By Keigen Rea — Welcome back to Rereads, the end of the year edition! I love doing end of year lists, so I’m using this space to do that, but I didn’t want it to just be my end of year list, because that didn’t quite fit what I want Rereads to be, so there’s a small twist. The books featured won’t necessarily be my favorite books of the year, they’ll be books that I wasn’t totally sure of the first time around, or they'll be books I want to revisit before I make my final favorites of the year list. Naturally, that means all of these books won’t actually be on my list, and I might even dislike some of them! As always, though, I hope I come away liking these books more than I did before.

This time around, I’ll be Rereadsing Amazing Mary Jane, written by Leah Williams, Carlos Gómez, Lucas Werneck, Zé Carlos, and Annapaola Martello as artists, Carlos Lopez on colors, lettering by Joe Caramagna, production designer Anthony Gambino, and editor Kathleen Wisneki, published by Marvel Comics.

And Sex Criminals Vol. 6 (but the digital single issues, and only the core series. Sorry Sexual Gary, great issue, but I’m only doing the core series), by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky, edited by Thomas K, managing editor Turner Lobey, and production by Erika Schnatz, published by Image Comics.

Why Amazing Mary Jane?

Amazing Mary Jane snuck up on me earlier in the year, and it went from being something I thought was pretty average, but very quickly grew into something that I’m really fond of. I’ve been meaning to read it as a whole, so now’s the time! I will also be very sad about cancellation :(

Pre-reread thoughts

I love me a villain reformation, and having Mary Jane, a person who is so close to a superhero and has been deeply affected by all that stuff, and I’ll be thinking about that a whole bunch on this reread,

Amazing Mary Jane

First off, I want the second arc of this book, and I’m so sad it got extended passed the first arc just to disappear forever. MJ in witness protection would have been fun.

For two, the redemption stuff throughout this series is Keigen catnip and I love it all. I definitely forgot how explicit it all was in the book, which I also love about it. It’s done in a few different ways with different characters, and I just like it a lot!

Something that really clicked for me this read, though, is that the biggest reason I really like this series is the role reversal and investigation into MJ and Peter’s relationship. Having MJ keeping a superhero-related secret from Peter feels fresh, and it even gives some validity to Pete himself hiding being Spider-Man from most of the ones he loves, and a dialogue that’s about that but isn’t about that. MJ’s more human than Pete, and that helps to sell those ideas about heroism in a different way, in a way that makes her decisions more relatable and reasonable.

Add in the way that MJ, who oftentimes is a victim, is able to both be compassionate and stand her own ground with the insanity of her superhero-adjacent life crowding her in, and I’ve got a book that appeals specifically to me.

Now, on to Sex Criminals.

Why Sex Criminals?

Sex Criminals is one of my favorite series. It has it’s highs and lows, but Fraction and Zdarsky crafted a work that is deeply personal and funny at different times and it’s a book that I have a lot of feelings about. That being said, the finale arc wasn’t my favorite thing from the pair, so I want to read it all at once to see if that had anything to do with pandemic delays or anything like that,

Pre-reread thoughts

I whined about the narration, but I mean. C’mon, it’s still comics, I just gotta get over myself a bit. Let’s do this.

Sex Criminals

My favorite thing about the finale arc of Sex Criminals is that it has all the hallmarks of Matt Fraction’s newer work. My least favorite thing about the finale arc of Sex Criminals is that it has all the hallmarks of Matt Fraction’s newer work. The series began with Fraction and Zdarsky in one place in their lives and careers, and it ended with them in totally different places. All of which is to say: I love how this fits in with Jimmy Olsen and November, but it feels like it belongs with those series’s more than it belongs in Sex Criminals.

But I mean, there’s still sex and criminaling here, so it’s really fine, because, yeah, this rocks.

It’s got flawed characters doing funny and dumb and great and bad stuff and they learn and grow and change. I love it, it’s personal, and it still feels right, even when it’s surprising. The end of this series could have gone in a different direction, but this one feels more right, and, well, I’m a sucker for time travel, so of course I’m fond of it. I definitely enjoyed this more all at once than I did as it was coming out.

One specific story thing I think is interesting, and I wrinkled my nose at the first time around is the treatment of Jon’s time in prison. I think we’ve seen media treating prison and prisoners differently, and it’s generally gotten better, more compassionate, and fair. In that way, Jon is a great example, in that aspect, he’s one of our protagonists, so we don’t just switch to seeing him as a villain in the last few issues, he just got arrested, it’s fine. What I wasn’t sure about before is the way it’s talked about, and how it affects Jon personally.

It rankles a bit that, while Jon did face consequences, his privilege shielded him from the worst parts of the incarceration system, and he was allowed to improve his life in a way that is many people’s justification for that dangerous and destructive system. I don’t think I had really investigated this or put it into words on my first read, but it was definitely something that was underlying and undermining my read of the book.

To start, Jon spends, like, 30 days in prison and it completely changes his life. Which is mostly fine, but y’know, I know one person who was rehabilitated through prison, and at least a dozen who’ve been unaffected by their time. This reread, though, and especially reading the whole arc at once, reminded me of something important about Jon: he’s kind of a dumbass, and he is extremely dramatic. So of course going to prison would be, not just a big deal, but a literally life changing and defining moment where he finds his life’s calling. It works, because it isn’t any kind of criticism of him or the system, but it’s just an obvious extrapolation of the character and events of the book. And I think that’s the thing about the finale and the arc. It’s able to be surprising while still doing what makes sense in the narrative. Can’t wait to read it as a big ol hardcover.

With this rereads, I want to highlight and encourage the podcast Mex Flentallo (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mex-flentallo/id1540715209?i=1000501534752 or https://open.spotify.com/show/7zg3EbgvQOwhMqPQFZUlBa). It is my favorite comic podcast of the year, and everyone should check it out.

The word “paparazzo” bridges these two stories. That’s pretty weird!

That’s it for this Rereads! Thank you for reading, and come back next time for The Rise of Kylo Ren, and SFSX.

Keigen Rea only had to make it one more week. Find him @prince_organa on Twitter, where he wants time to speed up and slow down.