Weird thing happened last weekend. My girlfriend’s brother and I got out of shopping on Saturday. Y’know what we did instead? We watched "Speed."
When was the last time you watched "Speed"? Are you like me, did you forget how AMAZING it is? Keanu has never been more Keanuy…Dennis Hopper is sufficiently nutso and fragile but still kinda able to handle himself physically…both Cameron from Ferris Bueller and the southern lady that plays the southern lady in every movie that needs a southern lady play type in fantastic fashion…there’s that floppy-haired guy on the bus that was on a few episodes of "Beverly Hills 90210," who, along with Ethan Hawke, will forever be enshrined in my head as the quintessential Man of the '90s…Sandra Bullock looks reasonably attractive (when’s the last time you could say that?)…and stuff blows up SO GOOD. Barely a whiff of CGI!!!!!!! Sigh, I miss no CGI.
So I’m sitting there, inhaling the beautiful bouquet of '90s jargon (“This is unreal!”) and hilarious Keanuy Keanu line readings (“I don’t KNOW you MAHN!”) and great almost-"Die Hard"-level joke set-ups (“How do you feel?” “Like I been shot”) and watching a bus ram into all sorts of stuff…
…and I can’t stop thinking of Spider-Man.
Why? "Speed" has nothing to do with Spider-Man. Wrong city, wrong movie genre, wrong everything. Figured it was my mind not allowing me to enjoy one thing at a time. So I blocked Spidey out and kept listening to Dennis Hopper (“Three-point-seven million! It’s my nest egg, Jack! At my age y’gotta think about the future!”) and watched a bus travel 50 feet in the air without the benefit of an incline…and then Spidey popped in again.
Grrrrrr…the "Speed" action scenes were nothing like the Spider-Man movie action scenes (NO CGI!!!!!!). No one in "Speed" reminded me of any character in Spidey lore (but I DID notice that the guy in the beginning, where they get into the elevator before Hopper sets off the first bomb? The guy that presses the button is the comedian from the second season of "Mad Men"! Wonder what he did between these gigs). WHY is Peter Parker sticking in my craw?
And then it hit me: I didn’t see "Speed" until it came out on video in 1995. That was when my favorite Spider-Man book came out.
I was flashing back to when me and Spidey were on the same page, when the greatest Spider-Man comic, UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN, was released. At 99 CENTS!!!!! Perfect Busiek writing (he provided flashbacks so I didn't need to read the old issues) and perfect Olliffe art (Spidey should always look small and weird). That book was perfect.
This has been a really long-winded way of saying that we're kinda starting over MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN with issue #53, and I'm trying to look at it through the fresh eyes I had back when I was a fan of Spidey. And I have Jan de Bont to thank for it.
I’ve never seen "Speed 2."
More info on the new direction for MA Spidey tomorrow.
starting over What do you mean starting over? Why would you need to with a book like Marvel Adventures Spiderman which is (at least when I was reading it) all ages, one shot stories with limited continuity?
(Speed 2 doesn't have Keanu. Keanu is what made Speed 1 work.
Speed 2 is a very bad, generic action movie set on a boat. I know that much from trailers and I may have seen the end once when channel surfing.)
Posted by izzatrix on 2009-04-17 10:52:41
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About this blog: By day, he’s a mild-mannered comic book editor! By night, he’s an obsessive sports fan!
By early morning, he drinks coffee and then runs! He’s Nathan Cosby, and he has thoughts about things.
This is them.
About the author: When Associate Editor Nathan Cosby is not thinking about football, he edits Marvel’s All-Ages books, including the Marvel Adventures line (Spidey, FF, Avengers, Super Heroes), X-Men and Wolverine First Class, Franklin Richards, Mini Marvels, and Power Pack, works on the Marvel Illustrated and Stephen King books, does the Custom Comics, and runs Super Hero Squad. There’s like 20 other things he does, but he’s bored with typing this.
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