[B5JMS] ATTN JMS: Spidey 32

[b5jms-admin at cs.columbia.edu]

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From: wrwhite963 at aol.com (WRWhite963)
Date: 16 Jun 2001 06:28:42 GMT
Lines: 41

>
>It really is kind of a different way of having the characters themselves
>reacting to the way things have laid out in the Marvel universe.  Opensup all
>kinds of possibilities, and has the effect of uniting something like thirty
>years of Spidey villains under one metaphorical umbrella.
>
> jms
>

The more I've been reading your Spidey run, the more I've been noticing I've
taken these things for granted.  I must have paused on that page for three or
four minutes, mulling over the Marvel universe.

It's a nifty talent, that - being able to look at things we've grown up with
and taken for granted, thinking about it, shifting the angle a couple of
degrees, and like a hologram - a whole new picture comes out. Were you always
that way, or did it develop through your writing?

Yet your take on Spidey is faithful to the Marvel/Spidey universe.  There's
nothing that turns me off more than when they take a character into the
trashcan by trying to re-vamp it, by denying the heart of the original
character which attracted people in the first place.  Thanks for taking the
care to build the building higher, rather than scrap it and build another. 
Looks like you've been firming up the foundation, as well.

I like this Peter Parker fellow.  A little more backbone, even for a
Spider-man.

And it's nice to see the metaphor there, underpinning things.  The real meat of
Babylon 5 was in analogy and metaphor, which is why it's so darn fun to sit and
analyze  (after having enjoyed it of course.)  A nice, meaty subtext to sink
one's thinking teeth into.  Who knows?  Maybe you'll start a trend for
mainstream comics (and the rest. One hopes.....)

Well, that's one satisfied "True Believer"! 

Excelsior!

Regards,
  Walter R. White


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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: 17 Jun 2001 05:08:41 GMT
Lines: 28

>It's a nifty talent, that - being able to look at things we've grown up with
>and taken for granted, thinking about it, shifting the angle a couple of
>degrees, and like a hologram - a whole new picture comes out. Were you always
>that way, or did it develop through your writing?

I've always been weird that way, I go for the details, I like turning things
around and looking at them in different ways.  When I was in college, I helped
a local community center fix up a "youth activities room," which meant getting
scraps left over from carpet stores and putting them together into a kind of
montage carpet.

Now, all the other guys working on this grabbed whatever big swatches of carpet
were available and started laying 'em down.  Me, I was at the other end with
all the tiny scraps, a few inches across, maybe a foot, assembling them in this
very detailed, precise sequence, this little abstract tapestry, if you will. 
At the end of the day, you would stand at one end of the room and, as one
person put it, "you can tell where Joe was sitting today."

 jms

(jmsatb5 at aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2001 by synthetic worlds, ltd., 
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine 
and don't send me story ideas)