TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING? Transparency in government has been bobbing around in the nation’s capital, in statehouses and in city halls for some time now as a political virtue. I’ve been for it all along. Our leaders should explain in detail how and why they spend taxpayer dollars.

But the case of Sunland Park, New Mexico, mayor and congressional candidate Martín Reséndiz gives me pause. As mayor, he’s being sued for payment on a $1 million contract he signed with a California architectural design firm.

The contract should be voided, Reséndiz explains in a deposition presented to the court. It contends he was drunk when he signed it. “I had way too much to drink and I didn’t know what I was signing,” he says. Legally, that’s a defense that can stand up.

If, for some unsurprising reason, his deposition flowers into a congressional campaign issue, apparently Reséndiz has his sister lined up as a character witness.

One of my sources, the Albuquerque Journal, didn’t state specifically whether the mayor was, as the saying goes. ”a fallingdown drunk,” but it did include his recollection, “My sister had to pick me up.” Am I misreading that last line?

SPIDER-MAN CHANGES COLOR: The word is out. RIP Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, the Marvel comic-book hero who first appeared in 1962, is about to be killed by the Green Goblin.

Bienvenido, Miles Morales. The “fresh and new and vital” (and demographically in sync) replacement set to emerge as the webspinning crime-fighter’s modern incarnation is Morales. He will be introduced as “a half-black, half-Hispanic American teenager.”