Knowing it’s ending, how would you rate Spencer’s run?

[Batman Begins 2005]

Hunted and Sins Rising/Return of the Green Goblin were big highpoints for me. 850 was one of the best Spidey comics I’ve read in such a long time.

Back to Basics, Heist and Sins Rising/Return of the Green Goblin for me.

[TheCape]

I’ll give the run a C average.

For comparison’s sake, I think Slott was a D+

Yeah, i'll go with this too.

[Dzika_Sowa]

C.
I wanted to give Spencer an A, but something bad happened within Last Remains, and his run has gotten worse, and worse to a point, where the ending is unsatisfactory. Sinister War and Chameleon Conspiracy were also weak stories, and felt like filler.

I blame editorial for interfering with Spencer's Vision - but unfortunately, it's what we got and what I'm rating.

[ZeroBG82]

Too early to say. Going to have to ruminate on this one. And see how long before Marvel makes Norman the Green Goblin again.

My instincts are to judge it solid but not classic. The "Kindred Epic" fell completely flat. Wet noodle, they name is Gabriel and Sarah Stacy. Again. But Hunted was quite good. I liked a lot of the Mysterio stuff, less so the Chameleon stuff. Could have done without Sinister War completely.

I think he got the character voices. His plots tended towards the absurd, but often worked better than they should have on paper because he character work just powered through. As the run wore on, and we started heading towards OMD and Sins Past it started to lose steam. Stories told just to undo other stories are rarely compelling, even if they may be necessary from time to time.

I have a hunch this will be remembered as being superior to Slott's run (pun intended), save for Superior itself. Be curious where people rank it compared to JMS after it's had a few years. But it's definitely not on the list of worst runs ever to my mind. There was a lot to enjoy here. I'm not going to miss Spencer, but I'm not sad he visited this corner of the MU for a while.

[Spiderfan001]

Too early to say. Going to have to ruminate on this one. And see how long before Marvel makes Norman the Green Goblin again.

My instincts are to judge it solid but not classic. The "Kindred Epic" fell completely flat. Wet noodle, they name is Gabriel and Sarah Stacy. Again. But Hunted was quite good. I liked a lot of the Mysterio stuff, less so the Chameleon stuff. Could have done without Sinister War completely.

I think he got the character voices. His plots tended towards the absurd, but often worked better than they should have on paper because he character work just powered through. As the run wore on, and we started heading towards OMD and Sins Past it started to lose steam. Stories told just to undo other stories are rarely compelling, even if they may be necessary from time to time.

I have a hunch this will be remembered as being superior to Slott's run (pun intended), save for Superior itself. Be curious where people rank it compared to JMS after it's had a few years. But it's definitely not on the list of worst runs ever to my mind. There was a lot to enjoy here. I'm not going to miss Spencer, but I'm not sad he visited this corner of the MU for a while.

Slott's was character Assasination, he made the characters worse w/ every run by a lot.His version of Peter and MJ were terrible and he loved wanking Otto.Superior has it's flaws specially for people who have read Pre-OMD Spider-man and not just Slott Spidey.

Spencer's done good tbf, Kindred was a fail but the run was a win.Not a big W overall, we all wanted more.But I think he's done enough that next writers can take ASM and Spider-man in a direction we will all like w/out much problem.

[HypnoHustler]

Slott's was character Assasination, he made the characters worse w/ every run by a lot.His version of Peter and MJ were terrible and he loved wanking Otto.Superior has it's flaws specially for people who have read Pre-OMD Spider-man and not just Slott Spidey.

Spencer's done good tbf, Kindred was a fail but the run was a win.Not a big W overall, we all wanted more.But I think he's done enough that next writers can take ASM and Spider-man in a direction we will all like w/out much problem.

Yeah, I mostly agree. Spencer (or editorial more likely) totally botched the conclusion of the Kindred epic.... but, Peter was never really written out of character during Spencer's run (there was the occasional iffy moment like relying too much on Order of the Web to help him, but nothing too bad). Like you said, Slott was a master character assassin; Peter, Felicia, Ben Reilly, even Aunt May a couple times... were written like completely different characters.

[Spider-Ham]

I loved every second of it and I’d pay anything to read Spencer on ASM one more year.

The weakest part were, obviously, Chameleon Conspiracy and, unfortunately, ASM #74.

Don’t know what happened BTS but that last issue doesn’t make any sense.

[Vortex85]

Given that the incoherent ending ruined it for me, I'd give it a C and that is gracious. The reason a C and not an F is Spencer did nearly everything I would have wanted to do as a writer (except expose OMD to MJ and Peter so that they remember and the marriage counts and informs the story going forward, which is the biggest thing I wanted out of this mess). Had it done that I would have given it an A.

But instead we are left with plot points that make no sense and are complete lies.
I loved Last Remains and wanted all that to make sense and come to a good coclusion but the end of the run basically retcons most of Last Remains entirely. So the highlight of Spencer's run is basically ruined.
Kindred turns out to be pathetic and incoherent and I can't read the run without thinking this was going one way and then swerved another and not in any way that makes sense in story. The heavy hand of editorial ruins Spider-Man again.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I wrote my thoughts about Spencer's run in detail here:
https://elvingsmusings.wordpress.com...ng-spider-man/

If you want the TL;DR, I liked Nick Spencer’s run in general and my overall feeling is that I didn’t regret following his run, and even after reading his controversial final issues, my feeling about his run is general contentment. Below I’ll give my thoughts about why I felt this way, what I feel Spencer’s run was about, which I felt were his strongest stories.

Thumbtacks


--When Spencer joined ASM, I was skeptical and even the news that Peter and Mary Jane had reunited at the start of his run didn’t exactly make me return...As such I wasn’t won over at the start and I came in with lowered expectations and I maintained those lowered set of expectations throughout Spencer’s run which puts me in an odd position of liking and defending Spencer’s run long after many of his early enthusiasts had soured and turned on him. Proof I suppose that once you win over the skeptic, you retain their loyalty more than that of the acolyte.

--Spencer had a sense of empathy with Peter and his portrayal of Spider-Man across his run was a sense of someone who had no control over his life. This was empathetic to readers in itself but it’s also largely true because the nature of One More Day where the reader knows things about the character the character doesn’t, literally means that Post-BND Spider-Man is a character with no control of his life who has fragmented into a reduced and regressed version of the character.

--I would say from Spencer’s ASM#1 (Vol.5) to ASM#29 (Vol.5) there aren’t any bad issues. It’s not that there aren’t good or great issues later on, but the most consistent stretch of his run is the series of issues from his first all the way to the event storyline Hunted, which is a sequel and homage to Kraven’s Last Hunt and its legacy.

-- When I think of Spencer’s run, I think of Mary Jane’s earnest desire for acting, Peter and Boomerang bantering as friends and amigos, the strange bromance between Peter and J. Jonah Jameson, and even Peter, Boomerang, and Mary Jane house-rooming Gog the inter-dimensional demon. I think of Peter and Felicia having a soulful conversation as they talk about the Thieves’ Guild, and I think of Mary Jane at the “Lookouts” talking about her relationship with Peter, I think of Taskmaster and Black Ant forming a bizarre bromance as they kidnap animal-themed villains and wonder if they fit the theme or not.

-- Spencer has a great gift for dialogue, where his characters sound like a mix of real people but also like comics characters at the same time. He’s able to pitch humor that’s both black and sweet, leading for tonal variations. His dialogue is generally on the high level from the start of his run to his end. More than anything I’ll miss the voices of the characters in the course of this run.

FAVORITE ISSUES

ASM#01-04 (Back to Basics)
ASM#06-07 (Bar with no name, Trivia Night)
ASM#09-10
HUNTED
ASM #24-25
ASM #29
ASM#50 Vol.5 (Spider-Man and Green Goblin team up)

--- I will say that the final issue of Spencer’s run which he didn’t fully write himself is an overprized mess at $10 with backup stories that aren’t worth printing, and a good candidate for false advertising and misleading solicitations

--- I would say that his run is most like Tom Defalco’s run on Spider-Man which had good character interactions and moments but mixed with a lot of erratic serialized stories that didn’t flow as well.

--- Regardless, I don’t regret returning to follow a Spider-Man from start to end for the first time since JMS. I don’t expect to follow another Spider-Man ongoing any time soon. That makes me melancholy thinking of how young I was when I followed JMS, now I’m older and if another Spider-Man run comes along that engages me again, I might be still older then. That makes me feel sad.

I started on CBR during Spencer's run and posted and met you all. It might be cliche, but maybe "the real Kindred mystery was the friends we made along the way", lol. I feel pretty blue now that it's over. Still who knows maybe BEYOND will do something that engages me. I feel as skeptical towards it now as I did when Spencer started.

[Spiderfan001]

I wrote my thoughts about Spencer's run in detail here:
https://elvingsmusings.wordpress.com...ng-spider-man/

If you want the TL;DR, I liked Nick Spencer’s run in general and my overall feeling is that I didn’t regret following his run, and even after reading his controversial final issues, my feeling about his run is general contentment. Below I’ll give my thoughts about why I felt this way, what I feel Spencer’s run was about, which I felt were his strongest stories.

Thumbtacks


--When Spencer joined ASM, I was skeptical and even the news that Peter and Mary Jane had reunited at the start of his run didn’t exactly make me return...As such I wasn’t won over at the start and I came in with lowered expectations and I maintained those lowered set of expectations throughout Spencer’s run which puts me in an odd position of liking and defending Spencer’s run long after many of his early enthusiasts had soured and turned on him. Proof I suppose that once you win over the skeptic, you retain their loyalty more than that of the acolyte.

--Spencer had a sense of empathy with Peter and his portrayal of Spider-Man across his run was a sense of someone who had no control over his life. This was empathetic to readers in itself but it’s also largely true because the nature of One More Day where the reader knows things about the character the character doesn’t, literally means that Post-BND Spider-Man is a character with no control of his life who has fragmented into a reduced and regressed version of the character.

--I would say from Spencer’s ASM#1 (Vol.5) to ASM#29 (Vol.5) there aren’t any bad issues. It’s not that there aren’t good or great issues later on, but the most consistent stretch of his run is the series of issues from his first all the way to the event storyline Hunted, which is a sequel and homage to Kraven’s Last Hunt and its legacy.

-- When I think of Spencer’s run, I think of Mary Jane’s earnest desire for acting, Peter and Boomerang bantering as friends and amigos, the strange bromance between Peter and J. Jonah Jameson, and even Peter, Boomerang, and Mary Jane house-rooming Gog the inter-dimensional demon. I think of Peter and Felicia having a soulful conversation as they talk about the Thieves’ Guild, and I think of Mary Jane at the “Lookouts” talking about her relationship with Peter, I think of Taskmaster and Black Ant forming a bizarre bromance as they kidnap animal-themed villains and wonder if they fit the theme or not.

-- Spencer has a great gift for dialogue, where his characters sound like a mix of real people but also like comics characters at the same time. He’s able to pitch humor that’s both black and sweet, leading for tonal variations. His dialogue is generally on the high level from the start of his run to his end. More than anything I’ll miss the voices of the characters in the course of this run.

FAVORITE ISSUES

ASM#01-04 (Back to Basics)
ASM#06-07 (Bar with no name, Trivia Night)
ASM#09-10
HUNTED
ASM #24-25
ASM #29
ASM#50 Vol.5 (Spider-Man and Green Goblin team up)

--- I will say that the final issue of Spencer’s run which he didn’t fully write himself is an overprized mess at $10 with backup stories that aren’t worth printing, and a good candidate for false advertising and misleading solicitations

--- I would say that his run is most like Tom Defalco’s run on Spider-Man which had good character interactions and moments but mixed with a lot of erratic serialized stories that didn’t flow as well.

--- Regardless, I don’t regret returning to follow a Spider-Man from start to end for the first time since JMS. I don’t expect to follow another Spider-Man ongoing any time soon. That makes me melancholy thinking of how young I was when I followed JMS, now I’m older and if another Spider-Man run comes along that engages me again, I might be still older then. That makes me feel sad.

I started on CBR during Spencer's run and posted and met you all. It might be cliche, but maybe "the real Kindred mystery was the friends we made along the way", lol. I feel pretty blue now that it's over. Still who knows maybe BEYOND will do something that engages me. I feel as skeptical towards it now as I did when Spencer started.

Briliantly put.I also came here w/ Spencers run.

[NC_Yankee]

Given that the incoherent ending ruined it for me, I'd give it a C and that is gracious. The reason a C and not an F is Spencer did nearly everything I would have wanted to do as a writer (except expose OMD to MJ and Peter so that they remember and the marriage counts and informs the story going forward, which is the biggest thing I wanted out of this mess). Had it done that I would have given it an A.

But instead we are left with plot points that make no sense and are complete lies.
I loved Last Remains and wanted all that to make sense and come to a good coclusion but the end of the run basically retcons most of Last Remains entirely. So the highlight of Spencer's run is basically ruined.
Kindred turns out to be pathetic and incoherent and I can't read the run without thinking this was going one way and then swerved another and not in any way that makes sense in story. The heavy hand of editorial ruins Spider-Man again.

Spencer’s run gets the F from me. While I give him credit for Felicia and MJ the bad far outweighs the good. My issues in bullet point form. 1: Using Mayday to justify Quesada. 2: Unnecessary Torture Porn. Peter did nothing to the Stacy Twins to justify that. 3: Pacing/ Too much filler. 4: Pathetic Parker/Damsel In Distress. 5: Too many unnecessary characters ( The Rose being an example). 6: No humor/quips. 7: Too much game playing. BND rehash being the obvious example.

[blackspidey2099]

Spencer's run is definitely a tale of two halves for me. I do want to re-read it before giving it my final verdict, but I think that the first year or so was a solid A- run for me, but after that it went on a steady decline. I think the last year or so has honestly been a D overall for me. Overall, I'd say that as a run I'd rate it a C, but that doesn't really capture how disappointing the decline from the first year was. I know there was some stuff regarding Spencer having to leave early due to Substack, and as such the run may not have been concluded in the way he'd originally have liked. I think you can definitely tell the last year has been super-rushed, especially with all the messy artist changes. So I assume that was the reason behind the overall decline of the run, and that's a shame. I do think that this run could have been a solid B if not better in another world had Spencer been able to finish the run the way he may have originally intended.

[Spiderfan001]

Spencer’s run gets the F from me. While I give him credit for Felicia and MJ the bad far outweighs the good. My issues in bullet point form. 1: Using Mayday to justify Quesada. 2: Unnecessary Torture Porn. Peter did nothing to the Stacy Twins to justify that. 3: Pacing/ Too much filler. 4: Pathetic Parker/Damsel In Distress. 5: Too many unnecessary characters ( The Rose being an example). 6: No humor/quips. 7: Too much game playing. BND rehash being the obvious example.

1)It's to signify how dangerous and powerful Peter and his daughter really are while also making the latter established in canon.
2)It's Mephisto who wanted that, he literally tortured them in hell to prepare them to kill Peter.
3)A bit, but most of the stuff was good or avg.
4)This run has been an insane showing of his durability and stamina.I would and did agree w/ you before but
a)w/ everything he is facing it's kinda waranted
b)it's not that much.Wan to point out a few instances
5)Rose is someone who will either be used in Devil's reign or for future ASM.It's a development for the next writer.I do agree we could have used less characters
6)Which is good, he made jokes when it was the time.Making jokes in such dark situations(even by spider-man standards) is a bad thing.Much better than loudmouth can't shut up unfunny Peter.
7)Agreed

He made characters better while Slott assasinated them.He fixed stories and did it in less time.

[Shunt]

2)It's Mephisto who wanted that, he literally tortured them in hell to prepare them to kill Peter.

They killed him like twenty times, so it seems they were more than prepared.

If Mephisto was so worried about Peter or his child, he should have asked Kindred not to resurrect Peter every time he killed him.

[Shunt]

Given that the incoherent ending ruined it for me, I'd give it a C and that is gracious. The reason a C and not an F is Spencer did nearly everything I would have wanted to do as a writer (except expose OMD to MJ and Peter so that they remember and the marriage counts and informs the story going forward, which is the biggest thing I wanted out of this mess). Had it done that I would have given it an A.

But instead we are left with plot points that make no sense and are complete lies.
I loved Last Remains and wanted all that to make sense and come to a good coclusion but the end of the run basically retcons most of Last Remains entirely. So the highlight of Spencer's run is basically ruined.
Kindred turns out to be pathetic and incoherent and I can't read the run without thinking this was going one way and then swerved another and not in any way that makes sense in story. The heavy hand of editorial ruins Spider-Man again.

Quoted for truth.