Spider-Man character growth vs. staying in high school and Joe Quesada

[Mister Mets]

If the only way to fit your definition of civil is to self-censor to that level, then to hell with being civil. I’ve always felt it’s better to be honest than polite anyways.

We're probably overthinking a slip of the tongue from Garlador but we should generally try to disagree without being disagreeable, and insulting someone's taste falls in the latter category.

No it isn’t. If you don’t want the character to grow, and to stay in high school, then you can just read flashback stories like Shadow of the Green Goblin or Spidey, and, then the mainline comics can have actual character growth again. Then everybody wins. You can read the character in the status quo you prefer, and fans who want to see a character develop still get what they want

It doesn't quite work that way. Copied and pasted from elsewhere.

Most Untold Tales projects combine the insignificance of the TV show/ movie tie‑ins, with a less accessible world. The stories have to fit in the old framework of the past of the real Marvel Universe, which suggests that nothing important can happen. There’s less drama than in the regular comics, as the reader will know exactly how things will end for the hero, main villains and most of the supporting cast.

Writers can play around with this, as Kurt Busiek did in his Untold Tales of Spider‑Man run and Brian K Vaughan did in his mini‑series Spider‑Man/ Doctor Octopus: Negative Exposure by focusing on new supporting cast members. They can also try taking advantage of dramatic irony with existing characters as Lee Weeks did in his excellent Death & Destiny mini-series, but many constraints remain. The dramatic irony strategy requires a reader to be familiar with the older material.

Long‑term subplots involving the private lives of characters are also more difficult, as in most cases readers will be convinced that things will work out fine, and decades old comics will usually prove them right. When they show conflict in a relationship, most readers will be aware of how that relationship will eventually come to an end, or that it’ll be strong enough to last into the present day Marvel U. Low sales on a few earlier critically acclaimed projects set in the past might scare away some readers, unwilling to invest in a book more likely than not to be a sales failure, and thus less likely to lead to interesting future stories. This is more of an occasional short-form structure for mini-series and possible OGNs than anything to be relied on for the long-term.

I vaguely remember someone from Marvel saying that back-issues of Spider-Man that Venom showed up in did well digitally. I think it was around the time the Flash Thompson Venom series launched, but I don't recall whether it was an interview, a convention panel, a blog post or something else.



Telling someone that they accept slop, that they accept substandard comics, and that they need to raise their standards, is saying that they want bad comics. It's condescending, it's rude, and it isn't conducive to a civil, adult conversation. It's a disproportionate response to a no stakes conversation about a super hero comic.

Checking what's popular digitally seems like a no-brainer thing to do.

It's useful for Marvel to know what characters, writers and artists get more readers.

The most useful detail would be to find out what stories keep more of their readers (IE- where do you see the lowest dropoff from Issue 1 to Issue 2?)

Saying that someone accepts repetitive comics is explicitly not saying that someone wants bad comics. TOM & JERRY is repetitive and I LOVE TOM & JERRY.

The specific word that was used was "substandard."