Is Dan Slott hogging Peter Parker / Spider-Man?

[Dan Slott]

Dan,

I know you like to tout your sales numbers.

Let's call it "readership" and "circulation."
I know you like to call it sales, but here's the thing, Cheesedique,
this is serialized fiction. If a book's success were just about sales-- or a one time burst like a Box Office opening weekend-- some tricks/gimmicks/etc could be used for a temporary boost to pad the books. But that's not the model we're talking about. We're talking about a regular, sustained, and active readership that shows up once-- sometimes twice-- a month.

Take a second and think about that.
There's how much a retailer orders, how much they sell through, and how much they have to adjust their orders for the next month. A retailer who kept over ordering their stock on a ongoing basis would soon go out of business.

So... What happened during the start of the Big Time run?
12 out of the first 13 issues sold out and had to go back to press for additional printings.
As high as retailers were ordering, they could not keep up with demand.
This trend of selling through and going back to press has consistently continued during Big Time, Superior, and the last Amazing run.
It's done this for over a third of its run!
What other Marvel flagship title has done anything like this in the past decade?! Show me another one. Take your time. I'll be here.

Besides growing in aggregate every year, besides having a fantastic track record for selling through and selling out, it has been the best selling Marvel U. title since Christmas of 2012. And ALL of that is thanks to a VERY faithful readership. Why on Earth would any company want to change that up? I get that this is NOT a book you enjoy-- but not every book needs to be for you. And it's okay for a book to be successful without you, specifically, supporting it.

It's also sales on the backs of two major Hollywood movies...

Wait. You mean the two films that notoriously underperformed to the point where they cut short the third movie in the trilogy and struck a deal with Marvel to try a reboot? Is that your argument?

So, by that logic, if say GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, IRON MAN 3, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, and AVENGERS were 4 of the highest grossing and successful movies of all-time, by the Cheesedique way of thinking, you should be surprised that these are not the highest selling books, right?

an anniversary issue, and two (and counting) #1 issues, all with a slew of high-priced variant
covers.

Outside of an anniversary issue for GUARDIANS, the same would hold true for GUARDIANS, IRON MAN, AVENGERS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, and THOR. (Whose movies performed way, way, way better than Amazing Spider-Man, and also had multiple #1 issues and high-priced variant covers.)

But I actually don't begrudge you all that...

Well, starting a thread called "Is Dan Slott hogging Peter Parker/Spider-Man" is a pretty bad way to show your complete lack of begrudgement. :-P

But what you've been doing with Spider-man isn't that good for the character.

And this is where I think you start treating your opinions as facts.

[comicscollector]

Dan Slott is writing Spidey stories that keep on entertaining readers proved by the sales of the Spider Man comics he is writing.
So it is obvious that he is being a very capable writer of Spidey comics,as was Clameront with the x men or Peter David with the Hulk.

[Pav]

This reminds me of some of the Detroit Pistons message boards I read: often times, you get these fans posting who act as though they know way more about basketball than the professionals who are actually paid to run the team. I've long found such lines of thinking to be pretty absurd.

The kind of man who always thinks that he is right, that his opinions, his pronouncements, are the final word, when once exposed shows nothing there. But a wise man has much to learn without a loss of dignity. - SOPHOCLES

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice. - GORE VIDAL

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated, and well-supported in logic and argument than others. - DOUGLAS ADAMS

I suppose he's entitled to his opinion, but I don’t suppose it very hard. - ISAAC ASIMOV

Long story short: Dan Slott knows more about comics than the rest of us. The proof is in the pudding (unless some of you fine fellows are secretly comic book writers yourselves.)

-Pav, who wishes he could remember this great quote about how opinions are basically worthless because by definition they aren't facts/the truth...

[Rob London]

This reminds me of some of the Detroit Pistons message boards I read: often times, you get these fans posting who act as though they know way more about basketball than the professionals who are actually paid to run the team. I've long found such lines of thinking to be pretty absurd.

Well, to be fair, the way the Pistons have done the past few years, those fans might know way more about basketball than the people running the team.

[John Ossie]

Well, to be fair, the way the Pistons have done the past few years, those fans might know way more about basketball than the people running the team.

LOL I don't really follow the NBA but I haven't heard much from the Pistons in the last few years so I can only assume they're doing badly these days. I do remember them winning the title one year though with Ben Wallace.

[Pav]

Well, to be fair, the way the Pistons have done the past few years, those fans might know way more about basketball than the people running the team.

Ouch! You've hit me right in the heart!

To be fair, they've got new management now. And while Joe Dumars made some horrible moves towards the end of his reign, the guy still put together a championship team.

I mean: Spider-Man!

-Pav, who wouldn't want to derail things...

[Metamorphosis]

Let's call it "readership" and "circulation."
I know you like to call it sales, but here's the thing, Cheesedique,
this is serialized fiction. If a book's success were just about sales-- or a one time burst like a Box Office opening weekend-- some tricks/gimmicks/etc could be used for a temporary boost to pad the books. But that's not the model we're talking about. We're talking about a regular, sustained, and active readership that shows up once-- sometimes twice-- a month.

Take a second and think about that.
There's how much a retailer orders, how much they sell through, and how much they have to adjust their orders for the next month. A retailer who kept over ordering their stock on a ongoing basis would soon go out of business.

So... What happened during the start of the Big Time run?
12 out of the first 13 issues sold out and had to go back to press for additional printings.
As high as retailers were ordering, they could not keep up with demand.
This trend of selling through and going back to press has consistently continued during Big Time, Superior, and the last Amazing run.
It's done this for over a third of its run!
What other Marvel flagship title has done anything like this in the past decade?! Show me another one. Take your time. I'll be here.

Besides growing in aggregate every year, besides having a fantastic track record for selling through and selling out, it has been the best selling Marvel U. title since Christmas of 2012. And ALL of that is thanks to a VERY faithful readership. Why on Earth would any company want to change that up? I get that this is NOT a book you enjoy-- but not every book needs to be for you. And it's okay for a book to be successful without you, specifically, supporting it.


Wait. You mean the two films that notoriously underperformed to the point where they cut short the third movie in the trilogy and struck a deal with Marvel to try a reboot? Is that your argument?

So, by that logic, if say GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, IRON MAN 3, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, and AVENGERS were 4 of the highest grossing and successful movies of all-time, by the Cheesedique way of thinking, you should be surprised that these are not the highest selling books, right?


Outside of an anniversary issue for GUARDIANS, the same would hold true for GUARDIANS, IRON MAN, AVENGERS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, and THOR. (Whose movies performed way, way, way better than Amazing Spider-Man, and also had multiple #1 issues and high-priced variant covers.)


Well, starting a thread called "Is Dan Slott hogging Peter Parker/Spider-Man" is a pretty bad way to show your complete lack of begrudgement. :-P


And this is where I think you start treating your opinions as facts.

You edited out a lot of the good stuff from last night before I could respond.

The readership growth since 2012 is evident. But one would think an initiative called "All New All Different Marvel" would give readers a new Spider-man comic
by a writer not named Slott or Bendis (because a hook like "Peter is now going to be like Tony Stark" seems like what we've already been gettting since 2011, with the high tech company and high tech spider-suits). Now, I admit that the book isn't out yet and no has read it, but this is how you yourself have touted the direction.

Who's to say the readership couldn't be even greater with a genuinely new creative team? Batman was riding high under Grant Morrison, and then with the Nu52 relaunch, Snyder / Capullo's Batman took the title to even greater commercial heights (while still managing to be a damn compelling read, much more so than ASM I daresay). Financial risk is not something a corporation like Marvel Publishing is prone to? Perfectly understandable and realistic. But what about creative risk (which is what gave us something like Superior Spider-man in the first place)?

A typical shut down attempt on this board is "you're presenting your opinions as facts". I'm not. It's a discussion, and I don't feel like I have to preface every sentence with "it is my opinion that.." But if that helps people, here goes:

It is my opinion that: certain readers (the ones who start those "talking points" online you mentioned before you edited) interpret Dan Slott's Peter Parker as an overgrown manchild presumably because of things like having him run around in a web-diaper in ASM V3 #1, for one example.

It is my opinion that: the writer who elbows Spider-man out of his own title at many turns is not one that I think truly honors him and his legacy. Case in point is ASM #592, Peter's 50th anniversary issue that featured a character like Alpha. Tell me, do you have additional plans for Andy Macguire in the upcoming ASM relaunch?

[John Ossie]

I mean: Spider-Man!

-Pav, who wouldn't want to derail things...

John Ossie, who quoted Pav in agreement about not wanting to derail things.

[Frontier]

A little off-topic, but I hope we see a lack of Felicia in the current ASM so other writers can handle her .

[Metamorphosis]

A little off-topic, but I hope we see a lack of Felicia in the current ASM so other writers can handle her .

I've found that the way Conway has represented her in "Spiral" has been pretty badass so far, if we must have a Felicia who's a nasty villain now.

[emac1790]

I've found that the way Conway has represented her in "Spiral" has been pretty badass so far, if we must have a Felicia who's a nasty villain now.

Is one of your problems with Dan's writing the way he writes Black Cat?

[Dan Slott]

You edited out a lot of the good stuff from last night before I could respond.

The readership growth since 2012 is evident.

Yup. Which begs the evident question:
If a creative team produced a book that got THAT much growth, SUSTAINED it, and have the book going strong as Marvel's best selling Marvel U. title...
...what company would MESS with that if the team were happy, enthusiastic, and wanted to keep going?

But one would think an initiative called "All New All Different Marvel" would give readers a new Spider-man comic...

It is. This Spider-Man comic will go in an all-new, all-different direction.
You know what was the last book that did that during a initiative to produce All-New and All-Different books across Marvel's line?
SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN.
And do you know what that book went on to do?
It went on to become Marvel's best-selling ongoing title-- twice a month-- in the Marvel Now! line.
There was a LOT of talk about changing up the creative team at the Marvel Now launch-- on staff-- and not surprisingly, here on message boards.
The Spider-Office stayed adamant that we would make the all-new direction for Spider-Man work.
And, in retrospect, Marvel Entertainment was VERY, VERY, VERY HAPPY with the result.

Who's to say the readership couldn't be even greater with a genuinely new creative team?

It might. You might strike gold. Or, conversely, you might have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Basically, you're asking, "Why won't the biggest comic book company in America remove the creative team off one of their most successful books, even though they've built up a strong, reliable audience, and are happy, enthusiastic, and motivated to keep producing?"

Batman was riding high under Grant Morrison...

Who had told all the stories he wanted to tell and was leaving the book. See a pattern here? If he wanted to stay, and if you were DC, why would you FIRE Grant Morrison?

and then with the Nu52 relaunch, Snyder / Capullo's Batman took the title to even greater commercial heights (while still managing to be a damn compelling read, much more so than ASM I daresay).

Say, you dare. But the difference here is: Cheesedique's tastes aren't everyone's tastes.
If you're a fan of Scott's, it's weird to cite him as your metric for "damn compelling", 'cause the core Spider title-- under the current creative team-- is one of his favorite books on the stands-- and he's even cited it as his inspiration for stuff he's trying out in the books.
(And, hey, Batman is one of my favorite books. So there's that.) :-D
And as great as Batman is selling-- there's another book out there that has placed in the Top 10 more times for the past 2 or so years-- it's done this more than any other book in the American market.
Take a sec. You'll figure out which one I'm talking about. :-)
And, again, WHY would you mess with that track record?

A typical shut down attempt on this board is "you're presenting your opinions as facts". I'm not.

You are. You're presenting your personal tastes and preferences as overall arbiters of what is "good" or "bad" or "compelling."

"Question: What kind of bear is best? FALSE! Black bear!"

[Darth Kal-el]

As long as the book sells and Slott wants to write it I don't see a problem. He is one of the best Spider-Man writers of all time imho

[Metamorphosis]

Is one of your problems with Dan's writing the way he writes Black Cat?

It's not how I'd like to see Felicia portrayed (I think she works better as a foil / ally / romantic tension creator), but I don't actually have a huge problem with it.

[Frontier]

Is one of your problems with Dan's writing the way he writes Black Cat?

Well, certainly one of mine, because I don't think he's really done the character any favors. I'm also not big on how he's been handling Peter, the supporting cast, and Spidey in general in his recent Amazing run, which is probably the biggest reason why I don't have much confidence in this new direction or Slott staying on the book.