Confession time: This writer isn't a Spider-Man reader, unless it's the Ultimate variety or the classics by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and John Romita. Amazing Spider-Man, while certainly one of the tent pole books of the Marvel franchise, has never come across as something worth spending a huge amount of time with—that's the logic of the tent poles. Ignoring the trust fundies who drop 80 bucks a week on comics, everybody only picks a few to ride with. What's your pleasure? The X-men? Ten books a month. Superman? Don't worry--just six, for now. Batman fans have to make a second choice—do they just stay with the starring titles and buy Batman, Detective, Batman & The Outsiders, Batman Confidential, whatever mini-series is operating (there's always at least one), Justice League—or do they keep up with the satellites as well? Robin, Nightwing, used-to-be sometimes Birds of Prey? Marvel is, at least, a little better—Spider-Man and Wolverine fans are the only ones struggling against the crunch of a budgetary fan base. After the choice of t-shirt books are made, fans can fill in the purchases with the once a month club—they can have their Blue Beetle, their Iron Fist, and maybe a Vertigo book too. (Just don't make it Fables, for god's sake.)

Of course, the glut of books per character is a completely monetary decision—we all know that. (There may be some crazies out there who think that Wolverine is a character that possesses ten to fifteen great stories per month, but everybody ignores them just as resoundingly as they ignore the naked body-paint Hal Jordan fans. "Everybody has a valid opinion" is a useful philosophy if you write fan-fiction, but in the read world, sometimes you just have to smile, nod, take the guy's money and hold your laughter until he leaves the convention hall.) Marvel and DC know, and so do the rest of us, that the big names sell more than the quality of story behind them. That doesn't mean that everything that a big name franchise book produces is crap—it just means that the quality of writing isn't what super-hero publishers are banking on. They're banking that comic book buyers are going to, come hell or high-water, choose to keep up with every title that says Spider on the cover before they'll take a shot at the latest version of Aquaman. Time and again, they're right to think so. The profit margin in the super-hero books isn't a growing one, and as long as Wolverine-starring books guarantee Marvel a slice of the dwindling pie, fans shouldn't stay up late hoping that Jonah Hex is headed for a 100th issue. (No matter that Hex is the best Western comic in decades.)

All this stuff is what makes Spider-Man's Brand New Day revamp a bit more fascinating then the stories it's telling. Part of the commitment that tent pole buyers make to comic publishers is that, as long as the books maintain some type of allegiance to the fans' long-standing membership, they'll keep the sales figures stable. Nearly destroy the title with the 90's Clone Saga? They'll complain, and the kids might leave, but the title survives. Reveal that Gwen Stacy got up to the nasty with the Goblin? The internet may try to implode, but they'll keep buying. Yank out Peter Parker's eye and claim he has a relationship with a never-before mentioned Spider-God? They'll bounce a rent check. Have Peter reveal his identity to the public and wear an Iron Man-designed costume? Seriously, nothing will stop the dollars from changing hands. Well, how about ditching Peter's marriage? How about revamping the continuity so they can start telling stories that, as the argument goes, may appeal to all those prospective buyers who are content to read Naruto, Nana and Naoki Urasawa's Monster?

When One More Day (the story where the devil gave Peter a Subaru that could climb Everest in exchange for his marriage to Mary Jane) was struggling through an incredibly late publication, the complaints weren't a surprise. Complaining about the direction of a revamp story is part of what comics fans pay the 3.99 cover price for—it's the same thing everybody does after they vote for President. Participation = righteous indignation. What came as a surprise was what Joe Quesada actually had planned after the navel-gazing of a four issue conversation comic was published. Brand New Day, while nowhere near a Watchmen or Preacher level of storytelling, is the most startling thing to happen to a tent pole franchise since John Byrne's Man of Steel 80's revamp of Superman. Joe Quesada put the shotgun against the beast that was Spider-Man's extravagantly weird continuity and pulled the trigger. Whether it's an attempt to attract the non-comics readers who know Spidey through Tobey Maguire, or an attempt to erase the obnoxious strains of mysticism that laced J. Michael Straczynski's run on the title, Spider-Man is, for the first time in years, as close to friendly to a new reader as franchise titles can be. It's the first step in years away from the constant dilution of a brand-name superhero—which is, in itself, a torturous necessity if anybody expects these stories to sell after the mid-30's fans currently paying for them finally die. And yes, no matter how many issues of Dr. Fate you've got squirreled away, you're not immortal. Complain all you want about the loss of Peter and Mary Jane's marriage—you're still headed to the same end as all those people who spent their last twenty years raging about the loss of the Brooklyn Dodgers. If there's a future for super-hero titles, it won't be found in forcing a future audience to burn up hours on Wikipedia learning about Infinite Crisis or Secret Wars. It will be in the willingness of the editors to ignore the current audience, their cries of betrayal, and taking a chance on telling new stories—or as new a story as can be told about a whining twenty-something, his asinine spider powers, and his incredibly boring social life.

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