Is the Spider-Man editorial approach out of touch instead of just spiteful?

[Garlador]

While storytelling is a part of the majority of modern games, storytelling is a different beast than games. Sometimes a seemingly unappealing story path can transform into an appealing one with the full context of the completed story. Also, while stories that become unpredictable for the sake of being unpredictable are generally going to be bad, a certain amount of unexpectedness in a story will keep it fresh.

With games, if the gameplay is unsatisfying, it's hard to justify it as part of a larger context (usually. some games are designed to annoy the player as part of the experience, but few pull it off well). And to use the CDProjekt Red example, the game being broken and buggy is objective. At best, a defender of such a game would argue the bugs aren't enough to detract from how well the game does other things. But the bugs should still be fixed.

Not off the mark, but there’s more nuance there.

Using CD Projekt as an example, the gameplay element was deemed so unacceptable due to lack of polish and poor performance that Sony outright removed the game from their online storefront due to player complaints. CD Projekt Red issued official apologies and promised substantial improvements to meet expectations. They certainly didn’t claim players were “playing it wrong” (the game LAIR claimed players and critics “played it wrong” and that studio went under, sadly).

Many games are STORY-driven though, from narrative text-based games, story-driven RPGs, and games that put their narrative out there front and center. Depending on the story backlash, I often see changes - from Final Fantasy 15’s party-focused DLC, Metroid moving far from Other M’s story and characterization in recent games, or BioWare’s entire Extended Cut and Citadel DLC based on initial story blowback, etc.

An example I’ll share is there was a romance path in a game that all the men in the room loved and approved and saw no problem with… until a female developer raised her hand to say she felt it was a bit “sexist”. That it turned the female party member into a plot device that lacked agency, just a prize for the player to win or lose. Another female developer sounded off, agreeing. Then another. Without their voices, the romance path would have been quickly approved with none of the male creators thinking there was a problem with it. But there was, and we couldn’t see it without outside perspective.

That’s how I think Spidey Office is - comics in GENERAL often still are - based on what I’ve heard from female creators who still struggle to feel seen and heard in a male-driven hierarchy of office authority. There’s so much in this recent run that makes me think of those women in the writers room at that studio, scared to speak up and be labeled a “problem” but with the courage to call out what they felt was taking a female character and reducing her just for plot drama.

Times are changing, but old writing habits and behavior dies hard.

[Tuck]

Many games are STORY-driven though, from narrative text-based games, story-driven RPGs, and games that put their narrative out there front and center. Depending on the story backlash, I often see changes - from Final Fantasy 15Â’s party-focused DLC, Metroid moving far from Other MÂ’s story and characterization in recent games, or BioWareÂ’s entire Extended Cut and Citadel DLC based on initial story blowback, etc.

But these things are different. I'll go with Mass Effect 3, since it is choice-based.

Mass Effect 3 is the most curated of the storylines in the series (it sort of needs to be because of how many branches are created throughout the first two games). But players are still there for an experience with how their personal playthrough has a significant effect on how the storyline plays out. Bioware had to balance those expectations with the realities of maintaining a coherent story.

I think the cause of a lot of the player complaints about the game is that Bioware favored keeping the story on a coherent track when accounting for all the possible variations in playthroughs became cumbersome. (So, everyone has the Rachni mission regardless of their choice about the queen in ME1.) This is also why the ending converges into a basic three-choice situation (although it was technically more complicated than that; how many choices you had depended on your choices throughout the trilogy).

If anything, Bioware's favoring of the story over gameplay (gameplay being the narrative differences created by individual player's choices) is the source of fan disastisfaction.

This balance of gameplay with narrative will always make games distinct from other forms of storytelling.

An example I’ll share is there was a romance path in a game that all the men in the room loved and approved and saw no problem with… until a female developer raised her hand to say she felt it was a bit “sexist”. That it turned the female party member into a plot device that lacked agency, just a prize for the player to win or lose. Another female developer sounded off, agreeing. Then another. Without their voices, the romance path would have been quickly approved with none of the male creators thinking there was a problem with it. But there was, and we couldn’t see it without outside perspective.

I don't know which game/romance you're talking about, but just thought I'd point out that with choice-based games with romance options, it's kind of a catch-22. Either you make all the LIs automatically be interested in the PC or you gamify achieving the romance. If you consider these situations outside of a gameplay situation, they're both kind of messed up.

That’s how I think Spidey Office is - comics in GENERAL often still are - based on what I’ve heard from female creators who still struggle to feel seen and heard in a male-driven hierarchy of office authority. There’s so much in this recent run that makes me think of those women in the writers room at that studio, scared to speak up and be labeled a “problem” but with the courage to call out what they felt was taking a female character and reducing her just for plot drama.

Times are changing, but old writing habits and behavior dies hard.

Comics could definitely due with more perspectives (including socio-political), but I really would like if people were more judicious with the accusations of -isms.

[Anthony W]

It does feel like comics has an adversarial relationship with it's consumers to a degree that I don't really see in other forms of entertainment. People in the gaming space behave absolutely abhorrently but that disdain seems one sided, developers usually seem receptive to feedback and willing to iterate and roll things back a lot more than DC/Marvel seem to. I'm not presenting an approach as right or wrong, but it's always interested me.

It's almost like they know the end is fast approaching and quit caring.

[PCN24454]

Even Captain Stacy was like one of the only members of the police who would go to bat for him.

Spider-Man’s had a lot of Gordon’s over the years. DeWolff, Watanabe, that one guy from the JMS era.

[CrimsonEchidna]

So the recent NYCC reveal that Wells and Lowe were the ones who pitched the idea of Kamala Khan's death to the Marvel bullpen kind of drives home for me that the direction of Amazing really is unfortunately all about just courting controversy. Introducing Kamala into the comic only to kill her, even leaving everything else aside, the fact that Wells proceeded to barely feature her in any of the stories just proves that they cared more about the shock factor than actually writing a meaningful story.

And after all the hoopla of how big of deal Kamala's death weighed on Peter conscience...they've proceeded to only "resolve" it in a few pages of Amazing and Kamala has now not appeared in the book again. lol

[Kaitou D. Kid]

God, I keep forgetting the Kamala thing was just a few months ago. It feels longer with how many issues and bad stuff we had since.

I think when a book makes mainstream headlines because they fridged Marvel's biggest Muslim-American hero in 2023 during AAPI month, asking the question "are they out of touch?" is 100% fair and appropriate. No amount of insistence or gaslighting is going to change that fact.

[Mister Mets]

Reposting this,

https://twitter.com/donoDMG1/status/1713972891790811165



This isn't a good look.

This thread's uglier.

There is absolutely zero threat or menace on this thread's title and original post. But since there is some valid commentary going on about the title, and being the one who created it, I should clarify. My original intent was to serve as a counterpoint to another thread that asks about "editorial hate" ever being "this large and transparent". My idea was "I don't think that's the case, but I do believe they may be out of touch". Which I do, sue me.

I worded the title like ****, that goes without saying. English is not my native language, so that may have played a part. I don't know if there's any way to edit a thread's title. Anyway, I meant to clarify this sooner, but if you have a look at the first few pages, you'll notice that a few members decided to carpet bomb me with insults and derision. One in particular was specially angry, and attacked me with particular viciousness. That one seemed to have taken this thread personally, as if they were actually involved with (or part of) the Spider office. I wrote a painstaking rebuttal of several of the bombs launched at me, a specially polite one given the circumstances. There was a further attack from this individual, and a request from me for them to back off.

The attacks are still there if anybody wants to check them out. My defenses... some of them are still there, some went missing.

So I said **** it, I was ready to apologize for the unfortunate wording of the title, but a lot of people went at my throat and got away with it scot free, while I had some of my attempts to defend myself deleted. And I will say this: most of the attackers seemed to have read the title but not the original post.

For what it's worth, if I could rename the thread I'd go for something like this: "Editorial hate? I don't think so. But they may be out of touch". If anybody feels that's still too inflammatory, then I don't know what to tell anybody.

The title is asking whether the editorial approach is out of touch or spiteful.

That seems to be a threat or menace type framing.

To clarify, I think the intent of the creator of the last thread was to ask about "hate" directed at editorial from the fanbase. Ie: Has the fandom ever hated on editorial as much as they have recently. I dont think the intent was to say that editorial was being "hateful" or behaving with malice in their storytelling approach. The title of this thread does make more sense if you interpret it that way though.

The "threat or menace" criticism is basically that the title comes across as presenting a double negative to choose from: Are they ignorant or behaving maliciously? It seems to assert that editorial is doing something wrong when some posters may not believe that editorial is a problem or doing anything wrong. So, in the future, it probably would be best to just pose the open-ended question: "do you believe editorial is out of touch?"

I certainly agree that titles should be more open-ended.

Groupthink is bad, and should be discouraged.

[Mister Mets]

I don't really understand what this is supposed to mean. You kind of just say that Well's didn't want to work on the book and had already told all the stories he wanted to with it. Which just kind of makes me incredibly frustrated that the work that I've seen on the page is so careless all the time. Then you just describe vaguely some ideas he might have for the book that don't really line up at all with what happens in his run. Like you point out two things: 1) he's building off the work of others. 2) He cares about practical things like storytelling efficiency.

For 1), the most you can say about this is that the RandyJanine marriage and the PeterNorman set up were explored in Spencer's run. I don't really think it goes much deeper than that. And the Norman stuff is particularly frustrating because he took that dynamic and just flipped it on its head without explanation. Like much else in the run, he was essentially throwing out what came before and saying "oh it just changed in a flashback". Big moments that should really define their relationship, like Norman kidnapping May, Gwen's death, or even the baby are really not examined outside of saying: "don't worry about that now Norman, we're friends". Also not to harp on the OMD of it all. But if there was a connecting throughline in the Spencer run, it was the fact that Peter and MJ were together and that that relationship worked. Even if you say PeterMJ are endgame, this aspect of the run was thrown out entirely with little care. Or at the very least, literally no desire for examing what throwing it out meant for Peter or for MJ. The idea that you would with a straight face describe someone writing like that as "building on the works of others, which we haven't seen in a while on this book" is mind boggling to me. Genuinely feels like I'm being gaslighted. Honestly I would describe this much more as a theme of Spencer's run.

2) You say storytelling efficiency. (What does it even mean?) I just say laziness. So much of the book is filler followed by rushing through the important character beats to get to some shocking hook. Kamala has to be the most egregious example. But so many character beats just kind of feel half baked. Black Cat, MJ, Peter's entire personal life during this time. So much of that stuff just exists in limbo for long stretches of time.

I guess what I'm saying is that this is nonsense vaguely meant to guilt people into thinking there's more there there with Well's run than there is. I don't even really understand what the big deal is with the title of the thread. This isn't a letter to marvel editorial or a reply on Nick Lowe's book of the week tweets. It's a fan forum where the tenor of at least half the users is that the books are catastrophically bad. Like it's fine if the tone here is negative sometimes imo. Just really rubs me the wrong way that professionals at Marvel would antagonize people spending literal hundreds of dollars to see them and communicate one or two questions to them. And the justification would in part jump to, "well look how people don't like the run on this forum. Both sides are pretty negative." It feels like the worst kind of whataboutism.

I think you're reading some stuff into my comments that isn't there. Wells didn't say he doesn't like the book or anything like that.

As for #1, the Peter/ Norman relationship is a big part of the book. Tombstone was the villain in the first five issues. There was the Ben Reilly arc, although Wells was part of the Beyond era. The Vulture two-parter built on a Saladin Ahmed one-shot. Ned Leeds was accused of being the Hobgoblin again. One issue was a crossover with the Hellfire Club. Another issue was a crossover with Judgment Day.

We could look at the work so far, and a lot of it builds on what was established earlier.
#1-5 feature Tombstone from Nick Spencer's run.
#6 is new with the Living Brain VS the Sinister Six.
#7-8 feature the Vulture angry at events in a back-up story.
#9 is a Hellfire Gala tie-in.
#10 is a Judgment Day tie-in.
#11-13 feature the Goblin Queen from Beyond, and developments with Ned Leeds.
#14-18 bring back Ben Reilly.
#21-26 bring back the Mayans, and explain how Peter came to Norman Osborn for help.
#27-30 feature Dr Octopus, paying off developments in #6.
#31 set up the crime war with Randy & Janice's wedding.
#32-35 feature Kraven's son and Norman Osborn's sins from Spencer's run.

This isn't a good or bad thing. It doesn't mean that this run is better than Nick Spencer's run or anything, but I do think it's more of a clear continuation than previous runs. That's something we should be able to assess objectively, because subjective questions are irrelevant.

With storytelling efficiency, I'm thinking more about how action set pieces work, and the ways in which he depicts a Spider-Man VS Vulture fight differently than others.

As for the title of the thread, it doesn't fit an idea that fans and creators should be respectful, and some of the comments don't fit the idea that both sides get to be equally prickly.

There's a third idea that creators do stuff so they can be held to a lower standard than fans who have less scrutiny/ pressure.

There's a final idea that the customer gets to be rude, but that has to be articulated clearly (and presumes that everyone is a customer.)

Wells also said in that interview that his plan was to try stuff he thought could be interesting and if he had to "eat ****" he'd do it. He also said (not sure if in the same interview, but it was also on a podcast) that he spent a lot of time writing stuff that tried to not piss people off and had now decided to write what he wanted. So, the man went in all cocky with a very specific plan and was cavalier about it. And there you have it: throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks (stories are all over the place, things are left dangling, questions remain unanswered, no overall theme, no tonal coherence), and lots of people unhappy.

I'd say, let the man eat what he said he was willing to eat instead of portraying him as a victim.

That wasn't the Ideas Don't Bleed interview.

I'd like to see exactly what he said in context before I offer any pronouncement on it.

[Kevinroc]

This thread's uglier.

Whether that's true or not is irrelevant. The fact is that, whether it's fair or not, the people are Marvel are held to a higher standard. And nothing good comes when they react poorly. We can talk all day about how poorly certain segments of the fandom have acted, but the perception of fandom is already poor. It ain't getting much worse than it already is. (And this is without getting into the worst elements of fandom that send threatening messages, which nobody should do or condone.)

When editorial reacts poorly, the fandom will respond poorly in turn.

[fjmac]

The title is asking whether the editorial approach is out of touch or spiteful.

That seems to be a threat or menace type framing.

You do realize, I suppose, I offered an explanation and acknowledged the poor wording of the title, which gave the impression of a sense I did not mean to convey. It's right there on the text you quoted.

As for the title of the thread, it doesn't fit an idea that fans and creators should be respectful, and some of the comments don't fit the idea that both sides get to be equally prickly.

You do realize, I suppose, I offered an explanation and acknowledged the poor wording of the title, which gave the impression of a sense I did not mean to convey.

That wasn't the Ideas Don't Bleed interview.

Which is why I said, and I quote, "not sure if in the same interview, but it was also on a podcast".

I'd like to see exactly what he said in context before I offer any pronouncement on it.

I'm sure you can look it up if you really feel like pronouncing on it.

[Frontier]

So the recent NYCC reveal that Wells and Lowe were the ones who pitched the idea of Kamala Khan's death to the Marvel bullpen kind of drives home for me that the direction of Amazing really is unfortunately all about just courting controversy. Introducing Kamala into the comic only to kill her, even leaving everything else aside, the fact that Wells proceeded to barely feature her in any of the stories just proves that they cared more about the shock factor than actually writing a meaningful story.

And after all the hoopla of how big of deal Kamala's death weighed on Peter conscience...they've proceeded to only "resolve" it in a few pages of Amazing and Kamala has now not appeared in the book again. lol

I wonder if they were feeling out ways to make Kamala a Mutant to tie-in to the MCU and that's why Wells and Lowe pitched their idea.

Either way, still probably one of the least popular and lackluster implemented parts of the run.

[Garlador]

I wonder if they were feeling out ways to make Kamala a Mutant to tie-in to the MCU and that's why Wells and Lowe pitched their idea.

Either way, still probably one of the least popular and lackluster implemented parts of the run.

Putting it lightly.

It was a decision that was so tone-deaf, it drove me back here just to see if my disgust and revulsion was shared by others, and I was happy to see it was.

[phonogram12]

This thread's uglier.

It really is.

[Mister Mets]

Whether that's true or not is irrelevant. The fact is that, whether it's fair or not, the people are Marvel are held to a higher standard. And nothing good comes when they react poorly. We can talk all day about how poorly certain segments of the fandom have acted, but the perception of fandom is already poor. It ain't getting much worse than it already is. (And this is without getting into the worst elements of fandom that send threatening messages, which nobody should do or condone.)

When editorial reacts poorly, the fandom will respond poorly in turn.

I don't think we should automatically assume that people at Marvel should be held to a higher standard.

I did address these points in my next post, but there are some different views.

I get that some people want different things online. They want to vent with likeminded people, or celebrate things with likeminded people. We see plenty of the latter with appreciation threads.

I think it's important to communicate with people who have different views and sources of information. I try to engage with people, and part of that is taking them literally and responding to the specific things that they say. And it annoys me when people aren't being honest, and pretend to care about some higher principle when it's just a cudgel to score points. It shows a fundamental dishonesty, and it's a waste of my time.

Another view is that caring about things that nothing to do with the quality of a comic book is bad. It creates incentives for companies to compromise on quality, since now there are additional considerations.

Someone can also think that critics (a category including anyone trying to communicate about a topic) should be held to the highest standard because they don't have responsibilities related to something that concerns me.

I know that comics pros are often taking a financial hit to make something in the hopes it connects with comic book readers.

You do realize, I suppose, I offered an explanation and acknowledged the poor wording of the title, which gave the impression of a sense I did not mean to convey. It's right there on the text you quoted.



You do realize, I suppose, I offered an explanation and acknowledged the poor wording of the title, which gave the impression of a sense I did not mean to convey.



Which is why I said, and I quote, "not sure if in the same interview, but it was also on a podcast".



I'm sure you can look it up if you really feel like pronouncing on it.

I thought it was worth mentioning that the comments weren't in that particular podcast in case someone was interested in.

Personally, I don't care as much about people's interpretations of what was said. I'm interested in the specifics, so I can come to my own conclusion.

I understand your explanation for the title, and I'm not saying it's all on you. Others have commented, and the thread title hasn't been changed by moderators or admins.

[Kevinroc]

I don't think we should automatically assume that people at Marvel should be held to a higher standard.

I did address these points in my next post, but there are some different views.

I get that some people want different things online. They want to vent with likeminded people, or celebrate things with likeminded people. We see plenty of the latter with appreciation threads.

I think it's important to communicate with people who have different views and sources of information. I try to engage with people, and part of that is taking them literally and responding to the specific things that they say. And it annoys me when people aren't being honest, and pretend to care about some higher principle when it's just a cudgel to score points. It shows a fundamental dishonesty, and it's a waste of my time.

Another view is that caring about things that nothing to do with the quality of a comic book is bad. It creates incentives for companies to compromise on quality, since now there are additional considerations.

Someone can also think that critics (a category including anyone trying to communicate about a topic) should be held to the highest standard because they don't have responsibilities related to something that concerns me.

I know that comics pros are often taking a financial hit to make something in the hopes it connects with comic book readers.

Whether it's fair or not, professionals are held to a higher standard than the fandom. This doesn't mean it's acceptable when someone says something out of line (as is often the case with fandom), but we should acknowledge that there is a power imbalance on display between fandom and creators. A fan couldn't force a creator to write Peter x MJ as a couple, for example. But if Cebulski ordered the current writer to bring Peter x MJ back as a couple as soon as possible, it would happen. (And yes, I'm aware an individual creator could not bring back the marriage so let's get that out of the way.)