Slott v. Spencer: Year One

[WebSlingWonder]

Hey everyone!

So now that Nick Spencer has his first 13 issues and thus his first year knocked out on Amazing Spider-Man, I thought it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on the comparison between Slott's first year as solo writer on ASM and Spencer's, seeing as it's been so long since there's been a new writer in a while on the title.

So, what do you think?

[Celgress]

Slott's first year was rather bumpy due to a massive status quo change so I think Spencer's first year by way of comparison has been better received. In my mind at least, it isn't really fair to compare the two for the reason I just mentioned. Both were good in their own way, is my personal opinion.

[Vortex85]

Hey everyone!

So now that Nick Spencer has his first 13 issues and thus his first year knocked out on Amazing Spider-Man, I thought it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on the comparison between Slott's first year as solo writer on ASM and Spencer's, seeing as it's been so long since there's been a new writer in a while on the title.

So, what do you think?

Wouldn’t 24 issues be his first year since it’s a bi-monthly book?

[WebSlingWonder]

Wouldn’t 24 issues be his first year since it’s a bi-monthly book?

Maybe. But I wanted to compare now since neither of them around this time had the major storylines.

[Rosebunse]

I think Slott gave Spencer a lot to work with and I like Slott's love for the epic scale.

That being said, Spencer's work just feels so much more intimate. It isn't just about Peter, but also about all these other people who make up his life, not just like JJJ and MJ, but also like his villains.

[Snoop Dogg]

Nick and Dan are like beautiful galaxies. To have them collide would lead to a maelstrom of cosmic energy that would ripple out across the universe and create all sorts of new life. I guess God in this metaphor is Nick Lowe. Or maybe Wacker for getting them both started on Spider-Books.

[your_name_here]

Two very different writers it’s hard to compare. Slott went bigger and more different. Spencer is keeping it grounded and adding a lot of needed “lightness” to the stories.

Maybe, as someone else suggested, wait for 24 issues.

[Inversed]

I would say personally that Spencer's run has started out, and probably will end up, much better than Slott's ANAD era run, however I think Slott's start during his Big Time era is a bit superior. I want to wait until at least Hunted concludes to get a better sense of my opinion, but I think Slott's first year really had alot of great stories back to back, with Big Time, Revenge Of The Spider Slayers, No One Dies, Fantastic Spider-Man, and then Spider-Island.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Dan Slott worked as part of a writing team, Webheads and so on for his first year before "Big Time"...whereas Nick Spencer is starting out by himself right out of the gate.

Slott also had to deal with the fact that he was overseeing what was basically a Crisis Reboot but was specifically not supposed to read like or feel like a crisis reboot and had to come up with a lot of distractions and stuff to hide the fact which ended up making Slott and his team a permanently polarizing chapter in Spider-Man's publication history because of the poisoned chalice that OMD and later OMIT gave them. Slott remember wasn't nearly as controversial until Superior Spider-Man. And the vibes that Nick Spencer's giving is not so different from Slott in that period between Spider-Island, his biggest, most crowd-pleasing and most consensus-making story and Dying Wish, where Slott was at his least contentious.

Right now, Spencer has done stuff well. His run has some vibes but more because of what they tease out from audiences and right now I think his run is burdened with unrealistic expectations, like Spencer will bring the marriage back, or Spencer will undo OMD and so on and so forth, when none of that is really in his power to say or do anything about, at least not in the way audiences want. I like TASM #1 and the Boomerang two-parter in the club, and the comedy and romance so far is "on point".

I am not too interested in Spider-Hush (the bandage-draped insect dude) because either that mystery will pay off in terms of stuff about Mephisto or it will be about this Thieves secret society or so on, or this is Spencer's take on the Hobgoblin mystery, and who really cares.

[your_name_here]

My only problem with Spencer at the minute, small as it is, is that it’s feeling like a constant build up. I’ll reserve judgement till after Hunted, where hopefully things go up a gear.

[Mister Mets]

It's not an exact year since the schedule's were a bit different, but if we're looking at the first 13 issues of the Big Time run VS Spencer, Slott wins hands-down.

And I like Spencer's first 13 issues.

But Slott's opening salvo was one of the best on Spider-Man ever. The debut of the Phil Urich Hobgoblin set-up the new status quo in a satisfying way. The next arc was a solid team up between Scorpion and the Spider Slayers. "No One Dies" is one of the best Spider-Man stories ever. A point one issue featured the solo debut of the Flash Thompson Venom. Torchsong had some fun Spidey/ Fantastic Four team-ups at a meaningful time.

[WebSlingWonder]

Dan Slott worked as part of a writing team, Webheads and so on for his first year before "Big Time"...whereas Nick Spencer is starting out by himself right out of the gate.

Slott also had to deal with the fact that he was overseeing what was basically a Crisis Reboot but was specifically not supposed to read like or feel like a crisis reboot and had to come up with a lot of distractions and stuff to hide the fact which ended up making Slott and his team a permanently polarizing chapter in Spider-Man's publication history because of the poisoned chalice that OMD and later OMIT gave them. Slott remember wasn't nearly as controversial until Superior Spider-Man. And the vibes that Nick Spencer's giving is not so different from Slott in that period between Spider-Island, his biggest, most crowd-pleasing and most consensus-making story and Dying Wish, where Slott was at his least contentious.

Right now, Spencer has done stuff well. His run has some vibes but more because of what they tease out from audiences and right now I think his run is burdened with unrealistic expectations, like Spencer will bring the marriage back, or Spencer will undo OMD and so on and so forth, when none of that is really in his power to say or do anything about, at least not in the way audiences want. I like TASM #1 and the Boomerang two-parter in the club, and the comedy and romance so far is "on point".

I am not too interested in Spider-Hush (the bandage-draped insect dude) because either that mystery will pay off in terms of stuff about Mephisto or it will be about this Thieves secret society or so on, or this is Spencer's take on the Hobgoblin mystery, and who really cares.

Spider-Hush is a fantastic name and I will definitely use that from now on.

[WebSlingWonder]

It's interesting: I really like Slott's first few years as solo writer, and "Superior" was a great continuation. But after that, he went downhill fast for me. I'm praying that Spencer doesn't do the same thing.

[Snoop Dogg]

As the world's biggest Spencer fan and the one voted as "Most Likely To Become Nick's Cosmic Herald" in high school, I am admittedly waiting for the one thing that's the backbone of the entire run. Kraven's been that for this first year, but I think in the macro it'll be the Centipede reveal, which is why I'm so thirsty for it. The one crazy idea that everything orbits around. Or maybe he is doing it like Dan did, where every year a new idea became that backbone. A format I also love. Maybe Kraven's for these first 12 months and Kingpin will have the Infinity Gauntlet for the summer and then Centipede will take over 2020. B-B-But I wanna know who The Spider-Hush Who Laughs is noooooooooow! 👶👶👶😭😭😭

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Spider-Hush is a fantastic name and I will definitely use that from now on.

I wish I came up with it. But it was actually coined by Mark Ginocchio and Dan Gvozden of the Amazing Spider-Talk. Those guys are some of the best online Spider scholars around and they've been covering Spencer's run with some amount of skepticism and doubt. They actually call him Shush. But I made that Spider-Hush because then no one would have gotten that reference.

"No One Dies" is one of the best Spider-Man stories ever.

I've read that recently and I have to say it's dated pretty badly. The art by Marcos Martin is excellent but fundamentally the story is really dumb. "No one dies" became this thing that Slott used as a meme throughout his run but there's no humanity or reality to what he's trying to communicate. Yeah funerals are bad. We knew that. And yes it's weird that in comics, bad guys come back from the dead more often than good guys...which as we all know is a problem applicable to the real world. The only part I like is when Jameson calls Spider-Man a moron for saying that which is classic Slott doublespeak for having his cake and eating it too...you know putting this out there and seeing if this could be a new motto for Spider-man and then adding a backdoor and then basically not doing anything real with that. I mean Spider-Man acting like a god and saying no one dies is ridiculous nonsense. That story got overpraised when it came out, again mostly for Martin and the layout which is artier than usual (or if you want to be mean pretentious) by Spider-Man standards but the story itself is not something that will age well, mainly because Slott never really resolved or organically built on the themes of what he did in that story going forward, except using it occasionally. And it's kind of obvious like Peter would go around saying, "When Marla Jameson died. I made a vow. From this day on...No one dies", the exact same phrase and it gets silly.

The stuff that Slott did that will last is Big Time, especially Mr. Negative, and Spider-Island. But aside from that little of what he did was truly original, unique, humane, or special.

Compared to that, there's more humanity in the two-part Boomerang story or Spencer's ASM#1/802. Where you know Peter hangs out with rogues and wonders if Boomerang is to be trusted on the level and then the two of them become bros while also still being on the opposite sides. It uses comic book stuff to communicate bits about redemption, forgiveness, and the fact that people can often surprise you and so on.