Is there any way Wells can turn the negative fan reception around?

[charliehustle415]

The problem is we don't know anyone's motivations for anything, and it's made the issues incredibly frustrating to read. Kindred is a very different thing since they were a mysterious new villain, but we still understood what Peter's motivations were. what MJ's motivations were, etc.

Here? Nope. Readers have been told very little since Wells was making it up as he went along.

The issues have also been extremely mediocre in and of themselves as well. Peter is completely ineffectual throughout, needing to be rescued constantly, particularly by Norman Osborn. And then there's the concept of the "payoff" being worth it. How could it be worth it? Is Wells going to put Peter and MJ back together like he inherited? Then what was the point of breaking up in the first place?

Is he going to have Peter x Felicia be a thing? Then what was the point of stringing Peter x MJ all throughout the run? And what makes anyone think the next writer isn't immediately going to look at this mess and say, "Let's just go back to Peter x MJ?"

Or is he going to just have Peter being single and unattached at the end? Leave it up to the next writer to fix his mess?

He's really kinda screwed himself on all of this. Because we know Peter isn't allowed to get married or have kids. There is no way to make this all "worth" it. It's just been a frustrating run that seems like it only exists to troll people who like Peter x MJ. (Which, you know, is most of the audience of Amazing Spider-Man.)

I mean do we really know if this is the case? And even if it were true Wells might throw something at fans that may blow everyone away.

Sure it may not happen, but that's the nature of the game. I feel like Spidey fans haven't been happy for decades, and I get the disappointment but people gotta find the good or y'all will never be happy

[Kevinroc]

I mean do we really know if this is the case? And even if it were true Wells might throw something at fans that may blow everyone away.

Sure it may not happen, but that's the nature of the game. I feel like Spidey fans haven't been happy for decades, and I get the disappointment but people gotta find the good or y'all will never be happy

Yes. Wells has said in interviews that he's making it up as he goes along. It shows.

Reducing it to "oh, he broke up Peter x MJ again, which has happened many times before." It's about not understanding the character motivations at all. Their motivations are being kept secret from the reader because the writer doesn't even know what they are. And given how he resolved the debt collector in his run, I don't have a lot of faith he is going to find a way that explains the break-up, and MJ's subsequent actions, in anything that even resembles a satisfying manner.

[TinkerSpider]

but we know that will be answered soon.

I mean Spencer took nearly 70 issues for the Kindred mystery

Kindred was an actual mystery. The reader was on the same page - or slightly ahead - of the characters in the story. The readers and the characters discovered the clues together.

But Wells is instead withholding information from the reader that the characters all know. Peter knows what happened six months ago. Mary Jane knows why she is living with Paul and has two kids. Aunt May knows what Peter did that caused her to lose her house and move into a tiny apartment. The Fantastic Four know what Peter stole. Even Chasm!Ben knows what Peter and Norman went off to do.

The only ones who don’t know? The reader.

It’s an amateurish writing trick that hack writers think builds reader engagement, but instead only creates distance and frustration as the characters are not allowed to converse or think naturally but can only communicate in coy, vague allusions to keep the reader in the dark. It’s not a mystery, it’s just Wells thinking it would be fun to shut the reader out of the characters’ heads and refuse to move the plot forward for no apparent reason other than it amused him as a writing exercise (yes, he said pretty much that in an interview).

And the pacing is atrocious. Wells has refused to provide even minor clues. It’s gotten to the point where the reader must read the recap at the start of the issue in order to know what is happening. For example, Peter’s relationship with Felicia has been woefully mishandled; any progress in their relationship took place in the recaps, not on the actual page.

Shippers are crazy what can I say

Ad hominens that ignore all the well-stated, well-reasoned criticism of Wells’s run - and PeterMJ comes very far down the list - are just so very cute. Just goes to show that the criticism can’t be refuted.

[Kevinroc]

Ad hominens that ignore all the well-stated, well-reasoned criticism of Wells’s run - and PeterMJ comes very far down the list - are just so very cute. Just goes to show that the criticism can’t be refuted.

I just want to add that it's totally valid to criticize the Wells run for how he's handled Peter x MJ.

[Batman Begins 2005]

Too late. This run is **** like TASM (Vol. 3), TASM (Vol. 4) and TASM: Beyond. I want Wells gone and this nightmare over.

[Batman Begins 2005]

Too late. This run is **** like TASM (Vol. 3), TASM (Vol. 4) and TASM: Beyond. I want Wells gone and this nightmare over.

There's a reason why I started this topic:

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...ho-do-you-want

I didn't expect it to reach 15 pages so soon.

[charliehustle415]

Yes. Wells has said in interviews that he's making it up as he goes along. It shows.

Reducing it to "oh, he broke up Peter x MJ again, which has happened many times before." It's about not understanding the character motivations at all. Their motivations are being kept secret from the reader because the writer doesn't even know what they are. And given how he resolved the debt collector in his run, I don't have a lot of faith he is going to find a way that explains the break-up, and MJ's subsequent actions, in anything that even resembles a satisfying manner.

Dang I didn't know that, so this kinda like a JJ Abrams style mystery box that may or may not pay off. This clarifies a lot.

It's funny because I really like Wells' writing in general and his earlier Spidey works too.

I guess he's trying to differentiate his run from others.

At least the art is real pretty

[Matt Rat]

Can he? He certainly can. There's always the chance of him reading the online response from his run and doing a 180. Or maybe doing a 180 was always his plan. Or maybe he never intended to do a 180 and the run will end as bad as it started. Will he? I guess we have to wait. And with this run making me anxious with every issue that releases it's gonna be difficult to keep waiting.

Wells has been a little too honest with his writing in interviews which I feel hurt the run stupendously. He said for instance that this was a creative writing exercise, he didn't have a set premise beyond the set-up, and then he said in another interview that nothing in his run will have any permanent bearing on the characters, so anyone listening to that and reading the book has an excuse to skip it as there's no justifiable investment.

[CaptainUniverse]

Wells has been a little too honest with his writing in interviews which I feel hurt the run stupendously. He said for instance that this was a creative writing exercise, he didn't have a set premise beyond the set-up, and then he said in another interview that nothing in his run will have any permanent bearing on the characters, so anyone listening to that and reading the book has an excuse to skip it as there's no justifiable investment.

That almost makes it sound like the whole thing is a nightmare, that none of this is actually happening.

[Alex_Of_X]

wanna add a lil context here:

Quoting from an October interview by Handsome Genius Club Radio Show, link below

"When we started talking about directions we wanted to take, or ways to play with a different version of the character, we wanted to just hit the ground running. We thought it might be fun to show him in a new place, and then fill in how he got there as we go, just as a writing exercise, or a dramatic exercise to make it more dramatic. And then by the end of the first year we'll pretty much fill in all the blanks and bring everyone else up to speed. I just like to have a mystery in there. I liked starting with him and Aunt may having it out, cause her feelings were hurt and Peter's been gone. It felt like a different flavor (of story). JRJR does drama really well, and I wanted to start with a sad Peter Parker, a mad Peter Parker, and as we went on see if I could justify that. That's what I'll be trying to do. We'll see how it goes."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...w/id1549479483

IMHO, having listened to the pod, the written out part in particular, it feels disingenuous to say that the "Writing Exercise" part was Wells setting up a mystery without knowing the solution to it. Like, I think he had an idea, a two-sentence explanation, at least, enough so that Lowe et al okayed the pitch.

I think what he talks about is that his instincts are that having the mystery and holding on to it will make for more exciting reading if he pulls it off as a writer. He's down to earth enough to say he's going to try, but can't guarantee it'll work (and clearly, for many it hasn't).

tl;dr: I don't think the man's ad-libbing the biggest gig of his comics career lmao

[Matt Rat]

tl;dr: I don't think the man's ad-libbing the biggest gig of his comics career lmao

He's winging it. The last part of the interview says they'd 'see how it went', would you say something like that if you had a sure fire game plan? One that you would commit to no matter what? Without compromise? That's something Slott did for better or worse, no matter how much it pissed people off. We've already seen Wells' run see many, many course corrections because they "saw how it went" and it went badly.

[NC_Yankee]

Wells has been a little too honest with his writing in interviews which I feel hurt the run stupendously. He said for instance that this was a creative writing exercise, he didn't have a set premise beyond the set-up, and then he said in another interview that nothing in his run will have any permanent bearing on the characters, so anyone listening to that and reading the book has an excuse to skip it as there's no justifiable investment.

That gives me two impressions:
1: He is using ASM as some kind of creative writing experiment, and not taking it seriously.
2: Wells is not only bad, but he leaves nothing positive for a future writer to expand upon. How? Here are two Spider-Man examples: Dan Slott created Cindy Moon and Marv Wolfman Felicia Hardy. Were the original versions good? Of course not. But they did create characters that could be improved upon, and were ( Especially true in the case of Felicia). He is not even interested in that.

[Lee]

I don't think the run is bad, and the sense of a negative fan reception may be based on non-representative online spaces, but even then most of the people complaining would be happy with a resolution that plays fair with what we know so far, and gets to their preferred outcome.

It's the Arrested Development meme. "There are dozens of us! DOZENS!"

but we know that will be answered soon.

I mean Spencer took nearly 70 issues for the Kindred mystery

Spencer put Peter and MJ back together as a couple, and the mystery teased remarrying them.

Wells broke Peter and MJ up, and the mystery is about why they broke up.

You can gauge how this forum will react to a run by Peter and Mary Jane's relationship status.

You rarely ever see any posts along the lines of "This isn't what I want, and it's not for me, but it's decently written", but you do see a lot of "This isn't what I want, so everything about it is terrible".

Like Mets said, it's for the most part about each poster's preferred outcome more than anything else.

[TinkerSpider]

It's the Arrested Development meme. "There are dozens of us! DOZENS!"

Again, when the only refutation is an ad hominem fallacy, that means the person using the ad hominem has no actual refutation of the criticism.

Spencer put Peter and MJ back together as a couple, and the mystery teased remarrying them.

That’s….not a mystery. Not even close to the definition of a mystery.

Wells broke Peter and MJ up, and the mystery is about why they broke up.

Again, what Wells is doing is not a mystery. It’s withholding information from the reader that the characters are all in full possession of and know everything about. It’s a blatant authorial trick where the hand of the author is very much visible (and thus not mysterious at all). It’s a transparent ploy to generate reader engagement (if frustration can be termed “engagement”), creates an inorganic, artificial story, and is considered something only amateurish writers, who don’t know better and who aren’t confident about their command of characters and plot, do.

You can gauge how this forum will react to a run by Peter and Mary Jane's relationship status.

Or how competently Peter is written. This is wholly ignoring the positive reaction Chip Zdarsky’s Spectacular received, because it doesn’t fit the narrative. And Wells’s Tombstone arc was also fairly well-received here.

And aren’t PeterMJ fans also readers? Aren’t their dollars also green? Marvel’s insistence on trolling them - at the expense of telling a coherent, cohesive story - is the oddest choice I’ve ever seen a consumer products make. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that as soon BND writers were no longer ensconced in the Spider-office, the trolling went away.

And as soon as BND writers returned, the trolling - which really does appear as if solely motivated by angering readers who find fault with certain writers rather than by telling a good story - reappeared.

You rarely ever see any posts along the lines of "This isn't what I want, and it's not for me, but it's decently written", but you do see a lot of "This isn't what I want, so everything about it is terrible".

Like Mets said, it's for the most part about each poster's preferred outcome more than anything else.

And another ad hominem! The criticism must be valid indeed.

wanna add a lil context here:

Quoting from an October interview by Handsome Genius Club Radio Show, link below

"When we started talking about directions we wanted to take, or ways to play with a different version of the character, we wanted to just hit the ground running. We thought it might be fun to show him in a new place, and then fill in how he got there as we go, just as a writing exercise, or a dramatic exercise to make it more dramatic. And then by the end of the first year we'll pretty much fill in all the blanks and bring everyone else up to speed. I just like to have a mystery in there. I liked starting with him and Aunt may having it out, cause her feelings were hurt and Peter's been gone. It felt like a different flavor (of story). JRJR does drama really well, and I wanted to start with a sad Peter Parker, a mad Peter Parker, and as we went on see if I could justify that. That's what I'll be trying to do. We'll see how it goes."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...w/id1549479483

IMHO, having listened to the pod, the written out part in particular, it feels disingenuous to say that the "Writing Exercise" part was Wells setting up a mystery without knowing the solution to it. Like, I think he had an idea, a two-sentence explanation, at least, enough so that Lowe et al okayed the pitch.

I think what he talks about is that his instincts are that having the mystery and holding on to it will make for more exciting reading if he pulls it off as a writer. He's down to earth enough to say he's going to try, but can't guarantee it'll work (and clearly, for many it hasn't).

tl;dr: I don't think the man's ad-libbing the biggest gig of his comics career lmao

He might have had some resolution in mind and Lowe did promise in the letters page of ASM #1 that they had answers to who Paul and the kids are.

But a key piece of evidence that Wells had no real idea how to get there or what it would mean for the characters and is just making it up as he goes along are the disjoined stories that don’t build on another, the horrendous pacing, and the lack of anything resembling coherent clues - especially when the characters all know what happened but he continues to force them to speak in coy allusions only. There is no sense of a larger story going on; the individual arcs are all one-off episodic stories. And when the reader has to read the recap at the start of the issue to understand what is supposedly happening in the characters’ lives because none of the events are on the page, it’s a huge writing issue.

This may be his biggest gig comics wise, but writing for TV and film are much bigger, career and money wise, and we know he’s had at least two high profile MCU assignments while writing ASM. I don’t think the issue is Wells is inherently untalented, but after the Tombstone arc his writing has been slapdash, disjointed and totally dissonant, as if the book is not his first priority.

[rward777]

Yes. Wells has said in interviews that he's making it up as he goes along. It shows.

Reducing it to "oh, he broke up Peter x MJ again, which has happened many times before." It's about not understanding the character motivations at all. Their motivations are being kept secret from the reader because the writer doesn't even know what they are. And given how he resolved the debt collector in his run, I don't have a lot of faith he is going to find a way that explains the break-up, and MJ's subsequent actions, in anything that even resembles a satisfying manner.

Perhaps a new female debt collector who ends up falling in love with Peter.