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

[Kevinroc]

First, I would like to say that if you're enjoying this run, then you are enjoying this run. A statement like the thread title is more of a general sentiment than a specific one.

I think it's fair to say that the Wells run hasn't exactly been the most popular with fans. And while online spaces have never been the best measuring stick, it's fair to say that there has been a pervasive sense of negativity around this run that has been bleeding onto the page.

I ask. Is it too late for Wells to turn this around? What would he have to do in order to accomplish this? Or is it too little, too late at this point?

[Vegan]

I personally don’t see a way out for him to turn it around, and I’m somewhat concerned whoever the next writer is will have to spend more time cleaning off the muck of this run than telling stories they might actually like to tell

[Matt Rat]

By explaining what Peter did and getting him and MJ back together in the same story.

[The Negative Zone]

He could, but he'll probably stick to whatever story he's currently writing instead of doing a 180.

[NC_Yankee]

I personally don’t see a way out for him to turn it around, and I’m somewhat concerned whoever the next writer is will have to spend more time cleaning off the muck of this run than telling stories they might actually like to tell

Can it be turned around? Sure. Will he? That is highly unlikely

[Vegan]

By explaining what Peter did and getting him and MJ back together in the same story.

I don’t think it would feel earned if he did that. It’d feel like if someone rear ended your parked car in the night, and you see a note with $5 and the word “Sorry !) on the windshield when you are about to leave for work

[Kaitou D. Kid]

It's too late for What Peter Did to make sense or be interesting.

That said, if Wells sticks around and has a Part 2 of his run, Marvel can always win people back if they internalize and learned from their mistakes. It could be like the opposite of JMS' run, where people loved the first half of that run with JRJR but hated it from Sins Past onwards.

But that's a pretty big if, and Wells is no JMS. I highly doubt something like that will happen.

[PCN24454]

By explaining what Peter did and getting him and MJ back together in the same story.

Yeah that’s really the only thing people care about

[Daibhidh]

Let's distinguish between three levels of description of what happened.
Level one: Peter fouled up somehow and the FF, Avengers, and Mary Jane can't forgive him for it. (In a Greek tragedy, something bad happens to the protagonist.)
Level two: The answer to what did Peter do? The story pitch. (In a Greek tragedy, Elektra is waiting for her brother Orestes to come home so he can avenge their father Agamemnon by killing their mother and her lover. He comes home and does so.)
Level three: The specific script for what he did. (The difference between Sophocles' treatment of the story and Euripedes' treatment.)

Level two, frankly, is not interesting in itself. It may become interesting once you add level three, but the marketing and the mystery box treatment suggest that the creative team think level two is inherently interesting, and that is not a good sign.

The real interesting question that has been implicitly set up is how do Peter and Mary Jane get back together. How do they get out of this mess? is a more interesting question than, How did they get into this mess? (The creative team do not seem to realise this. I will be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong.) Therefore, level two would be interesting if it turns out to be relevant to how Mary Jane and Peter get back together. (Mary Jane just decides that it didn't really matter after all is not a good way out of the mess.) It would also be interesting if it made us see that the apparent Level One description, Peter did something that Mary Jane couldn't excuse or forgive, is in fact not the case, and we read it all over again in a new light. (It turns out that Mary Jane and Peter have only pretended to break up.) But it's hard to see any other possibility that fits the details of the scripts so far according to what I've heard of them.

[Matt Rat]

Peter did something that Mary Jane couldn't excuse or forgive

As we see in Dark Web, MJ chose to talk with Peter and then asked Felicia to look after him after seeing how hurt he was, so she's already forgiven him, there's really just the matter of her responsibilities to the kids being the obstacle. I don't think she loves Paul and he is merely a package deal.

[Knightsilver]

The problem for Wells...is that everything is built around how interested readers are in "what Peter did". But readers *aren't* interested...they're just annoyed over yet another Peter and MJ breakup. When the mystery that you intended to hook readers fails...there really isn't anything you can do other than end it and move on.

[Darthfury78]

I heard that Zeb Wells wants to leave ASM once his contract is up.

[Mercwmouth12]

I heard that Zeb Wells wants to leave ASM once his contract is up.

Is that this year or next year. If it's this year maybe issue 24 or 25

[TinkerSpider]

Can Wells turn the negativity around?

No.

Zeb Wells comes out of sketch comedy in the aughts where cynicism and humilation = funny. Anything even faintly resembling real emotion or earnestness is to be squashed like a bug. Nihilism rules, optimism and sincerity drools. Therefore, when the story is predicated upon two people deeply in love being torn asunder and a true hero falling mysteriously from grace: he's going to fail, every single time, because that school of writing is scared/incapable/thinks it's beneath them to acknowledge such things as true love and true heroism exist. As a writer, Wells is the anti-JMD (which is ironic as there are interviews where he says he loves JMD's Spider-Man stories).

And we see this in his authorial affinitiy for characters of dubious/dark gray morality. Only Tombstone, and to a lesser extent the Vulture and Norman (although Cantwell is the writer doing the actual heavy lifting in Gold Goblin) resemble human characters. His Peter is a cartoon, incompetent and a quitter, whose only nod to heroism is forgiving his trangressors like a mindless compassion machine - put a quarter in Peter and watch him let bad guys walk all over him. So can Wells turn around the negativity on his depiction of Peter? He'd have to understand why Peter is a hero, and so far he's failed to demonstrate that he has a grasp.

Also, there is a streak of sexism in Wells's work, from TV to comics, that bodes poorly for any story featuring Mary Jane. Wells's work has been dismissive and disrespectful of MJ, from having Venom physically and verbally abuse a downtrodden, passive MJ in Venom: Dark Origins; to writing her sadly standing by the window as Peter swings away and incapable of telling Peter from Ben on the phone (while Aunt May can) and forgetting Peter just told her Ben was back to the world's least romantic and most hesitant conversation about moving in together in Beyond; to turning her into a catatonic mommy housewife that is the complete opposite of MJ Watson, life of the party, in the current run. Nor has he dropped any clues that we are supposed to think MJ's abrupt 180 degree turn in characterization is anything but played straight - no hints of possession/spell/alternative reality/mind control. That might be the resoution he pulls out at the last minute, of course, but so far he's done nothing to lay the groundwork. If Wells doesn't understand Peter, his inability to understand Mary Jane borders on the pathological.

Last, Wells's resolution of the debt collector story was...underwhelming, to say the least, and vastly comical only in how much of a last minute poorly executed pull out of thin air it was. In fact, Wells's swerve into a farcical tone for Dark Web doesn't bode well overall for his ability to turn around the negativity. This was his big chance to sell us on Ben/Chasm as a tragic hero, to let the reader feel Ben's pain and to make us understand why Chasm is a fitting fate for Ben at this time. Wells knows Ben has fans, he spent almost an entire podcast back in August, I think, talking with a Ben fan about why the character resonates with readers. But nah. Let's make the event a silly cartoon where the star is a talking scooter.

(It could be worse, of course - Wells could indulge his motif of killing/eating/mutilating babies and kids even more in this run. And while there's been plenty of unnecessary graphic violence, his love of Grand Guignol levels of blood splatter and torn limbs has been rather restrained for him.)

I get the feeling from his latest scripts that his level of interest in writing ASM appears to have gone sharply downhill after the Tombstone arc. Maybe he's taken on too many other projects, from Marvel Zombies to The Marvels to whatever other scripts he's doctoring out of public view. But overall, his first year of stories has been very poorly paced.

So no, IMO Wells can't turn it around.

Could Cantwell or MacKay or Gleason, etc, turn the current story around? Quite probably.

Let's distinguish between three levels of description of what happened.
Level one: Peter fouled up somehow and the FF, Avengers, and Mary Jane can't forgive him for it. (In a Greek tragedy, something bad happens to the protagonist.)
Level two: The answer to what did Peter do? The story pitch. (In a Greek tragedy, Elektra is waiting for her brother Orestes to come home so he can avenge their father Agamemnon by killing their mother and her lover. He comes home and does so.)
Level three: The specific script for what he did. (The difference between Sophocles' treatment of the story and Euripedes' treatment.)

Level two, frankly, is not interesting in itself. It may become interesting once you add level three, but the marketing and the mystery box treatment suggest that the creative team think level two is inherently interesting, and that is not a good sign.

The real interesting question that has been implicitly set up is how do Peter and Mary Jane get back together. How do they get out of this mess? is a more interesting question than, How did they get into this mess? (The creative team do not seem to realise this. I will be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong.) Therefore, level two would be interesting if it turns out to be relevant to how Mary Jane and Peter get back together. (Mary Jane just decides that it didn't really matter after all is not a good way out of the mess.) It would also be interesting if it made us see that the apparent Level One description, Peter did something that Mary Jane couldn't excuse or forgive, is in fact not the case, and we read it all over again in a new light. (It turns out that Mary Jane and Peter have only pretended to break up.) But it's hard to see any other possibility that fits the details of the scripts so far according to what I've heard of them.

Excellent analysis! And I agree.

[Kurolegacy]

Well he could start by not having Peter look so outmatched by villains he’s beaten a thousand times. Maybe it would make sense if it was set right after he got out of the hospital or there was a plot point that it had some effect on his powers but this is six months later. It’s just sad how he’s had to be saved by external forces practically every arc and not a good look.