Reggie Blogged

I don't know how often people click on those links that are located on the left or right side of people's blogs, but you should check 'em out every now and then. You may come across a pretty sweet web-site or another jolly good blog. Anyway, I wanted to let those that check this page know I've got another blog going. Gaming Rocks On is the where I'll be posting all my gaming related stuff. I'll still keep doing regular blog entries here but I'll be posting a lot of stuff in that blog as well. So if you're into gaming, old stuff or new, I think you'll dig what I post there.

Tommy Wilson, fellow SpiderFan.org writer and a frequent commenter on my blog presented some strips from the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip. These are actually more than 10 years old and I normally don't talk much about the strip here since another SpiderFan writer handles that pretty well, but I thought these warranted posting and talking about. Posted above are a few strips where Mary Jane unleashes her fury on Peter on what is clearly romance of the one-sided kind in order to create a publicity stunt. Peter tells MJ this but it doesn't look like she really believes him. Looks like Ditko-Gwen possessed MJ because she's slapping the spit out of Peter. Now I've heard of overacting but MJ's behavior here is borderline psycho. Get this woman some Valium. I know Stan was only trying to add romantic tension in the strip, but making MJ the hot tempered, crazy jealous wife is a bit much. Even though its really out of character for her to act that way, I think its rea...

Is there really any truth to the words "too much of a good thing"? I don't know and I don't really care. Amazing Spider-Man has, for many years been my all-time favorite comic book. The first issue I picked up was Amazing Spider-Man #397 back in early 1995. From there I picked up any issues of the comic (and other Spidey comics) that were on the racks that I had the green to pay for. At that point, the oldest issue of Amazing Spider-Man I had was #107, an issue I'd gotten for free from one of the kind ushers at my church (still have it). It wasn't until 1997 that I'd gotten a huge does of Amazing Spider-Man that would strengthen my love for the character and the title. I came across a book that was called at the time, The Essential Spider-Man . For $12.95 (these are now $16.99) I had black & white reprints of Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spider-Man #1-20, and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1. To a fifteen year old kid, it was the equivalent of stumbling on...

I've made it no secret that I despise One More Day and it's successor, Brand New Day. If you're on the side of the camp that believes Marvel screwed the pooch on Spider-Man, then you should check out Killer Writer's MySpace blog. Regardless of your thoughts on fan fiction, I think you'll be pretty impressed with what he's doing here. He begins the story in Amazing Spider-Man #545 and rather than urinate all over everything and eff things up the way Marvel has, he actually moves forward, and by forward, I actually mean forward, not backwards like Joe Q. Peter and MJ are still married and written in character, which is reason enough to read it but he also weaves a lot of interesting plot threads. In all honesty, Killer Writer's work is a lot more creative than anything currently going on in the pages of ASM (which is a pitiful attempt to recall the glory days at best.) He's even got a story going that involves Norman Osborn and his green alter ego. I'...

Since Spider-Man is no longer married in the main Marvel universe, fans of the marriage (of which there are many) have had to look other places if they want to read stories where he's married to Mary Jane and not trolling for booty. I may not like Marvel's approach with Amazing Spider-Man of late, but there are still other ways for me to see my favorite super hero with my favorite redhead. The Amazing Spider-Man comic strip may not be what it used to be but in all honesty, I do get a kick out of tunning in every day to read the hokey dialogue and see if my predictions for what happen next come true. Stan Lee's run on Amazing Spider-Man is still one of my favorites and its nice to see him still in touch with the wall-crawler in some form. I wish John Romita Sr. was still doing the art, but bearing a few odd panels, Larry Lieber's art isn't too shabby. Amazing Spider-Girl may not be the core continuity and Peter Parker may not be the central character, but Peter is m...

Books, that is, Digest Spidey books. I went in Borders today, not really expecting to walk out with much, if anything at all. To my surprise, I saw that they had the Marvel Adventures Spider-Man digest books vols. 1-9 in stock. See, I'm not much of an online shopper. Whenever I've got money in my checking account, its usually only kept in there to pay bills. Picking up the earlier stories from MASM has been pretty tough for me. My comic shop doesn't have the issues and even the trades have been very hard to come by. So seeing so many of the digests on the shelf was the best thing I'd seen all day (it was a pretty "meh" day for eying hot babes). I bought vols. 1-5 and I'm pumped for some teenage, light hearted done-in-one-issue Spidey goodness. I've read vols. 6 and 8 of this series and I've started collected the single issues from #36 onward. This really is in my opinion, one of the best Spider-Man books out there, one I've pimped here in my ...

As tired as I am of seeing Spidey unmasked in Ultimate Spider-Man, I really can't argue with what went on in USM #122. When I heard Spidey was gonna be unasked again, I let out a sigh. I felt even more annoyed when I found out that the person who caught and unmasked our teen hero was Shocker. Shocker has been the joke villain of this series since USM #8. Whenever he shows up, he's quickly caught and sent to jail. In Peter's own words, Shocker is "the biggest loser in Loserville." Well Herman Schultz gets the upper hand on Spidey and he's pretty ticked that he's been defeated by a punk teenager time and time again. What I liked about USM #122 is that we finally got some back story of a villain that has more or less been the butt joke of this comic for years. The Roxxon corporation shafted him, so now he's taking what he wants by force and he's tired of Spidey always laughing at him. Spidey breaks free, socks Shocker one and all is well and good in t...

This is it. The final episode of season one of The Spectacular Spider-Man. In "Nature vs. Nurture" Spider-Man goes up against Venom, former longtime friend Eddie Brock. Brock is powered by the very symbiote that Peter rejected because it was feeding off his negative emotions. With Brock's unfathomable levels of hate and his unstable personality, one doesn't have to be a genius to know what the suit will do to him. Our episode opened up with an excellent bank heist foiled by our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. If you saw the teaser trailer for Spectacular Spider-Man that was aired nearly a year before the series began, this scene will look very familiar as it is almost an exact replica. The added scene of Spidey saving a helicopter with his webbing was well done. Since Spidey no longer has the symbiote, he turns down Tombstone's offer, which leaves the position open. Guess who takes it? Tombstone's test of loyalty is for Venom to kill Spider-Man, a test Venom...

My tax rebate check (finally) came in the mail and after setting some of the green aside for bills, I decided I'd treat myself. Went to my comic shop and snagged myself some cool Spider-Man goodies. I was thinking I'd pick up Amazing Spider-Man #247 to further complete my issues for Roger Stern's run. God must have really smiled on me because when I was looking through the back issue boxes for said comic, I found a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #248, which has the highly praised side story, The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man. And I was just talking about this story a few weeks ago. Go figure. This could be my Spidey biased kicking in, but I've always loved Black Cat more than Catwoman. Don't get me wrong, I like Selina Kyle and her feline alter ego. In fact, she stared in one of my favorite mini series, Selina's Big Score, but I find Felicia Hard to be a more interesting character. Be it the sexual tension between her and Spidey, or her simply being a good friend and ...

You gotta love Spider-Man's black costume. Its simple, sleek design has been a fan favorite for more than 20 years. It looks just as cool in the cartoons as well. As sweet a costume as it is, I'm always happy to see the web-head return to the classic red & blue tights, which is what he does in the Spectacular Spider-Man episode "Intervention." This episode moves at a slower pace than others but considering the heart of it is Peter's inner conflict with the symbiote, I think moving slower was the right choice here. This episode was written by Greg Weisman, the show's producer. He hasn't written an episode since "Survival of the Fittest," the series premier episode, so it really was a pleasure to see him return to the writing helm. The good news is that aunt May, despite suffering from a heart attack in the previous episode is doing fine. The bad news is, the bill is pretty huge and this puts Peter in a foul mood. Mary Jane, Gwen and Liz all tr...

Yeah, I know I'm really late to the party on this one but I just read Amazing Spider-Girl #15, which celebrates the 10th anniversary of Spider-Girl. The book was a good read I really dug the Master Planner/Final Chapter moment of May freeing herself from her bonds in a one page spread. Very cool. May "Mayday" Parker is a lot like her father and not just in the everyman (or everywoman) sense. Like Spider-Man, Spider-Girl's first appearance was originally intended to be a one story deal. Making her first appearance in What If...? #105 vol. 2, Spider-Girl made such a spark among Spider fans that she was given her own title for 12 issues. Then more issues were added, then more, and well now, Spidey's kid has been in publication for 10 years. Spider-Girl has been faced with cancellation many times. Time and her series has been saved by what seems to be an extremely loyal fan base. Not long ago Marvel said Amazing Spider-Girl was good until issue 30 but Joe Q said sales...