Less is More

If you weren't following the comic news this weekend, lot's of stuff was announced at the San Diego Comic-Con. Over the course of next week or two I'm going to be offering some comments on some of the bigger things, and highlighting some of the small stuff people may have missed.

Chief amongst these, are the plans for Spider-Man over at Marvel. I had never been a Spider-Man fan until JMS started writing Amazing Spider-Man, but afterwards I found myself really getting into the character. Even being really happy that they brought him onto the New Avengers and picking up Ultimate Spider-Man religiously. I never really got into the others, Sensational Spider-Man, or even Peter David's book, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. I did read Marvel Knights Spider-Man, which morphed into Sensational, but I stopped when Mark Millar left.

Now Marvel has announced that after this fall's big event, One More Day, they are canceling all Spidey titles but Amazing. Amazing will start to ship three times a month, and will have four, yes FOUR, different creative teams on it. All at the same time too. I am not sure how this is going to work exactly, but here is what I kind of envision, oh, and this is not the order in which they are coming out, this is just me tossing the creative teams into a random order.

Month One

1 - Zeb Wells & Chris Bachalo
2 - Bob Gale & Phil Jimenez
3 - Dan Slott & Steve McNiven

Month Two

4 - Marc Guggenheim & Salvador Larroca
5 - Zeb Wells & Chris Bachalo
6 - Bob Gale & Phil Jimenez

Month Three

7 - Dan Slott & Steve McNiven
8 - Marc Guggenheim & Salvador Larroca
9 - Zeb Wells & Chris Bachalo

Month Four

10 - Bob Gale & Phil Jimenez
11 - Dan Slott & Steve McNiven
12 - Marc Guggenheim & Salvador Larroca

Make sense? Yeah, I know, not really. Basically each team is responsible for three issues every four months. Not bad actually, they should have plenty of time to finish issues. Of course, if I understand this right, they will all be writing their own story arcs. So if you like Dan Slott & Steve McNiven, but not the other teams, you will have to get every fourth issue. This is what new Spider-Man editor Steve Wacker had to say "The new creators have laid out about a year's worth of story arcs for Peter Parker and the cast. Over that, they're coming up with stories that will move the uber-plot along, so that each story has the same writing and art team and no one is left writing Part 3 of some else's story." I will also point out, this was all decided before Wacker left DC, or so they say.

Of course this makes it hard for you guys too. Unfortunately we can't just put you down for all the Slott issues, but none of the rest. It's an all or nothing type of thing. You could however, order the issues you want individually. I know this is not the preferred method, but it's pretty much the only way unless you want all four teams.

At least, this is how I think it's going to work, it's pretty confusing. And I could be completely wrong, they could be working it out where Slott and McNiven do three or four issues, then Gale and Jimenez do an arc, and so on. But why not just announce Slott and McNiven, and then the next, and then the ones after them. I guess we'll see soon.

-Dan