The C2E2 Spider-man 60th Panel, some interesting things been said.

[Lee]

The drop happened after Conway and Stegman left, it’s no surprise Marvel switched to a completely untested new creative team because renew your vows was getting more praise than Amazing at the time.

You're suggesting that the editor of Renew Your Vows hired a creative team that they had no faith in, in order to intentionally tank sales, because the comic was getting too much praise.

That's nonsense. Editors want their comics to be liked and to sell well. That's their job. It's insulting to both the editor and the creative team to suggest that the team was hired to make the book fail.

Either way, it’s over and the marriage is gone for the foreseeable future while this “editorial “ is in charge, no way anyone higher than C. B gives a damn about the marriage because it means nothing to the movies or tv shows.

We have been told otherwise.

I'm saying it's important to let people complain. You don't need to tut tut people for expressing their unhappiness by defending a giant corporation worth billions of dollars.

You can argue that sales are good (relative to sales of the rest of this industry right now), but this run isn't exactly held in high regard by the SM comic fandom. Marvel Editorial knows that a sizeable portion of their audience is unhappy, knows why they're unhappy, and do nothing to change it except to tell their audience that nothing can be done about it. That's quite the business strategy.

In your post, you said "I honestly can't explain why, after 15 years of the audience saying what it wants, Marvel goes out of its way to say "no" and actively moves against that direction."

The explanation is:

1. The Amazing Spider-Man has been one of Marvel's best selling ongoing series over the past 15 years. The audience voted with their wallets and said that they don't mind if Spider-Man is unmarried.

2. Renew Your Vows petered out and got cancelled. The audience voted with their wallets and said that Peter & MJ being a married couple isn't enough of a draw in and of itself in the long-term.

3. Even if the Marvel editor in chief wanted to remarry Spider-Man in the core Marvel comics universe, they wouldn't be allowed to. The decision goes above them. Marvel Entertainment and Disney don't want that to be the permanent status quo for the character.


We've had people on this forum speculating that what was said at this panel was a bluff, a misdirect. That Peter and MJ will remarry in Amazing Spider-Man #1000. Or that they'll be remarried when there's a change in the editorial team. None of that is realistic. They're setting themselves up for disappointment.

Fans of Peter and MJ as a married couple could be writing letters to Marvel Comics asking for more untold tales from the married era of Spider-Man, or a revival of Renew Your Vows or MC2 Spider-Girl. There are productive ways to let Marvel Comics know what you want.

[Kevinroc]

But why do you think the marriage won't be returning?

Because Marvel wants the option for a flexible status quo for Spider-Man they can revert back to for the next creative team. If Zeb Wells leaves ASM tomorrow and the next writer says "I want Peter and MJ to be together," they can do that. And if the writer after that says "I don't want Peter and MJ to be together," they can do that.

[RJT]

You're suggesting that the editor of Renew Your Vows hired a creative team that they had no faith in, in order to intentionally tank sales, because the comic was getting too much praise.

That's nonsense. Editors want their comics to be liked and to sell well. That's their job. It's insulting to both the editor and the creative team to suggest that the team was hired to make the book fail.

Exactly this. The job of an editor is to sell comics. I feel like so many fans are oblivious to the economics of comics publishing--each book has a budget, and popular creators can command higher page rate. Hiring Jody Houser, who at the time was a fairly new creator and therefore likely commanded a much smaller page rate, was a decision made to *extend* the life of Renew Your Vows, not get it canceled. Also, an editor whose series routinely got canceled would be an editor who was losing money for his publisher and would probably not be an editor for much longer.

[Kevinroc]

In your post, you said "I honestly can't explain why, after 15 years of the audience saying what it wants, Marvel goes out of its way to say "no" and actively moves against that direction."

The explanation is:

1. The Amazing Spider-Man has been one of Marvel's best selling ongoing series over the past 15 years. The audience voted with their wallets and said that they don't mind if Spider-Man is unmarried.

2. Renew Your Vows petered out and got cancelled. The audience voted with their wallets and said that Peter & MJ being a married couple isn't enough of a draw in and of itself in the long-term.

3. Even if the Marvel editor in chief wanted to remarry Spider-Man in the core Marvel comics universe, they wouldn't be allowed to. The decision goes above them. Marvel Entertainment and Disney don't want that to be the permanent status quo for the character.


We've had people on this forum speculating that what was said at this panel was a bluff, a misdirect. That Peter and MJ will remarry in Amazing Spider-Man #1000. Or that they'll be remarried when there's a change in the editorial team. None of that is realistic. They're setting themselves up for disappointment.

Fans of Peter and MJ as a married couple could be writing letters to Marvel Comics asking for more untold tales from the married era of Spider-Man, or a revival of Renew Your Vows or MC2 Spider-Girl. There are productive ways to let Marvel Comics know what you want.

Aren't we getting that with JMD's upcoming The Lost Hunt mini?

What I was talking about was Zeb Wells splitting up Peter and MJ at the start of his run Post-Beyond. I think from a creative standpoint, that was a misfire. It was too soon. Obviously that didn't stop him from going in that direction, but a lot of the angst and turmoil among the fanbase over the current run can be traced to that decision. I think if Wells had MJ out of town for some work thing and Peter was miserable with her gone and yearning for her to come back, a lot of this current angst wouldn't be there.

But as I said, Marvel wants a flexible status quo where it's up to the creative team's discretion whether Peter and MJ are together or not. But from a fan perspective, that is hard to stomach and it's easy to understand why a sizable portion of the fanbase is unhappy.

[Matt Rat]

In your post, you said "I honestly can't explain why, after 15 years of the audience saying what it wants, Marvel goes out of its way to say "no" and actively moves against that direction."

The explanation is:

1. The Amazing Spider-Man has been one of Marvel's best selling ongoing series over the past 15 years. The audience voted with their wallets and said that they don't mind if Spider-Man is unmarried.

And, again, sales across the board aren't as sysemic as you like to imagine they are compared to the peak of the 80s and 90s.

. Renew Your Vows petered out and got cancelled. The audience voted with their wallets and said that Peter & MJ being a married couple isn't enough of a draw in and of itself in the long-term.

Renew Your Vows lasted three years, that's considerably more than the lifespan of your average satellite title, and only ended when Peter and MJ were re-established as a couple under Nick Spencer.

It was also an alternate universe that had bad art teams, creative difficulties, and barely any promotion.

[RJT]

I agree with that. Where we disagree is that there is no real evidence to the supposition that marriage partisans make up "a sizable portion of the audience" when there is no evidence to support that supposition. Spider-Man has been a top-seller before, during, and after he was married. Most readers do not care either way.

[Matt Rat]

Spider-Man has been a top-seller before, during, and after he was married. Most readers do not care either way.

Spider-Man could be selling better with the marriage. Again, it's current sales are peanuts compared to how it used to be. Most readers do not care about Spider-Man period these days. The ones who complain and hateread are the only ones they have left.

[RJT]

And, again, sales across the board aren't as sysemic as you like to imagine they are compared to the peak of the 80s and 90s.



Renew Your Vows lasted three years, that's more than half the lifespan of your average satellite title, and only ended when Peter and MJ were re-established as a couple under Nick Spencer.

I don't know why you folks keep saying Renew Your Vows lasted three years when it was canceled with issue 23. That's less than two years. And it's sales were abysmal at the end. Its final issue sold 15,000 copies.

[Kevinroc]

The Peter x MJ shippers don't want the relationship to be "off" just because a new writer comes on board. It doesn't help that the way Wells has handled this has left something to be desired. But Marvel still wants to appeal to Peter x MJ shippers.

I don't think I need to elaborate on this.

[RJT]

Spider-Man could be selling better with the marriage. Again, it's current sales are peanuts compared to how it used to be. Most readers do not care about Spider-Man period these days. The ones who complain and hateread are the only ones they have left.

Are Spider-marriage partisans also hate-reading Batman? X-Men? How do you use the lack of Spider-marriage to explain that sales across the board are lower than how they used to be?

[RJT]

The Peter x MJ shippers don't want the relationship to be "off" just because a new writer comes on board. It doesn't help that the way Wells has handled this has left something to be desired. But Marvel still wants to appeal to Peter x MJ shippers.

I don't think I need to elaborate on this.

I'm sure they want to appeal to Peter X MJ shippers because they want to appeal to as many readers as possible. But that Marvel acknowledges that Peter x MJ shippers exists doesn't prove that they are a sizable group. If Peter x MJ shippers comprised a sizable audience, they would be married.

[Kevinroc]

I'm sure they want to appeal to Peter X MJ shippers because they want to appeal to as many readers as possible. But that Marvel acknowledges that Peter x MJ shippers exists doesn't prove that they are a sizable group. If Peter x MJ shippers comprised a sizable audience, they would be married.

This is a fallacious argument. I can just as easily say that sales were higher on average during the marriage years, which includes the best-selling Spider-Man comic ever.

[RJT]

This is a fallacious argument. I can just as easily say that sales were higher on average during the marriage years, which includes the best-selling Spider-Man comic ever.

I've addressed this. If the marriage was the reason that Spider-Man sold so much better, how does that explain why every other comic also sold so much better? Did the Spider-marriage cause X-Men #1 to sell 8 million copies? Or did the Spider-marriage just happen to coincide with a huge period of speculation across the entire comics industry?
This is what I mean when I say that Spider-marriage folks see every single fact as a evidence of their preferred theory. "If you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail," right?

[Matt Rat]

If Peter x MJ shippers comprised a sizable audience, they would be married.

One argument I constantly read in here is that editorial can't remarry them because corporate won't approve it, so it has nothing to do with what the customer wants.

[The BaRoN]

Are Spider-marriage partisans also hate-reading Batman? X-Men? How do you use the lack of Spider-marriage to explain that sales across the board are lower than how they used to be?

Batman is nothing more than grief porn since the whole wedding fake out showed it’ll always be that way. He can’t change ever so I don’t read that.

Superman under Gleason with his family was a massive seller and very enjoyable until bendis saw to that.

Spider-Man changed naturally and relatable with the wedding, financial hardships, still birth and the passing of May but then they made him a “relatable” single man-child idiot who does deals with devils, has his mind swapped with a rapist and becomes a billionaire!

As for X-men, they just killed off one of the only married X-men to end that relationship. Certainly tells you something about current marvel.

Sue and Reed better watch out, although I think they tested the waters with civil war on that already.