Comic Book Entry: Here's Why I Don't Read Spider-Man

I have a love/hate relationship with Marvel. I love the characters they've created over the years. It's a rich group of original concepts and personalities with endless potential for creative stories. And sometimes they actually do have creators that come up with some cool storylines for these characters. She-Hulk, The Thing, X-Factor and New Excalibur are four Marvel titles I'm loving right now.

But then I see an article on a new Spider-Man costume and a new direction for the webslinger and I get a case of painful deja vu. This feeling is then quickly followed up with an eye roll and me shaking my head. How many times does Marvel have to lean on this crutch with Spider-Man. The guy has had more costume changes then I can remember, its such a non-event since they never become permenant and usually there is a lame storyline attached for the reason behind the change. I haven't read any of the Spider-Man comics in a long while specifically for the reason that I just don't like what they do the with the character most of the time. If I read any of his stories they are the old ones from the 60's through the mid-80's that have been reprinted or that I have in my own collection.

This new costume, dubbed the Iron Spidey, is apparently an Iron Man inspired armor/costume. I was afraid this kind of crap would happen when Spider-Man was made a member of the Avengers. What doesn't help the case is this these new costumes always look like crap. There is only one Spidey redesign that I liked and that was his first, the Black/White costume from the Secret Wars mini-series. Now that costume had style, really slick. Personally I like it better then his red&blue original.

All of this is aside from the point. What I'm getting back to is, how many times is Marvel going to try to pump interest in Spidey with a new costume? What I'm even more curious about is, does this even work? Do sales jump every time Spidey changes his duds?

I guess it's just a let down for me. Mainstream comics are suffering from the same recycling of ideas that movies, video games and television are suffering from. I can excuse it when it's done in away that still provides some escapist entertainment, but from what I've read of this I couldn't be less interested. With Spider-Man as an Avenger they could've gone in so many other directions with his character, an underdog hero finally joining with the major league. Marvel is dropping the ball.