Spider-Title Placements in The Top 100 For December 2017

[DieHard200904]

Personally, I don't care much for Peter and MJ's daughter, more so the relationship itself.

So would Peter and MJ going out, which apparently Slott says is acceptable, be ok?

[DieHard200904]

I think the book would've done better but how much better I couldn't really say with any confidence. The thing that really baffles me with the way they elected to go is that I imho there's two definitive things you can say about Ben Reilly whether you're in favor or against the direction they went with.


#1 Ben is a controversial character. The missteps they made with the character during the Clone Saga are well documented & trying to make him the "true" Peter Parker pretty much sabotaged any chance of a successful run he had as Spider-man.


#2 The audience for a solo book featuring Ben no matter which way they decide to have him act (hero, Anti-Hero, villain) is most likely a pretty limited audience.


So if we can agree to those two things (hopefully we can as I feel they're both pretty fair statements about the character) why would you go a route where you know there's more than a pretty good possibility that you're going to drive off a portion of said limited audience?

Were they really that confident that they could offset the people who'd be put off by this by people who were optimistic or didn't mind the morally grey route? To me you can get away with doing something like that in ASM (EX: Superior Spider-man) but not with something like Scarlet Spider/Ben Reilly.


The last point I want to make is that when the book was first announced & people voiced concerns over the premise the first thing I & quite a few others were met with was "But they provided such a great creative team!" & the response to that I voiced (along with others) is that the quality of the creative team wasn't the issue but I feel like maybe that somehow people weren't trying to hear that.

The biggest part of the problem, IMO, is that Ben Reilly is a spinoff character, you generally get a fraction of the fanbase with Ben that you would get with Peter, so what you do risks hurting the fanbase to a greater degree than it would Peter. Couple that with the fact that some people were finished with Ben back with the original Clone Saga where he died. Just because they could bring him back doesn't mean it was the greatest idea. It hurts to say this, especially when the Clone Saga was my first attempt and the Parker Legacy comic was interesting.

[classicgmer]

The biggest part of the problem, IMO, is that Ben Reilly is a spinoff character, you generally get a fraction of the fanbase with Ben that you would get with Peter, so what you do risks hurting the fanbase to a greater degree than it would Peter. Couple that with the fact that some people were finished with Ben back with the original Clone Saga where he died. Just because they could bring him back doesn't mean it was the greatest idea. It hurts to say this, especially when the Clone Saga was my first attempt and the Parker Legacy comic was interesting.

I think the moment people permanently turned on was before that when he was revealed to be the "real" Peter Parker. That moment pretty much killed any chance at a successful run as Spider-Man & the fan backlash from that pretty much killed Marvel's interest in the character until recently.


I'm also of the mind that if Marvel only sees value in him with his current demeanor then he basically should've stayed dead. When you throw Peter David & Mark Bagley at the book & the result is that the book is surviving as opposed to thriving I'd say it's time to perhaps reevaluate the strategy used for the character.

[frizb]

Which is funny because Miles and Spider-Gwen have loads of counter parts in the animated mediums now.

Ha! I guess it's a good thing I don't watch those lol