one more day – Comic Genre

With Dan Slott’s monumental 10-year run on Amazing Spider-Man finally coming to an end this month, it’s a good time to look back at the event that kicked off this strange new era for Spider-Man, the immensely controversial and divisive “One More Day” anti-saga. In the Fall of 2007, Marvel serialized the storyline in Amazing Spider-Man #544-545, Friendly Neighborhood #24, and Sensational #41. Hyped for nearly a year, the exact details of the story were not made specific, but fans were aware it was going to accomplish three things: end J. Michael Straczynski’s tenure as writer of the flagship title, set up the new “thrice-monthly” shipping Brand New Day status quo, and somehow change Spider-Man’s world dramatically. Rumors were flying left and right, to the point where even the most naive fan went into the story arc aware that it was likely going to somehow result in the ending of the marriage between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. And end, it indeed did. Continue reading “Time’s Up: One More Look at Spider-Man’s One More Day”

In the first season finale episode of Mad Men, Jon Hamm’s dapper Don Draper is trying to sell a version of Kodak’s Carousel home slide projector, which was ostensibly a product in 1960. Making a pitch while he rifles through pictures of his family and himself in better times, Don delivers a monologue so moving that even hapless Harry Crane wheezes tearfully from the room. He narrates, “In Greek, nostalgia literally means pain; the pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge, in your heart. Far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place, where we ache to go again. It’s not called ‘The Wheel,’ it’s called ‘The Carousel.’ It lets us travel in the way a child travels. Round and round, and then back home again. To a place where we know- we are loved.” Continue reading “Carousel: The Circular Nature of Comic Books”