J. Michael Straczynski Archive

The “centennial” issues of Amazing Spider-Man are similar to the season finale of your favorite television show – they are often entertaining and there’s a certain level of importance assigned to them, but it’s very rarely the “best” representation of the characters and their universe. That doesn’t change the

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I’m not going to lie to you (and why would I?). Despite being an ardent fan of the superhero genre where characters fly, stick to walls, fire optic blasts from their eyes and countless other things that normal human beings can’t do, some of my all-time favorite Spider-Man stories

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We’re in the final week of Reader Request Month. After doing some rather large arcs the past few weeks, I was a bit relieved when Gus Lindgren recommended a simple “one and done” story for me: @ChasingASMBlog ASM v2 #50. Have you done that? — Gus Lindgren (@guslindgren) October

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In my Amazing Spider-Man #530 write-up, I mentioned some of the defining character differences between Tony Stark and Peter Parker as demonstrated by the first two parts of 2006’s “Mr. Parker Goes to Washington,” arc. In the storyline’s third and final section, ASM #531, these stark differences are even

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Amazing Spider-Man #530 is a significant entry in the title’s history because it’s the first issue that explicitly starts to outline the proposed parameters of the government’s Superhero Registration Act – a piece of fictional legislation designed to have Americans with super powers out themselves as part of a

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I often wonder what my appreciation for Iron Man/Tony Stark would be without Robert Downey Jr.’s incredible (and funny) portrayal of the character in the 2007 film. Up until then, I had viewed Iron Man as a hero who was more fitting for the DC Universe – a man

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On Monday, I posted about my #10 and #9 all-time favorite issues of Amazing Spider-Man. Today, I continue with my list by discussing two more (personal) favorites that will always be near and dear to me:

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Unless your take on the world of comic books is even more myopic than my own, you probably heard last week that DC is controversially going to release prequels to the all-time great graphic novel Watchmen more than 20 years after the story was originally released and without any

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Amazing Spider-Man’s J. Michael Straczynski era kicked off with one of my favorite storylines of all time and, as such, the first entry in my “stand up and cheer” series. While recent ASM writers have moved away from the whole “Spider Totem” theory that JMS put forward, I still

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I have stories, reflections and memories about nearly all of the Spider-Man comic books in my collection, but in order to add proper context to these “Remembrance” posts, I think I need to write about one more “foundation” issue. By “foundation” issue, I mean a comic that, for a

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