks at Marvel that this might change MJ’s and Peter’s relationship with this new revelation, not to mention he’d have a heck of a time reconciling getting his ‘greatest wish’ with the life he led now. How do you get up in the morning knowing that this isn’t what you want at all? Or that you had it and boy was it pretty twisted!

This got dealt with in Son of M for maybe… four pages? Not in his own books which were going through that The Other mess in which Spidey got new powers and some sort of twin spider person who… disappeared? And now he doesn’t have the time to sort those out because he has even MORE new abilities thanks to the Iron Spider suit which commits him to Tony Stark’s side in Civil War and then he’ll be yoinked out to go participate in Beyond!… *whew*. Someone give this man a vacation.

Hell, give us a vacation. We buy into it every time Joe Q. gets up there and tells us ‘In this issue Insert Name Here DIES!‘, there we stand cash in hand, hoping that this time it’ll be different.

Take Ike back, baby.