Thread:Benspider/@comment-29421682-20171205195549/@comment-29421682-20180112043335

I thought Reign was awesome. Inferior to The Dark Knight Returns (I'm a huge Spidey fanboy and I admit that the Batman story is superior.), but a decent story nonetheless. I actually thought it was more like 1984 than TDKR, tho, which is what both stories are partially based on.

I liked a lot of concepts about it, like M.J.'s death, Doc Ock's skeleton, Sandman's daughter, etc. But there were a lot of things I would have changed about it;

First and foremost, the introduction of the Sinner Six. Not that it was bad, or anything, but it just seems kind of abrupt and out of place. They should have gradually built up the re-introduction of the villains. Also, while I can understand characters like Hydro-Man, Sandman, Scorpion, and even Kraven not being able to age, I question why characters like Mysterio and Electro aren't dead from old age or anything, the former especially, considering he has no actual super-powers.

Second, the context in which New York has been oppressed. Okay, I know that they were trying to create a repressed kind of society with the government being corrupt and all and the police force being overly brutal, but I cannot fathom, I cannot fathom, the idea of any kind of political government suspending basic voting practice. Not even the President has that kind of power. I also can't figure out how the city would have completely eliminated crime even with the use of the Reign in the first place. If anything, there would be skyrocketing levels of crime because of oppression. IMO, they should have actually made the main focal point of corruption be that the Mayor was being bribed by some new (or old.) crime boss, and that's why there's so much corruption and brutality in the streets.

Last, but not least, the choice of main villain. Okay, I get at the time that Venom was the most popular Spider-Man villain, because of the movie, but I cannot see Venom, for the life of me, pull off a scheme like this one. Calling for the removal of the bells, the outlawing of super-heroism, and creating a literal web to cover the city in order to sprout pieces of the symbiote across Manhattan is way too out of Venom's league for his kind of intelligence (the most intelligent thing I ever recall Venom doing was trying to escalate a gang war and frame J. Jonah Jameson for murder. And that wasn't even Brock!). If anything, as cliche as it may be, they should have just brought back Norman Osborn and had him be the real mastermind behind the whole thing. At least I can see him logically fitting in with the scheme and the stakes.