Read the first Brand New Day ish, and have to say it was nice to see the iconic version of Peter Parker created by Lee and Ditko (and Romita,and Gerry Conway) back for the first time twenty years. I know there's lots of people out there for whom Spider-Man has been married their entire comic reading existence, and it sucks to see the version you've grown attached to yanked away from you. All I can say is, now you know how longer-time fans felt in the 90's watching married Spider-Man fight clones and Carnages and Kaines (who? Exactly) and female Dr. Octopus', while Mary Jane sat at home and worried and---well not much else. Just through the necessity of publishing three or four books a month about the character Spider-Man has been dragged through more bad stories and had his raison detre damaged more in the last twenty years than Daredevil, Iron Man and Captain America combined.

So I'd say if any character deserved a continuity baggage removing reboot, it would be the guy who's had three times more bad stories told about him than any other Marvel character. And if anyone wants to compare the relative quality of storytelling in the books from 1962-1987 vs 1987 on, I'd love to hear any non-nostalgia tinted opinions. In case anyone cares, my feelings about the major creative staff on Spider-Man pretty much run along the lines of--

Lee/Ditko----Obviously classic, and I'd say Ditko's first 20 issues or so are some of the most fun comics ever. And just the fact that Ditko is responsible for designing about 80% of Spidey's classic foes should tell you how important this guy was to the character. I think he got sloppy about halfway through his run though, and his lack of interest definitely shows in his last few issues where three villains in a row show up with roughly the same powers, (Molten Man, Looter, A Guy Named Joe) with two having roughly the same costume (Joe, The Looter).

Lee/Romita----Romita is the definitive Spider-Man artist. And with him on the book the supporting cast went from ciphers and irritants, to full-bodied interesting characters. This made the slide into soap opera style storytelling much more prominent, and is the period I generally consider the most important in the character's history

Gerry Conway/Romita/Ross Andru----Conway got a lot of shit at the time for some of the weird developments in the book once he took over, but in hindsight his run really stands out positively, now that you can see what he was going for. His storytelling style was a little more mature than Stan's (despite Conway being several decades younger) and he's the guy who successfully (and logically) transformed MJ from go-go dancing party girl into a likeable, believable romantic interest. And Andru's art, while a little stiff, was incredibly innovative at times, storytelling-wise. Also, his mania for photo reference gave us the most three dimensional view of New York city (and Paris in two issues) we'd ever seen in a comic up to that point.

Len Wein/Andru---Wein was okay, but got the book stuck in a bit of a rut. Didn't seem to know what to do with the supporting cast generally, although his Harry/Goblin/Bart Hamilton story wasn't too bad.

Marv Wolfman/Keith Pollard---Pretty nice little return to form for the series. As good as Andru was, after 80 issues or so, Pollard's art was like a breath of fresh air, injecting a little Ditko-style Spidery-ness back into the art. And the run-up and resolution to the big 200th issue I'd actually consider one of the high points in the series run.

Roger Stern/John Romita Jr.---Classic story after classic story. One of the greatest crimes in comics history is the way Stern's Hobgoblin story was taken away from him and thrown away by lesser talents. He eventually got to set things right in a mini-series years later, but it still shouldn't have happened in the first place.

Tom Defalco/Ron Frenz---Not a bad continuation of the Stern/Romita Jr. run. Some interesting new villains were introduced (the Puma, the Rose, Silver Sable etc.) but I have a couple of caveats. Defalco's idea that Mary Jane knew Peter was Spider-Man all along, was frankly one of the most bone-headed ideas in comics history. Not only is at contradicted a thousand times over by the stories themselves, it sets a path for the characters that in twenty years will require a continuity altering reboot to fiximage. Also, although I like Frenz's art a lot ( more now than then, actually) he was the first artist to draw a seriously off-model Peter Parker, and set a bit of a bad precedent. To the point where Todd McFarlane could draw him looking like a brown-haired Archie Andrews and nobody complained.

David Michelinie/Todd McFarlane---I have to say McFarlane's art had a bit of a fun novelty quality for the first year or so of his run. Don't get me wrong, he's obviously not a good illustrator by any rational technical standard (if you can't draw something, cross-hatch the hell out of it !) but his weird, underground cartoon version of Spidey was certainly--different. And sometimes different can be fun. For awhile. Now whenever I see one of his triangle eyed cross-hatchy spaghetti shooting monstrosities I want to claw my eyes out.

Michelinie/Erik Larsen/Mark Bagley---same as before, but worse. Although I thought Larsen's versions of the Sinister Six had a nice Ditko quality.

Okay, I'm going to skip most of the 90's here because hardly anybody was on the books long enough to make a real impression. Let's just say I thought the story quality was mostly lacking, and some poor decisions were made with the character. But at least the art mostly sucked!image

J. Michael Strazcynski/John Romita Jr.---I was onboard for awhile with this run. I thought having Peter become a high school teacher was an interesting way to go, and Morlun seemed like a novel new villain. The Spider-token stuff was ridiculous though, and the way it was resolved was beyond anti-climactic. Also, looking back, I'd have to say the first year or so of JMS' run was the strongest, and maybe it's not entirely coincidental that Mary Jane was hardly in it. Of course neither was J.Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, Betty Brant, Flash Thompson, Liz Osborn, etc., etc..which is a bit of a problem in a book famous for it's well-rounded supporting cast.

JMS/Mike Deodato/ Ron Garney---Nice art. Not fun. Spidey in the Avengers is good for The Avengers, but bad for Spidey. This is really the period where the book totally became unrecognizable from any concept of Spider-Man I'd ever been familiar with. Which may have been the point, since they'd known this reboot was coming and probably considered this their clearing house for bad ideas they couldn't use if they had to be concerned about the long term viability of the character.So I guess I get it, but it didn't make it any more fun to read.

And to the people attached to the version of the character that just ended, I don't know what to say other than you had your turn, and it's time for people who are attached to the iconic version of the character to have some fun with him again. We've missed him.