Thread Drift: Will One More Day ever be reversed?

[Mister Mets]

Mr.Slott,
Is it possible to have the questions in my previous post answered openly and honestly without changing the subject or deflecting?
Those questions being;

"What exactly are these "obstacles"? Why is the marriage "off the table", and yet having Peter and MJ in a relationship isn't? What is the difference between two people being in love and living together, and twp people being in love and living together but yet are married? Is kids the problem? Because many unmarried couples do have children and don't require being married to have one.
Is it the aging of Peter Parker that is the problem that keeps the marriage off the table? If that is the case then why doesn't DC have those same issues with their characters?
Can we get your perspective as to why the "higher ups" feel so negatively towards the marriage, but yet seem to have no problem with things like bringing back clones,Ben Reilly,Gwen Stacy or any other plot device?"

Any insight into this would be very welcome...thank you.

Mr.Slott,
you have also used and borrowed the Biblical motiff of death and resurrection many times throughout your 10 year run...most recently in The Clone Conspiracy.
Is not death and resurrection a repeating motiff used throughout the comic medium?
And does not this motiff have its origins dating back to the earliest of man's recorded time...most famously with the story of Jesus?
Is not Doc Ock in your current run a prime example of that, and of the messianic figure returned from death?

There is no obligation of any poster to respond to your questions, be it Slott or some other guy. These discussions are meant to be fun.

However, there are some things you can do to increase the chances for a response.

1. Limit your request to the most important questions. I count nine questions with relatively complex answers directed at Slott in your two posts. If you want a guy to spend a few minutes addressing your concerns, that's too much. He might think it's not worth responding, because you'll be pissed if he doesn't address part of what you said. And if he does respond, he might pick the questions you don't care about as much.

2. Don't ask anything that's already been answered. There are several ways to search this thread for every comment by Dan Slott. You'll see his answers on some of the questions (IE- why clones are allowed but not the marriage.)

[Lee]

Probably not. The marriage did NOT affect sales negatively, it did NOT affect the brand in a negative fashion, it did NOT limit or make Spider Man less relatable or viable.

I found married Spider-Man less relatable when I was a teenager.

[UnknownEntity]

I found married Spider-Man less relatable when I was a teenager.

I got into Spider Man through the cartoons and the movies and then the comics when I was just a kid in the early 2000's. I didn't read Ultimate Spider Man, I read JMS' Amazing Spider Man. It certainly didn't deter me from it but everyone has their own experiences. Ultimate Spider Man ran concurrently to JMS's run so that was also an option and Brian Michael Bendis' run in that series is louded as the best Spider Man depiction in a general consensus.

[WebLurker]

\Why can Peter be portrayed being married with a child in Renew Your Vows by Marvel with no problems or issues, but not the 616? This is a double standard that makes little sense at all.

I suspect the answer is probably something to the effect of: "It's okay in an AU story, but it can't happen in the 'real' Spider-Man stories." But, yeah, I don't get it either why Marvel on one hand says that OMD had to happen in the 616 comics despite the rest of the franchise being seeped in the idea of Spider-Man and Mary Jane being a couple is the default normality

WHY? Why undo the marriage? What was so wrong about it that they went through all means to undo it being met with backlash every time they did? They already had their single Spider Man running around in the concurrent Ultimate comics.

I think Marvel wants the "real" Spider-Man to be unmarried for reasons that make sense to them and since they're the ones with the rubber stamp, that's all they need. As far as Ultimate goes, I think that it being AU, wasn't real enough to work for Marvel (in their opinion). However, the irony of the situation is that Ultimate was actually very much in line with the spirit of the married years, much more faithful to what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man than anything produced in the post-OMD comics (subjective, I will concede, but I'm calling it as I see it), and is proving to be the series that is used for adaptations and whatnot.

They don't have to answer my question but then I will never stop asking it.

I think we're at a ten-year impasse; neither side is budging. Fans may be underestimating Marvel's unwillingness to back down, but I also think that Marvel is misjudging that the fans are not going to let this go.

They made a choice but their execution was atrocious. You say I and many others disagree but do YOU agree with One More Day and the Pact with the Devil, Spider Man the most morally sound superhero making a deal with the devil. How is that not atrocious!

My guess is that Marvel cares only about the destination, not the road to get there. (As I recall, the expert opinion was that fans would get over it in a year or so. So, I'm not sure they were expecting ten years of pushback over a story that was a clumsy way to rewrite things.)

I think both sides have their own misconceptions. In a nutshell, I don't think that OMD has hurt the brand from a financial standpoint as much as marriage fans think (or want to think), nor has it helped the brand financially as much as Marvel thinks (or wants to think).

[Metamorphosis]

Ding! Ding! Ding!

There's a perception here that I and others don't/didn't like the marriage or the marriage era stories.
And that's simply not true.
If I was hired on to write about a married Peter Parker, I would have happily done so.
Just I was happy to be hired on to write a Peter Parker who wasn't married.

I was happy writing a married Spider-Man when I wrote his appearances in SPIDER-MAN/HUMAN TORCH, SHE-HULK, THING, and AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE.

If I didn't enjoy writing a married Spider-Man, I wouldn't have risked dancing through the political minefield that I did to pitch RENEW YOUR VOWS. (Again, you're welcome.)

What I do understand is all of the reasons (political, corporate, what-have-you) why the marriage will not be reinstated into the core comic book continuity version of Spider-Man. I understand the factors at work here for why that's the case-- even in a world where RYV started outselling ASM, or if Cheesedisque/Metamorphosis won the lottery and became the largest Disney and/or Marvel shareholder, or if Sully landed another plane in the Hudson and while getting the key to the city said "All I want is a married Spider-Man. PLEASE.".

Again, you could do a story that resolved OMD without restoring the marriage. You could give Spidey a victory over Mephisto. You could have MJ back in the book as a love interest w/o them being married. But you're not going to see the marriage back in the core continuity. I'm not saying this to be cruel or to belittle anyone's genuine love of that status quo. I'm saying this with complete honesty and frankness. This is what the situation is.

I'm glad you brought this up, because this is instructive:

In the Renew Your Vows (2015) series you wrote, we had a Peter Parker that was decidedly more proactive, and who would go to great lengths to protect his family (he still had to be saved by other heroes as usual, but that was part and parcel of having a Paper Tiger villain like the Regent in the story).

Contrast that with the representation of Peter in the 616 universe, BND - now. He's being portrayed as well-meaning but impulsive and feckless, a hero who rarely wins the day on his own. Who seems loathe to even chase Norman Osborn without "backup" from SHIELD and Mockingbird.

I know which one I'd rather read about, and it's not the Toys-R-Us, Tony Stark-expy of current ASM Vol. #4, the one of bloated crossovers like Spider-Verse and Clonespiracy. The Spider-Man where even when he has to cross town to retrieve a priceless Jameson family heirloom, it has all the dramatic effect of letting the air out of a balloon with a pin. The Spider-Man who keeps telling us what a great man the person who hijacked his life is (the same person who has had more meaningful "character development" than the title character under your pen).

In short, OMD promised that we would get all these great stories by defeating the marriage. We're about ten years out, where are these great stories?

Several points.

1. Slott would have a better understanding of the views of people working at Marvel, given that they are his colleagues.

2. Slott's claim isn't that everyone who supports the marriage has been cycled out of Marvel. His main argument is that people who want to bring the marriage back would face insurmountable institutional opposition, but this doesn't require everyone working at Marvel to prefer Peter and MJ being single.

1. It's still a one-sided point of view by someone with a stake in banging the drum for the Anti-Mary Jane contingent. Let's not pretend it's not a biased opinion on his part.

2. If that's not an appeal to a bandwagon authority approach to a faceless entity, I don't know what is.

[Miles To Go]

We have the newspaper comics as well as RYV. Both handle Peter and MJ exceptionally well.

Slott's handling of the main book has always been divisive, and I fall in the field of people who don't like what he's done, talented as he is.

five issues of ryv>two years of regular ASM

[Dan Slott]

In the Renew Your Vows (2015) series you wrote, we had a Peter Parker that was decidedly more proactive, and who would go to great lengths to protect his family (he still had to be saved by other heroes as usual, but that was part and parcel of having a Paper Tiger villain like the Regent in the story).

Sometimes I don't think you've actually read the stories I've written. Or you've rehashed them so many times with your crawlspace pals that you've reworked them into things they never were-- or squeezed them into shapes to fit your personal talking points.
In ASM:RYV #1, #2, #3, and #4, Peter is taking out villains one-after-the-other, all by himself. At one point saving other heroes, the Power Pack kids. In issue #4, it's Regent who captures Peter. And in RYV #5 it's his family who helps to free Peter-- And, eventually, Peter who frees himself because of the love he has for them. It's not "other heroes" who save Peter. It's his family, working together-- who take out a villain who was powerful enough to destroy all the Avengers. And it's Peter who takes the winning shot.

The way you guys (meaning you and your crawlspace pals) take everything I've written, chop it up, over-analyze it, toss in your own personal biases, and then repeat them ad naseum, it gets tiring after a while. After silliness like this, I don't have the time, energy, or desire to blast each one of your other completely invalid arguments apart. I get that this is a hobby for you, slamming on this book for dozens of posts a day, every day, but Jesus, why don't you find something you actually enjoy and spend your time promoting that instead?

[Metamorphosis]

Sometimes I don't think you've actually read the stories I've written. Or you've rehashed them so many times with your crawlspace pals that you've reworked them into things they never were-- or squeezed them into shapes to fit your personal talking points.
In ASM:RYV #1, #2, #3, and #4, Peter is taking out villains one-after-the-other, all by himself. At one point saving other heroes, the Power Pack kids. In issue #4, it's Regent who captures Peter. And in RYV #5 it's his family who helps to free Peter-- And, eventually, Peter who frees himself because of the love he has for them. It's not "other heroes" who save Peter. It's his family, working together-- who take out a villain who was powerful enough to destroy all the Avengers. And it's Peter who takes the winning shot.

The way you guys (meaning you and your crawlspace pals) take everything I've written, chop it up, over-analyze it, toss in your own personal biases, and then repeat them ad naseum, it gets tiring after a while. After silliness like this, I don't have the time, energy, or desire to blast each one of your other completely invalid arguments apart. I get that this is a hobby for you, slamming on this book for dozens of posts a day, every day, but Jesus, why don't you find something you actually enjoy and spend your time promoting that instead?

Dan, I really enjoyed your Renew Your Vows series, which I read AND reviewed (giving it pretty high marks, along with calling it some of your best work).

But Peter did have to be saved, as usual, by Annie, MJ, Hawkeye, and the rest of the survivors / resistance memebers. Not enough to derail the story, and it made for an enjoyable-enough ending. You are right that he did get the final shot in on Regent after disarming him with a joke. But it did follow the pattern that Peter had to be saved, and Regent was still a lame villain with a deux ex Achilles heel. Sorry, but true.

[Dan Slott]

Sorry, but true.

I'm so glad you've come around in the space of one post to say how much you really enjoyed the story you kinda savaged in your previous post.
You're wonderfully flexible that way. Same way you seem to be with facts and figures when they don't fit your Crawlspace-ish, predetermined views. :-P

I get that any villain you don't like is "lame".
That any popular story you don't like is "a gimmick".
Any supporting character, a "Mary Sue".
Any callback, "a retread".
And so on...

"Sorry, but true" is objective. And, in the case of someone who is predisposed to hate on something with a prepared crawlspace-approved code book of talking points, "true" is also incredibly malleable.

[WebLurker]

Sometimes I don't think you've actually read the stories I've written. Or you've rehashed them so many times with your crawlspace pals that you've reworked them into things they never were-- or squeezed them into shapes to fit your personal talking points.
In ASM:RYV #1, #2, #3, and #4, Peter is taking out villains one-after-the-other, all by himself. At one point saving other heroes, the Power Pack kids. In issue #4, it's Regent who captures Peter. And in RYV #5 it's his family who helps to free Peter-- And, eventually, Peter who frees himself because of the love he has for them. It's not "other heroes" who save Peter. It's his family, working together-- who take out a villain who was powerful enough to destroy all the Avengers. And it's Peter who takes the winning shot.

Fair enough.

I'd contend that Regent is still the weak link of the story, though, in regards to lack of character development and being made too powerful at the beginning, etc., etc. (I wonder if a longer story arc with more time to develop the character and a less rushed finale would've made for a better Regent?). However, if having a villain that could've been better is the worst thing you can say about a story, then you're in pretty good shape.

[Mister Mets]

27 posts on JMS's original plans for One More Day were moved to a thread on that topic.

21 posts about how people on another message board feel about Dan Slott's run were deleted.

[WebLurker]

21 posts about how people on another message board feel about Dan Slott's run were deleted.

"I think we lost something."

"Not to worry. We're still flying half a thread."

[Timmyb52]

Several high ranking Marvel Comics employees (such as Joe Quesada and Tom Brevoort) have explained the reasoning for un-marrying Spider-Man over the years. If you want that information, it's out there.

But, to be blunt, is there any answer that would satisfy you?

It seems like no matter what answer is given a vocal part of the fan base will try to argue against it or find a logical flaw, as if Marvel would then have to concede defeat and re-marry Spider-Man.

You mean this great explanation...."It's magic, we don't have to explain it!". Marvel has never ever,ever given a logical and sound explanation for getting rid of the marriage other than that it allows Peter "to date other women"!

[boots]

You mean this great explanation...."It's magic, we don't have to explain it!". Marvel has never ever,ever given a logical and sound explanation for getting rid of the marriage other than that it allows Peter "to date other women"!

the in-universe explanation (muhjek!) is totally different to the irl editorial reasoning.

[WebLurker]

the in-universe explanation (muhjek!) is totally different to the irl editorial reasoning.

Personally, I don't think either made much sense, but that's just the perspective I came from.