Spoiler follows! Or maybe not.

I saw The Amazing Spider-Man last night, and I have to say it was a surprisingly bittersweet experience.

You see, I know how Gwen Stacy dies.

I'm not special in that regard, a lot of people know.  Gwen Stacy died in 1973, although, in the fashion so common among comic book characters, death has not been a barrier to subsequent appearances in Peter Parker's life.  Regardless, that moment 39 years past when Peter cradled his dead girlfriend in his arms is considered to be a critical event in the history of comics, the end of the Silver Age and the beginning of a changed world not only for supporting characters, but for the heroes as well.

The question is, what do the producers of the Spider-Man reboot have in mind for Gwen?  Unlike any of the other comic movie franchises, The Amazing Spider-Man doesn't feature the hero's nemesis, deciding instead to go with another villain from Spider-Man's catalogue of foes.  The Lizard certainly occupies a strong position in Spider-Man's mythology, but I have to say that I don't consider him to be a first-line villain.

But I can guess at the strategy behind the decision to start the show with Curtis Connor's cold-blooded alter ego.  By connecting Connor's experiments with Oscorp and Norman Osborn, they're setting up the elements for Osborn's appearance behind the mask of the Green Goblin in a future movie.  I'm impressed that they'd gamble on the success of the reboot by refusing to lead with trump, so to speak, and I think it augurs well for the next film.  (Or pair of films, trilogies seem to be the standard for super-hero movies.)

Similarly, I can see why they went with Gwen Stacy for Peter's love interest.  Gwen was Peter's first love, and it was widely believed that Marvel was working their way up to marriage for the happy couple, at least until the events of Issue #121.  As such, she's a better canon choice than Mary Jane Watson for Spider-Man's return - in fact, in the comic version it was shared mourning over Gwen's death that began the process of Peter and Mary Jane becoming a couple.

But does that mean that Gwen Stacy is marked for death?  They've made some minor alterations in Peter's backstory for the reboot, but the major events in his life remain the same.  On the other hand, they've already made a substantial change in the Gwen and Peter continuity by having Peter tell her about his dual lifestyle - in the comic, she died without ever knowing Spider-Man's true identity.  On that basis, I'll be paying a lot more attention to subsequent movies in the series to find out whether or not Ms. Stacy's relationship with her friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man has started her down a path with only one destination.

- Sid

Asimov to Zelazny?

It's funny that I don't talk more about books here considering how much reading I do.  Not a day goes by when I don't read a e-book or a paperback or a hardcover, and my daily round trip commute gives me at least an hour of reading, regardless of what else is on my schedule.  My brother John once asked me if I read while eating - I laughed and replied, "John, I read while I'm brushing my teeth."

However, I'm not buying as many books as I used to.  Part of the problem is the fact that I'm out of shelf space again - it's not just a case of buying another shelf, I need to reconfigure my apartment in order to find room for that new shelf.

I'm also torn between on-line shopping and the more limited opportunities of retail outlets.  The down side of physical book shopping is that, quite frankly, I no longer remember each and every book that I own. This has not been helped by the e-book phenomenon, which has resulted in confusion between books I own on paper, downloaded, or which I may have borrowed from someone to read and never owned myself.  As a result, I sometimes find myself purchasing books that I already own, which is counterproductive. Online shopping allows me to check possible purchases against existing stock, so to speak.

Unfortunately, I seem to experience some sort of basic disconnect in the online browsing experience. Something in the manner that Amazon in particular has set up its system completely disagrees with the way in which my mind processes information - or at least the way that it browses for books.

All other issues aside, unless I'm missing something incredibly basic on their website, they won't let me look at their inventory in alphabetical order!  I realize that alphabetical order is an obsolete holdover from the pre-digital age, but you know, Amazon, I think you'll find that a lot of people still sort their books by author's name.  In fact, you still do it in your stores.  Would it really be that hard to add a "Sort by author" to the options?

Oh, and if anyone's curious, I'll be happy to do a posting on how to brush your teeth while holding a book and turning the pages with the other hand - but trust me, don't try it while you're shaving, there are some things you really do need to watch in the mirror.

- Sid

 

Aren't we all?

Purchased at Kimprints in Gastown on Saturday. The button, that is, I've had the windup robot for decades. In fact, it was one of the centrepieces on my wedding cake...but that's another story.

- Sid

 

With great power comes great responsibility.

"I mean, Marvel has certain hard and fast rules, like about the spider bite — you have to have Peter get bitten by a radioactive spider, and Uncle Ben’s death has to transform Peter Parker into Spider-Man, you know what I mean? He has to learn a lesson by that. But I’m trying to find new inflections and new context so that the story feels new. Because I do think the character is different; you want to honor the iconic elements of Spider-Man but you also want to reinvent the world around him so that it feels interesting and new, and that’s a tricky line to walk."

The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb in a Movieline interview.

All evidence would indicate that the Spider-Man reboot is going to be a big success à la The Avengers. I've read positive comments on line, it's doing well at the box office, all well and good, but hints in the previews suggest that the script has taken some liberties with the traditional version of Peter Parker's accession to arachnid abilities.

Sam Raimi's version is completely faithful to the original, simple, iconic version:  a radioactive spider bites Peter, bang, done.  (And Tobey Maguirre's WTF experience when he wakes up the next morning and looks in the mirror is a great little moment in the first movie.)  But the previews for the reboot hint about a deeper, darker aspect to this transformation, suggesting that Peter's parents had somehow genetically modified him in order to create the potential for his wall-crawling abilities.

 Sigh...as with the now-infamous plan on the part of Michael Bay to reboot the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as aliens, why do these people want to mess with success?  After all, Spider-Man's origin isn't really the radioactive spider bite - it's actually the moment of trauma when his actions cause the death of Uncle Ben, that discovery of consequences and responsibilities.  Why diminish that moral epiphany?

On the other hand, I have to give credit to Marc Webb's comments in the opening quote.  Isn't the whole purpose of doing a reboot is to "find new inflections and new context" - otherwise, why bother?  Sadly, the answer to that question may also be "in order to make millions of dollars by springboarding off a proven box-office commodity that may have another mile in it."

Regardless, I'll undoubtedly catch The Amazing Spider-Man in commercial release, so that I can experience it in 3-D, and see what they've actually done to the story. And who knows, maybe I've done the film an enormous injustice.  After all, it looks like they went back to the original web-shooters, so they're not completely evil.

- Sid

 

The Campbell Brothers strike again!

Well that's not fair...what about the people of Ralph?

- Sid

(Excerpted from The Pirates of Zan, by Murray Leinster)

Okay, I added the eldritch green misty bits.

I could not help feeling that they were evil things - mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss. That seething, half-luminous cloud background held ineffable suggestions of a vague, ethereal beyondness far more than terrestrially spatial, and gave appalling reminders of the utter remoteness, separateness, desolation, and aeon-long death of this untrodden and unfathomed austral world.

H. P. Lovecraft, At The Mountains of Madness

I recently visited Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia, and in one of those odd little coincidences happened to be reading a collection of H. P. Lovecraft stories as we flew over the astonishing panorama offered by the Coast Mountains - specifically, At The Mountains of Madness, a story of antarctic exploration, horrifying discovery, and distant, alien ranges of mountainous terror.

- Sid