Do you consider Kindred a hit or a miss?

[Nero]

From the mystery surrounding the identity of Kindred to the depraved ways Kindred tormented Spider-Man both psychologically and physically, clearly Kindred played a major factor to Spider-Man during Nick Spencer's Amazing Spider-Man run.

Now with the story with Kindred concluded, do you see Kindred a hit or a miss?

[HypnoHustler]

Miss.

Huge, huge miss. It should’ve been wrapped up around #50 and the reveal should have been a lot more simple, logical and emotionally satisfying.

[federicodettofred]

I like Spencer's run (way more than Beyond, for now), but Kindred is definitely a miss if we consider the ending. 74 issues just for "hey, Sarah and Gabriel are clones and they hate Peter because he forgot about them" is honestly stupid, especially after all those Kindred monologues where "he" seemed to be planning something and there was nothing in the end.

[Spidey_62]

Big fat miss.

[Spiderfan001]

Kindred as a character is a miss for me, but his impact on Peter and the story surrounding him is a hit.If that makes sense

[Batman Begins 2005]

Miss. Liked the first half but everything post Kindred reveal was a letdown.

[Grapeweasel]

Who?...........

[A Maze Thing]

Kinda interesting early on. As a kid I really loved the original Carrion-story and Kindred reminded me a little of that, with both being creepy looking mysterious characters who knew who Peter Parker was. But the Kindred-mystery definitely went on for too long and the more that was revealed the sillier and less interesting everything became. Not sure if Spencer had any ambitions to create a new arch-villain or not, but like so many other villains that has started as mystery-villian with potential to continue to be big threat (Jackal, Hobgoblin, and the already mentioned Carrion) it feels like Kindred also probably will be handled poorly or just be ignored by future writers

[Frontier]

I consider him, ultimately, a convoluted and overdrawn miss that had some potential.

[Lukmendes]

What? No poll?

Either way, big miss.

While I did like the way the mystery was used at first, with him being a passive villain staying behind the scenes and helping out other villains instead of being a more direct threat, after a while it overstayed its welcome, and it felt like this after a while:



Which's actually funny to realize that the dumb mystery around Kraken back in Secret Empire was also by Spencer...

Anyways, the more the story was focused on Kindred, the worse it became, and when Spidey finally confronts him directly in ASM#52 vol 5, Last Remains drops in quality by becoming really slow, really whatever, with Kindred rambling nonsense and the narration barely calling him out on that, and it manages to become even worse in the final arc with the sudden reveal that "Kindred is Gabriel's and Sarah's bodies, controlled by Harry's AI, controlled by Mephisto", and while there were hints that there's more than one Kindred, it still fell flat.

And there's even more problems than those, like Spencer being fucking terrible at writing magic, so Kindred has seemingly no limits to what he can do (And funnily enough he arbitrarily can't shapeshift), manages to give Sin Eater, who's basically a minion, the power to steal any power, and there's also how Spidey activated a spell by recording Strange doing it, and unexplained stuff like who cloned Harry, which may or may not be related to Kindred.

So again, big miss, became too convoluted and boring, and Spencer's run was at its best when Kindred wasn't involved, his presence almost always dropped the quality in later issues.

[Nero]

What? No poll?

For some reason, it wouldn't go through when I tried setting it up. If the moderators are able to add that, that's cool.

[SpideyClone]

Miss. The whole AI/clones/Mephisto mish-mash of a plot went on far too long. The ultimate prize turned out to be a battle for Harry's soul, which none of the primary characters were aware of. Not only cheapened Harry's original death and redemption, but killed him off a second time (clone Harry) wasting all of the character's development since BND.

[Majesty]

It retconned Sins Past.

So hit.

[bob.schoonover]

It's a miss. Despite reporting to the contrary, I'm quite certain that Spencer had a different plan, and I think the plan he intended to execute would have made Kindred worthwhile. However, it seems pretty clear to me that editorial wasn't on board with either Spencer's original plan or the compromised finale we got (hence Beyond being planned specifically to ignore most of Spencer's run). On the plus side, I think the finale was sufficiently conclusory in a way that means it can be ignored from here on out - we never have to talk about Sins Past, the Stacy twins, or Kindred ever again if we don't want to. Harry, Mephisto, and Norman's sins will all come back, but we don't need to dwell on the rest

[PanicPixieDreamGirl]

Hated it, hated it, hated it. If Mephisto himself turned up on my doorstep and offered me a deal to erase the whole damn storyline from existence there would be a very long pause while I thought about it.