How would you sabotage sales for Spider-Man?

[Frontier]

The more ideas I read the more plausible they seem as ideas Marvel would actually use at this point .

Some of them even sound like stuff Marvel is currently doing right now.

[Vworp Vworp]

Nothing, Spider-Man is far too popular a character to get to a point where sales go down that significantly.

Yup. If it's the in-universe main ASM Spidey title, people are always gonna buy it. If you can have your main character essentially murdered and his killer take over the book and people are still digging it, then you're basically bulletproof.

[Mister Mets]

Nothing, Spider-Man is far too popular a character to get to a point where sales go down that significantly.

The X-Men and the Avengers have had sales go down, though.

Yup. If it's the in-universe main ASM Spidey title, people are always gonna buy it. If you can have your main character essentially murdered and his killer take over the book and people are still digging it, then you're basically bulletproof.

I don't think Marvel did that one to sabotage the series.

[Spiderfang]

Oh there are several ways that will surely cause some longtime readers to drop the book, let's see...

1. Change Peter Parker's race
2. Change Peter Parker to a female
3. Change Peter Parker's gender/sexuality to one of the 75 new ones
4. Incite a second Clone Saga
5. Replace long-standing characters with new obviously gimmicky characters who act as mouthpieces for the sponsors
6. Make Peter Parker give up fighting crime altogether if the total number of villains do not match his own gender/sexuality/ethnicity out of fear of public backlash & accusations of 'racist/sexist/homophobe/etc'.
7. Put literal ads in the middle of the comics and require readers to pay a small fee each time they want to bypass the ad to read the next page
8. Make Aunt May as out of character as possible (i.e. make her a devil-worshiping, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed, sadomasochistic dominatrix)
9. Stretch events over a several year period by filling up spaces with several pages of characters gasping, poorly colored backgrounds and recaps of previous issues.
10. Follow Bleach's example.

[Scott Taylor]

alas her heart belongs to miles as decreed by the great bendis.lol

Kaine actually might make for a very good adversary for Miles.

[Thor-Ul]

I already suggested that in here

Oops, sorry.

Anyway...

Peter discovers than Uncle Ben is alive and living as a millionare palyboy in europe. He always hated May ad Peter and after he won a millionare lottery prize,he faked his death and run away with the money. Dissapointed, Peter choose to become Dr. Octopus sidekick, because he is a better role model.

[SuperiorIronman]

Peter faces a villain who not only can drain his powers but knows his move-set inside and out so that the villain can't even be touched by Peter. The villain can temporarily remove Peter's powers but the length of time they are gone gets longer with each removal to the point they might as well be gone. The villain beats Peter every single time over the course of six issues and at the midway point the villain murders Mary Jane Watson.
With her death Peter is on the hunt for the villain and the fourth issue is just a reprint of any earlier Peter and Mary Jane moments with out of context word balloons. At the fifth issue the villain proceeds to blow up Peter's childhood home with Aunt May inside killing her and at the final issue the villain reveals herself as CINDY MOON. Turns out that this was all about Peter being deemed unworthy to wield the Spider-man title. Cindy has come to not only destroy Peter and usurp the title for herself but destroy anything Peter has built or had in order to truly cripple him. At the end of the sixth issue Cindy kills Peter with her enhanced powers and uses the web of life and destiny and whatever to erase Peter from 616. This effectively puts her into the role of Amazing Spider-man with no differences in history beyond the fact that it's Cindy and not Peter. This goes unresolved and Cindy remains the lead in Amazing Spider-man for 2 years despite not being called Spider-man in the actual comic.
Cindy eventually usurps the Avengers with her own team comprised of her own Spiderlings and makes the world truly safer than it has ever been ever. This status qup is reflected by Marvel as a whole eventually and suddenly the book ends with Peter swinging along with none of this ever happening to show it was truly wasting our time.

[boots]

hire rob liefeld








(half joking i actually really liked his rendition of spidey in early x-force)

[boots]

Genre fans love boring, as long as it is indulgent. Just go check out some fan fiction.

An unfortunately large amount of fans would love nothing more than to see characters they love just hanging out at a party absent any drama or even story structure.

this is da truth

[Mister Mets]

hire rob liefeld








(half joking i actually really liked his rendition of spidey in early x-force)

Hire a bad Rob Liefeld imitator.

[DieHard200904]

Oops, sorry.

Anyway...

Peter discovers than Uncle Ben is alive and living as a millionare palyboy in europe. He always hated May ad Peter and after he won a millionare lottery prize,he faked his death and run away with the money. Dissapointed, Peter choose to become Dr. Octopus sidekick, because he is a better role model.

Or how about Uncle Ben is actually Deadpool? Yep make the whole Wade Wilson story a lie, and its actually Uncle Ben who got the experimentation to become Deadpool and make Peter scream off that "No, That's not true, THAT's IMPOSSIBLE!" When Deadpool (a.k.a. Uncle BenPool) reveals the truth to him.

[DieHard200904]

People are going this all wrong. To make anything(be it comic books, movies, tv show, etc.) a commercial failure, there is only one near sure fire way to do that.

Make it boring.

What you guys are describing might make it a critical failure, might make it a failure to fans, but not necessarily a commercial failure. Seriously, some of the ideas presented in this thread I'd read just to see what happens next. Some ideas might be offensive, and again that could have the opposite effect on what you want. Some people would want to read it just to see what the rukus is all about. But make it boring, and that's pretty much it. Nobody wants boring.

This post bears plenty of repeating...

[Lukmendes]

They could make it so that part of Mephisto's deal was to make Peter eventualy have to work for him, so they do that and make Peter just so disguntingly edgy that would make the 90's look like silver age, oh and the first thing he should do is kill MJ, and in the goriest way possible, maybe covering an entire issue.

Or maybe this would be so controversial it would actualy sell well, you never know with fans lol.

[Rosebunse]

Most of these ideas actually sound really cool if implemented correctly.

Because we all know we'd totally buy it if Peter Parker married Johnny Storm. You know you would, I know I would, we all know we all would.

[suemorphplus209]

Most of these ideas actually sound really cool if implemented correctly.

Because we all know we'd totally buy it if Peter Parker married Johnny Storm. You know you would, I know I would, we all know we all would.

No kidding, a lot of these would sell like hotcakes if they were obviously alternate universe concepts, or even gags like Spider-Man marrying Deadpool. Or Spider-Man in an alternate universe marrying both MJ and Gwen at the same time because marrying more than one is legal in that universe.