The Lost Art of the No Prize
I don’t usually write any primers on limited series on this index because more often than not, a limited series requires no further explanation. It’s not very often that a limited series has anything really profound to say. They serve to tell a short story that wouldn’t otherwise fit in the ongoing adventures of a given hero or they’re used to flesh out plot lines that wouldn’t otherwise have a major impact on what’s going on elsewhere. It’s very rare that a limited series is a must-read in order to follow the monthly adventures of a given title or character.
Spider-Man and X-Men titles are usually the ones that feature limited series that expand upon past stories in a profound way. Usually, this is done by telling things from a new perspective, a more modern take, or to tell a story from a specific era that happened between the events of the monthly ongoing series.
In the 2000s there were four specific limited series in the Spider-Man line of books that take another look at the past. These were Spider-Man: Blue, by Jeph Loeb and Time Sale, part of the “Color” series that saw the pair examine tragic events that surround popular heroes in the Marvel Universe. Another was Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One by Zeb Wells with art by Kaare Andrews that explored the origin of Doctor Octopus. There was Spider-Woman: Origin by Brian Michael Bendis and Brian Reed with art by Jonathan and Joshua Luna, which (as you may have guessed) re-tells the origin of Spider-Woman. Lastly, there is Venom: Dark Origins another Zeb Wells story, this time penciled by Angel Medina
Unlike other titles I have written about in my index, these three series are not entirely placed in any chronologies available (either Marvel’s Official Index or the semi-official Chronology Project) The only people who do try to fit these stories into continuity presume that these stories retcon past events, with little thought about how that negatively impacts previously established continuity.
I find the modern “fandoms” to be placed with an appalling lack of imagination. Back in the days of Stan Lee, any time something appeared to be out of continuity, fans would write in and provide explanations for it. This led to the tradition of awarding fans with “No Prizes”, a badge of honor for explaining something that a writer either didn’t know, chose to ignore, or got wrong. I feel that today’s fan doesn’t have this level of creativity because they also have no respect for the past. Go ahead and look at any fan aggregated source of information. They’ll update whatever is new and current while gaps in older information continue to go unfilled. Even in a day and age when you can easily read digital copies of most old stories, fans don’t want to put in the work to think about how a story fits in with continuity. It’s fucking lazy.
I say this time and again: Hard retcons (Where old stories are replaced by new ones) is more the wheelhouse of DC Comics. Marvel doesn’t replace continuity, they either frame it from a different perspective or build on something that already exists. The only time they’ve committed a hard retcon was during One More Day and that was the biggest mistake of the last 20 years, but I digress.
Anyway, the No-Prize has become something of a lost art as fans seldom seem to have the attention span to try and figure these things out. With that in mind, I have done what nobody else seems to want to do and that’s figured out how the continuity between these three limited series fit in with pre-existing continuity. Which, if you do the necessary research you can do with literally any story Marvel published. If you’ve been reading the fiction long enough, you can sort out how things can be slotted in without ignoring or retconning anything else. As you come upon my summaries for Spider-Man: Blue, Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One, Spider-Woman: Origin and Venom: Origin, you find that I did just that. I put these stories in the continuity with hardly many workarounds and any assumptions made on my part are very minimal.
That all said, as much as I am deriding other resources for their lack of imagination, where I have chosen to place these stories in chronology should be viewed as merely my own opinion and should not be considered any sort of fact unless they are adopted by an official or semi-official source (which, I’m not holding my breath and neither should you)
If anyone at Marvel is reading this, I expect a stack of No Prizes to be not mailed to me at your earliest possible convenience you stingy bastards.
To any fans out there that try to provide a resource to your community, all I will say to you is this: Do Better.
Sidebar: I am well aware of the recent story arc in Spider-Woman Volume 7 where Jessica meets Michael Merchand, who is allegedly her brother and that also reveals that Jessica’s mother is allegedly still alive. That story is still ongoing and at first glance, it looks like writer Karla Pacheco is honoring the original origin of Jessica Drew which involves the High Evolutionary, ignoring the 'take on her origin made by Bendis almost a decade earlier. However, that plotline is still in progress, and just because it looks like a character somehow cheated death doesn’t necessarily mean that they succeeded. As such my theories have been made prior to these recent developments, I will revisit and adjust them as necessary once the current Spider-Woman story arc has sorted itself out. The absence of evidence is an argument from ignorance.
Sidebar the 2nd: With respect to my summaries of the Spider-Man Family series, I have omitted the stories that are reprints and are only indexing the original stories.
