Quote Originally Posted by RD155 View Post
Another problem was that they tried to brainwash the fanbase in a sense by continuously stating things like "the marriage is holding us back"...."It limits him..." "It limits the stories we can tell". I'm still waiting for those amazing stories that can only be told through the eyes of an unmarried man child character.
Yeah that was basically attempting to gaslight the readership. And gaslighting the readership was something they had success in because Quesada and company, and especially Brevoort's asinine manifesto (which earns Jedi Master Luke Skywalker's astonishment for getting every single word wrong), spread a lot of misninformation and distortions about the character which I still see sprout and disperse online.

Slott did not have a good feel for the character. This is not to say that he doesn't know about Spider-man. Its obvious that the guy is a Spider nerd with endless knowledge on him. His skillset as a writer just never fit in well with the character.
It's possible to be a fan of something, to be passionate about something, and not be good at the thing you are passionate for. 'Wanting is better than having' and so on and so forth.

Personally I'm just not a fan of him as a person either and I've had back and forth conversations with him on a different website forum and his energy rubbed me completely the wrong way during those interactions as well.
Spencer has said that he has not given interviews or spoken much when taking over as lead Spider-Man writer, letting the work speak for itself. I kind of think that stance is a response to, not only Spencer's own bad experiences on social media and twitter when he wrote Cap but a response to the kind of outsize platform Slott tried to make for himself where he basically went on message boards and others and argued like any fan.

My issues with Slott's opinions was there seemed to be a general lack of conviction. By that I mean he had things both ways. So for instance when people criticized his Superior Ock for doing the story in a way that seemed to license his bad behavior, Slott would say that he intended readers to feel that way, to see that as subversive and challenge their identification. On the other hand if people praised Slott and said that they unironically liked Superior Ock and found him heroic, Slott would say that those people got his point and he was telling a story of redemption. Alan Moore has always corrected the record on Rorschach for instance. Whenever fans came up and said that Rorschach was their favorite hero or character, Moore would pause and raise an eyebrow and set the record that he intended Rorschach to be an interesting character who is tragic but not as any kind of hero you hold as a role model. Moore would reject praise if that countered his moral argument, whereas Slott never once tried to correct the record but always had things both ways. Because Moore has conviction. Gerry Conway is trying to reclaim The Punisher from his "Thin Blue Line" fanboys because he too has conviction.