I recently came across something called Marvel Spotlight. This was a series of Marvel magazines published around 2008.
https://www.amazon.com/Marvel-Spotli.../dp/B000PTGX8O
https://www.amazon.com/Marvel-Spotli.../dp/B076617V1P
The interviews happened and took place in a period before JMS publicly broke with Quesada about OMD's final issues. So it's kind of a neat capsule of ASM before the OMD backlash (which I think created a change in mentality among Marvel staff after that).
What makes this magazine interesting is that they feature rare interviews with JMS discussing behind the scenes issues of his run and general thoughts about it that he otherwise doesn't talk about elsewhere or only briefly mentioned. Also has some new information not shared or discussed before (not to my knowledge).
There's some interesting details that hasn't been talked about elsewhere.
-- JMS says quite clearly he avoided Spider-Man's classic rogues partly out of them being overexposed and partly out of a desire for freshness but he also says clearly, and I paraphrase, that he didn't intend villains like Morlun, Digger, to last beyond his run. He wanted one-shot villains he could control for his run.
-- However he said that he eventually planned to bring back classic rogues in a big way. He said that he had plans to do something special with Electro and Black Cat but that got torpedoed by Bendis and New Avengers. With the move to New Avengers, JMS had to change gears, that meant classic rogues had to go on the backburner. Black Cat as mentioned here (and also in the BACK IN BLACK special) became inaccessible because of Kevin Smith's series.
-- According to him, he had planned to do more with Peter as a teacher and he regreted the fact that it ended before he could do more with it before the move to Avengers Tower. JMS wasn't against that but he felt more time needed to be done to explore that.
-- The shift to Avengers Tower was something editors asked him to do, and they also suggested that he tie Iron Man to Spider-Man more.
-- This part was a surprise to me. JMS was on-board with Tony Stark and Spider-Man being a father-son mentor relationship. He said that he liked it, and that he didn't agree with Spider-Man breaking with Tony. He said that he ideally would have liked to continued exploring that further. JMS felt that the break between Peter and Iron Man was too abrupt and not set up well, and it was something that he had to do to accommodate Millar's story. I found this surprising because I always felt that JMS wrote IM as douchey and that he disliked Tony in favor of Cap.
-- JMS wasn't happy that Peter's unmasking happened in CIVIL WAR first rather than ASM. He felt that such a major moment was his collar as Spider-Man's lead writer at the time.
-- Some new details about Sins' Past. JMS says that Sins' Past was approved by editorial as being a story of Peter and Gwen's kids but then he was told to make it Norman's. JMS said that he wanted to spike the story then but promos and solicitations had gone out already so he committed himself to that. What this means is that Quesada did agree on principle at first for Peter to be the Dad of Gwen's kids but changed minds after promos and stuff went out. JMS agrees though that Sins' Past is a mistake.
-- JMS' five favorite issues of his run -- "The Conversation, the 9/11 issue, ASM#500, the fight with Morlun, Doomed Affairs".
-- JMS doesn't seem to be all that keen about BACK IN BLACK. Apparently the entire issue came out because Spider-Man 3 was coming in and Marvel needed a comic with Spider-Man in the black suit. Originally CIVIL WAR and Aunt May getting shot was to lead directly to the first issue of OMD (which JMS mentioned before). He said (elsewhere) that delaying it killed the dramatic tension and desperation that the story needed for it to work. So Back In Black was, JMS noting sending Peter down a dark path.
-- JMS hates THE OTHER. He regrets Sins' Past, but The Other was a story that he felt was editorially mismanaged because of different writers in different styles working in a story that doesn't gel together.
-- JMS in general says Peter is 12 times smarter than the ordinary man and that he wrote Spider-Man as being much smarter and more intelligent than himself (i.e JMS).
-- JMS' also is a big Peter/MJ shipper and talks extensively about how he wanted to make them work as a loving couple in his run and move away from how they were written before.
I always did feel that JMS' collaboration with JRJR was better than the latter part and the reason for that is apparent with all these editorial interventions that he wasn't consulted about or given time to think about -- Bendis' New Avengers, The Other, Civil War, Spider-Man 3 appearing and so that leading to Back in Black, OMD.
Not that it's black-and-white. Sins' Past was largely JMS (even with editorial changes), while Back in Black which is basically a finger-exercise padding issue actually is an all-time great story and led to another all-time great story with Fraction's Annual.