in comics, if one creator tactically nukes something they don't want to work with, like a character, a status quo, a costume, blah blah blah, then the next person is free to fix it, for better or for worse, and as long as your superhero comic still has a character doing superhero things related to the book's name, you can do anything, because you can hypothetically convince editors to do anything if you have an argument for why your story needs it or why it should be done
nothing is sacred and we're all going to die
I don't blind date I make the direct market vibrate
None of the BND team argued for the marriage going away. That was decided upon by Quesada himself. The BND writing team signed on to write Spider-Man and that would have happened regardless of the marriage being there or not. JMS didn't agree with it either, but eventually said yes out of professional courtesy to Quesada and a sense of friendship to the man, and in the vain hope of somehow salvaging it and doing a good story. Paul Guggenheim and Dan Slott said multiple times, at the time and afterwards, as did Fred van Lente, that they would have worked on Spider-Man if he was married or not. And Guggenheim has said he'd be totally okay with the marriage coming back, noting that nothing of what he did in BND has stuck. Guggenheim also said that his initial reaction to hearing Quesada's actual OMD plot (he was told there would be a retcon but never the details until later), was one of shock and the coming s--t-storm he had signed on for.
To quote Reed Richards in Secret Wars 2015, "Everybody Lives".nothing is sacred and we're all going to die
yes, but if someone hypothetically wanted mary jane dead, it would be a huge ask, but they would have the chance to at least propose an argument that maybe, maaaaybe could work, breaking up the relationship or writing her out of the book is much less of an ask and could definitely be done if someone really wanted to and they could address some concerns, and their plans for it were pretty good, prettaaay, prettaaay, pretty good
nothing is sacred and we're all going to die
I don't blind date I make the direct market vibrate
There's nothing hypothetical about this. Bob Harras ordered Mackie and Byrne to kill of MJ over their objections, and that included Byrne who didn't agree with the marriage. Paul Jenkins criticized that multiple times throughout that entire period calling it a terrible mistake and while he wrote Spider-Man in that time, he was never happy about it, and only felt satisfied when she returned, and that was restored.
And in any case, do people want to kill off Mary Jane because she is better off dead and a good story could be done with that, or as a way to make Peter single again? Those are two separate things. And not comparable. Spider-Man's story doesn't work with too many dead supporting cast.
Whose plans are you talking about here? In any case we have the stories. If the Spider-Marriage was a bad decision and the decision to undo it the good one, then the Second Clone Saga and OMD should be good stories. The decision to kill off MJ and the entire death/separation era should be considered a great era. In all cases, that has not proven to be the case. The fact that the stories that undid the marriage are bad stories disproves the notion that this was a good direction to take Spider-Man in.breaking up the relationship or writing her out of the book is much less of an ask and could definitely be done if someone really wanted to and they could address some concerns, and their plans for it were pretty good, prettaaay, prettaaay, pretty good
To quote Reed Richards in Secret Wars 2015, "Everybody Lives".nothing is sacred and we're all going to die
This does not appear to be the story of how Dickens wrote the Christmas Carol, or of its reception in the US.
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/...alinescu1.html
It was written for an English audience, and published as a novella. There was no comment about changing for American sensibilities.
At the time, Dickens had pissed off Americans with their depiction in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, as well as his travelogue American Notes for General Circulation, so they weren't his target audience.
https://lithub.com/charles-dickens-h...s-bad-manners/
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
Dickens did change the ending of Great Expectations after reader reception and public demand though.
To quote an example closer to Spider-Man, Blake Bell's Strange and Stranger, his biography of Ditko mentions that Steve once pitched to Stan a story to kill off Betty Brant. Stan told him no, feeling it would give too much baggage on top of Ben's death. Ditko came around and agreed that Stan was right. Ditko's plan had Betty dying in a domestic accident rather than any supervillain or criminal shenanigan.
From what I've read with a few minutes on Google, Dickens changed the ending of Great Expectations prior to publication based on the advice of writer friends.
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/en...ns/ending.html
https://listverse.com/2013/01/14/deleted-book-chapters/
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
unless something is actually done, you’ll never truly know if it would have worked
on making creative changes based on feedback; good advice i once heard was to listen to your friend’s feedback, if enough of them tell you something isn’t working...believe them. it isn’t. but fffs, do not listen to their ideas on how to fix it. that’s up to you
troo fan or death
It's ... possible, I mean, I have said a bad thing or two about it but you can have complaints about stories even if you do like them. I'm not one of those people that harp on it forever.
I will say that OMD caused the fanbase to become horrible. You can't have Spider-man conversations anymore without people bringing it up and every appearance of Mary Jane, or for that matter, any female that shows any interest in Peter, is somehow twisted to prove a point where somebody is bound to rant for paragraphs on end about how the story is the worst thing that ever happened in human existence, how the people who wrote it hate marriage and support satanism, or how the comic itself somehow broke into the reader's home and molested their houseplants.
I disagree on multiple levels.
In these types of comics, writers are essentially borrowing characters from their successors. A reliance on retcons from their end can increase the chance of changing characters too much, and breaking things in ways that change the reality of the series. Imagine the arguments about One More Day if we had that kind of retcon three times a decade.
It's also probably possible to break characters in ways that can't be fixed. If DC were stupid enough to do a "Leaving Neverland" take on Batman & Robin, no retcon would fix the damage to the character's reputation. They're not going to be that dumb, but it's always possible that there will be a decision that is very unpopular in ways they don't anticipate (editorial may have blind spots), or something that hits a cultural fault line in a way that's difficult to reverse (if half the fans like it and see any reversal as an insult, and the other half demand immediate reversal.)
The discussions on feedback are a bit muddied by the difference in writing for a finite work, and writing a serial with no end in sight.
With a traditional movie or novel, the main thing is to tell one story well.
A serial requires the character and world to stay intact for years to come.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets