Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Where's My Money?

As you may recall, way back in the halcyon days of three weeks ago, we discussed Marvel's new rules for the Spider-Man universe. And their little two page spread made it exceedingly clear that "absolutely no one knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Not Daredevil, not the Avengers, not anyone."

And as you may also recall, I made a bold prediction: "I'll bet you a billion dollars that Bendis blows this in New Avengers..."

Well, here's today's New Avengers Annual #2:

And by absolutely no one, we mean all the Avengers, Ms. Marvel, and 58 S.H.I.E.L.D. agentsHmmm, that didn't take long.

Someone owes me a billion dollars....

Oh, and by the way, congratulations to Bendis for using the EXACT same plot device is BOTH of his Avengers mags released today. Both here and in Mighty Avengers #8, Ms. Marvel and crew have the drop on the "New Avengers," and both times she chooses to pretend they weren't there and lets them go. I'm not sure how many more times he can use that cliche before it gets worn out, but dammit, Bendis is going to keep trotting it out until we find out. But, man, twice in the same day? That's skill, bro. Mad skill.

And thank you, Marvel...this is exactly why you had the Civil War, so we could perpetually avoid the consequences of it. Why bother to have a universe-shattering mini-series to establish the Registration Act if you're always going to puss out and not have anyone actually enforce it???

Anyway, where's my billion dollars?

2 comments:

El Gigante said...

At the risk of sounding like a "continuity tool" doesn't the fact that Spidey is in his black costume indicate this story is happening before OMD? Just a thought.

snell said...

Fair point.

The "previously" page says this takes place after World War Hulk, but since we never saw any impact of WWH before or after OMD in a Spidey mag, we can't say if that helps us or not.

But since this is being published more than a month after the first arc in Brand New Day was supposed to be finished (remember, OMD was delayed over a month to make it extra horrible), it does seem editorially incongrous. If BND was supposed to re-launch everything Spidey and give us a whole new status quo, why are they still publishing stories that are apparently pre-OMD?? Not that Bendis cares about any Marvel continuity besides his own mags, but you'd think an editor might nudge him or something.

Of course, there's also no reason that he couldn't pull out his black suit post OMD, is there? If his red suit was dirty...

So you're no bigger a continuity tool than I am, Gigante. And I still want my billion bucks from someone.