Because nothing in life – and in particular nothing relating to this job – has ever really been easy, I found out today that I am
not starting my new job come Monday morning.
While I’ve been assured that it’s not actually a problem, apparently there is some information in my background check that couldn’t be verified in time to clear me to start work on Monday. I don’t know what that “something” is, but the long and short of it is that my start date will be delayed until probably the middle of the week.
Oh, and just to make things more irritating, even though I no longer qualify for the severance package payoff from AOL, today the money from the severance showed up in my checking account. This wasn’t a total surprise, as I’d gotten the little check stub/Advice of Deposit in the mail the other day, but it’s still irritating because somewhere along the line I’m going to have to give it back to them.
On the advice of the recruiter for the job that I want and now have(?), I’m transferring the money over to my high-yield savings account, as she’s seen it take 4 to 5 months for them to get around to sorting the situation out when this sort of thing has happened with other laid off AOL employees who moved over to that branch of the corporate tree.
So I might as well make some interest off of it while I wait for them to come calling to collect it.
This morning I headed to the comic shop, then stopped at Super Target on my way home and picked up some Just For Men. Light Brown was the closest match to what was my natural color. This afternoon I tried it out.
The end result? Well, instead of looking like someone who once had dark blonde hair and has since gone gray, I look like someone with brown hair who either has some oddly-placed highlights or is starting to go gray. I guess it’s an improvement.
I tried taking some before and after pictures of myself, but the lighting is such that you can’t really see much of a difference so I didn’t see the point of posting them.
One Less Day Department:Back in the summer of 1987 in a
Spider-Man annual (which is part of my collection), Spider-Man (Peter Parker) married his longtime friend/sometimes girlfriend
Mary Jane Watson, a character first introduced into the Spidey mythos back in 1964.
While plenty of stories – some good, some bad, some dreadful – featuring a married Spider-Man have been told in the last two decades, somewhere along the line
Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada decided that it is completely and utterly
impossible to produce Spider-Man stories so long as he’s saddled with the old ball and chain, and that having Spidey be a mature, married man makes it equally impossible for new, young fans to relate to the character.
With that in mind, comic fandom was treated to an editorially-mandated “event” entitled
One More Day, which Quesada himself drew, the purpose of which was to resolve this “problem.”
There are plenty of comics blogs which have discussed this issue to death, so it’s not my intention to delve too deeply into it here, but there are a few things I want to say about it.
Quesada has gone on record as saying that he didn’t want to simply kill off MJ or to have them get divorced, as it would send a terrible message to the kids.
So what did he do instead? He had Peter
make a deal with the Devil to rewrite history so that the marriage never happened.
Because that’s a
much better message to send to the kids.
(As a side-effect of the history rewriting deal, they also retconned out something that was, unlike the marriage, actually a legitimately bone-headed move: Spidey publicly revealing his secret identity.)
Personally, I think the marriage was a good idea, and that it does not present a barrier to telling good stories. In fact, it creates considerably more possibilities than endlessly exploring the woes of a single Peter Parker as he struggles to find love could ever hope to do.
Beyond that, there are
already existing Spider-Man comics that
do feature a single Peter Parker, such as
Ultimate Spider-Man (the whole purpose of which was to tell modern stories that present a young, single Peter Parker) and
Marvel Adventures Spider-Man.
Further, an entire generation of comics fans has grown up with a married Peter Parker being a simple fact of life.
What’s really at play here is not some concern about what the fans want – in fact, the guy at the comic shop told me that several customers have requested that the Spider titles be
removed from their subscription lists – but what
Joe Quesada wants. And what he wants is for Spider-Man to be exactly the way he was when li’l Joe was reading comics.
This is actually a pretty widespread trend in comics these days. So many creators are trying to make comics the way they “should” be, which is to say, the way
they remember them. Nostalgia is the most important consideration, and anything that’s happened in the years since they were reading comics can (and should) be thrown out the window. Screw character growth, screw history, and screw what the fans actually want.
Okay, getting a little off track here; the above is itself suitable material for several lengthy posts.
To get back to my point, I need to get into some of the actual content of the
One More Day storyline (which, taken out of the context of the rather heated debate, was actually
a really bad story). The catalyst for Peter and MJ – both had to agree to the terms of the deal – to enter into this pact was Peter’s beloved
Aunt May getting shot with a sniper’s bullet intended for Peter. Not for the first time, May’s life was hanging by a thread and her chances for recovery were virtually nil. Peter did everything he could to try to restore May to her normal state of health (which has never really been good – she is a very old woman, after all), but to no avail.
The deal he was presented with was that in exchange for giving up his marriage, the Devil (technically a demon named
Mephisto) would restore May to health.
(What does Mephisto get out of it? There will be a part of Peter and MJ’s souls that remember the love they shared and will be crying out in pain throughout eternity, a sound that will be pleasing to Mephisto’s ears. Also, their love is so pure and wonderful that their forsaking it will be an affront to
God Himself, which Mephisto will also get off on. I told you the story was really bad.)
Anyway, we’re getting close to my point, which is that there is one thing that I haven’t seen mentioned a lot in the various comments I’ve read about the story, and which was not mentioned at all in
One More Day itself, and that is this: had she known what Peter and MJ were doing, May would never have approved.
The
last thing that May would want for her beloved nephew, whom she had raised as if he were her own child, would be for him to give up his happiness for her sake.
If she’d been given the opportunity to speak, I imagine May would have said something like this:
I’m an old woman, Peter. An old woman who has lived a long, full life, one that has, perhaps, had more than its share of tragedies, from the loss of your parents to the loss of my darling Ben. Despite that, I have no regrets because I had the opportunity to share a long life with your uncle, and though I would have liked that life to have lasted just a little longer, I know that one day he and I will be together again and our love will last throughout eternity.
I have also had the opportunity to watch you grow into a fine man. A strong man. A loving man. A man like your uncle. A hero. Sometimes I look at you and I can still see the sad, awkward boy that Ben and I took in and loved as our own, and when I think about how far that boy has come and what he’s accomplished, I feel like my heart will burst with pride to think that I played any part in making you the strong, wonderful, heroic man you are.
The happiest day of my life was the day you made MJ your wife. To think that you could find someone who complements you so perfectly, someone with a fierce spirit and a heart full of boundless…it filled me with so much joy to know that you had found a love like the one Ben and I shared.
And I would happily give up my life to make sure that you hold onto that love.
Let me go, Peter. My time has come, I’ve lived my life, and I so want to be with my Ben again, to hear his warm laugh, to feel his strong, gentle arms. Let me go, and know how much I love you, and how much I love MJ, and that all I want is for the two of you to know the happiness that Ben and I knew.
Don’t throw love away, Peter. In the end, it’s the only thing we really have.
*Sniffle*
Anyway, I realize that this new status quo is, like all things in comics, likely only temporary, and I’m not filled with anything even remotely like the near-murderous rage that some fans are over it, but I do think it was a dumb idea (and lousy story), and thought I should put my two cents out there and speak to the issue of May and what her wishes would have been, since no one involved in the story seemed to be capable of doing so.
