Following on...

[angelophile]

...from the last post, about Spider-man, let me just clarify my position further.

I hate One More Day and I'd do everything I could to undo it, but my main objection is this:

Its purpose was to bring Peter back into the game where he can have fun stories about his love life and being a swinging single.

The trouble is Peter's an everyman. And he's an everyman who's grown with the readers. It's not kids and young teens who are picking up his books every month from comic stores any more, it's the twenty-thirty somethings with disposable income who've seen Peter grow up with them and, well, move on.

Taking a twenty-something Peter and taking away the trappings of a mature lifestyle (marriage, home life) and replacing it with the things familiar with teenagers (romances, rivalry with friend, living at homes) doesn't work. You know why? Because while plenty of us enjoy reading a book with Spider-man as a teen and doing teenage stuff (see Ultimate Spider-man), the last thing anyone wants is to see a thirty year old Spider-man acting like a teen. He's no a creepy man-boy. Kind of like the Fonz, but without the cool. The kinda creepy aging guy who hangs around with teens and hits on them.

That's not an everyman, that's just creepy.

But there is room for a teen book and a book focusing on older Peter. There should be a teen book. Something for younger readers. But taking existing continuity and trying to deage a character so he's 26 but has all the trappings of a teenager is not the way to appeal to youngsters. Peter's now become upallatable to everyone. No one wants to read about an embarrassing man child in his twenties trying to act 16. It's cringeworthy.

Next thing he'll be hanging around the school gates trying to pick up twelfth graders.