How would you rate Dan Slott/ Mark Bagley's Spider-Man?

[exile001]

Is the book ending? I heard that somewhere.

Yes, it's being superseded by Spider-Boy and Superior Spider-Man.

[Username taken]

I'm voting B, cause End of S-Verse didn't hold my attention past issue 2. The Electro story, tho, was primo

I agree with this.

I didn't really like the Spider-Verse stuff but it's gotten much stronger since that first arc.

[Batman Begins 2005]

Went with C.

[Spidey_Legend]

Slott is in my Top 5 worst Spider-Man writers of all time.

I like Bagley.

[hobnob]

Slott is in my Top 5 worst Spider-Man writers of all time.

I like Bagley.

Slott’s a good writer and his ideas can be pretty good. I think Superior should have been an AU but Spider-Island is prime Spider-Man and Worldwide had great moments.

[Mister Mets]

Slott’s a good writer and his ideas can be pretty good. I think Superior should have been an AU but Spider-Island is prime Spider-Man and Worldwide had great moments.

How would Superior work as an AU? Would it be kinda like White Knight and other DC projects?

[CaptainUniverse]

How would Superior work as an AU? Would it be kinda like White Knight and other DC projects?

I bet it would be a What If? comic series with that fancy new logo that only ever got used on Chip Zdarsky's Spiders Shadow.

[hobnob]

How would Superior work as an AU? Would it be kinda like White Knight and other DC projects?

Yeah and I think it would have been a really good concept for something like that. DC has shown repeatedly that AUs can go for years. Injustice is an example. It got fruity in places but the concept was never boring IMO.

Marvel is good at limited runs but maybe they deem long-running AUs as unviable long term. DC’s very good at pulling them off and making them work.

[Spidey_Legend]

Slott’s a good writer and his ideas can be pretty good. I think Superior should have been an AU but Spider-Island is prime Spider-Man and Worldwide had great moments.

I hate the concept of Superior.

[Mister Mets]

Yeah and I think it would have been a really good concept for something like that. DC has shown repeatedly that AUs can go for years. Injustice is an example. It got fruity in places but the concept was never boring IMO.

Marvel is good at limited runs but maybe they deem long-running AUs as unviable long term. DC’s very good at pulling them off and making them work.

So what would make it better in an AU?

Do you think it works better with permanent changes? Should Spider-Man stay dead? Or is it more about the consequences when Peter returns (IE- Doc Ock can try to be a hero, Parker Industries doesn't have to get shut down?)

[exile001]

Marvel is good at limited runs but maybe they deem long-running AUs as unviable long term. DC’s very good at pulling them off and making them work.

2099 and the entire Ultimate Universe says "hi."

[Crazyspideyfan]

I liked the run was very enjoyable, wish it was continuing but understand why that’s not possible with the 2 new titles coming out, I wish we got a few more arcs because when all was said in done it was mostly just Spider-Verse and the Electro storyline which I loved the concept of. Looking forward to Superior and Spider-Boy!

[Lukmendes]

2099 and the entire Ultimate Universe says "hi."

Ultimatum wave also says "hi" .

[Yvonmukluk]

The later arcs were OK, the Electro arc for one felt like some good Big Time-era high concept stuff. Which is the only reason I didn’t vote F. End of the Spider-Verse was…another Dan Slott Spider-Verse story, which if you like that sort of thing I’m sure is your cup of chai. Unfortunate I’m not in that camp so it feels like a rote list of things I don’t like. It starts off feeling weirdly spiteful towards the ending of Spider-Geddon, with Annie, anointed as the Patternmaker or whatever, technically causing the whole mess and being patient zero of the waspification, Spider-Ma’am getting infected and eating the baby Inheritors, and even MC2 Peter’s resurrection getting undermined into him apparently being stuck as a giant spider (contradicting the Spider-Verse Unlimited story that predated this run in the process). The twist with the Totem dagger was OK for a shocking moment, I suppose, although if you think about it it rather raises an issue of causality, given Annie is the reason Shathra (we'll get to her) was able to set this whole thing into motion, and if Peter was never Spider-Man in any dimension as a result of the knife, then Annie would have then never been Spiderling, so she couldn't have become the pattern-maker and turned Shathra loose, so Peter never got cut with the dagger and oh no I've gone crosseyed.

And with Peter gone it turns into a parade of Slott's OCs, mostly, with 'Kraven, but a Spider-Man' and 'Black Cat, but a Spider-Man'* being given prominence in the narrative, as well as Spider-Norman and Spiders-Man (quick sidebar, Spiders-Man was much more interesting in the origin short story where he's a genuinely tragic figure, as opposed to all his later appearances where he's just Norman's minion and used as the butt of jokes about eating people) coming back to pass the MacGuffin along and then die. Even Cindy once more gets elevated to being the designated Chosen One, although granted technically the non-powered Peter also contributes. You'd think Spider-Zero from MacKay's miniseries would be involved, since she was the designated protector of the Spider-Verse at the end of that series, but she's conspicious by her absence. And I suppose the intent of Morlun getting stabbed with the Totem knife is meant to be 'putting the toys back in the box', but given he wasn't the only one eating Totems (the other Inheritors are all dead at this point, after all) and he also killed non-totems (sucks to be the Peter Parker of Earth-1983, I guess, given his Amazing Friends died and aren't totems - or literally anyone else who died whose identities got exposed and loved ones would be under threat as a result), there's still a lot of deaths that happened. Does it undo the whole army of Electros from web Warriors literally conquering worlds? We also get a weird bit where Spider-UK basically seems to look directly at the camera and say 'shut up about the numbering of Earths, it doesn't matter', which is either sniping at readers who were pointing out the inconsistency over the designation of the Amazing Friends' universe back in the original Spider-Verse comic, telling people off for getting huffy that 616 is the most important in the multiverse (which I guess does make in-universe sense now, given it was key to the whole Secret Wars business) or it's Slott essentially capitulating to Frenz and DeFalco that the Earth-982 depicted in the various Spider-Verse stories isn't actually the same one they worked on.

And then there's Shathra, continuing the tradition since the first Spider-Verse comic of taking a JMS villain that worked as a one-off totemic enemy (yes, I know Morlun came back, but frankly that was a mistake and laid the seeds for this whole mess. Jim Butcher did a much better take on 'Morlun's family comes back for revenge' in The Darkest Hours) and then inflating them into this ginormous multiverse-spanning threat that only the designated protagonists can stop. I much preferred the idea of the Web of Life and Destiny being more organic (no pun intended), rather than it turn out there's literally a spider-goddess who made it at the beginning of creation as the underpinning of all reality, and it turns out this one-off villain was her sister all along! Makes you wonder why she was slumming it in the 616 going after Peter & Kaine, really. At least the army of Electros from Web Warriors actually had a rationale for existing other than 'the writer decided this character was a multiversal bad guy all along', even if it was yet another multiversal level set of stakes.

Honestly I think the reason why I dislike End of the Spider-Verse (granted I didn't like either of its predecssors - well, at least, not the main story, there were soime hidden gems in the tie-ins) is that we got MacKay's Spider-Verse miniseries inbetween Spider-Geddon and this, which was basically the platonic idea of what I was looking for in a Spider-Verse story. Effectively small stakes (saving Spiderling), a single clear protagonist in Miles, who gets to go on effectively episodic adventures that all culminates in the final battle where everyone he helped comes back to return the favour. And it turns out that there's not a malevolent mastermind or anything, it's just that the web got tangled which allowed various bad guys to accidentally slip through and the Web itself is trying to protect Annie, but since it's not fully sentient and in pain, it doesn't fully understand it's making things worse, and they essentially talk it out and fix the problem that way.

In all honesty, this run kind of feels like it only existed because they wanted to put out another Spider-Verse story to tie into the movie, and then lay the groundwork for Spider-Boy's series and what I'm assuming is the next event/series to tie into the Madame Web movie given the Edge miniseries ends with her and Anya (and Spider-UK) as the new Web Warriors. But of course ATSV happened, so it kind of looks ridiculous that there's a team you can count on one hand to watch over an infinite multiverse, but that's going beyond the scope of Slott's run.

*I get that Spider-Gwen was a big success, but part of why she took off is because she wasn't just the 616 version plus a radioactive spider bite. You need a thief and a tracker? You could have characters who fill those roles that don't even need to tie into a preexisting character at all! It's an infinite multiverse, aside from the Spider-powers you could come up with something entirely new and exciting! I mean, look at Spider-Boy, I'm not a big fan of returning to 'this character was part of 616 Peter's backstory all along' either, but at least it his backstory and origin feels distinct from what came before. And the countless Spidersonas circling around the internet, for that matter.

I wish Slott all the best with the Spider-Boy and Superior series, but after this run I'm not going to be buying them.