Why bother fixing the Spider-Man origin?

JB: First, it depends on how you define "fix". Aside from some wonky science more or less characteristic of the time, there is nothing wrong with the Spider-Man origin as first presented. But when Stan and Steve did that story in AMAZING FANTASY there were two important elements that many seem to forget: one, it was only fifteen pages long, and two, it was, so far as they knew, the ONLY Spider-Man story that was ever going to be told! Now, almost forty years later, Marvel has decided to "reboot" Spider-Man, but unlike the Superman reboot, this does not mean scraping away years and years of barnacles. Instead, it means taking the whole Spider-Man tapestry and looking at it with a single eye -- asking, for example, what Stan and Steve might have done with (a) more pages, and (b) a certain knowledge of future Spider-Man stories. Thus, certain scenes can be expanded, and a large degree of foreshadowing can be brought into play. CHAPTER ONE is a way of saying "Hey! Over here!" to ...  more

JB: First, it depends on how you define "fix". Aside from some wonky science more or less characteristic of the time, there is nothing wrong with the Spider-Man origin as first presented. But when Stan and Steve did that story in AMAZING FANTASY there were two important elements that many seem to forget: one, it was only fifteen pages long, and two, it was, so far as they knew, the ONLY Spider-Man story that was ever going to be told! Now, almost forty years later, Marvel has decided to "reboot" Spider-Man, but unlike the Superman reboot, this does not mean scraping away years and years of barnacles. Instead, it means taking the whole Spider-Man tapestry and looking at it with a single eye -- asking, for example, what Stan and Steve might have done with (a) more pages, and (b) a certain knowledge of future Spider-Man stories. Thus, certain scenes can be expanded, and a large degree of foreshadowing can be brought into play. CHAPTER ONE is a way of saying "Hey! Over here!  more