The Quality of Writing in Mainstream Comics Circa 1993




My roommate has boxes and boxes of old comics upstairs at our house, and I was going through some today. I knew writing was bad back then, but generally could still enjoy much of it regardless when I was younger and didn't know better. Take for example The Amazing Spider-Man #374, written by David Michelinie. Thank God he's not a big name. Everyone in the entire issue, including Venom, all speak with a higher vocabulary than most Ivy League English professors.

Here is an excerpt from the opening pages, as EddieBrock/Venom is picking up heavy things in a concrete bunker far beneath an amusement park to bulk himself up:

EDDIE BROCK: Too heavy, c-can't lift it! But *hng* won't give up! Have to be at peak fitness! Our mission is too important! The prize agggh* too precious! HELP...ME! Yessss! Your alien strength... flowing to join mine! As it must! For together we will triumph!

(skipping ahead a couple pages, this is all really boring...)

VENOM: But... there's something ELSE now. The startling revelation that gave us cause to escape our recent confinement! Peter Parker-- The devil who is Spider-Man-- has recently found parents he once thought DEAD! And that is a reunion that cannot-- MUST not -- continue!

Pretty Shakespearean eh? Beauty monologue. This is the same plotline that gave us back Peter's parents from a Russian spy prison and in this very issue a parade clown single handedly fends off Venom to save a child... with a novelty water-spraying flower...

Let us be thankful, for what we have today.