So what's the consensus on Spencer's Spider-Man run?

[Matt Rat]

very tru i was born in the 90s pretty much seen a ton of his love interest and their variants and I like the ones I like. Doesn't make me a bad person or less than a fan and if my ship isnt feature no big deal the writers arent attacking me personally.

Writers attack MJ fans personally.

[CrimsonEchidna]

I have a real love/hate relationship with this run because I think his character writing was really on-point, but even looking past the resolution of Kindred, I feel like too much of the run is defined by all of his "continuity cleaning" of things he wanted to get rid of from the past 2 decades. It was kind of like how Geoff Johns, for a time, was using his Green Lantern and Flash stories as a vehicle to tidy up continuity to the way he wanted it.

[PCN24454]

Writers attack MJ fans personally.

Keep telling yourself that.

[Frontier]

I have a real love/hate relationship with this run because I think his character writing was really on-point, but even looking past the resolution of Kindred, I feel like too much of the run is defined by all of his "continuity cleaning" of things he wanted to get rid of from the past 2 decades. It was kind of like how Geoff Johns, for a time, was using his Green Lantern and Flash stories as a vehicle to tidy up continuity to the way he wanted it.

As much as I was a fan of the run, one thing I will give Johns credit for is as much continuity cleanup as he does, he usually tends to expand on and develop the franchises he's doing that in.

With Spencer...I mean, what did he really add?

Boomerang? Who died in the end.

Gog? Nobody seems to care anymore.

I guess the JanicexRandy pairing.

The Sinister Syndicate, although outside their Marvel Unlimited appearance I'm not sure if they're even still a team.

We all know how Kindred went.

Was anyone craving the return of Ned Leeds?

And just a lot of under-cooked or half-baked plots.

[Jman27]

Writers attack MJ fans personally.

which writer hurt you Matt

[bob.schoonover]

As much as I was a fan of the run, one thing I will give Johns credit for is as much continuity cleanup as he does, he usually tends to expand on and develop the franchises he's doing that in.

With Spencer...I mean, what did he really add?

Boomerang? Who died in the end.

Gog? Nobody seems to care anymore.

I guess the JanicexRandy pairing.

The Sinister Syndicate, although outside their Marvel Unlimited appearance I'm not sure if they're even still a team.

We all know how Kindred went.

Was anyone craving the return of Ned Leeds?

And just a lot of under-cooked or half-baked plots.

I agree with all of this and think it's tied into the lack of a likely evergreen story from this run that gets reprinted, appears on "Best of" lists, etc. Ned came back, but the story wasn't memorable (and it certainly didn't explain too much). The Rose's resurrection was more or less out of nowhere (it worked in the story and made sense w/what Zdarsky's doing w/Kingpin, but it wasn't an obvious choice based on the 60+ issues preceding it). The Syndicate is a fun concept that I hope comes back, but they weren't used to great effect (and Sinister War absolutely fizzled). Peter was unceremoniously dumped from his job, then went back to school, then that went mostly nowhere*. Hey, remember the support group MJ was in for a hot second?

It really is disappointing, because Spencer had a good ear for his characters and there were good ideas in there, but the story never really met its promise

*The MacGuffin device could have just as easily come from a story he was doing for the Bugle, a fellow researcher at Horizon Labs, an employee at Parker Industries, etc. - Peter being in college was mostly incidental to that story, and his time in grad school was otherwise nonexistent.

[Frontier]

I agree with all of this and think it's tied into the lack of a likely evergreen story from this run that gets reprinted, appears on "Best of" lists, etc. Ned came back, but the story wasn't memorable (and it certainly didn't explain too much). The Rose's resurrection was more or less out of nowhere (it worked in the story and made sense w/what Zdarsky's doing w/Kingpin, but it wasn't an obvious choice based on the 60+ issues preceding it). The Syndicate is a fun concept that I hope comes back, but they weren't used to great effect (and Sinister War absolutely fizzled). Peter was unceremoniously dumped from his job, then went back to school, then that went mostly nowhere*. Hey, remember the support group MJ was in for a hot second?

It really is disappointing, because Spencer had a good ear for his characters and there were good ideas in there, but the story never really met its promise

*The MacGuffin device could have just as easily come from a story he was doing for the Bugle, a fellow researcher at Horizon Labs, an employee at Parker Industries, etc. - Peter being in college was mostly incidental to that story, and his time in grad school was otherwise nonexistent.

Oh yeah, I guess Threats and Menaces is the new Daily Bugle, but it was another thing Spencer didn't get to develop that much. Like Norah having dealings with the Chameleon? Was there a point to that?

It's like with the major runs you can usually cite something major or character defining that happened that characterized the entire run or is what people remember most about it, but I don't think there's anything Spencer did that wasn't derivative or re-establishing something that was already done. Even something like Aunt May getting cancer was treated as a footnote and then relegated and resolved in a satellite title for a short run.

And I say this as someone who enjoyed the run precisely because he wrote the cast better than they had been in the years prior to Spencer taking over.

[Matt Rat]

Keep telling yourself that.

It's plastered all over social media. I don't need to convince myself of anything.

[Frontier]

How did everyone feel about the art consistency of the run? Or lack there of?

[PCN24454]

How did everyone feel about the art consistency of the run? Or lack there of?

Honestly, unimportant.

[CaptainUniverse]

How did everyone feel about the art consistency of the run? Or lack there of?

I got Spencer's 2099 issues today while on a back issue run and honestly Gleason's art looks great, is it perfect? No, but it doesn't take anything away from the story. The other artist for this arc though...his Doom needs work, something was...off. I don't have the full run but from what I have seen its mostly all good. In my opinion, anyways.

[Celgress]

Better than the run that followed it.

Agreed, I'd say 2.5 out of 5 stars or average. I really wanted to give it 3.5 or 4 stars but the second half fell apart and the ending was atrocious. I don't blame Spencer because I've heard rumors there was massive editorial interference. I hope one day the whole behind-the-scenes story can be told.

[Mister Mets]

How did everyone feel about the art consistency of the run? Or lack there of?

There's a reason a bunch of the artists don't have Wikipedia pages in the second half of the run.

The artist quality started out pretty consistent with Ramos and Ottley, and decent occasional fill-ins (IE- Chris Bachalo.) With stories like Hunted, they were able to have a mostly consistent quality with multiple artists on the same story. That didn't last. The most disappointing work was in the last issue, which was the most important of the run but did not have artists on the necessary level (to be fair, it's possible the artists were rushed.)

[TinkerSpider]

My sincere belief is that Spencer’s run was greatly impacted by the pandemic, with the order to go pencils down coming about halfway through the run which coincides with the dip in artist quality and the tonal dissonance of the latter half. Remember, the pandemic forced the cancellation of the Amazing Mary Jane comic, which had previously been extended, which was just one unexpected event that probably caused a behind the scenes scramble. The pandemic threw everyone’s income into question, as artists and writers aren’t going to be paid - or their payments will be delayed - during a time of pencils down. And there are many accounts from creators, from every creative industry, who found the pandemic negatively impacted their creativity and productivity. I’m sure Marvel editorial also found the pandemic difficult, as it threw their schedules and operations into disarray (they’re still dealing with paper shortages and printer capacity issues). And we all know Spencer started to work with Substack because of the pandemic, which soured his relationship with Marvel.

I would love to see a run by Spencer that wasn’t so impacted by a major world shutdown - I have a feeling the result would be very different.

[Jman27]

How did everyone feel about the art consistency of the run? Or lack there of?

same as the spencer run do better