[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

Spoilers Ahead. Forreal.

Sometime ago, Marvel unleashed an event on the Spider-Man universe called One More Day. This story essentially undid years and years of continuity and character development; in exchange for Aunt May’s life, Peter Parker and Mary Jane agree to allow Mephisto to retcon their lives any way he sees fit. Of course, he makes it so that they were never married.

Fugging hogwash.

For the most part, I feel that rewriting character history is a dangerous endeavor. By saying This and that and the other thing never happened, a writer is basically tossing out the stories that fans have spent years reading. The characters don’t really develop and readers can pretty much count on future tales coming to similar conclusions.

I’m going to pause for a second, to add some counterbalance to my tirade. I’m not opposed to reboots or reimaginings of all sorts. In fact, I think that harnessing fresh perspectives to relaunch franchises can lead to products that are better than the originals (see: Battlestar Galactica, The Dark Knight, etc.). But what I can’t stomach is the constant rehashing of tried-and-true formulas.

Read the rest of this entry »