Things to keep in mind when concocting behind-the-scenes conspiracy theories...

[boots]

that is verifiable

How would you define that outside of video taped surveillance? Would working at Marvel maybe count towards it?

[Alan2099]

Haven't seen much from Dan that is verifiable to be frank, so to say he's been 'correcting misinformation' would be quite misleading.

It's one thing to be a a shamelessly gullible gossip, but to address somebody that actually knows what's going on, knows the people involved, and was there when things happened and then tell them you'd rather believe the rumors then what they tell you takes a whole nother level of bullheadedness.

[Pav]

There's been a lot of online chatter about "Why do a Spider-Boy book instead of a Ben Reilly or Kaine book?"

Since you brought them up...

I'm curious what "behind the scenes" info you might be willing to share regarding the Spider Clone Bros. As someone who loves the Clone Saga and named my son after Ben Reilly, you can imagine how much I care about seeing them appear as often as possible -- yet the Spider-Office has admitted not really knowing what to do with Ben (and maybe Kaine as well). It seems to me the trouble may come from a blurring of the lines between the two characters: Kaine becoming the Scarlet Spider -- and a hero -- made him more similar to Ben; then when Ben is brought back (by you!) it's as though Kaine has kinda taken his place, so Ben returns as a villain, which arguably leads to him becoming more like Kaine -- and perhaps both characters have maybe lost what differentiates one from the other, leaving neither in a good place.

I seem to recall that you originally planned to bring Ben back in Spider-Island instead of Kaine: do you have an opinions on whether move might've been "better" for the characters long-term?

Also, totally unrelated question: I came to love your work due to reading your Great Lakes Avengers stuff. Any chance you can work them into your current stuff? Or maybe a new one-shot?

Thanks for all your great comic work and for taking the time to discuss comics with us!

-Pav, whose Benny Boy is almost 6 months old... 59748.jpg

[Rift]

Pav, your son is adoranle

[Xix25]

It's one thing to be a a shamelessly gullible gossip, but to address somebody that actually knows what's going on, knows the people involved, and was there when things happened and then tell them you'd rather believe the rumors then what they tell you takes a whole nother level of bullheadedness.

How would you define that outside of video taped surveillance? Would working at Marvel maybe count towards it?

I mean there's a difference between being reliable and being in the know. The latter doesn't necessarily imply the former and I'm not sure why you want to use the fallacy of appealing to authority here to say otherwise.

[Alan2099]

I mean there's a difference between being reliable and being in the know. The latter doesn't necessarily imply the former and I'm not sure why you want to use the fallacy of appealing to authority here to say otherwise.

The horse rancher, who you've seen ride horses, is telling you the hoof prints you're looking at belong to a horse, he rode over that spot just yesterday, and you're still insisting that they're zebra prints.

[Kurus]

The horse rancher, who you've seen ride horses, is telling you the hoof prints you're looking at belong to a horse, he rode over that spot just yesterday, and you're still insisting that they're zebra prints.

And if said horse rancher has a history of telling falsehoods, I may be disinclined to believe him.

[wleakr]

I mean there's a difference between being reliable and being in the know. The latter doesn't necessarily imply the former and I'm not sure why you want to use the fallacy of appealing to authority here to say otherwise.

No one is appealing to anyone. But most of us have a respect for comic book creators sharing information and anecdotes with us on here.

Maybe your words don't truly represent what you're portraying, but it would appear you have a (major) issue with Mr. Slott. If that's the case, fine, but why even read his words?

You actually told someone to "carry on with their life". Hope that made your day.

And you got on me for not adding any value to the board?

“You want it to be one way...But it’s the other way.” - the Wire

[Alan2099]

And if said horse rancher has a history of telling falsehoods, I may be disinclined to believe him.

So instead you believe the far more trustworthy anonymous internet rumor mill?

[Kurus]

So instead you believe the far more trustworthy anonymous internet rumor mill?

Personally I don’t really care one way or the other. At the end of the day I can’t really know what’s going on at marvel behind closed doors and I’m comfortable with that fact.

[Kevinroc]

Since you brought them up...

I'm curious what "behind the scenes" info you might be willing to share regarding the Spider Clone Bros. As someone who loves the Clone Saga and named my son after Ben Reilly, you can imagine how much I care about seeing them appear as often as possible -- yet the Spider-Office has admitted not really knowing what to do with Ben (and maybe Kaine as well). It seems to me the trouble may come from a blurring of the lines between the two characters: Kaine becoming the Scarlet Spider -- and a hero -- made him more similar to Ben; then when Ben is brought back (by you!) it's as though Kaine has kinda taken his place, so Ben returns as a villain, which arguably leads to him becoming more like Kaine -- and perhaps both characters have maybe lost what differentiates one from the other, leaving neither in a good place.

I seem to recall that you originally planned to bring Ben back in Spider-Island instead of Kaine: do you have an opinions on whether move might've been "better" for the characters long-term?

Also, totally unrelated question: I came to love your work due to reading your Great Lakes Avengers stuff. Any chance you can work them into your current stuff? Or maybe a new one-shot?

Thanks for all your great comic work and for taking the time to discuss comics with us!

-Pav, whose Benny Boy is almost 6 months old... 59748.jpg

Pav, your son is adorable.

[IamnotJudasTraveller]

Adorable kid indeed, Pav.

I also second your request if Slott could divulge any info whatsoever on possible Ben returns that never came to fruition. I remember that, during Clone Conspiracy, he posted in this very same forum that there were "multiple" attempts at bringing Ben back that never happened. I'm very much interested in hearing about any of them. I might be off the mark here, but I always got the impression DeMatteis might have been involved at any such plans (at least one, depending how many there even were).

[Mister Mets]

Pav's kid is adorable, and the story behind the name is great.

I was speaking on a creative level, not sales. The intended outcome of One More Day was to rejuvenate the creative energy of the book and draw in new readers. The book is stagnating creatively by many responses, articles, editorials, and even other professional writer responses, while sales are certainly NOT growing year over year even as the population of earth has nearly doubled and superhero media hit record highs over the last decade.

There are also thousands of factors at play here beyond "One More Day" itself that determine a character's longevity, particularly when comics are a miniscule fraction of Spider-Man's exposure to the general public. Sheer positive momentum can carry a beloved character forward long past their shelf date. The recent games are selling upwards of 33 million copies. Spider-Man is in the 2nd highest-grossing film in movie history. You could do a story where Peter says "screw it" to valuing human life and turns into The Spider-Punisher and starts gunning down criminals and I would wager his comic would still be around a decade later and still charting.

And, inversely, the marriage itself certainly wasn't a sunk cost, given that the book was still around 20 years later and selling well, with some of the highest-selling and best-received runs in history.

Not to get too political, but some of the absolute worst things that have happened recently to many of my friends (and myself) who have strong advocacy for human rights was bad people finding success in catering to the worst parts of their base's ideologies and finding far more success catering to bigots and zealots instead of rational, civil citizens. The short-term success has left long-term consequences that my children's children will be cleaning up after, because doubling-down on bad decisions and then refusing to reverse-course when the red flags appeared meant we broke things so hard that it's nearly impossible to fix them now.


What a terrible medium to be in where the fear of failure prevents creative minds from letting decades of wonderful stories organically develop forward.


I'd argue that fans need more facts. There are less and less of them to make educated conclusions these days, and the best we get is second-hand information and absolutist statements that don't pan out like that in other books or with other companies. I do not remotely blame readers for jumping to conclusions based off even a mild look at the history of comic books. I've lived through and seen all the problems over the years, books and companies dealing with altered plans, creative in-fighting, job loss, editorial mandates, creative bankruptcy, artist boycotts, leadership failures, bankruptcy, legal battles, GoFundMe's for dying creators, institutional sexism, racism, and homophobia, creator burnout, boycotts, credit denial, artistic theft, petty bias, talented writers quitting in protest, blacklists, a Yellowface scandal, rape and assault scandals, creators jumping-ship, royalty disputes, nepotism, and good ol' fashion fraud.

The only truth of the matter I fully believe is what is public record, and there is a very good reason most audiences don't know the whole story. As one of my instructors at Disney once said, "you don't want to know all the facts. It'll break your heart and destroy the magic."

I don't see any reason for the editors to assume the books are doing worse creatively than if they hadn't gone through with One More Day.

What would have happened to the comics if not for One More Day is an interesting counterfactual, but I don't think many at Marvel would want a mulligan about how things ended up going.

A Spider-Punisher might sell well, but I don't think it would sell as well or as consistently as regular Spider-Man comics. There are no sure things in entertainment. Even the MCU is showing that right now.

The illusion of change vs commitment to change isn't about the comics medium, but a very specific subset of comics set in a shared universe.

I do think writers and artists should have the attitude that they're borrowing the series from their successors, and that they should be mindful not to break anything.

Fans do have plenty of facts. We know where Amazing Spider-Man places on sales charts. We know how sales charts are determined. We know the names of the people who work on the book. We know whether it gets new printings or spinoffs.

[Mister Mets]

We know for a fact the story was changed. Cebulski confirmed it as a Con last year.

The only mystery question up until recently was "What was it changed from?"



Lowe and Brevoort never confirmed or denied what happened to Spencer.

Cebulski said there were some last minute changes, but didn't go into detail.

None of this technically counts as lying (i.e. deliberately give false information).

They have said there were no plans to undo One More Day.

If Spencer's goal was to "undo OMD", assuming he had buy-in from editorial, he could've (and should've) spun that story at the start of his run.

We only needed a 4-part story to tell OMD; could've easily un-did it in another 4 parts (definitely did not need 70 plus issues to spin it).

Had he done so at the start, he would have had all those issues to show how to "properly" write a married book. Instead, if we are to believe that was his goal, it appears he was trying to end his run on that and potentially pass the buck to the next writer to figure what to do next.

But that's just a conspiracy theory concocted on my part....lol!

That's a fair point.

If he was interested in bringing back the marriage, presumably he would want to take advantage of that status quo.

That's factual, but also kind of missing half the story - DeFalco wanted to pursue it to the end, and when Harras still put his foot down, he balked out of writing the Gathering of Five prelude altogether and left it to Byrne. It's an interesting precedent that just makes us wonder if it was a similar scenario with Spencer.
He also did not need 70 plus issues to undo Sins Past... after all, comics is a business, and Spencer's run was profitable. And as you very adequately put it, we don't even know if editorial bought in (I'd believe not, as Dan said, and he's basically one of the few hard confirms we've had on this case, besides what the Youtubers posted here alleged), which basically just leads to the hypothesizing here.

I mean, that's what I'd call the biggest difference between hypothesizing and conspiracy theories. Dan said Nick wanted to undo OMD, but that editorial wouldn't let it; and we got the run we got. Given the myriad contradictions by the run's finish, at this point I think both hypothesis have the same weight to them: it could have been because the run was shortened, or it could also have been because of Spencer just wanting to tell it the way he wanted (despite editorial not allowing it; not unlike the DeFalco situation above).

I'm reminded of how in the recent months after Spencer's run wrapped, people were basically making it out of thin air that "there were shouting matches between Quesada and Spencer" as far as concluding the story goes. I think Quesada wasn't even in a Chief Creative Officer position at the time (I may be wrong), but people were spinning it around in some places. That, there, I'd just say fits conspiracy altogether - we don't know what happened, but they wanted to believe it so hard, Spencer HAD to get in a shouting match with a higher up because that's how badly the guy wanted it to be true.

By all accounts, there was never a plan to bring back Baby May.

The main question was whether to leave her fate ambiguous for readers to take away the sting.

https://www.benreillytribute.x10host...fReilly32.html

Dan, you're an amazing writer whose work on Spidey will reverberate for generations.

Why do you do this to yourself and try to convince people who are unconvincable?

Some comic dorks are just as bad as Qanon dorks - there's no winning.

The internet is a curse if you allow yourself to be consumed by it.

He's taking people literally. If someone makes a claim, he thinks they're interested in discussing facts rather than venting.

Spencer wrote Peter with an engagement ring and a desire to propose to MJ.

A plot point even brought up at the beginning of Sinister War and then completely dropped without explanation.

And just like Strange confronting Mephisto about Peter's soul was changed to asking about Harry's soul, this also was not explained in the story or by anyone involved. I don't think it's a conspiracy to say this wasn't about Sins Past.

The engagement ring was about bad timing. That seemed to be the message. Peter wanted to propose again, and the timing just doesn't work out.

It's the Parker luck in action.

Someone who would also be in the know has said the same to me… the Kindred reveal wasn’t editorial interference and the plan all along was basically what happened (in which case, wtf Spencer…). The only thing that changed was the number of issues to get there. The original plan was the Kindred saga would stretch 100 issues, not 75! But the ending was always going to be more or less, the same. I can’t reveal my source as it was a private correspondence and they didn’t give permission to quote them (I will say it wasn’t Spencer or Lowe), but the person basically said what Slott is saying here.

This matches the Bleeding Cool story.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/did-...ncer-intended/

Not to pretend to have brilliant insight and all the answers that some people just don't like and want to see? I see no reason for Slott to comment at all vs carrying on with his life.

But he does have the insights. He knows what's going on at his place of employment.

Haven't seen much from Dan that is verifiable to be frank, so to say he's been 'correcting misinformation' would be quite misleading.

It's a different argument to say we should assume Slott's lying than to assume he doesn't have information worth sharing.

[IamnotJudasTraveller]

By all accounts, there was never a plan to bring back Baby May.

The main question was whether to leave her fate ambiguous for readers to take away the sting.

https://www.benreillytribute.x10host...fReilly32.html

That's more going into semantics than anything else which might have been due to my wording; I wasn't attempting to imply Harras ever considered bringing May back, so much as, exactly per that article, Glenn remarked the cop-out maneuever was disliked by much of the staff. DeFalco then balked out of the confirmation it was all going nowhere (leaving it to Byrne, and by even suggesting Mongrain was still hiding something "she'd grown attached to" before that particular issue), and followed the threads to the end with Spider-Girl.