What Will Make You Come Back to Spider-Man?

[PCN24454]

Spider Man is successful when he is a unlucky guy, short on money, smart but forced to be a part time photographer because of his spider man duties, with a bad public image caused by the very newspaper he works for, always worried for her aunt. And now he is nothing of that anymore.

While I mostly agree with what you said, that last statement implies that he should be frozen in time and never changing which is something I don't agree with.

The problem with a lot of comics is that they're episodic by nature. Trying to make it serialized has essentially devalued the individual issues. We're past the point where we care about Peter dealing with the Villain of the Month. That's why people have been clamoring for the story to progress. It's kinda hard to do that when you don't have a main story to begin with.

[Alan2099]

The problem with Spider Man is that is basically broken, by gimmicks like the marriage and the clone saga. Too much changes brought him too far from the original concept that made him successful. Look at all the other heroes, their concept still stands, Batman is a rich broody man always seeking revenge for their parents death, daredevil a blind catholic man with a deep sense of justice and a lawyer, the FF a family of sci-fi adventurers and so on. Even the née Hickman X-Men, despite the big changes, maintain their original concept, they fight for survival in a world here they are a feared / hated minority. Spider Man has lost the Daily Bugle and its cast, changed too many jobs, had too many girlfriends, his connection to May has become too tenuous, the book cast has changed so much nobody knows what to do with them. Spider Man is successful when he is a unlucky guy, short on money, smart but forced to be a part time photographer because of his spider man duties, with a bad public image caused by the very newspaper he works for, always worried for her aunt. And now he is nothing of that anymore.

I'm with you 100% on all of us.

People say things like progress and character growth but all that means in this case is that they took something that worked and turned it into something that doesn't work nearly as well.

[Celgress]

The problem with Spider Man is that is basically broken, by gimmicks like the marriage and the clone saga. Too much changes brought him too far from the original concept that made him successful. Look at all the other heroes, their concept still stands, Batman is a rich broody man always seeking revenge for their parents death, daredevil a blind catholic man with a deep sense of justice and a lawyer, the FF a family of sci-fi adventurers and so on. Even the née Hickman X-Men, despite the big changes, maintain their original concept, they fight for survival in a world here they are a feared / hated minority. Spider Man has lost the Daily Bugle and its cast, changed too many jobs, had too many girlfriends, his connection to May has become too tenuous, the book cast has changed so much nobody knows what to do with them. Spider Man is successful when he is a unlucky guy, short on money, smart but forced to be a part time photographer because of his spider man duties, with a bad public image caused by the very newspaper he works for, always worried for her aunt. And now he is nothing of that anymore.

I do agree that the absence of his classic status quo mainly the Bugle and its staff has hurt Spider-Man immensely in recent decades. I don't think taking away the marriage is the answer when all the other things that originally made Spidey popular remain absent. If they are going to reset Peter they need to do it right either be all in or don't bother. Spider-Man being a bachelor is not a fix-all as Marvel Editorial believes.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

People say things like progress and character growth but all that means in this case is that they took something that worked and turned it into something that doesn't work nearly as well.

People who trot stuff like this need not assume that others will automatically understand or agree with criteria as vague as "something that worked" and turned it into something "that doesn't work nearly as well".Nor ought they to make blithe statements like this without offering evidence in support of such a claim. How is that when Spider-Man got married, the books sold so well, and sold far better than the stories that came right before and did so for 7 years straight? The David Michelinie run sold far better than the Roger Stern and Tom Defalco runs that came before. KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT and THE WEDDING ANNUAL sold far better than Gang War, Spider-Man V. Wolverine, the entire Hobgoblin Saga that dragged and bored people by then. Of the five biggest Spider-Man stories of the '80s -- SECRET WARS, THE WEDDING, KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, VENOM, MacFarlane' SPIDER-MAN 1, four of them featured a married Spider-Man.

I don't think this claim that the marriage didn't work well has any substance or truth to it. It's a personal opinion, sure, but it cannot ever be passed or accepted as truth, nor I will add, was it in anyway representative of how the vast majority of Spider-Man's readership felt in the '80s (who I will also add is the biggest readership Spider-Man has had ever).

So again I must ask what makes you make such easily refutable claims as this?

The problem with Spider Man is that is basically broken, by gimmicks like the marriage and the clone saga. Too much changes brought him too far from the original concept that made him successful.

You say stuff without any evidence in support.

The "original concept that made him successful" if you mean high school...college-era Spider-Man and married Spider-Man outsold the previous status-quos far more than staying to the original concept ever did. The lowest-selling and lowest-read periods of Spider-Man are always the ones that fail to embrace the changes that have happened.

Look at all the other heroes, their concept still stands, Batman is a rich broody man always seeking revenge for their parents death,

Spider-Man feeling guilt about Uncle Ben's death is a constant no matter what he does or how much he grows up.

daredevil a blind catholic man

Murdock being a Catholic only became a major part of his title during Frank Miller's run, and especially the BORN AGAIN story.

This was not in any sense the original concept and with that you have shot your entire argument in foot in terms of your awareness of the original concepts of these characters and your credit of a major change by a later writer as a defining part of the character.

...had too many girlfriends,...

This problem got solved when he was married, you know. Then he just had the wife.

And now he is nothing of that anymore.

It's important to point out he wasn't nothing of that at the start. In AF#15 you didn't have Jameson, you didn't have the Daily Bugle, you didn't have him working as a photographer, and the public didn't hate him or anything.

[Celgress]

I'm with you 100% on all of us.

People say things like progress and character growth but all that means in this case is that they took something that worked and turned it into something that doesn't work nearly as well.

*shakes head* I never thought I'd write this, but, I'm starting to agree with you. I've found myself alienated in recent months from another of my comic book loves Superman because DC Editorial is trying to replace Clark with his bland copy-cat wanna-be edgy son. Superman is changing far too much for my tastes and I freely admit I hate it.

[Pav]

I doubt I'm the exact audience for this thread, because I haven't stopped buying Spidey comics: I just wait long periods of time and buy trades, either from my local con or online. But I don't find it hard to like Spidey comics, or comics in general. Usually, I'm able to find something I appreciate about an issue, an author, an artist, etc -- even if there are aspects about the work that aren't my cup of tea.

But! I can answer this: What would make me buy each new issue on a month to month basis, like I did as a kid?

1) Ben Reilly appearing regularly
2) The Slingers appearing
3) maybe Kaine

-Pav, who has no problem waiting for anything else...

[Darthfury78]

Have Peter complete his Ph.D

[PeterParked]

While I mostly agree with what you said, that last statement implies that he should be frozen in time and never changing which is something I don't agree with.

Personally I think super heroes comics works when there is change but this change doesn't impact the foundational elements that makes a character work. The famous "illusion of change". Updating a character is different than changing it, see for example Hickman (or Morrison) work on X-Men; everything fundamental is still there in a more contemporary key. Is it possible to do the same with Spider Man? Probably it is, what I mean is that they way the did it imho failed.

I do agree that the absence of his classic status quo mainly the Bugle and its staff has hurt Spider-Man immensely in recent decades. I don't think taking away the marriage is the answer when all the other things that originally made Spidey popular remain absent. If they are going to reset Peter they need to do it right either be all in or don't bother. Spider-Man being a bachelor is not a fix-all as Marvel Editorial believes.

I don't know why everyone think I was singling out the marriage, personally I didn't like that period a lot, but like most periods some part were good, some less. A problem I have with marrying a character like Spider Man is that it's too permanent and for reasons that don't have to do with storytelling, you can't have him divorce, you can't really kill or have his wife die, so you are stuck with the status forever (or you need to do something really weird like they did that doesn't work at all).

People who trot stuff like this need not assume that others will automatically understand or agree with criteria as vague as "something that worked" and turned it into something "that doesn't work nearly as well".Nor ought they to make blithe statements like this without offering evidence in support of such a claim. How is that when Spider-Man got married, the books sold so well, and sold far better than the stories that came right before and did so for 7 years straight? The David Michelinie run sold far better than the Roger Stern and Tom Defalco runs that came before. KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT and THE WEDDING ANNUAL sold far better than Gang War, Spider-Man V. Wolverine, the entire Hobgoblin Saga that dragged and bored people by then. Of the five biggest Spider-Man stories of the '80s -- SECRET WARS, THE WEDDING, KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, VENOM, MacFarlane' SPIDER-MAN 1, four of them featured a married Spider-Man.

I don't think this claim that the marriage didn't work well has any substance or truth to it. It's a personal opinion, sure, but it cannot ever be passed or accepted as truth, nor I will add, was it in anyway representative of how the vast majority of Spider-Man's readership felt in the '80s (who I will also add is the biggest readership Spider-Man has had ever).

So again I must ask what makes you make such easily refutable claims as this?



You say stuff without any evidence in support.
[/QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;5384591]

Relax man, everyone has their opinion, that you disagree with them doesn't mean you have to take it so hard. It's just comics. As far as comics sales go throughout the decades, a book sell more when the market is in is bigger, and less when the market is smaller, more in good times less in time of economic crises. A look at the numbers also shows that the difference is irrelevant, actually one could say that from the year of the marriage onwards sales only declined. Obviously the marriage wasn't the main culprit, the market shrinking was, but don't go on this crusades about facts if you have yours wrong.

The "original concept that made him successful" if you mean high school...college-era Spider-Man and married Spider-Man outsold the previous status-quos far more than staying to the original concept ever did. The lowest-selling and lowest-read periods of Spider-Man are always the ones that fail to embrace the changes that have happened.

Spider-Man feeling guilt about Uncle Ben's death is a constant no matter what he does or how much he grows up.


It's important to point out he wasn't nothing of that at the start. In AF#15 you didn't have Jameson, you didn't have the Daily Bugle, you didn't have him working as a photographer, and the public didn't hate him or anything.

The status quo that makes a character successful is never established in one 20 pages episode, almost nothing except the origin is introduced in AF #15, but what does this mean? This is true for almost every character ever. You don't build a character, their cast and everything in 20 pages.

Murdock being a Catholic only became a major part of his title during Frank Miller's run, and especially the BORN AGAIN story.

This was not in any sense the original concept and with that you have shot your entire argument in foot in terms of your awareness of the original concepts of these characters and your credit of a major change by a later writer as a defining part of the character.

Yes sure, cherry pick one example among many to "prove" your point because everyone is stupid and will fall for it. You didn't even get the point. There are changes and additions that build what a character is, and other that undermines it. My examples were example of things that did that, in fact they became an stayed as integral part of the characters' mythos, while the marriage ended a lot of time ago if I a remember correctly. It didn't stick.

[Snoop Dogg]

Spider-Man is not a complicated franchise. Its issues are not with some stuff that happened years ago. Its issues are the things that are currently happening.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Personally I think super heroes comics works when there is change but this change doesn't impact the foundational elements that makes a character work.

But if you can't identify the foundational elements that makes the character work in any concret manner, then there's really no point in making pronouncements or trotting it out like its graven truth. When you say "foundational" you imply something clear, hard, agreed-upon, objective. IT's there in the word "foundation" which is an architectural word.

What you say is several vague phrases that don't mean anything which you pass as unquestionable wisdom.

Updating a character is different than changing it, see for example Hickman (or Morrison) work on X-Men;

Most would dispute that Hickman and/or Morrison simply "updating the character" rather than "change it".
-- Hickman has made Apocalypse a good guy or a neutral figure that the X-men.
-- He's made X-Men's human ally Moira and retconned her into a mutant.
-- Grant Morrison similarly turned Emma Frost who was introduced as a villain as an X-Man and a love-interest for Cyclops.
-- Morrison introduced concepts like "secondary mutations" and Charles Xavier's embryonic twin-sister.
-- Morrison also broke the original love story of the X-Men, Scott and Jean and had their relationship end in distrust, coldness, and adultery.

And if you say that the theme of the X-Men are a hunted minority...that's not something Lee/Kirby introduced. It was Chris Claremont who did that and it's to Claremont that both Morrison and Hickman are responding and updating.

As far as comics sales go throughout the decades, a book sell more when the market is in is bigger, and less when the market is smaller, more in good times less in time of economic crises.

Okay, good then, comics sales don't actually matter and when we say the character should be consistent to "what made them successful" we aren't referring to any objective standards and figures, but simply talking vaguely.

Obviously the marriage wasn't the main culprit, the market shrinking was, but don't go on this crusades about facts if you have yours wrong.

My facts are fine. As the comichron numbers you pointed out reveal. Spider-Man's numbers during the Wedding and aftermath (1987-1988-1989-1990-1991-1992-1993) were consistently higher than the Roger Stern years (1981-1984) barring the spike in 1984-1985, owing to the arrival of the Black Suit as a result of SECRET WARS 1984. During Stern, "Total Paid Circulation" was in the 240,000 range. Whereas the Wedding years at their lowest was around 266,000 in 1989, but otherwise consistently high and got higher as the title went into the early 90s. Factoring in attrition, fading novelty and so on, the marriage years retained more numbers of regular readers than any other big change did. Compare the drop-off before and after Secret Wars to the one in the wedding. The one after SW was steeper by far.

The status quo that makes a character successful is never established in one 20 pages episode, almost nothing except the origin is introduced in AF #15, but what does this mean? This is true for almost every character ever. You don't build a character, their cast and everything in 20 pages.

So when is your cut-off point then? IF everything isn't fully formed in the Origin Issue then nothing can be said to be truly foundational to the character, and everything is added and built on top of one another, right? It's important to remember that AF#15 was published in June 1962 and ASM#1 came out in March 1963. The success of AF#15 led to ASM, so readers who started with that story in June had to wait 8 months before learning about Jameson, the Daily Bugle and all of that.

Yes sure, cherry pick one example among many to "prove" your point because everyone is stupid and will fall for it. You didn't even get the point.

I got the point, I disagreed with the point, I gave my reasons against that point. IN response you have not provided a better counter-argument.

There are changes and additions that build what a character is, and other that undermines it.

That's not what you said here (https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post5384398)

The problem with Spider Man is that is basically broken, by gimmicks like the marriage and the clone saga. Too much changes brought him too far from the original concept that made him successful. Look at all the other heroes, their concept still stands, Batman is a rich broody man always seeking revenge for their parents death, daredevil a blind catholic man with a deep sense of justice and a lawyer, the FF a family of sci-fi adventurers and so on. Even the née Hickman X-Men, despite the big changes, maintain their original concept, they fight for survival in a world here they are a feared / hated minority. Spider Man has lost the Daily Bugle and its cast, changed too many jobs, had too many girlfriends, his connection to May has become too tenuous, the book cast has changed so much nobody knows what to do with them. Spider Man is successful when he is a unlucky guy, short on money, smart but forced to be a part time photographer because of his spider man duties, with a bad public image caused by the very newspaper he works for, always worried for her aunt. And now he is nothing of that anymore.

You said "Look at all the other heroes, their concept still stands" and then mentioned daredevil "a blind catholic man..." as if Daredevil being a Catholic was there at the foundation all along.

My examples were example of things that did that, in fact they became an stayed as integral part of the characters' mythos,

No what you said was "their concept still stands" you didn't cite it as an example of a change that worked.

while the marriage ended a lot of time ago if I a remember correctly. It didn't stick.

It did for 20 calendar real-time years. The marriage also happened in 1987, the 25th anniversary of the character and was the biggest comics event of the '80s and had a far higher readership for its entirety than the OMD era has. A far higher number of eyeballs have read the marriage and will continue to read the marriage (since readers of comics and Spider-Man will turn to classics) than will ever read the OMD era.

As an achievement, the marriage is forever. It's never going away.

[BlueElf94]

Bear with me guys and gals, this might get wordy, but I just wanted to get some of my thoughts out concerning Spider-man and his status quo.

The thing that makes Peter so special to me is his perseverance, not so much the specifics of "he can't pay bills, can't make dates, etc." Sure, you could argue that perseverance is a generally heroic trait a lot of characters possess, but the appeal of Peter was seeing him have general problems people could understand/ relate to, coupled with being outclassed and in seemingly unwinnable situations as a hero......but he always manages to rise above his own neuroses and faults and come out on top anyway. This is the essence of Peter to me, and I would wager a lot of people feel the same. But somewhere down the line this got conflated with people relating to him because he was a single guy in his 20's that had problems paying bills, dating, etc., to the point that it's accepted by a lot of people/people with decision making power that this is essential to the integrity of the IP or something.

Anyone one who has lived any period of time will tell you the problems and hurdles don't stop after marriage or after your financial situation changes. An older, wiser Peter is still gonna have those unwinnable situations, there's still gonna be plenty of conflict. What happens when he has to choose between being a hero or a Dad, for example? I know they're scared to alienate young, new fans with major changes to his status quo, but it's just so frustrating to invest time and money into something that feels so static. I know we've had plenty of AU versions where he got to grow older and have kids, and a lot of them are great (Life Story was particularly good!). But it's still sort of a commitment-free solution for me.

Idk where I'm even going with this really, sorry for the incoherence. I guess for me to start buying the book again monthly, there would have to be some sort of good faith gesture that the company was interested in moving the character forward beyond all of the OMD baggage. I don't even necessarily care if it's in the way I want or would envision, I just don't wanna pay $5 for an issue of ASM just to say "yeah, been there done that".

[Max_Mercury]

People who trot stuff like this need not assume that others will automatically understand or agree with criteria as vague as "something that worked" and turned it into something "that doesn't work nearly as well".Nor ought they to make blithe statements like this without offering evidence in support of such a claim. How is that when Spider-Man got married, the books sold so well, and sold far better than the stories that came right before and did so for 7 years straight? The David Michelinie run sold far better than the Roger Stern and Tom Defalco runs that came before. KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT and THE WEDDING ANNUAL sold far better than Gang War, Spider-Man V. Wolverine, the entire Hobgoblin Saga that dragged and bored people by then. Of the five biggest Spider-Man stories of the '80s -- SECRET WARS, THE WEDDING, KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, VENOM, MacFarlane' SPIDER-MAN 1, four of them featured a married Spider-Man.

I don't think this claim that the marriage didn't work well has any substance or truth to it. It's a personal opinion, sure, but it cannot ever be passed or accepted as truth, nor I will add, was it in anyway representative of how the vast majority of Spider-Man's readership felt in the '80s (who I will also add is the biggest readership Spider-Man has had ever).

I agree with all this 110%! While it's true that Spider-Man has "classic" elements it's important to point out that he was an evolving character in a way titles like the FF and Batman aren't. Stan Lee didn't leave much of Spider-Man from Amazing Fantasy 15 still in place by Amazing Spider-Man 100. (and that's not true for the FF, they're basically in the same place they started after the same 100 issues written by Lee and Kirby) But the one element of Spider-Man that always bothered me the was idea that life always had to beat him up in the end. This is one of the reasons (among many) that I hated about Slott's run--the "Parker luck". It's not entertaining or sustainable to have the hero constantly lose. This is why the marriage was so great--it was Peter Parker finally winning something! He got the girl of his dreams, but he still had struggles. Remember they were basically broke and kicked out their apartment a year later. So for me the marriage worked and losing it, ripped the heart out of Spider-Man stories for years later.
To the point of the thread: I did come back to Spider-Man when Spenser took over and Mary Jane came back as his love interest. It's not ideal since I wish for the day they'll be married again. But at least Spenser seems to understand the importance of Mary Jane and Peter in a way no writer has since JSM was on the book.

[PCN24454]

To the point of the thread: I did come back to Spider-Man when Spenser took over and Mary Jane came back as his love interest. It's not ideal since I wish for the day they'll be married again. But at least Spenser seems to understand the importance of Mary Jane and Peter in a way no writer has since JSM was on the book.

Of course he understands. He made sure to keep Mj and Peter apart so that they don't have to deal with each other. It's what makes their relationship so perfect.

[Huntsman Spider]

Spider-Man is not a complicated franchise. Its issues are not with some stuff that happened years ago. Its issues are the things that are currently happening.

Fair point. I'd say the things that are currently happening in Spider-Man are, by and large, attempts to fix or at least finally address what was broken by One More Day, which was rooted in certain people's fears of Spider-Man/Peter Parker changing too much from where and how he'd started out or where they preferred him to be and resulted in those same people forcing him (back) into their idealized status quo for him, even if it meant betraying the character's core ethos. That was what really broke Spider-Man --- not growing up, or getting married, but spitting in the eye of "with great power, there must also come great responsibility" by making a literal Faustian bargain to avoid the repercussions of his actions.

[PeterParked]

.

As an achievement, the marriage is forever. It's never going away.

The marriage is done, it ended 14 years ago; it’s as much an “achievement” as any other storyline or period. It started as a gimmick to push sales up, it ended with a silly retcon. A large part of the stories that happened during the marriage years are quite forgettable in fact most of people don’t care for them, and honestly the marriage was quite inconsequential to many of the best ones; aside a small contingent of people that mostly like it because they started reading spider man during the marriage years nobody really cares about it or longs for it.