One of the strengths of the Spider-Man mythos, going back to the heights of the Lee/Ditko and Lee/Romita runs, has always been the supporting cast. A rich grouping of characters representing multiple ages, races, and societal rank, the supporting cast alone could make for an interesting title. However, one of the interesting things about these supporting characters is that the vast majority of those popular with fans can be traced back to those aforementioned classic runs of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and John Romita. For a long time, the cast surrounding Spider-Man has been virtually identical to that which could be found in the late 1960s. Nearly every new writer has attempted to augment this supporting cast with new characters, with varying results. (Anybody remember the TriCorp Research staff? Anybody?)
Brand New Day, true to form, has introduced new supporting characters, while attempting to update the classic cast to the new continuity. This entire potpourri of new and old faces has, not surprisingly, been met with a wide spectrum of response. In this installment, we take a look at the people that surround Peter Parker in his everyday life.
Kevin Cushing: One of Spider-Man’s greatest strengths for storytelling is his rich and expansive supporting cast. These characters do not represent that. We have a racist face-licker, a racial stereotype with a shotgun and an attitude problem, a bland new love interest who was never necessary in the first place, and a sleazy newspaper editor who vacillated between caricature and villain before he seemed to be forgotten altogether.
And the ‘returning’ members of that rich supporting cast are mostly unrecognizable. Harry Osborn was regressed to college but with the villainy and insanity stripped out of him. The Black Cat went from 3-dimensional to 1-dimensional, and even that dimension is characterized as if the last 20 years of her memory has been removed along with almost all of her moral compass. J. Jonah Jameson is occasionally written correctly (see: when written by Fred Van Lente), but too often just acts as if his character was never given any depth.
All in all, an extremely poor showing for a book that, once upon a time, was known for its supporting cast.
Zach Joiner: Now about this supporting cast… Lets review: JJJ was heart attacked out for Bennett. JJJ Sr shows up to give May more action than Peter. Vin is the roommate who has it out for Spider-Man, and dislikes Peter. Michele is brought into create romantic tension, but only shows how batshit crazy she is. Norah? Witty Racist Reporter. Carlie Cooper? She’s the ‘too good to be true’ girl. Lilly Hollister? Yeah she’s the hottie that is with Harry only for the Goblin Goo. Take away Norah Winters and Michele, you do not have any of these characters intact … in fact they’ve all been written out of the series! For all this time we could’ve spent on developing them, we don’t because of the choppy storytelling. Norah is written almost exclusively by Kelly, Michele is written more by Gale in the ‘Peter Parker’ book than any of the other writers combined. Van Lente wrote a lot of her, but I think Gale has handled her better than anyone. Yeah, Gale. Seriously, how sad when your weakest writer handles your (before Carlie was thrust on us like a bad Van Lente Rape) premiere love interest in a book than you thrust him onto to get his paws off the main title? Seriously, this shows that the writers have incompetently handled this from the beginning.
CrazyChris: Again, I’ll limit my opinion to the early issues of Brand New Day and the handful of issues I have read since then. My vote for least-favorite supporting cast member goes to Norah Winters because she constantly makes racist jokes and her methods of flirtation (e.g., unsolicited face licking) would get her sued for sexual harassment in real life. I also hated Dexter Bennett, not because he lacked potential, but because the writers couldn’t get over the running gag of him forgetting people’s names.
The writers also handled Harry Osborn poorly, at least in the issues I have read. His return needed immediate explanation. Spider-Man watched him die in an ambulance after rescuing Spidey from bombs Harry himself had placed. Considering this man had a change of heart after attempting to murder Peter, Pete should have more than zero questions right away when Harry suddenly showed up alive. If the writers successfully crafted a suspenseful mystery around Harry’s return, then it might have held my interest, but when the continuance of a mystery hinges solely on the characters being too stupid to ask the obvious questions, the pussyfooting aggravates and never captivates. Worse, in an interview, assistant editor Tom Brennan mentioned that it took so long to for them to explain Harry’s return because the writers themselves hadn’t come up with the answers. When writers make the damn story up as they go along, especially when it comes to huge developments like the return of a long-thought-dead character, we have no basis to care about any unanswered questions in the story because we have no basis to believe an answer even exists or will exist until the writer decides to pull it out of his you-know-what.
Jon Wilson: Taking into account that I’m a bit behind on my reading, here are my thoughts.
I had no clue who Menace was and was completely surprised when it turned out to be Lily. She became a much more interesting character at that point, and I wonder where she’s going next.
Carlie Cooper needs more screen time. I like her, she’s cute and smart, I’d date her myself if I were a drawing. We definitely need more of her.
Harry Osborn has been an interesting addition to Peter’s life. Without Mary Jane as a constant sounding board, Harry has been able to serve as one of Peter’s primary go-to guys. I loved the initial American Son arc, but I haven’t seen him since, and I’m kinda wondering what’s up with that. (I realize there’s a miniseries going right now answering that very question, but we’re back to the “too long between characters” scenario I mentioned earlier.)
Gerard Delatour II: I’m of two minds on the subject of the supporting cast.
On the one hand, I like when writers attempt to break away from the established side characters. The supporting cast traditionally features the same characters that have been around since the 1960s, with very few newbies actually having the staying power to last beyond one or two writers’ runs. On the other hand, many writers attempt to toe the line of keeping the established supporting cast while introducing new side characters, and this almost always ends in failure because there simply aren’t enough pages. That’s why I was initially excited about the possibility of the new supporting cast to be introduced in Brand New Day – for once, they had the page count to make it work!
Unfortunately, I’ve been disappointed by the supporting cast. I’ve liked the Webheads’ use of the classic characters, for the most part – J. Jonah Jameson, Betty Brant, Flash Thompson, etc. – but that use has been very limited. The Black Cat is the major exception, as she has seemingly been devolved back into the late 1970s for no apparent reason, wiping out all of her significant character development. The pendulum has swung heavily in favor of the new supporting cast, and frankly I don’t care for a single one of them. Michele Gonzales, in particular, is insulting – an oversexualized racist caricature (the “fiery Latina”) that manages to drag the book down with every appearance.
The worst part of all of this, however, is the odd frequency of the appearance of these characters. There have been long stretches in which certain characters have practically disappeared, after which they feature prominently in an arc, and then they return to obscurity for another long stretch. It’s bizarre to have an arc focusing on Harry Osborn (“American Son”) followed by a long period in which he’s barely been seen outside of random cameos.
Brad Douglas: Every female introduced is always overshadowed by Mary Jane. Readers want her to be in the book. Everyone else that appears tries to measure up to her and fails. I am glad to have Harry Osborn in the book. I also like the twist they’ve done with Flash.
Up next: If thee be my enemy!
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Wait, where’s everybody getting this “racist” angle from Norah?
Got to agree w/ Donovan, I don’t have a major issue with new supporting characters, but they seldom get any appearances in the books and so are not fleshed out well enough to make us really care much about them. Though some of the old “gang” are still around they are for the most part so seldom used as to be nearly forgotten, as if the Brain Trust is trying to distance Peter from them altogether.
And I am sick of Carlie too. I’d just as soon they wrote her out completely.
I hope I wasn’t sounding all pretentious or anything. I do like what you are doing and I’ve read each as soon as they have been posted. That was just my two cents. Obviously I understand time/money restraints. You guys all do good work.
Although, I would like to see that Gwen Stacy analysis that I mentioned above continue. 😉
Yeah, I would have loved to do a deep editorial series, with tons of research and a full round table of contributors. The problem is, this isn’t CBR or Newsarama. This is a fan site. We’re doing this in our free time, without being paid. From that perspective, I think we did okay for ourselves. 😉
Btw, if you’re looking for a more in depth retrospective on Brand New Day, there’s always Berryman vs. The Brandnewverse, that looks at every single arc in order. So really, you’re getting the best of both worlds: a series that takes an in-depth look at every story and another one that gets a variety of views on general topics. Crawl Space has you covered!
Durkinator, I get that what you’re describing would be cool, but it’s just not what this project was. This is more like the brief personal reflections of the panelists.
Thanks for the consideration guys! One reason why this site is pretty awesome!
@Timmy: When you get to the later installments, you’ll find that to be quite untrue. In fact, two of the panelists are actually pro-BND!
I think I’m understanding what Timmy was trying to say. It’s really cool how quickly these are being pumped out, but at the same time I think we were expecting something along the lines of the Gwen Stacy feature this site had a while back, where it was more of an analysis of these subjects each time and then using the evidence to reach a conclusion. It would be a lot of work, sure, but spread out amongst the panelists wouldn’t be nearly as bad. Maybe do some research and then have the panel give their own critiques based on the evidence they find. As it stands, we the reader are kind of taking your word for it based on memory, with very few specific references to things (i.e. many people say “Norah is a racist” but no one has named any specific moments that made you think such. How cool would it be for someone to try to pull everything racist she’s said and see just how many racist jokes she’s actually made in the run?)
Of course, like I said, that would be very time consuming and a big endeavor to take on. And I do like this; while it isn’t terribly “in-depth” it’s a nice little refresher into what was good or bad (well, mostly bad) in BND and a cool way to compare opinions relatively objectively. I’m just saying, maybe in the future or if someone were really willing to devote THAT much time to it, it would be cool to do a legitimate analysis of Brand New Day that could finally justify what people say about it. I guess Berryman is sort of doing that now in a way, but I could see even less of a review-style and more of a compilation of facts and snapshots from each of these subjects about BND. That way readers make their own opinions instead of listening to Crawlspace staff voice their own…however interesting they may be ;).
Okay… time to critique
I like these retrospectives but i was expecting something more. I thought this would be everyone giving in-depth analysis, not just their opinions (which are fun to have though)
No offense taken, Timmy. First of all, I don’t think my critique is and less credible because I admitted I haven’t read all of the current run of ASM. I did exactly what a credible reviewer would do: aknowledge the limitations of my knowledge and proceed to critique what I have read to the best of my ability. I’d agree that my opinion might not carry the same weight as those of folks like Zach and Kevin, who have read every issue, but that doesn’t mean I have nothing “legit” to add about the 33% or so of BND issues I have read. Also, I don’t think we’re especially biased. Being critical of something does not equate to being biased against it. And what would an unbiased review of a comic book even look like, anyway? Entertainment is highly subjective, and we all bring our individual expectations and desires to the table. In terms of objectivity, the best I can promise is that if I ever levy a criticism against a comic book, I will substantiate it with reasons. I don’t like Norah because she makes racist jokes and flirts obnoxiously and I don’t like Harry because he was brought back from the dead with no plan of how to explain it. I don’t think those are unfair critiques at all. They are concrete examples of parts of the story I dislike and an explanation of why.
I really hate to say this because I like so much on this site, but a lot of these BND critiques reek of bias. Yes I know not everyone’s a fan and that the new stories don’t hold a candle to classic stories written by Stan Lee (and what self respecting reader would ever think that they could) but when no body even attempts to say something genuinely good about the object of their critique they come of as unfair, biased, and it hurts their credibility as a reviewer. I’m not asking you to like the new books, but when your claiming expertise and (i think it was) two reviewers said they haven’t even been reading ASM it makes me wonder how legit these opinions really are. Try not to take too much offence of my critique of the critiquers
@Wheatcakes: Stella chose not to participate. Believe me, I asked. 🙂
I used to like Carlie but man I got sick of her, I hated Lily and found her uninteresting and well it seem like a logical step to make her a villian as Menace. I used like the idea of Vin and cops with various opinions on Spidey and well Vin never grew out of stuff he did sure, he did the right thing in the end and fess up and then put on a bus and have him be replaced by Michelle whom I never liked at all snice the beginning and never gave me a reason to like her at all. I would like her to be killed off. Norah started as a interesting character and then the stuff that come out of her mouth or balloon bubble just well sickens me. Funny man poor Felica, the last time she was well-written in a spiderman comic was in Sensational Spider-man in late 06, and well Zeb Wells did a alright job in her stint in Heroes for Hire in 07. I hated Bennet. Harry is very conflicting and well Flash is the only thing postive to come out of this.
I’m enjoying these entries, but why isn’t Stella offering any opinions?
I think the new supporting characters have been the least of BND’s problems because I’m all for new people in Peter Parker’s life. New roomate? Sure, why not? New boss? It’s been done before, why not again? Potential love interest? Would you expect any less from Spider-Man writers?
But the infrequency of their appearances and their cardboard cut-out characterizations really do hurt the book as opposed to pluss it. My biggest gripe stems from the three PowerPuff Girls Carlie, Norah and Michelle. Each woman is an archetype as opposed to a character added into Peter’s life. Their sole reason for being to to give him stress. Now one can argue that the same could be said for Liz and Betty and Gwen and MJ in the beginning. But the way I see it, those characters at least had their own goals and ambitions that went beyond being involved with Peter. Why can’t they just opt to be his friend and hook up with him down the line? That way personalities and dimensionality can be shown through their characterizations other than easy way outs like anger and sexual frustration.That’s the way I see it anyway.
Whoops, didn’t mean to hog the comment section. Nice job guys.