Comics! The passing of the Torch

Marvel's two flagship comics continue to deal with the aftershocks of the death of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, a couple of issues ago in "The Fantastic Four." Nobody this side of Aunt Petunia believes the Torch is really, permanently dead (since a revived and all-growed-up Bucky Barnes is now on the Avengers as Captain America, my old ironclad Marvel Comics rule "Nobody dies but Bucky" has now been amended to "Nobody dies, period"), but these long-arc storylines where a major character seems to be dead allows writers at Marvel and DC to pretend it was all true and put all the related characters through all the Kubler-Ross stages of grieving, kind of like Tom and Huck getting to watch their own funeral.

Such a gambit can be flubbed, of course - DC dropped the ball big-time twenty years ago with its "Death of Superman" arc, and then, not to be outdone, they dropped the ball again last year when Batman allegedly died. But Marvel tends to do it right, as was seen in their recent headline-grabbing "Death of Captain America" story. And the approach they're taking this time is low-key and entirely believable.

The stress is on family, and Dan Slott's writing captures something of the tone of that quite nicely. The current issue of "Spider-Man" (lamentably titled "Torch Song") features nothing more than Spider-Man going to the Baxter Building late at night to share the company of the remaining members of the Fantastic Four (we're treated to a neat little homage to Spidey's first visit to the team, when he's accidentally caught in a pneumatic intruder-tube). It's all very quiet and sad and real-seeming, just four old friends talking about a loved one who's died. Gruff Ben Grimm matter-of-factly tells Peter Parker that he's a member of the family, and Sue Richards seconds it. They're sitting in the kitchen talking - no super-villains erupt through the walls, no surprises explode in splash panels.

The timing is off a bit in terms of titles shipping to stores - readers already know Spider-Man will join the team - but that doesn't dull the enjoyment of the last bit, where Reed Richards reveals that Johnny left one last holographic video message for Peter Parker:

Pete? If you're hearing this, I'm sorry, pal. Sorry that I'm gone, 'cause ... well, I know how you feel when it comes to losing family. And that's what you are to me. Family. So ... if you're thinking of this as my last will and all ... I'm not leaving you my sports cars or stuff like that ... I'm leaving you the best thing I ever had ... my spot on this team. A place in this family. The best sister, two brothers, niece, and nephew a guy could ask for.

Slott hits all the right notes in these scenes (including the hokey-but-effective signature FF hand-pile), but for my money, the single best evocation of what this whole story means is Marcos Martin's wonderful, understated, incredibly sad cover illustration. The combination of elements - the Empire State Building, the old-style water tower, the '4' signal-flare that will never now mean what it once did, and a small-looking Spider-Man looking up at it - makes this the best Marvel cover I've seen this year.

A Comics Shocker!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled entry today to do something I never thought I'd have occasion to do again: praise the daylights out of an issue of Spider-Man.

The issue in question was recently bought by Elmo: it's Part 1 of "Unscheduled Stop," written by Mark Waid and drawn by Marcos Martin, and it's as good an issue of Spider-Man (which is, mind-bogglingly, up to #578, even though it feels like five minutes ago it was hitting #100) as we've seen in probably a good ten years, maybe longer.

The story starts simply enough, even charmingly: a rain-soaked Spider-Man is perched on a rooftop, not very well sheltered by the impromptu webbing-umbrella he's made, eating some Chinese take-out and wishing he had carfare to get out of the weather and take the subway to meet his Aunt May in Brooklyn. When a subway card with fare still on it comes his way, he considers it his lucky day and (after switching to his Peter Parker clothes, naturally) sprints down to catch the next train.

As bad luck would have it, that train is attacked while it's traveling under the East River - by a super-powered hitman who's intent on killing the entire jury of an ongoing mob-trial. The jury is taking the train to view a crime scene, and when the subway car they're in is separated from the rest of the train by the attack, the jurors find themselves in the subterranean company - and of course under the well-meaning protection of - Spider-Man. Which is a good thing, since the villain who stopped the train is still in the tunnel, intent on finishing the job.

The whole thing is handled perfectly. Waid writes a quirky, believable, entirely urban Spider-Man, and his dialog for everybody else is just the combination of urgent and breezy that used to make the book such a joy way back when Stan Lee was writing it. His Spider-Man is level-headed and opinionated, very much a person and not a paragon, and all the other characters trapped in that subway tunnel are equally distinct, including one whose identity is only revealed on the issue's last page, and it's a revelation absolutely nobody - and I mean nobody - will see coming. Not in forty years of reading Spider-Man did I ever even think to question the significance of two little letters...

And what to say about Marcos Martin? If I've ever seen his artwork before, I ignored it (if that happened, it's almost certainly because it was poorly inked - you can tell at a glance that his penciling style is slangy and loose enough so that a lazy inker would make it look like crap despite its great structural strength), but boy, he's great in this issue. His street-scenes are detailed like Norman Rockwell, as is the wonderfully personalized panel where Peter Parker is hurrying to catch the train. And his action-sequences (including the moment where Spider-Man confronts the issue's villain, a tableau lifted with obvious affection from the great Steve Ditko, and a joy to all us long-time readers) are fantastic, which not every comic artist working on a flagship title today can say.



So what's the problem, you ask? I loved the issue, and yet you're sensing my reluctance, the grudging nature of all this praise?

I know it'll sound funny considering that this is a comic book we're talking about, but the problem with this issue is that it isn't real.

As comics fans will know, last year Peter Parker's dear old Aunt May was brutally gunned down in the aftermath of the whole 'Civil War' storyline (during which, to comply with the fascist Superhero Registration Act, Peter Parker unmasked on live TV). As she hovered on death's doorstep, Peter literally made a deal with the devil to save her life: in exchange for malevolent supernatural being Mephisto reviving Aunt May, Peter had to agree to give up Mary Jane, his wife - not her life, but their life, the whole reality of their love. Peter agreed, and Mephisto reworked reality - no shooting, no Mary Jane, no public unmasking, plus lots of other tweakings here and there. Suddenly, the 'reality' of all the Spider-Man books was re-set, like a clock at Daylight Spending Time.

It was very weak dealing, a silly, lazy hail-mary move on the part of Marvel Comics - they had a successful movie franchise boiling along, and they needed a comics version of their character who was more reader-friendly, less encumbered by 'Civil War' baggage - more like he was in the '60s. The ridiculous fiat of it made me so frustrated I was certain the issues that resulted would be garbage from wall to wall. And I was resigned to that, since I didn't like the premise underlying those issues at all.



I still hate that premise (it's so going to be overturned, vitiated, invalidated, the next time Spider-sales need a little goosing - and then where will all these issues be? Stuck in Spider-clone-land, I'm guessing), but regardless, it's long since time I admitted it's starting to produce some really good issues. I'll definitely be bugging Elmo for the second installment of "Unscheduled Stop," and that feeling - actually looking forward to an issue of Spider-Man - is so strange and comfortable to have back again that I can almost overlook the price that was paid to get us all here. Almost.