Spider-Man: Major in real life, Minor in-universe?

[Snoop Dogg]

lol @ fantastic four not being the most inconsistent flagship, half of its writers don't even get the two basic principles that made it exciting in the 60's

[Lee]

Marvel had a vested interest in promoting the Avengers to the center of the MU when before it had never been that. That's why they kneecapped the X-Men during House of M and went "no more mutants" because those properties were tied to Fox and the MCU had already gotten its seed capital with Iron Man entering pre-production.

This is nonsense. In 2004, when the New Avengers comic was being put together, the idea of Marvel Studios becoming a behemoth with a string of successful Avengers films was pie in the sky. If the premise was to make Avengers a tentpole comic for multimedia synergy then they wouldn't have put Spider-Man, Wolverine, Spider-Woman and Daredevil (as was initially planned) in it.

They didn't "kneecap" X-Men. They made a creative decision that they believed in to sell more X-Men comics, and they got a lot of mileage out of it. They didn't give Bendis a briefcase of money and tell him to ruin X-Men.

[Lapsus]

Why?
- Do poor people no longer exist?
- Is Universal Basic Income a reality?
- Are we in Marx's Communist end-state where the state has withered and we live in a post-scarcity economy?

As long as those three questions have a negative answer, there's nothing overused about Spider-Man and Peter Parker having money problems.

i dont think any of those three points have something to do with anything, Is a personal opinion, he is resourceful, smart and knows people, after decades of development i think is more laziness from the writers who refuse to advance the character in any way.

[boots]

marvel's intent for spider-man was to seed the world with the pointing clone meme. i know this because of the correlation between vaccines and autism

[Agent Z]

And the post-2000s Spider-Man being featured in Avengers was definitely marketing driven. Marvel had a vested interest in promoting the Avengers to the center of the MU when before it had never been that. That's why they kneecapped the X-Men during House of M and went "no more mutants" because those properties were tied to Fox and the MCU had already gotten its seed capital with Iron Man entering pre-production.

People are still spouting this in 2020? The X-Men had numerous books, often had star writers on the titles and the "no more mutants" nonsense was blatantly untrue with the number of new mutant characters being shown.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

People are still spouting this in 2020? The X-Men had numerous books, often had star writers on the titles and the "no more mutants" nonsense was blatantly untrue with the number of new mutant characters being shown.

I know people on the CBR forums, mostly on Marvel Universe general pages try and state this but there's evidence to the contrary and consensus among everyone that House Of M indeed greatly restricted and neuteured the X-Men line. And again I don't know why people try and deny what the actual creators and Marvel insiders and observers have said multiple times, repeatedly.

Just this week, a few days back, Jordan White, X-Men's editor said this about Hickman's run, while Claremont and Hickman long talked about how the rights issues affected stories in the Marvel Universe:

What was the most impactful change that Jonathan Hickman and company made to the X-Men in 2019?

JordanWhite: He changed so much, it’s hard to choose. I think the most impactful was that he managed to shake things up enough that the X-Men really got out from under the cloud they’d been under since M-Day. The books have a different feel than they did for the last 10 years, and I think that’s what they needed most.

https://www.marvel.com/articles/comi...editorial-team

"I guarantee you that if 10 years ago, when Marvel was approached by Disney, if the X-Men film rights were owned by Marvel Studios and not Fox the X-Men would probably still be the paramount book in the canon. The reason for the emphasis on the other titles is because Marvel / Disney control the ancillary film rights whereas all the film rights for the FF- the Fantastic Four – and the X-Men are controlled by Fox who has no interest in the comic books. So I think the corporate publishing attitude is: “why would we go out of our way to promote a title that will benefit a rival corporation’s films when we could take that same energy and enthusiasm and focus and do it for our own properties?” Hence the rise of the Inhumans as the new equivalent of the mutants. I could wish for something else but it ain’t my 5 billion dollars."
-- CHRIS CLAREMONT

https://www.slashfilm.com/x-men-movi...ic-book-sales/

“I think it’s pretty common knowledge at this point that Marvel isn’t publishing Fantastic Four because of their disagreement with Fox. While it bums me out, I completely understand because, well, it isn’t like they’re not acting out of cause. Fox needs to do a better job there. That kind of thinking runs contrary to everything I believe in as a professional storyteller. It comes from a place of manipulation where an attempt is made to make the reader desire something through denial. It’s hacky. It’s suboptimal. It’s the central tenet of all sh—y dating advice. If you want someone to care about a book, write a story they care about.”
-- JONATHAN HICKMAN
https://www.slashfilm.com/marvel-can...athan-hickman/

Where I differ with Hickman is that sometimes stuff coming from "a place of manipulation and making a reader desire something through denial" actually does work, despite everything saying it shouldn't. Much in the same way, that the current President won his election despite all good sense and logic, as well as good taste and basic decorum, indicating he shouldn't have won. Mark Millar's CIVIL WAR was an event designed to make the Avengers the center of the Marvel Universe. It's not a good story by any means, but it's a pretty important story for the Marvel continuity and it managed to work. Team Iron Man and Team Cap, "Who's side are you on", and SHRA, the Eisenfuhrer and so on, all that actually did manage to make the Avengers feel more important than they deserved.

This is nonsense. In 2004, when the New Avengers comic was being put together, the idea of Marvel Studios becoming a behemoth with a string of successful Avengers films was pie in the sky.

The plan for what became the MCU was the brainchild of David Maisel and he hatched it in 2003 which is where he met Ike Perlmutter and others about holding on to the rights of characters Marvel already had (https://movieweb.com/marvel-studios-...-david-maisel/).

Historically, Marvel's business model was to give licenses to their characters to companies and use that revenue to stay afloat but as time went on, the returns weren't enough for Marvel. Then the Fox X-Men and especially Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (which made more money than the first 2 Blade Movies and the first 2 X-Men movies combined) became really big and that started the first wave of Marvel adaptations, leading to the Affleck Daredevil movie, the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies, The Thomas Jane Punisher movie (remember that?), Ang Lee's Hulk. There might have been even more licenses but Maisel put his foot down and that's when Marvel decided to hoard on to it. The success of these movies made Marvel profitable enough that they could get investors from Wall Street to give them big loans as capital to invest and develop their own movie studios and take control of their projects. The first being Iron Man.

Now obviously that's the corporate side of things but the creative side of it wasn't by any means unaffected. I mean Bendis was commissioned to do Ultimate Spider-Man by Bill Jemas, President of Marvel. And stuff like making Tony Stark into a bigger deal and the Avengers more central definitely fit their plans.

That's not conspiracy mongering. It's not any different from how Jim Shooter tried to build up Dazzler because he had gotten together a plan to make a Marvel comics movie that introduces the universe all centered on Dazzler (http://jimshooter.com/2011/07/debut-of-dazzler.html/) and that led to a long buildup of Dazzler in the comics in prominent storylines even if ultimately that went nowhere.

None of this was inevitable. Everything depended on the success of the Iron Man 1 movie. And that wasn't certain going in. Had that movie failed, Marvel as a company would almost certainly have been finished because of the loans they had taken and the fact they mortgaged and hocked their IP rights to Big Capital to get it through. Had it failed, I think the comics would have reverted fairly quickly to a previous status-quo, like House of M would have been undone immediately.

Who knows maybe OMD wouldn't have happened. I mean Quesada said that the three things he wanted to do was, or three genies back in the bottle (https://www.cbr.com/cup-o-qa-spider-man-the-hulk/)
-- Diminish the Mutants
-- Make the Avengers Great Again (which it never was)
-- Remove the marriage.

If you look at how that arranges, basically House of M came first, then came Civil War, and then OMD. My feeling is that the success of the first two provided Quesada license to do the third. I think Marvel higher-ups, even if they wanted to remove the marriage, might have been skeptical and hesitant about it (since it failed so spectacularly in the 90s) and that Quesada was more invested in it. And Quesada basically had to meet them halfway, give them what they wanted (which is not to say Quesada didn't agree with the plan) so that in return they would back him.

So maybe if Iron Man 1 failed, OMD gets reversed or they aren't that bold in thinking they could get away. I mean the success of Iron Man 1 and the MCU ensured that Marvel Comics no longer exists chiefly to sell comics but to serve as an IP farm for the movies, for better and worse. So ultimately even if sales go down, as it did in the BND era, it was a risk Marvel could get away with because they had insurance and then Disney bought them giving them a permanent home.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

i dont think any of those three points have something to do with anything, Is a personal opinion, he is resourceful, smart and knows people,

The implication, intended or not, is that someone who is "resourceful, smart and knows people" cannot be poor. I am sorry to tell you that's just not how things work.

...after decades of development i think is more laziness from the writers who refuse to advance the character in any way.

I agree with this in principle.

I disagree with the concept and notion that making money or becoming rich is a form of character development and growth. It's not.

Peter Parker had far more character development and growth as a high school teacher in JMS' run than in any of Slott's issues with him at Horizon Labs and Parker Industries. he was also far more happier as a person since that was a job he was good at and genuinely enjoyed doing.

[Prof. Warren]

I know people on the CBR forums, mostly on Marvel Universe general pages try and state this but there's evidence to the contrary and consensus among everyone that House Of M indeed greatly restricted and neuteured the X-Men line.

It gave it a new status quo that, in the end, was not conducive to great storylines. But that's not the same as deliberately neutering a line.

Sometimes writers and editors decide on a direction that seems like it'll be fruitful but it proves not to be.

The concept of House of M, on the surface, probably looked good - let's really make mutants a hunted minority again and let's really make it seem like their survival is on the line in a way that it hasn't been in a long time what with the proliferation of mutants. It also likely looked desirable as a way to streamline the unwieldiness of the mutant corner of the universe. If there's one corner of the MU that is harder to keep track of than others, it's the X-line.

So, for many reasons, House of M/M-Day surely looked like a winning idea. It wasn't. These things happen.

Currently Bendis has shaken up the Superman books with the secret identity reveal. I'm sure he sold DC on this as a status quo change that will generate a wealth of new story possibilities. I think it's a dud that will have to be undone eventually. Time will tell. Point being, Bendis isn't deliberately sabotaging Superman anymore than he intentionally blew up the X-Men.

No one can see the future. Writers come up with ideas, editors approve them, but until those ideas are executed, you don't know how it's all going to land.

And again I don't know why people try and deny what the actual creators and Marvel insiders and observers have said multiple times, repeatedly.

Jordan D. White simply acknowledged that M-Day was something that the X-line had had a difficult time emerging from. That's all.

It cast a shadow over the books that no one quite knew how to get out from under until Hickman. It's not about conspiracies, it's about creativity.

Claremont's statement is simply echoing the paranoid speculation of X-fans.

And Hickman is talking about the Fantastic Four and, specifically, Marvel's reaction to the sh*tty FF reboot.

Mark Millar's CIVIL WAR was an event designed to make the Avengers the center of the Marvel Universe. It's not a good story by any means, but it's a pretty important story for the Marvel continuity and it managed to work. Team Iron Man and Team Cap, "Who's side are you on", and SHRA, the Eisenfuhrer and so on, all that actually did manage to make the Avengers feel more important than they deserved.

CW was not "designed to make the Avengers the center of the Marvel Universe."

The Avengers were already, in-universe, the premiere team and had been for years.

If anything, CW simply brought in a new angle on Steve and Tony and their relationship that re-defined them as pillars in the MU.

And "more important than they deserved?" Sounds like someone has a hang-up about The Avengers. What a surprise.

The plan for what became the MCU was the brainchild of David Maisel and he hatched it in 2003 which is where he met Ike Perlmutter and others about holding on to the rights of characters Marvel already had (https://movieweb.com/marvel-studios-...-david-maisel/).

Historically, Marvel's business model was to give licenses to their characters to companies and use that revenue to stay afloat but as time went on, the returns weren't enough for Marvel. Then the Fox X-Men and especially Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (which made more money than the first 2 Blade Movies and the first 2 X-Men movies combined) became really big and that started the first wave of Marvel adaptations, leading to the Affleck Daredevil movie, the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies, The Thomas Jane Punisher movie (remember that?), Ang Lee's Hulk. There might have been even more licenses but Maisel put his foot down and that's when Marvel decided to hoard on to it. The success of these movies made Marvel profitable enough that they could get investors from Wall Street to give them big loans as capital to invest and develop their own movie studios and take control of their projects. The first being Iron Man.

Now obviously that's the corporate side of things but the creative side of it wasn't by any means unaffected. I mean Bendis was commissioned to do Ultimate Spider-Man by Bill Jemas, President of Marvel. And stuff like making Tony Stark into a bigger deal and the Avengers more central definitely fit their plans.

So in 2003, Marvel decided to pump up the Avengers because...oh, fu*k it. This is too stupid to respond to.

That's not conspiracy mongering.

Yes, yes it is. It's exactly that. This is Crackpot Theorizing 101.

Who knows maybe OMD wouldn't have happened. I mean Quesada said that the three things he wanted to do was, or three genies back in the bottle (https://www.cbr.com/cup-o-qa-spider-man-the-hulk/)
-- Diminish the Mutants
-- Make the Avengers Great Again (which it never was)
-- Remove the marriage.

I'm sure Quesada never said "diminish the mutants." And if he did, he meant that he wanted them to seem like a threatened minority again rather than make it seem like their path to dominance in-universe was an eventuality. The reasoning is sound from a certain point of view but the path to achieving that goal was flawed.

And if you want to claim that the Avengers was never great, and that trying to pump them up was a post-2000's marketing scheme, just stop being ridiculous.

The Avengers had many key runs that distinguished them as a cornerstone Marvel title.

Any Marvel EIC would want to ensure that the book was doing right by its legacy.

If you look at how that arranges, basically House of M came first, then came Civil War, and then OMD. My feeling is that the success of the first two provided Quesada license to do the third. I think Marvel higher-ups, even if they wanted to remove the marriage, might have been skeptical and hesitant about it (since it failed so spectacularly in the 90s) and that Quesada was more invested in it. And Quesada basically had to meet them halfway, give them what they wanted (which is not to say Quesada didn't agree with the plan) so that in return they would back him.

You're concocting a whole scenario in your head that has no connection to real life. That's sad.

So maybe if Iron Man 1 failed, OMD gets reversed or they aren't that bold in thinking they could get away. I mean the success of Iron Man 1 and the MCU ensured that Marvel Comics no longer exists chiefly to sell comics but to serve as an IP farm for the movies, for better and worse. So ultimately even if sales go down, as it did in the BND era, it was a risk Marvel could get away with because they had insurance and then Disney bought them giving them a permanent home.

You're trying to tie in OMD to the success of Iron Man 1 now? That if the gamble of that movie hadn't paid off, they might have brought back the marriage?

Really? That seems like a plausible scenario to you?

FFS.

[WebSlingWonder]

Yeah, Jack, I honestly think you're trying to convince yourself more than the others. Your points make no sense and the so-called evidence doesn't hold up except for you. That's not debating: it's steamrolling an argument for the sake of being contrary. You talk about consensus, but the main consensus in this thread is that you're not in the right here.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

It gave it a new status quo that, in the end, was not conducive to great storylines. But that's not the same as deliberately neutering a line.

So we must always take EIC decisions at face value and not look at them as corporate officers, which is what they are? We must live in a happy dreamland never-fantasy that pretends that comics run aren't affected at a corporate level? Quesada openly said there was a moratorium to creating new mutants (https://icv2.com/articles/comics/vie...o-more-mutants). He said he wanted mutants to be like it was in the '60s, i.e. when it was a failing Marvel title and got sent into reprints. I don't know why people are pretending this isn't the kick to the curb that was.

Sometimes writers and editors decide on a direction that seems like it'll be fruitful but it proves not to be.

That doesn't explain why the House of M status-quo was maintained and extended. You are making it sound like this was an event that came and went. It wasn't until Disney bought Fox that they moved past this. Hickman openly said multiple times that his run was intended to make X-Men the center of the Marvel Universe as it was before.

The concept of House of M, on the surface, probably looked good - let's really make mutants a hunted minority again and let's really make it seem like their survival is on the line in a way that it hasn't been in a long time what with the proliferation of mutants.

Grant Morrison's run opened with the Genocide of Genosha, Whedon's run had a mutant cure...so the survival of mutantdom was by no means not a running theme before. it was indeed far moreso than post-House of M.

It also likely looked desirable as a way to streamline the unwieldiness of the mutant corner of the universe.

The mutant corner is no more unwieldy than any other corner of the MU. Spider-Man is an unwieldy corner of the Marvel Universe on account of Clone Saga, and OMD, and unlike the case of X-Men where stuff like Summers' Brothers, Madelyne Pryor, and other elements eventually got addressed and resolved...that hasn't happened in the case of the Spider-Man.

Claremont's statement is simply echoing the paranoid speculation of X-fans.

Interesting that you are insulting a man who is arguably the most influential writer for Marvel after Stan Lee stepped down. Obviously Claremont has no insight into how the industry works, has no experience to make judgment calls about things, does not speak from a store of experience.

So in 2003, Marvel decided to pump up the Avengers

An undertaking like a comics company creating a movie studio and producing their own movie is not something that is planned or put into motion overnight, and not done without a significant amount of groundwork. That article explicitly said that the idea came in 2003, well before Bendis came on New Avengers.

However big the Avengers might have been before, it's hard to deny that in terms of influence, sales, and actual lasting continuity impact...Bendis' New Avengers and Millar's Civil War marked the most glorious chapter in its history. Whether it's better or not, is a separate thing. GO back and read Avengers #300. A major milestone issue. IT was a tie-in comic to X-Men's Inferno crossover. A milestone issue of a supposed flagship title dedicated to an X-Men crossover isn't a great marker of prestige.

In the words of Ed Piskor, author of X-Men Grand Design (one of the best Marvel comics of the last decade), "I don't want to live in a world centered around the Avengers rather than the X-Men, why join the navy when you can be a pirate".

You're concocting a whole scenario in your head that has no connection to real life.

I mean part of this thread is about Spider-Man's status in the Marvel Universe and the sub-discussion is about Spider-Man being more tied to teams since 2000 which everyone agrees is when it really started. Stuff like Spider-Man and Tony Stark, Spider-Man becoming part of Avengers Tower, Spider-Man joining the Future Foundation. And one thing is wondering how those decisions factored in changes to Spider-Man's continuity.

[Prof. Warren]

So we must always take EIC decisions at face value and not look at them as corporate officers, which is what they are? We must live in a happy dreamland never-fantasy that pretends that comics run aren't affected at a corporate level?

The only one living in a dreamland is you.

The rest of us are living in the real world.

And living in the real world means that you don't wildly speculate and project based on limited data and then convince yourself that your imaginings are the stuff of reality.

Quesada openly said there was a moratorium to creating new mutants (https://icv2.com/articles/comics/vie...o-more-mutants). He said he wanted mutants to be like it was in the '60s, i.e. when it was a failing Marvel title and got sent into reprints. I don't know why people are pretending this isn't the kick to the curb that was.

Wanting the mutants to be like they were in the '60s is a desire to get them back to their roots.

That's not a "kick to the curb." Bendis bringing the O5 into the present was also a move to connect the X-Men with their roots.

This is not sabotage. It's a creative decision. What I think Quesada and Bendis and others didn't understand is that The X-Men is different than other Marvel franchises.

Whereas books like the FF, Spider-Man and The Avengers often work by creators getting back to basics, pushing nostalgia buttons, and going back to the core principles, The X-Men don't thrive on that. What Hickman has proved is that the X-Men tend to work best when they're looking ahead, not behind.

That doesn't explain why the House of M status-quo was maintained and extended. You are making it sound like this was an event that came and went. It wasn't until Disney bought Fox that they moved past this. Hickman openly said multiple times that his run was intended to make X-Men the center of the Marvel Universe as it was before.

Because it wasn't until Hickman come along that anyone was able to crack that particular nut.

And keep in mind that Hickman's plans have been building behind the scenes for years.

The X-office had to keep the books "on hold" in a sense until everything Hickman was going to do could be lined up.

The Fox deal going through certainly didn't hurt the X-Men's cause but I think most of the problems with the line were simply creative ones.

And also, it should be noted that going into - I believe - All-New Marvel Now or whatever it was that Rick Remender was going to be going onto the X-books.

Whatever those plans were had to be shuttled and re-thought at the last minute when he decided to leave. Things happen. Sometimes you have to wait until the right people get on the right books for them to take off again. It's not like anyone at Marvel was purposely trying to hold the Hulk back, for instance. It's just that until Ewing came along with the Immortal Hulk, no one had a great new angle on him.

Grant Morrison's run opened with the Genocide of Genosha, Whedon's run had a mutant cure...so the survival of mutantdom was by no means not a running theme before. it was indeed far moreso than post-House of M.

House of M was continuing the thread that's been a staple of the X-Men for years and finding a new angle on it.

What I think it underlined - unintentionally - was that keeping mutants on the run and putting them deeper into a hole was becoming a creative dead end.

The mutant corner is no more unwieldy than any other corner of the MU.

It absolutely is.

Spider-Man is an unwieldy corner of the Marvel Universe on account of Clone Saga, and OMD, and unlike the case of X-Men where stuff like Summers' Brothers, Madelyne Pryor, and other elements eventually got addressed and resolved...that hasn't happened in the case of the Spider-Man.

The Clone Saga isn't a problem for current continuity with Spider-Man. Nor is OMD. Those are not hard storylines for writers and editors to wrap their head around.

What makes The X-Men difficult is the enormous cast and the way they connect.

X-fans have an encyclopedic knowledge of even the most obscure mutants and every one of those mutants has its own die-hard fanbase.

Spider-Man, on the other hand, is much easier to oversee.

Interesting that you are insulting a man who is arguably the most influential writer for Marvel after Stan Lee stepped down. Obviously Claremont has no insight into how the industry works, has no experience to make judgment calls about things, does not speak from a store of experience.

Who's insulting?

Interesting that someone who spins all sorts of fantasy scenarios has such a hard time intuiting the actual meaning of words.

To say that Claremont is engaging in the same brand of speculation as fans is not an insult. It's simply the truth.

An undertaking like a comics company creating a movie studio and producing their own movie is not something that is planned or put into motion overnight, and not done without a significant amount of groundwork. That article explicitly said that the idea came in 2003, well before Bendis came on New Avengers.

However big the Avengers might have been before, it's hard to deny that in terms of influence, sales, and actual lasting continuity impact...Bendis' New Avengers and Millar's Civil War marked the most glorious chapter in its history. Whether it's better or not, is a separate thing. GO back and read Avengers #300. A major milestone issue. IT was a tie-in comic to X-Men's Inferno crossover. A milestone issue of a supposed flagship title dedicated to an X-Men crossover isn't a great marker of prestige.

In the words of Ed Piskor, author of X-Men Grand Design (one of the best Marvel comics of the last decade), "I don't want to live in a world centered around the Avengers rather than the X-Men, why join the navy when you can be a pirate"

.

What the fu*k does Ed Piskor's opinion about the X-Men or Avengers have to do with anything? Nothing is what.

If anything, his opinion simply underlines the fact that the Avengers were always the center of the MU in-universe while the X-Men were the rowdy outsiders on the fringe.

And the fact that Avengers #300 was a X-Men tie-in speaks to the fact that the book was in a shaky patch at the time. The Avengers has had a long history. It's importance as a title is not defined by one anniversary issue thirty years ago.

And The Avengers had been relaunched to great success in 1998 with Busiek and Perez. Marvel cared a great deal about restoring the title to greatness long before 2003.

It isn't a marketing scheme. It isn't a thing where in 2003 someone imagined that in 2012 there'd be an Avengers movie and wanted to lay the groundwork.

It's that it's the Avengers and the Avengers is perceived by Marvel as a title worthy of A-list stature.

I mean part of this thread is about Spider-Man's status in the Marvel Universe and the sub-discussion is about Spider-Man being more tied to teams since 2000 which everyone agrees is when it really started. Stuff like Spider-Man and Tony Stark, Spider-Man becoming part of Avengers Tower, Spider-Man joining the Future Foundation. And one thing is wondering how those decisions factored in changes to Spider-Man's continuity.

Wolverine joined the Avengers at the same time as Spider-Man. Is there some corporate conspiracy at work there too?

Or is it just that Bendis convinced Marvel that if the Justice League featured all of DC's most popular heroes that Marvel was crazy not to do the same with the Avengers?

Yeah, it's probably that.

I was never crazy with that decision, by the way - I don't think either character should be a regular Avengers member but it was a creative decision that ended up being well-received by most readers and that led to that ball being carried further with stuff like Spider-Man living in Avengers Tower and so on. Not everything is a conspiracy. In fact, few things are.

Most of the time what happens in comics is just creators telling stories that they think will connect with readers and that these stories will add to the mythology of these characters in cool, interesting ways. Sometimes those plans work out better than others. That's all.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

And living in the real world means that you don't wildly speculate and project based on limited data and then convince yourself that your imaginings are the stuff of reality.

You are actively denying the stated opinions and public statements issued by Quesada, Hickman, Claremont, Jordan White, and others who worked on the title.

That's reality. Which. You. Are. Denying.

Wanting the mutants to be like they were in the '60s is a desire to get them back to their roots.

Why didn't Quesada return Daredevil to his roots then you know the character who created his own identical twin brother and passed time in San Franscisco? The answer is that Daredevil is only worth anything because of Frank Miller's run. So obviously he had enough sense and awareness as the history of the X-Men and why you can't return that title to the roots. I mean it's the job of the Editor-In-Chief to know the character history, title, and continuity after all.

Because it wasn't until Hickman come along that anyone was able to crack that particular nut.

That's because they weren't allowed to. Many writers openly said that they weren't allowed to do a lot with the stories and editorial restricted what they could do.

The Clone Saga isn't a problem for current continuity with Spider-Man. Nor is OMD. Those are not hard storylines for writers and editors to wrap their head around.

Are there events in Spider-Man continuity that can be referred to in the same way they were written down originally. Since the answer to that is no, then obviously the continuity is unwieldy. You can't address the stuff in the Clone Saga - Peter accepting Jackal's offer to genocide humans/Peter hitting a pregnant MJ/MJ being pregnant and her missing "baby" even if they happened in continuity. You can't address OMD. Or Sins' Past.

So obviously the continuity is unwieldy.

Wolverine joined the Avengers at the same time as Spider-Man. Is there some corporate conspiracy at work there too?

Obviously a way to get X-Men and Spider-Man readers to give two s--ts about Avengers and make them think that being an Avenger is some kind of big deal.

Who's insulting?

You are, you are insulting Chris Claremont by claiming that his opinions don't count.

To say that Claremont is engaging in the same brand of speculation as fans is not an insult.

It absolutely is. It's saying that Claremont has no conviction, and that he would repeat anything fans tell him, and that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

It's simply the truth.

Since you don't work for Marvel, since you have never written for superhero stories, and certainly not for so many years, you are absolutely not in any position to judge Chris Claremont or call him a liar or paranoiac.

Chris Claremont will always know more about comics and the state of business than you or me or anyone here ever will.

And that's about all I wish to say on this.

[Agent Z]

House of M was undone in 2012, seven years before the Fox buyout. And even before that, there were still mutant characters being created. Even Claremont's Nightcrawler book featured new ones. This conspiracy theory that the X books were being kneecapped is provably false and is mostly promoted by X-fans who were bitter that marvel was daring to develop other properties besides Spider-Man and the X-Men. No one accuses Marvel of deliberately sabotaging Spider-Man and they didn't have his rights either. And blaming the Avengers for OMD is the height of madness. They'd already tried to get rid of the marriage in the 90s. If the Avengers push failed, they'd have simply tried again.

As for the thread topic, I don't Spider-Man to be on the same level as Captain America but he shouldn't be treated like an amateur either. And that doesn't require him being an enemy of the Avengers.

Since you don't work for Marvel, since you have never written for superhero stories, and certainly not for so many years, you are absolutely not in any position to judge Chris Claremont or call him a liar or paranoiac.

To my knowledge, you've never done any of these things either. What Claremont said and what was going on in the books are two different things.

[Michael Watkins]

i'd say that Spider-man's status as an Avenger during Dark Reign was already a promotion. if he's not taken seriously, it's because of his personality. no one is judging his skill.

[Hybrid]

In fairness, Marvel did kneecap the X-Men (and the Fantastic Four) by not allowing them in Marvel media such as animated series, merchandise, video games and what-not, and I know the X-Men haven't played a pivotal role in a Marvel wide event in a long time. It's telling that as soon as the buyout became a thing, this ended, with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 featuring them. Likewise, the Fantastic Four were cancelled and remained so for three years, and didn't return until the buyout was imminent.

So while the X-Men were a thing in the comics, they were just getting by. Sure, we had X-Men stories, both in their titles and mutants did appear in the General MU, but to deny that NOTHING was happening over this is absurd. I've seen people who don't even know the X-Men share the same universe with the Avengers in the comics, and that's criminal. As is acting like the Avengers are the core of Marvel and the X-Men exist outside of it. When the X-Men and the Avengers crossed over, it was the X-Men who were treated as the stars and the Avengers as second fiddle. Again, see Onslaught.

How much this applies to the comics landscape is debatable, but Marvel definitely had an interest in promoting the characters they had the film rights to at the time. Same with the Inhumans getting promoted suspiciously similar to the X-Men, because Perlmutter wanted an equivalent for the MCU, not anticipating the buyout. When the X-Men film rights returned, notice how the Inhumans basically vanished.

It was not just "Marvel was developing properties besides X-Men and Spider-Man", it was "Marvel was promoting their biggest properties for the MCU, at the expense of what wasn't available for movies (X-Men and Fantastic Four)". Spider-Man will always remain an exception due to being Marvel's mascot, and a huge cash cow even without the film rights. I'm not saying they totally built this up in the comics, but I can see how it would happen. I personally think it was a process of multiple factors. The Avengers getting pushed to the heart of the universe may have been to give Marvel their own Justice League, but when the MCU rolled around they went in with it at full force, while downplaying the X-Men in the process.

My two cents.