THANK YOU.

I may not change things at Marvel, but how dumb is it for me to keep throwing money at a product I'm no longer happy with? Marvel gets money from me for Thor, Spider-Girl, and the random Incredible Herc. That's. It.

And look at DC. I don't like the direction of the Marvel Family. I didn't but Trials of Shazam. I didn't buy countdown. Why? I didn't like the stories. Jeff Smith and Hunkle's Shazam's? I bought and am buying regularily. It may only be a dollar, but at least I'm not spouting my hatred for a product I dislike. My dollar goes to the amount of sales that tell management, "This number of people like this direction."

If I'm on the "wrong side," so be it. At least I'll be able to say I paid for something I wanted.


Essentially, yes. I really don't care if the stuff is being written well.

If you support the series, it's a carte blanche for any editor to force personal opinion and dictate all stories to their writers, solely on their personal taste. Not what's necessarily best for the character or the company, but for themselves.

If you have no problem with that, that's fine. Enjoy the series. I have my reasons for not giving money to Marvel for a book that's just distasteful for me to read. If things never get "retconned" or whatever, I'll be fine. I have plenty of other of stuff to read.

Bravo Entertainer13 I applaud your reasoning and lack of hate!

And since it was asked I there were plenty of times the marriage worked and was entertaining IMO, but unfortunately there was just as many times that it didn't work IMO.
JMS's run on Spider-Man was outstanding and it really is too bad it had to end on such a "poop-note".

I have read Spider-Man for decades. OMD? No sir I don't like it. Bought BND for a couple months. No sir I don't like it. When Spidey joined the Avengers I was all excited. Gee maybe they will start writing him a little more mature. Make him step up take charge. Cap was starting to train him. He could have focused on his science background. Didn't care for his unmasking but loved that everybody else knew who he was now. Don't know why but got a kick out of him and Mary Jane having dinner with the F.F. Stingers and organic webs meh? At least it was different ie moving forward. Did the writers get themselves in a corner? Did they think that readers wouldn't go for a more mature Parker? Joe @3$%^&^ Q ruined Spider-Man. He won't get my money. I may not hit him but if I ever saw him he would feel my dislike for him.

I read Spider-Man all my life. I remember as a kid reading the death of Harry Osbourn, and how it stayed with me. I wanted to be able to be that good of a storyteller, it was my goal. Now its meaningless. Now instead of Mary Jane telling Harry "Are you just going to leave my husband in there to die?" its are you going to leave my roommate in there. I grew up with Spider-Man. I understand why Joe did what he did. He wanted the Spider-Man he grew up with back. But in doing so he took the Spider-Man I had away. I will never read BND, I hardly made it through OND. It make me sad that Spider-Man is gone, and in his stead we have Spider-College-Kid.

There are very few things about Spidey that can't be described the same way. An aspect of a character can sometimes work great and sometimes kinda suck. The answer is to get a writer than "gets" that aspect of the character. Not to eliminate that aspect. Writing married Spidey was hard so they got rid of it. Writing quippy mid battle Spidey dialog is hard to. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's cringe worthy. So will the next step be a serious non talking Spidey?

Tarnish

Dude you're complely wrong.

Theres never been an attempt to write away Spider-Mans banter.

For just as long as they were shown to be a couple, their marriage was flat out ignored.

Remember when Kevin Smith was supposed to bring MJ back into the Spider-Man comics but JMS did instead?

She had been gone for sometime before JMS penned her return.

How about the entire clone saga who's main purpose was to make Spider-Man come off like young unmarried Spider-Man again?

It amazing to me that fans have been so irate about the remarkably forced marriage being removed that they selectively forget that just as much time was devoted to writing the marriage away as it was to having it a part of the Spider-Man stories.

Now I liked the marriage when it was written well.
JMS did a great job, the best really at taking care of that one.

But I'm glad its gone in the long run.

Really? There's never been an attempt to write away Spidey's banter? So I guess you just didn't read Spider-Man back during the time right after Chameleon tricked him with his robot duplicates of his parents?

The dark, silent and brooding "I am the Spider!" Spider-Man we got out of that was almost as bad as the Clone Saga!

There was a writing team on Spider-Man at the time.

I'm pretty sure what you're recalling is more of the J.M. Dematteis issues than the David Micheline issues.

There is a big difference between a writers take on a character and an editorial edict.

So if bad writters are to blame for the things you're ok with, makes whole thing ok, but bad writters on the things you don't like aren't? Seems impartial.

That's how I felt about "Back In Black" Spidey. Kinda terrible.

Ok I'm sorry I was unclear. It was an analogy. My point is people liked the marriage. Hence every time they tried to write MJ out they eventually had to bring her back. Because a majority of fans wanted her back.

One of the reasons that was often sited for getting rid of the marriage was how "hard" it made writing a Spidey story. It was described more than once by Marvel as "like trying to write Spidey with a club foot".

My point was just because getting some aspect of a character "right" is hard, it doesn't make sense to get rid of it if the fans like it when it's done well.

Tarnish

Did I say it makes it okay?
Nope.
I'm just making the difference clear between a writer who doesn't get the character and a decision to alter something fundamental about a character.

Now on one level suppose I do think its okay for writers to have thier take on a character.

JM Dematteis has a knack for writing soul searching whiners.

He was a bad choice for Spider past his Kravens Last Hunt storyline.

Note that Spidey wasn't funny at all in that storyline, but nobodies complaining about that one.

Why?

Because in that case his style worked, and that perfectly justifies his writing style for Spidey at that time.

but the giant sweeping change thrust onto Spidey that was his marriage with MJ?

That altered Spidey in a fundamental way that left him for at least a decade afterwards a mess when it came to how he was approached.

Look I'm not telling anyone that they should like the Spidey comics.

But I like em, and so do many many others.

They are selling hundreds of thousands of the comics a month regardless of if you like it or not.

So just pretende MJ died, move on and enjoy what Sloth is doing with the characters, because right now Spider-Man is one of the best books out there.

And they didn't muck up 30 years of history, mucking up 30 years means changing everything - thats not what happened. I just finished the anti-venom story. Its made very clear that Spider-Man and Brook and Venom and Green Goblin all had their pasts and battles and issues with each other. Norman and Harry both still died and came back. If people have an issue with how they made the changes (and I do too, OMD was everything I don't like about comics) but don't have a big issues with the changes themselves......just pretend OMD didn;t happen and start enjoying some great books.

IfAnd if you let one bad story line drive you away from the character, you weren;t that big of a fan to begin with.

Its not hard at all, no writer ever really deals with the marriage. "Sorry I have to go fight X villian sweetie, sorry we can't do whatever I promised we'll do" then one panel of MJ looking worried and thats it.

You're wrong. BND brought that repsonsibilty back to Spider-Man. Most of his supporting characters had been dropped by the way side. His wife took care of everything a home, Aunt May knew he was Spider-Man etc...

Now he has to worry and deal with - money, having a place to live, affording his webs (he went a few issues without them), Aunt May and her not finding out about him, Harry and his gf coming on to him, moral issues with the DB, living a cop who wants to kill him, the city thinking hes a killer etc.... Over the lat 20 years or so the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders, they just slammed it back onto him.