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[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

As for the Extremis storyline, I actually thought it wasn't THAT bad.

It was new -- I'll give it that. But it undercut something I've always loved about Tony Stark. He was a major force in the Marvel universe purely through the power of his mind; his engineering genius and his resourcefulness kept him on top through countless disasters, physical and mental. In that sense, he was Marvel's Batman, the guy you could be if you tried hard enough. Now he can hack machines with his brain, and they've been doing some interesting things with that ability, but I don't think it was worth it. (By the way, be sure to read the mini Iron Man: The Inevitable by Joe Casey, which gave some badly-needed followup to both Extremis and Tony's role in Avengers Disassembled.)

But I'll grant that Spider-Man in the JMS era has had it worse. Even before "The Other", Marvel decided he needed organic webshooters -- a dumb decision made to align with other dumb decisions. Then JMS did "Sins Past", the ill-conceived story that launched a thousand flamewars. Then "The Other" did its damnedest to top the Clone Saga for worst Spider-Man story ever, changing his powers and finishing the continuity hash JMS had started earlier. And finally Spidey's part in Civil War, which was a lot more interesting but way too predictable -- except the identity revelation, and the jury's still out on whether that'll be Peter's rejuvenation or ruination as a character.

Of course, JMS is a very skilled writer; he's made all this readable and even fun sometimes. But good execution can only do so much for bad ideas. (See "A Night in Sickbay".) I'm actually even more annoyed about his Fantastic Four retcon, where Reed is now partly responsible for the team's origin and, oh yeah, the creation of the universe. Peter David, for all the problems I have with him, has been Spidey's salvation during this time, telling funny and entertaining stories over in FNSM. These days you have to read the surrounding titles to have fun; the big ones drown in events and celebrity writers.