American Son was the ONLY good story to come out after OMD. Because it followed the classic Good Spidey Story Formula. At one point, he can't take it anymore, he flips out, gets serious, and [parasitic bomb] gets real. It's how Spidey atories get good. When Peter actually mans up and does WHAT HE HAS TO. He hasn't had any of those moments recently, which makes me sad.
I liked American Son myself for all these reasons (when Pete flips out and does his own take on the Mark of Kaine? That was pure badassery), but I think that BND had some very nice stories. Mainly because when they decided to go this new direction, they got writers who were interested in telling stories about Spider-Man, not redefining him or turning his world upside down every three months (SINS PAST! TOTEMIC POWERS! EATING MORLUN'S HEAD!).
Now OMD is just an unforgivable pile of stupidity, but what came
after it is not necessarily bad - it becomes a bit of a "shoot the messenger" thing, but I can see why with the glorious failure that OMD was, though I don't support it. As far as Spidey's attitude, even prior to BND Peter was already a bit regressed to a manchild more than the character I grew up reading. But, honestly, I'll take the BND stories any day of the week over JMS's stuff. Simply not to my tastes, if anything. Nothing worthwhile told in BND needed a single Peter Parker either, but that only goes to show how off the rails Quesada was/is with ego.
MATTIE was killed? I haven't been paying alot of attention to Spider-Man for obvious reasons, but jeez, Mattie Franklin? The Saga of the Five was one of my favorite Spidey tales when I was a kid, and Mattie was pretty much the first Marvel character I remember well from Marvel canon, mostly because she seemed more carefree and happy amongst all of the dark and sad stuff that constantly happened to Peter. Why did they have to kill her? I swear, between this kind of stuff and Quesada's plans to rub OMD in our faces continuously with rebooted marriages and whatnot, makes me want to read Spidey less and less.
I don't know why they decided to off speciffically her (though others also died;
[spoiler]Madame Web died and pretty much 'tucked her essence' or something in Julia Carpenter, the 2nd Spider-Woman, who was known as Arachne, who's now the blind fortune cookie teller of the Arachniverse; Vladimir (the Grim Hunter, killed by Kaine in the clone saga) was brought back by Mattie's death and was also killed back; Kraven's wife Sasha who had recently debuted and Kaine. But Kaine came back at the very last page of the issue.)[/spoiler], though it looks as if it's to give Anya Corazon ("Araña") some uniqueness (she's set to adopt the name of Spider-Girl in a few months).
Now if they had dragged in Jessica as well that'd be wholly understadable, but she's an object of Bendiswank. So... off-limits.
As far as super-hero origins being retconned/revamped/refit or whatever, that's inevitable. Especially on Marvel's case where they have to keep their characters' age within a certain range - that's why what war Punisher fought in or Iron Man was wounded in constantly shifts. Steve overrules it; Super Soldier serum is h4x.
(É verdade. Já agora, por curiosidade, comics demoram tanto tempo a chegar aí como cá? Eu sei que a vossa editora distribui algumas da Marvel para cá (embora ainda estejamos no secret invasion), mas eu costumo comprar numa loja de importação que tem as versões americanas, excepto que estas demoram de uma semana a um mês a sair lá. Também é assim convosco?)
Aqui as revistas estão atrasadas mais ou menos um ano. Dark Reign começou, mais ou menos, há uns 5 meses. Inclusive "American Son" tá sendo publicada na revista do Aranha no momento com o estúpido nome "Filho da Pátria" - e veja que sigla interessante ela forma.