OK, here's what you need to know. Marvel erased the Peter-MJ marriage in a move known as the "One More Day" storyarc. Following that debacle, Steve Wacker headed a team of Spidey-Braintrust writers to script the weekly adventures of everyone's favourite web-spinner in the Brand New Day "Amazing Spider-Man" title. 100+ issues later, the Braintrust is calling it a day. Read their farewell interview at CBR where they talk about how the whole thing started, what their individual experiences were like and what their favourite storyarcs were.
Personally, I really liked "New Ways To Die" and "American Son". I felt that those were the two better-scripted arcs. Now, I belonged to the original folks who screamed for blood when they got rid of the Spidey-marriage. After reading the first couple of arcs, I was still largely unimpressed. However, I stayed on and by the time Joe Kelly and Mark Waid jumped on board, I was hooked. Other highlights include the introduction of J. Jonah Jameson Sr. and his eventual marriage with Aunt May. The book also made newspaper headlines worldwide when Spidey "teamed-up" with Barack Obama to stop the Chameleon. Speaking of the Chameleon, I also liked that issue where he pretended to be Peter Parker for a day in "Red-Headed Stranger". Finally, Joe Kelly's "Black Cat Returns" arc holds a special place for me as well seeing as how Felicia Hardy is probably my favourite supporting character in the Spidey books.
With the end of the BND-styled storytelling where everything is tightly connected (thanks to Wacker's superb editing work), Marvel has just announced the next stage of the series with "Big Time" by Dan Slott and a harem of new artists. Read the news over at CBR. Truth is, I'm really not very impressed with the new direction nor the standalone series, "Carnage" and "Osborn". I mean, it's still the same continuity, right? Everything that happened during BND happened, right? Even more importantly, the Spidey-marriage is still non-existent, right? So why the name change? The whole thing feels like nothing more than a rebranding of the same product. We'll just have to wait and see what happens, won't we?
Well, if the whole thing end up sucking, rest assured that "Ultimate Spider-Man" is still around. David LaFuente is drawing the book like his life depended on it and Bendis is probably doing his most honest writing work on that book right now in the post-Ultimatum relaunch. Speaking of the bald-headed scribe, check out the latest interview with Bendis over at CBR.
