J.Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 stands, in my mind, as one of the great achievements in television history. Despite corporate greed, cast defections, multiple threatened cancellations, and the more pedestrian obstacles to creating Art in the name of Commerce, Straczynski was able to create an intriguing, humanistic adventure. It's all the more astonishing that it is so uniquely stamped with his style, given the collaborative nature of weekly television.
Straczynski did not come away from the B5 experience unscathed, though. He has talked in interviews of how writing the bulk of the series' episodes aged him, and he and the fans both got ass-raped by the corporate interference that killed Crusade, a spin-off series that had reams of potential that was perhaps most obvious to those of us who remember those early, uncomfortable, first-season episodes of B5. If only the show had had time to develop; if only the network hadn't demanded changes; if only, if only...
The moral of this story, of course, is that Straczynski has found a place for himself in another collaborative medium, one in which it is presumably possible for a creator to have a greater say in his creations (at least, one would hope). J. Michael Straczynski is writing comic books.
He's got two titles under his belt, Rising Stars and Midnight Nation. I've tried 'em both, and dropped 'em both. The former was crippled by criminally amateurish artwork that all involved refused to acknowledge was killing the story, while the latter's first issue was, on balance, nicely drawn and pretty boring. I'm a dedicated fan of Straczynski, and I use the term "fan," rarely when describing myself. But anyone who took the time to videotape every episode of Babylon 5 might be considered slightly fanatical. I also have every episode of Crusade on tape, and watched one of those episodes yesterday. Satisfied?
So, I'm a fan, but a discriminating one. No matter how much I love a given creator's work, I know crap when I see it. Loved John Byrne's Uncanny X-Men. Don't read X-Men: The Hidden Years even when I get it for free, although God knows I've tried.
Anyway, now that we have John Byrne and J. Michael Straczynski in the same stream of consciousness, perhaps it's time to get to the point:
A few years ago, Marvel gave John Byrne too much money (way, way too much money) to create Spider-Man: Chapter One, an ugly, misbegotten, unneeded mish-mash that would supposedly revitalize the Wallcrawler in the same way Byrne's mid-80s Man of Steel miniseries gave Superman a shot in the arm.
Byrne, and his unindicted (although not unimpeached) co-conspirator Howard Mackie inflicted worse damage on Spider-Man and his mythos than even the much-maligned Clone Saga. Plots that no one cared about to begin with (Hello, Senator Ward?) went nowhere, new characters that recalled old characters for no reason (Gwen Stacy's cousin, and Captain Stacy's brother...oh, brother) went nowhere, and of course, the box from the airline that proved that Mary Jane was...was...what did that box prove, anyway? Oh, yes, I remember now:
It proved that Howard Mackie is a lousy writer.
So, now that Mackie has brought Mary Jane back (in perhaps his worst plot ever...this month), the slate is cleared (well, the abbatoir is hosed down, anyway) for a new era! to begin...again...
Amazing Spider-Man #30 will feature the debut of the Straczynski era. He's joining regular Spidey-artist John Romita, Jr. for a tale called "Transformations, Literal and Otherwise." It's mostly scene-setting for future tales, as Peter Parker defends a high-school nerd (and finds it nearly as thankless a task as following Howard Mackie), and meets a mysterious stranger who hints that there may be much more of a legacy of being Spider-Man than has ever before been hinted at.
I've read the story, and I'll tell you something: I don't know, at this point, if anything can save this classic version of Spider-Man. But Straczynski gives it a pretty good shot, and there are hints that he may have something worthwhile up his sleeve.
My biggest problem with the issue is the artwork; there was a time when I really liked Romita's quirky, blocky, angular style. But flipping through the pages of the preview copy I've got here, man, it's hard not to associate this story with the disastrous Mackie era just by association.
Especially in the early pages, the double-page splash, the construction site sequence (which brought a smile to my face in its punchline, nonetheless), even the high school scene.
It's only in the last few pages, when Spider-Man meets Ezekial, that it begins to feel like a Straczynski script. That there begin to be hints of something bigger. That I even cared that I was reading about the Peter Parker that I literally grew up with.
There's an epilogue of sorts that introduces a future plotline, but even that felt Mackie-esque...like it's intriguing, but even if we get a payoff, it'll be one no one cares about.
I don't want to blame Straczynski for this, because I think he gave good effort in putting the script for this issue together, and I think I will give him a few months to convince me one way or the other. But there were mistakes made here:
Well, Mary Jane is alive but has left Peter, and Aunt May is still alive. These all recall huge mistakes of the Mackie era.
Romita's time may have come and gone with the Wallcrawler. In addition to making the book visually identical to the just-ended Era of Hideousness, JR Jr.'s style has nearly become a parody of itself. There's a kind of static dynamism to it, but it's long-since turned stale and uninteresting. Plus, what's this new thing of Spider-Man covering himself in webs? Why would he waste web-fluid like that? Just to look "interesting?"
Finally, the choice of cover artist J. Scott Campbell has to be addressed. Campbell's contribution here recalls nothing so much as the vacuous McFarlane Spider-Man series, yet another creative nadir for poor Pete. Why can't Romita draw his own covers? Or someone else who could contribute covers with depth and visual interest rather than empty flash?
I do like the return of the classic Amazing Spider-Man logo, but this issue leaves me still concerned for the future of this "franchise." Marvel needs to make right what's been so horribly inflicted on readers for the past few years, and while there are hints here that that could happen, there are some clearly backward looks too, looks to all-too-recent memories.
And when it comes to Spider-Man, there's nothing in the recent past worth remembering, and a lot of nightmarish memories we'd all like to forget. My advice, to Straczynski, is to push this thing forward like your ass is on fire, because it is.
For Marvel, leave the man alone and let him stand or fall on his own imagination. Given his resume, it could go either way. And those are better odds than the Wallcrawler has faced in years.