The Renew Your Vows Retrospective Throw-Down: Slott v Conway v Stegman vs Houser

[Miles To Go]

The year 2015 saw a monumental paradigm shift in Marvel Comics. An ambitious storyline called Secret Wars did away with alternate realities and threw various "What If" scenarios into one big blender called Battleworld under the control of God Emperor Doom. During this event, we followed Peter Parker through a most unique adventure. Written by Dan Slott and illustrated by Andy Kubert, Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows was the appointment book of the summer for Spider-Man fans.

At a time where Peter and MJ were portrayed as night and day apart, and the Spider-Marriage had spent four to five years confined to just the daily newspaper comic strip, RYV came out of a need to "scratch the itch" of fans hungry for fresh Peter/MJ material...a taste of forbidden fruit. According to Dan, trying to get it done took "moving mountains", but eventually people listened, and we got five issues of a story of family, struggle, hard choices, and rollicking adventure as Peter went up against Venom and then a despot called the Regent, which he defeats with the aid of his faithful wife and daughter.

When the dust on Secret Wars settled, Battleworld was no more, the Fantastic Four had been split up, Doctor Doom had his face fixed, and the 616 version of Peter went back to being the focus of the book and went about his own life without MJ, who migrated over to Iron Man. As established by Slott later in 2016, both had only a very faint memory of what their Battleworld counterparts had experienced

Later in 2016, the Spider-Marriage was brought back to mainline comics for a full ongoing based on the RYV adventure written initially by Gerry Conway and assisted by Ryan Stegman on art. Peter, MJ and their daughter Annie came together as a crime-fighting family unit and came up against Mole Man, Magneto and the Brotherhood, MJ conquered the Venom symbiote at last, fought a giant Goblin robot. Eventually, Conway left due to clashes with editorial and Stegman filled in for a bit before passing the baton over to Jodie Houser...and even more changed with her. Annie was grown into a teenager, and the fortunes of the book soon faded.

Today, Renew Your Vows came to an end with issue 23. The Parker family will play a role in the Spidergeddon event and Annie Parker will team with her alternate world sister Mayday in a Spider-Girls mini-series (along with Anya Corzon)

This thread is dedicated to asking you, the Spider-Man paying public, what your thoughts on the overall series were. Who had the best run? Which era was your favourite? What were the highs and lows? And with Peter and MJ now a couple again in 616, what do you think it's legacy will be on reflection? It obviously helped prepare new readers mentally for Peter and MJ as an item, and told long standing critics that it was perfectly OK for MJ to function as more than just a "housewife who worries and waits by the window" (which was always a b.s criticism anyway). Do you see a future for the series, or do you think Spidergeddon will dismantle the family?

Decide now.

[Celgress]

Gerry Conway, IMO.

[blackspidey2099]

I honestly think Stegman's one or two issues were best. Though after Stegman/Conway left the series became mediocre at best, ngl.

[Mister Mets]

I'll have to read Houser's work before I can vote, but I'm probably going with Slott. Conway/ Stegman's work was solid, but I can't see anyone picking it as one of their all-time favorites.

I could see someone saying that of the original mini.

[SpiderClops]

Dan Slott's Renew Your Vows mini is one of the best Spider-Man stories.

Conway was enjoyable. Stegman was ok. After that I just gave up. Only read the first Houser issue. The series was going into directions and had made a few really weird choices that I don't think suited this title at all.

[WebLurker]

I think that I liked the Conway/Stegman era the best. Houser's has been fine for what it was and Slott did a nice (if flawed) single story, but I think that Conway/Stegman paced themselves pretty well, even if the ending fell flat on its face. (Also, I think that Stegman has been the best artist of the bunch to work on the series to date.)

[Jekyll]

As a single story? Slott’s mini series was probably my favorite work on Spider-Man he did.

I would have been really interested to see where Conway would have taken the book. It had a really strong opening and it’s a shame that he left due to creative differences. I was very impressed with Stegeman’s fill in issues and I was expecting not to enjoy Houser’s run but she did a really great job as well. I’m really sad to see this series come to an end.

My rankings:

Slott
Stegeman
Conway
Houser