kgrogers1979

Yeah, I did. I was just going by comics I could remember off the top of my head. Tangled Web was only about another 25 or so issues. I also forgot Sensational Spider-man which was another short-term book.

Sins Past probably wouldn't have been bad to a new reader who knew nothing about Gwen, but if you had a lot of history with her then you would know how badly that story shit all over her. Sins Past was widely regarded as the worst Spider-man story ever written... until One More Day at least.

bluetoast

I only had one or two of them, but I liked the one story that had Uncle Ben pulling pranks on Peter as a kid, and that was the reason he was a wiseass later on. It seemed like a retcon, but made sense in terms of Peters' connection to the characters.

Other one shots I really liked: The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man. I ended up getting the individual issue of that after reading it in a trade.

Hazel Motes

Anyone who's a true Spiderman fan has probably wasted a good portion of their life.

bluetoast

Haha, that reminds me of a comic I read once as a kid:

Two people were on a boat, traveling. One guy would ask the other "Have you read this book?" The other guy would say "No, I haven't." The first guy would reply "Then you've missed out on 3 years of your life." He would ask the same thing for a few books, and still say that the other guy was wasting his life. Then the boat springs a leak and starts to sink.

The second guy then asks "Do you know how to swim?" The first guy says no. The second guy says "Then your whole life is wasted" and swims away.

But now that I think about it, the second guy was kind of a dick.

kgrogers1979

Oh look another "comics are for nerds" post. How original.

Big hint here:

If you like comic book movies, you are a nerd. If you think comic book movies aren't as nerdy as comic books themselves, you are a nerd in denial.

And anyway, if you enjoy what you are doing, then why is it a waste of a life? I would rather do something I enjoy (like reading comics) than be an Ebeneezer Scrooge who works hard and has tons of money but doesn't enjoy anything. Hard work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

JTH182

And that Tim Burton Willy Wonka was da bomb, yo!

fumanstan

I love how after all that, you didn't really answer if any of those are enough to make you a "true fan."

kgrogers1979

I thought I answered that at the beginning when I said it was badly phrased on my part, and what I really don't like is when a person claims to be a huuuuuge Batman fan but has only seen Nolan's movies, so it really just means that person is a fan of Nolan's Batman in particular but not Batman in general.

fumanstan

It's the same thing, you're just saying "huuuuuuge fan" instead of "true fan."

Can you be a huge fan if you've watched the Burton and 60's Batman movies too? What about if you added the animated series? Or all of the animated series but none of the comics? How many comics do you have to have read to be a huge fan of Batman?

It never ends!

Hazel Motes

I don't hate comic book movies. I was just riffing on the whole "you're not a true fan if..." tangent from the last page.

There are at least 6 or 7 comic book movies that are really pretty good. However, none of them happen to be Spiderman.

kgrogers1979

See this is why I hate debating. I am no good at it. I always blew math subjects away, they were easy A's for me, but everything else I struggled just to get a B. On the high school SATs I got a 760 in math and only a 520 in English/reading/communication whatever the heck it was.

Anyway, yes you can be a huge fan if you do everything Batman-related except comics. You are just a huger fan if you do comics as well. I can't imagine a person loving everything Batman-related except comics though. That would be odd. Almost like a nerd in denial (see earlier post) with the person thinking comics are for nerds but everything else Batman related isn't. It seems to me that a person watching Batman Rises, who has never seen Bane in anything but Schumacher's bastardization, would be curious and want to track down the Knightfall story to see how it was in comics and see the "breaking of the bat" as it happened there.

How many comics do you have to read to be a "true" Batman fan? Do you really want me to do what I did with Spider-man and list all the Batman comics throughout the years? (There's actually probably three times as many Batman comics since he started in 1939 compared to 1963 for Spider-man, and at a couple times in Batman's comic history there was no less than eight Batman related books at one time.)

Anyway, how many would you have to read? I don't know. A lot? But that's pretty ambiguous since "a lot" means different things to different people. Some people think 100 comics is a lot. To me that's just beginning. My personal Batman collection is about 1,400 comics... basically everything from 1986 to present day. Nothing before 1986 (that was when DC rebooted their comics with the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyarc) because I started reading in 1988 as a kid and never cared to go back before the COIE reboot. So I guess by my own logic, I'm not a "true" fan since my collection isn't complete all the way back to 1939. But really is there anyone in the world that has an entirely complete collection of Batman comics? You would need to be as rich as Bruce Wayne to afford all the really old Golden and Silver Age comics and need a home as big as Wayne Manor to store them all...

Edited to add:

Now that I think about it, comic collecting is a lot like DVD collecting. As I said before, some people think 100 comics is a lot, but to me that's just a beginning. I have a little less than 300 DVDs and that's enough for me. My back-collection is complete and I only buy three or four new movie releases per year now. Some people have several thousand DVDs, and that is just a mind-boggling WTF to me. I am sure a lot of people look at my comic collection and get the same mind-boggling WTF reaction.

DonnachaOne

Well, let's not start sucking each other's dicks quite yet.

Dr. DVD

But a rich dull boy who most likely gets more women than the other version.

I admire your comic expertise and devotion , being a fellow comic reader myself (mostly through Graphic Novels, no longer into the individual issue stuff, hope that doesn't make me a an "untrue fan" ) . However, having been in your shoes about ten years ago on boards like these, I can honestly attest that espousing all of your comic knowledge and fan boy philosophies isn't going to help your case or convince anyone in these parts. I say enjoy the movie for what it is, and enjoy the self satisfaction.

Supermallet

Draven

Spider-Man 3 (Remember to capitalize Man...as a true fan would know ) is definitely the worst as far as "whiny Peter" goes, but there are a lot of fun moments in the Raimi movies. Moments like discovering his powers, the wrestling fight and the Bugle scenes. That continues in 2, with his pizza delivery job, his struggles with schoolwork and a fair amount of banter with Doc Ock.

Norman praised him for his science abilities, Connors knew he wasn't living up to his potential in school and Octavius liked him because he knew all about his research. He was a realistic science genius...well-read and respected by his instructors. Not able to create "web-shooters" that surpass any technology we currently possess. I'm a fan of the organic shooters in the movies. The idea that a kid could invent something like that only works in the comics, and only because that story was made up in the 1960s.

There are like five brooding poses in the dark in that trailer alone, ominous music and slow-motion black and white shots of past events. Looks pretty dark to me.

They were CIA agents from day one? Didn't that information come up later in the run?

I don't like that Parker is played by a waifish big-haired actor, the one humorous moment in the trailer is not actually funny, and they appear to be mucking with a fairly straightforward origin story (high school student visiting a science lab is stung by a radioactive spider). To Raimi's credit, that's what happened in his movie. OsCorp wasn't secretly behind it or other ridiculous contrivances this movie seems to be establishing.

Dr. DVD

Not to mention that Doc Connors was an individual just trying to heal his broken arm while teaching at Parker's university. This time around he is working for Oscorp and seems to develop the lizard formula with dastardly things in mind. Connors' was never power-hungry, and the lizard simply hated warm-bloods and wished them extinct, he was never out for the "total domination by reptilifying everyone" stuff. Add this to all that Draven mentioned above and I really don't see how this version is going to appeal to the "true fan," aside from mechanical shooters.

EDIT: adding to the "hired-gun/hack" approach to making this one, notice they have made sure to cast recognizable stars in several roles that don't require them (Stone, Sheen, Field, and Leary). What matters is that the characters are around, not who plays them. In the first movies one was actually seeing Ben Parker and Aunt May, this time we will be seeing Martin Sheen and Sally Field dressed up like those characters. Add to that "it-girl" Emma Stone and it's going to prove very difficult to believe what we are seeing on screen.

kgrogers1979

Nah, its cool. I don't personally trade wait myself simply because I don't like waiting so long for the trade to come out. I need my monthly fix. Comics are my drugs.

I can understand why a lot of people trade wait though. Single issues are just too expensive nowadays with most titles being $4 for what is essentially a 20 page book. If you buy a lot of comics, its pretty easy to spend $100 or more a month just on comics. Waiting for the trade is a heck of a lot cheaper, especially if you buy it from Amazon.

I will nitpick and say that the terms "trade paperbacks" and "graphic novels" are often used interchangeably like you used it, but they should not be. A trade paperback is a collection of single issues while a graphic novel is an original piece of work. Batman Year One was originally told in single issue format in Batman #404-407 and later collected in a trade paperback. The Killing Joke was never told in single issues and was an original graphic novel.


Yeah, I know Spider-Man is supposed to be capitalized Man as well. I am often just too lazy. The real offenders are the people that don't even hyphenate the name.

I completely forgot about the wrestling. The Bugle scenes with JJJ were always great. JK Simmons as JJJ was the perfect casting choice and my favorite part of the movies. (Although the first time he was on screen I wondered why Vern Schillinger was running the Bugle. It took me a minute or two to get used to him in another role since I was so used to seeing him on Oz for so many years.)


Well in the Ultimate Spider-Man universe, Peter's dad was a scientist as well and was actually working on a new type of adhesive before his death. Peter found the notes and was able to complete it and turn it into his web formula. I agree it is really stretching logic to believe a 15 year old kid could develop it all on his own regardless of how smart he is, but Ultimate handled it pretty well with help from his dad.



It was revealed in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5 which was written in 1968.

http://marvel.wikia.com/Amazing_Spid...Annual_Vol_1_5

That was the first time Peter's parents backstory was ever given, other than them "dying a tragic death." Other than that particular annual, the whole CIA agent angle was largely ignored until the 1990s when Peter's parents apparently came back to life and brought the CIA agent angle back into continuity. (Although in the end they were revealed to be robots. Yes, the 90s were dumb.)


It seems like they are mixing a bit of the Ultimate universe origin into the movie. In the Ultimate universe, it was at OsCorp where Peter was bitten. OsCorp was using spiders as test subjects. Peter's high school class was visiting on a field trip, and a spider got loose and bit him.

Dr. DVD

^ Okay, I like the trade versions. I'm into comics strictly for story, and budget wise, this is the best route to take. When I had more disposable income I did do the single issue approach, but times have changed, and I like my story in large doses.

islandclaws

Quote from Webb speaking to MTV:

“I wanted to give the audience something new, so that started off with getting underneath the parents’ story, which will unfold over probably a few movies,” Webb told MTV News during a recent interview. “We don’t totally wrap up that story in this first movie. It’s sort of an ongoing mystery. That was something that was interesting to me.”

Solid Snake

...I'm still saying it's just pointless filler to give a damn about his parents. A neat little bit of info..but rather pointless in the grand scheme in the storytelling sense.

kgrogers1979

The "mystery" of Peter's parents is going to be spread out over the entire trilogy? So what, do they come back to life in the second movie only to be revealed as robots in the third movie? So new and original!!

Tom Creo

This is a trilogy?!?!?!.............damn

bluetoast

So...this is going to be the Monk's Wife storyline of the Spider-Man movies.

kgrogers1979

Its been planned as a series from the start. The second movie already has a release date of May 2014.

Tom Creo

Wonder if Peter will grow into his neck by then.