Amazing Spider-Man #700 Back-Up Stories

[tesh_karde]

Beautiful?!? My 5 year old niece could have written and drawn a better Spidey story than that!!!

Let's see it :-p

[DV1Band]

Yeah, they were bad. Just sayin'.

[Invisible Martian Archer]

Yeah, they were bad. Just sayin'.

Look, I don't think they were "bad..." just not what you'd expect in the LAST ISSUE OF AMAZING SPIDER-Man!

Alright, the cover gallery was cool. I wish they'd shown every alternate cover for every issue but whatever. That's the kind of thing they needed more of - looking back on Amazing Spider-Man's 700 issue run! I mean, this issue just didn't end the magazine, it ended the character (if not forever than for a good, long while).

The first story (with the old-man) is an odd choice. Is this suppose to give us a big wink and say, "Peter's not dead."? Why is he going under a fake/different name? Why do we see him marrying MJ (when, of course, this never happened... right?)? I get that we're seeing a man with spider-powers retelling his career and that kinda fits with the theme of the backups I was just mentioning but the story just can't find a place in your mind where it fits. Maybe that's the point. I don't know. I did enjoy seeing the mis-rememberings of all of the villains and such.

There was also the "tour of desks." That's basically a huge commercial for upcoming titles and stories. I suppose you could mine the pages for information about what's coming but why would you want to?

The black-cat story is an odd one. If Amazing truly never comes back then THIS WILL BE THE LAST STORY EVER TO RUN IN AMAZING SPIDER-MAN! It's cute and the art is very stylized (which some like, some don't) but it's a complete waste of pages if you ask me for the last issue of ASM. I'm guessing they had it sitting around and threw it in just to get rid of it.

The letters pages were interesting. It's ALWAYS good to hear from Stan but I thought it was funny that several people asked him, "Do you read Spidey now?" and he never answered the question. He said he was fine with the current status quo but I doubt he knows or cares at all what the current status quo is. And why should he? To the degree that Marvel screwed him over (if you don't know about the $10 million payoff, then check it out - http://onelostroad.blogspot.com/search/label/Stan%20Lee) he is very gracious to ever write anything for Marvel ever again. The letters from other creators were *meh*. No big revelations, but some nice peeks into personal histories. I could tell they were rushed. Why are letters pages always rushed? I'm sure that final letter made that kid a Spidey fan for life (I know how he feels).

Overall, the extra features in the issue fell WAY short. Where was the Doc Ock/Spidey retrospective, detailing their every encounter? Where was the updated Marvel Handbook pages for Spider-Man and Doc Ock? Where was a backup feature retelling Spidey and Doc Ock's first encouter or perhaps Doc Ock's origin from Doc Ock's point of view? Heck, how about a top ten list of the greatest stories told in ASM?

Like the entire issue, the backups were a great disappointment and showed how far off the mark the editorial staff is.

[Bookem Danno]

Posted here:
http://apesandbabes.com/frankchoforu...108&start=1210
was this cute pic:

Does anyone know if it was staged or photoshopped?

[Tendrin]

Posted here:
http://apesandbabes.com/frankchoforu...108&start=1210
was this cute pic:

Does anyone know if it was staged or photoshopped?

Shopped.

Stan's a lot of things, but his twitter response to this was pure class.

[Bookem Danno]

Shopped.

Stan's a lot of things, but his twitter response to this was pure class.

Cool. Thanks. What was the tweet? Guess I could Google it unless you recall it?

[Kevin Nichols]

Like some others have said, I'm not such a fan of Stephanie Buscema. However, I thought the DeMatteis back-up was great! Not everything has to fit into continuity. It was a very cool little story.

Also, to those saying that back-ups are a waste of time, did you never read Roger Stern's "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man"? It's on the short list of best Spidey stories ever, and it was a back-up. Also, there were several fun back-ups in ASM during the 90s, including a very nice one of Aunt May visiting Uncle Ben's grave and another of JJJ taking credit for creating Spider-Man. Back in the late 80s-early 90s, Captain America had a running back-up story about Diamondback getting kidnapped by Crossbones, who abused her, trained her, and eventually brought her to the Red Skull. It eventually intersected with the main Cap storyline and it was all kinds of awesome.

[PeterCSM]

So that Dematteis story was in the future? It looked like it was taking place in the present given the absent of anything remotely futuristic. I had no idea who the characters were (or even when they were) and because of that I had trouble enjoying it.

[Mister Mets]

An interesting note about the Dematteis story.

He kept Spidey's wife hidden in the flashback sequences, and had her hair color change from blond to red. Was he hinting at the possibility that someone might bring back Gwen?

[charlesthehammer]

An interesting note about the Dematteis story.

He kept Spidey's wife hidden in the flashback sequences, and had her hair color change from blond to red. Was he hinting at the possibility that someone might bring back Gwen?

I doubt it (well I doubt its a hint) as its a future story, you can do whatever you want because we will never, ever reach that point. Do to the nature of comics.

Edit: Although since it when from blond to red that could symbolize the change that happened with Gwen's death, IE the shift from Gwen to MJ as the major love interest.

[ZetaOmega0]

I guess I'm the only one who like Stephanie Buscema's Black Cat back-up story, which I thought was adorable and didn't like DeMatteis back-up story because it was more out of place of the two stories.