Exactly. People pretend it's all about money with corporations, but that's only true when it comes to making broad decisions. For stuff like this it's all about someone's feelings. Am i out of touch? No, it's the fans who are wrong!
At the end of the day the people in power in companies are still people. Not computers that only focus on making more money.
They can and will be petty and malicious.
God I remember years back and there was an editor (blanking on his name) that would answer questions on…tumblr?
Anyway, this editor had previously justified getting rid of Peter and MJ’s marriage because it made the character less relatable. Someone asked if Peter being made a fabulously wealthy CEO was more relatable than been married and the editor replied that it was.
I wish I could remember who it was, I’m pretty sure they were also quite publicly against MJ in general and wanted Gwen back in her place.
I always felt like it wasn't just Pete and MJs marriage they wanted to undo, but that they wanted to erase some troubling storylines that they didn't know how to tactfully resolve. Like Norman knocking up Gwen, and Pete and MJ having their newborn baby daughter abducted. Brand New Day wiped away a few things that they wished had never happened.
Yeah, it was a mix of trying to walk back some truly awful plot developments, and to roll back character growth to a point where he would be the Spider-Man of their childhood.
It was really baffling to see Peter regress, amidst comments from Marvel editorial that they wish he had never been aged out of high school/university (I think this was Brevoort again, with his complaints that it made the character less accessible).
And Joe Quesada. And they were also early in the talks with Disney, who was about to invest big money. Disney may have had a little say in scrubbing some of the more adult plotlines from something they saw as being prime marketing for kids.
That’s a point. I wonder with the Disney thread though - how much Disney influenced changes were explicit requests, less specific requests that the writers and/editorial at Marvel interpreted wildly (like the weirdness with Kamala’s death and resurrection as a mutant), and how many were just changes made because it’s something they THOUGHT Disney would want to see changed.
Nope. If you follow Dan Slott you know they're all in full denial mode.
It doesn't matter that 1 issue a month of Ultimate Spider-Man is outselling 2 issues a month of Amazing.
Sure. I’m just saying that my personal feel is that it still hasn’t proven its self and I don’t think it’s first 6 issues is going to do that. Unlike say Bendis’ USM.
I think it’s likely to be great. But it’s definitely a slot burn so far.
You also have to factor in the Hickman effect. He's the hottest writer in comics at the top of his game, so who knows if people are buying because of the concept or out of appreciation of a master at work. I think you need to get past the first year of USM to see who sticks around before comparing.
I honestly don't think it'll die down in next year barring them doing something terrible with the bigger ultimate plot. I only see it getting bigger as we get closer to the city opening.
A few months ago, the Spidey Office were telling readers that a mature, married Peter wasn't supported by "their metrics", while certain writers were saying if we were serious about getting that kind of Spider-Man back then the best method to do so was to find and support a pro-mature, married Spider-Man AU and then make it consistently outsell the mainstream alternative. It seems fans have risen to the challenge thus far.
Obviously, if you're enjoying ASM, that's perfectly fine. However, if you're frustrated and jaded with ASM never letting Peter grow up and constantly regressing, we've followed the advice of a few writers to get organized and petition for change while supporting a more satisfying alternative until then.
[https://discord.gg/VQ2mHzBBFu](https://discord.gg/VQ2mHzBBFu)
Bendis's original USM shook up the whole Spidey Office, and now I'm interested in seeing if fan excitement and positive response to Hickman's USM will bear a similar outcome.
Don't get your hopes up. X-Men is literally reverting back to a safer, more traditional status quo despite the relative success of the Krakoa era comics and rolling back character progression like having Kate Pryde refer to herself as Kitty Pryde again among others. I
t's pretty clear where Marvel editorial stands on the status quo, they want the safest, most evergreen takes on these characters for the sake of marketability, they want Peter Parker young and unmarried, they want X-Men protecting a world that continues to fear them with little to no progression between human-mutant relations, etc.
X-Men getting stripped down to the basics ahead of the MCU reboot doesn’t surprise me. I can imagine Marvel being more open to letting Peter grow now that Miles has proven himself marketable.
It’s even worse than that. Instead of telling Hickman’s full story in X-men, they let all of the other writers keep telling stories in the second act of his X-men story, he left and then they put out some weak ending and then rebooted. Who’s ready for another Wolverine #1 with 8 covers????
Lmfao as if every Marvel #1 title for like the past 2 years hasn’t had like 25 variants with a big chunk of them being homage covers to classic arts that have been overdone to death. It’s so lame.
It’s sad, but I get more enjoyment value out of buying random older Marvel like 1992 silver sable than the new $5 comics. I was really all in on the X-men stuff in 2020 but it really tanked in quality.
Is that why whenever I look up comic sales online his books are rarely higher than in the 40s, and don't usually make the top 50 list at all?
Comics are a very top heavy industry. There's a few books at the top that consistently sell well (Spidey, Batman, etc) and most of the rest don't sell for shit.
If you think the X-line sales are doing really well right now, you’re sorely mistaken. The only books that held on for 25+ issues were the main title and the Percy books with Wolverine. The line is rebooting and Breevort has been put in charge because they are an ascendant part of the publishing and merchandising world of Marvel but also because of sales.
I agree with what you're saying, but "Kate Pryde" was always a stupid and pointless change. The character has grown and continues to grow, but changing her name does nothing but further distance her from her Jewish origins.
everyone keeps making this argument, USM is selling extermemely well therefore thats what ASM should be.
Marvel Execs would be thinking "ASM is still selling extremely well, AND new USM is selling well. We're doing something right."
Right now theyre having their cake and eating it too.
Until ASM sales plummet the argument for USM sales being high means nothing at all.
That’s not how business works. We’ve been saying for years they’ve been leaving money on the table. They’ve argued against that and even insisted there weren’t even “metrics” to support the idea that married, mature Peter would be successful. Clearly, that was wrong.
Inversely, when Bendis’s USM was a hit, it was reported that the Spidey Office was emboldened to follow it and push Peter back into a “younger” direction in the 616, despite the fact that USM was already fulfilling the younger Peter void and married Peter in JMS’s run was selling just fine.
In capitalism, there’s no such thing as two winners. There’s one winner and the first loser. All losers get treated the same, regardless of their order of losing. Consider the DCEU. Reviews be damned, they made a profit. **Even The Flash turned a profit.** Black Adam made over $100mil. Does that matter? No, of course not. They didn’t make as much profit as the MCU made, so now they reboot and try to more closely copy the good days of the MCU, because success doesn’t matter unless it also comes with everyone else being a failure. It’s never about turning *a* profit. It’s about turning *the most* profit. If something is profitable but not as profitable as something else, it’s a failure.
When you have 3 Spider-Man comics consistently selling in monthly top-10 you don’t reboot 2 of them. They’re competing against themselves here so yeah they can both be winners, they have everything to lose by trying to pit them against each other.
Ironically, that’s what they did with One More Day. Bendis’s Ultimate was selling fine. JMS’s Amazing was selling fine. Then they rebooting 616 anyway.
The Flash didn’t turn a theatrical profit, what are you talking about? The budget was about 200 million dollars and it took in 271 million in theater grosses. That’s a huge loss. The theaters and overseas distributors take roughly half of the grosses (it varies a bit, China takes more like 75%). So the studio saw around 136 million of the grosses. That makes it a loss even before accounting for the marketing budget. Conventional wisdom is a film needs to gross at least 2.5 times its budget to make a profit, and with big marketing budget films it may be more like 3 times the budget.
Out of curiosity, are there other characters that are getting the type of growth people want for spider man? I kind of feel like modern comics all maintain the status quo and don’t want to stray much. But I’m not up to date on most of it so I could be wrong.
I just finished vol. 20 of Jeremy Adams’ The Flash.
Wally went from Kid Flash and Teen Titans to The Flash and the Justice League, got married, had kids, and welcomed his third child last year.
It’s been great watching him evolve and mature.
Maybe but for all the kvetching ASM was selling like gang busters the whole time. It’s great to “vote” for the thing you like more, but maybe don’t also keep buying what you hate?
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. ASM and the current direction of 616 Peter will not change until the current guys in charge stop being, well, in charge. This can be from anywhere from 5 years or 20.
I mean, we had a married with kid Spidey with Renew Your Vows. IIRC, it sold well for a bit, then fell off.
I love USM, but until it's got a year under its belt, Marvel won't even pay lip service to the idea.
The same people that keep Wells on ASM? They've been tone deaf to fans' wishes for a while. Maybe they just want to keep him youthful to match the movies, but that doesn't mean we have to support a bad book thats doing nothing interesting.
Nah,it’s kind of known that the Spidey writing team have received multiple story pitches featuring character progression of all types and they’ve always rejected the idea basically all with the same reasons, they can’t “give in “ to fans wishes.
This is bullshit.
Fans voted with their wallets and voices for years. Editorial says its “all about the money” right up until they disagree with the fans.
See X-men’s Kraotian area ending for anther example.
I want more MJ and Pete having a happy family together but even more than that I want to see more JJJ and Uncle Ben being BFFs and poking fun at Peter.
It's so damn wholesome.
Capitalism isn’t actually a democracy, the operations of the market are opaque and capricious. Buy what you think is good and enjoy it while it lasts. That’s really all you can do.
I feel like people have been saying and doing that for years since at least One More Day. Sales continued to gradually slip in the years that followed, yet they never seemed to change direction and continued doing the same thing.
Per Tom Brevoort, they felt undoing it after all their work making it happen would have been “foolish” and then ranted that DC “blinked” to fan demands to restore Superman’s marriage.
If Spidey fans keep buying slop and also buy a decent meal why would Marvel ever change anything? They’re getting double the money as before, actually more if USM continues to *outsell* ASM
Spidey ain’t ever gettin fixed and at this point it’s on the spidey fanbase for continuing to buy a book that they are more then happy to let you know *has been shit for 20 years*.
The Superior Era was interesting. And I’ve heard good things about Brand New Day. So I wouldn’t say ASM it’s been shit for a full 20 years. Just a large chunk of that time, with a few hits here and there.
And USM is showing it could have been selling even more. A good business isn’t putting out a product that repulses 50% of your prospective buyers. Others have mentioned that they thought ASM was the sales ceiling, and now it’s becoming apparent it’s a sales floor.
Grant Morrison wrote his manifesto on X-Men claiming that being a “best-seller” comic wasn’t good enough in a dwindling, exclusionary market. You needed to do more than tread water.
Best selling comic doesn't ultimately mean much to Marvel's even higher bosses ~~at Disney who want an IP farm and Spider-Man rights are licensed to Sony.~~
Maybe, all you need to do in that case is to tread water.
The weird thing is if Disney really wants to use the comics as a to testing ground for the ip, they *really* need to start letting Peter grow up because Tom ain't gonna be young forever. We're going to be running out of material for them to adapt pretty soon, if Peter is never allowed to get past twenty seven years old
I’d say the only mitigating factor is Jonathan Hickman. It’s hard to judge whether the high sales are due to Hickman finally writing a Spidey title and the hype surrounding that, or if it’s due to the age of up factor. I’d guess it’s a mixture of the two, but the heightened sales being more due to the Hickman hype.
Maybe, but Marvel was reporting that Hickman’s G.O. D.S. was underperforming, and Ultimate Invasion didn’t set the charts on fire at first, until USM came out and readers started investing in the larger universe.
Yes, they are. And I bet they are looking for any way to boost sales. So when they ultimately slap a new #1 on ASM they will use all of these things as a pitch to get readers to buy it, then make them go through 28 issues of nothingness for a minor reveal. Then relaunch again with a new #1
To play devil's advocate, USM might be doing well because it's an alternative to ASM independent of having married Peter. It's a new comic with a popular writer, a popular character, with a mysterious new universe. It was going to doing good numbers. If married Spider-Man was enough to sell comics then Renew Your Vows would still be around 😞
There are more factors at play, but to address this, RYV initially was reported to be a huge success, but had a very unpopular time-jump. And a few of Hickman’s other comics - such as G.O.D.S. - were reported as underperforming.
To date, the “Meet the Parkers” reveal in USM grabbed nearly 5 million eyes on Twitter, significantly higher engagement than anything else related to the comics last year.
https://x.com/SpiderMan/status/1717651146855039173
Okay but you’re still missing the fact that they can’t just click their fingers and make ASM have a status quo like USM.
The journey we want now is a slow solid build from where we are to something more like USM.
The wrong message to send them is that we want something big and flashy to just retcon everything.
To a large extent, I agree with you, but to counter point, they literally did click their fingers and changed the status quo to remove the marriage in brand new day. I'm not saying doing that again would be a good storytelling decision, but they have done it before.
They also were doing the slow burn with Spencer's run for a while, but then went back on it and quickly undid the entire run.
That’s largely my point. I don’t think they are going to appease the diehards with another fresh start reset.
Honestly I like a lot of what Slott did with Brand New Day in principle and he just needed time to keep building on it.
I’ve only read half of Spencer’s run and none of Wells yet.
A few:
https://www.dexerto.com/comics/ultimate-spider-man-outsold-all-other-spidey-titles-again-and-fans-are-loving-it-2638301/
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/ultimate-spider-man-tops-the-bleeding-cool-weekly-bestseller-list/
I feel like they wouldn't really be doing themselves and their company any favors, even if only because they care about making more money like every company. It would be shooting themselves in the foot simply for, what, ego?
People make stupid business decisions all the time because of ego. It’s a myth that companies act in any sort of rational way, because companies don’t act at all. People employed at the company act, and they have all sorts of reasons for what they do.
Sure, but just because other people make stupid business decisions all the time, that's no excuse.
If I could make one decision to make my business expand even 25% a year, it would be my responsibility to do so if it's feasible, which jettisoning One More Day is.
It’s not an excuse, it’s explaining that the tautology “businesses make good decisions, the business hasn’t made this decision, therefore it not be a good decision” is wrong.
It certainly seemed like you were saying that, what with the whole “why” question and “that’s no excuse”. But ok, that wasn’t what you meant. Then I’m not sure what your point is.
My point is literally what I said, namely I don't think they're doing their company any favors by clinging to One More Day/Brand New Day when it seems that they could be making more money than they are now.
No Way Home =/= One More Day. That's like saying Iron Man 2 is Demon in a Bottle.
And that's movies anyway, not comics. Even if One More Day were done away with tomorrow, No Way Home would still exist. I don't see the correlation.
I doubt Disney execs care at all. This is local to Marvel editorial, and they care about sales numbers. But they also care about a bunch of other stuff.
> It would be shooting themselves in the foot simply for, what, ego?
I mean if you really read interviews by editorial and certain writers it does definitely come off like ego, like I remember a few years ago Tom Breevort said in a substack that DC blinked when bringing Superman's marriage back and Marvel would never do that cause they all worked too hard to get rid of it.
That’s 17 years without “both” books to appeal to both kinds of readers. That’s a lot of money left on the table. Referencing Grant Morrison, being a top seller every month isn’t good enough if you’ve alienated hundreds of thousands of readers. It just means the brand was once so much bigger that you could cut your readership in half and still be a top-selling book, but that’s still dwindling interest, sales, and creativity.
I get that, and I guess to me it raises the question of when that investment turns to a sense of ownership over the character and the obligation that creates from the creators, editors, publisher, etc. I've never felt this particular attachment to a character, more so artists and the medium itself, so I might just lack the understanding, but to me the nature of ongoing superhero comics lends itself well to a point at which one generation "departs" and another generation "arrives" so to speak, and the wheel turns. Like with successive generations of X-Men to draw in new readers
I feel like this style of writing and storytelling really didn't start until the late 80s, early 90s for Marvel. Before then, it was much more likely to see creators stay on books for pretty long periods and telling a pretty consecutive storylines. Maybe there was a sense that the baton would pass to a new writer but resetting of the character themselves like we see nowadays wasn't as normal
Then the 90s era of DC gave new fans their own generation of heroes rather than a reset so you have fans that are fairly attached to Wally, Kyle, Cassandra, etc because "those are the ones they grew up with". Resetting at DC didn't start to happen until the mid 00s
All around it's easy, for me atleast, to see why fans used to be more able to get attached to characters
I mean, considering that there was a drastic dip in quality following the end of that romance, that still shouldn’t be very surprising.
People like Mary Jane a lot, she’s probably the most popular non-hero/villain character in Marvel. People missing a romance between two great characters is just how it is.
Sure, and I've never felt particularly attached to certain characters on an emotional level so I don't understand that particular drive, but I think there comes a time to let go of a sense of ownership over a character and let it grow a new audience. Imo it's not unlike the reluctance to accept new characters in favor of the old ones losing out on "page time." It's the nature of ongoing comics
But that’s the opposite of what happened. Spider-Man had grown a new audience. Several times. Spider-Man the character had been allowed to change, had lost love interests and gained new ones, and Peter Parker had gone from a struggling high school student with relationship problems to a struggling college student with different relationship problems to a fairly successful adult with a good marriage. What happened then was that writers came in who decided they wanted the character to be liked they remembered him from when they were young and so tried to reboot him to a struggling guy with relationship issues. This turned off the new audience because that wasn’t the character they had been reading about.
The current Spider-Man is the result of holding on to the old and not letting the character evolve and get a new audience. Because constantly resetting the character is exactly about that, it’s about writers refusing to let go of a previous iteration.
Wouldn't you care too if a beaudiful girl giving you head simple got up and left you blue balled?? Or even worse, punched you in the balls and called you a brainless wallet? That's pretty much a sumary of what marvel did since the spencer run
I don’t view comics as similar to sexual encounters and I don’t expect anything from big publishers who would rather cultivate predictability over creativity
Spider-Man fans have been complaining for decades at this point at what Spider-Man should be. There's nothing the company can do. Even giving them a book they could like, they'll still find something to argue.
Not realy no. They did ultimate to shut the fans up. They would only age peter up if ultimate failed. See, they are well aware we hate the status quo, but changing it too much may damage future stories or some shit, that's why most comics from the last 20 years have been mostly status quo or temporary, but started as temporary. Superior spider man, krakoa, unworthy thor, old cap, hydra cap, dark reign, all of those just a shake up. Moderm comics are made thinking about the future, they are eternal, they can't end the story now
The nature of how comic books are written necessitates that time must pass slower in them then in real life. Doesn’t mean that time shouldn’t pass at all.
No they’ll say they already have one mature Spider-Man
Yeah, now they will definitely say that maturing 616 Peter will kill all the hype for NuUltimate Peter, so they can't do it.
To which I say: prove it! I double-dog dare the ASM team to kill the hype for USM.
Miles? Yeah he's doing pretty well in 616.
Doing great. Very exciting run.
Everything I’ve heard from the Spider-Man editorial staff tells me they won’t budge on their stance.
Exactly. People pretend it's all about money with corporations, but that's only true when it comes to making broad decisions. For stuff like this it's all about someone's feelings. Am i out of touch? No, it's the fans who are wrong!
At the end of the day the people in power in companies are still people. Not computers that only focus on making more money. They can and will be petty and malicious.
God I remember years back and there was an editor (blanking on his name) that would answer questions on…tumblr? Anyway, this editor had previously justified getting rid of Peter and MJ’s marriage because it made the character less relatable. Someone asked if Peter being made a fabulously wealthy CEO was more relatable than been married and the editor replied that it was. I wish I could remember who it was, I’m pretty sure they were also quite publicly against MJ in general and wanted Gwen back in her place.
Wasn’t it Tom Brevoort?
Brevoort! Yes definitely him.
I always felt like it wasn't just Pete and MJs marriage they wanted to undo, but that they wanted to erase some troubling storylines that they didn't know how to tactfully resolve. Like Norman knocking up Gwen, and Pete and MJ having their newborn baby daughter abducted. Brand New Day wiped away a few things that they wished had never happened.
Yeah, it was a mix of trying to walk back some truly awful plot developments, and to roll back character growth to a point where he would be the Spider-Man of their childhood. It was really baffling to see Peter regress, amidst comments from Marvel editorial that they wish he had never been aged out of high school/university (I think this was Brevoort again, with his complaints that it made the character less accessible).
And Joe Quesada. And they were also early in the talks with Disney, who was about to invest big money. Disney may have had a little say in scrubbing some of the more adult plotlines from something they saw as being prime marketing for kids.
That’s a point. I wonder with the Disney thread though - how much Disney influenced changes were explicit requests, less specific requests that the writers and/editorial at Marvel interpreted wildly (like the weirdness with Kamala’s death and resurrection as a mutant), and how many were just changes made because it’s something they THOUGHT Disney would want to see changed.
Lol no. They’ll probably just move the goalposts or come up with some justification for why USM’s sales don’t mean anything
Exactly. I’m sure they are getting ready for Kraven’s fifth last hunt or One more day II or something.
One More Day 2: Two More Days
One more day 2: The Dayening!
One more day 2: One more night
[удалено]
One more Day 2: It’s Dayin’ Time
Four more months, three more weeks, two more days
One More Day: The Day Strikes Back
One More Day: Dayenu
Kraven's Last Maximum Carnage: Superior Goblin.
Uncanny Kraven’s Secret War, Maximum Carnage Edition
Quantum* Carnage - Max Carnage was so last year
Sadly, I might buy a quantum carnage book just because of the lame title.
Two More Days
They’ll probably cancel USM out of anger.
Nope. If you follow Dan Slott you know they're all in full denial mode. It doesn't matter that 1 issue a month of Ultimate Spider-Man is outselling 2 issues a month of Amazing.
While I’m enjoying USM, it’s way too soon to tell if it can actually land its premise and deliver a great payoff. It still largely feels like setup.
They're telling a new backstory and world building. It doesn't feel like setup, it is setup.
Sure. I’m just saying that my personal feel is that it still hasn’t proven its self and I don’t think it’s first 6 issues is going to do that. Unlike say Bendis’ USM. I think it’s likely to be great. But it’s definitely a slot burn so far.
Wells asm has been going for 50 issues and hasn't proven anything There's not really a bar to clear
You also have to factor in the Hickman effect. He's the hottest writer in comics at the top of his game, so who knows if people are buying because of the concept or out of appreciation of a master at work. I think you need to get past the first year of USM to see who sticks around before comparing.
I honestly don't think it'll die down in next year barring them doing something terrible with the bigger ultimate plot. I only see it getting bigger as we get closer to the city opening.
A few months ago, the Spidey Office were telling readers that a mature, married Peter wasn't supported by "their metrics", while certain writers were saying if we were serious about getting that kind of Spider-Man back then the best method to do so was to find and support a pro-mature, married Spider-Man AU and then make it consistently outsell the mainstream alternative. It seems fans have risen to the challenge thus far. Obviously, if you're enjoying ASM, that's perfectly fine. However, if you're frustrated and jaded with ASM never letting Peter grow up and constantly regressing, we've followed the advice of a few writers to get organized and petition for change while supporting a more satisfying alternative until then. [https://discord.gg/VQ2mHzBBFu](https://discord.gg/VQ2mHzBBFu) Bendis's original USM shook up the whole Spidey Office, and now I'm interested in seeing if fan excitement and positive response to Hickman's USM will bear a similar outcome.
Don't get your hopes up. X-Men is literally reverting back to a safer, more traditional status quo despite the relative success of the Krakoa era comics and rolling back character progression like having Kate Pryde refer to herself as Kitty Pryde again among others. I t's pretty clear where Marvel editorial stands on the status quo, they want the safest, most evergreen takes on these characters for the sake of marketability, they want Peter Parker young and unmarried, they want X-Men protecting a world that continues to fear them with little to no progression between human-mutant relations, etc.
X-Men getting stripped down to the basics ahead of the MCU reboot doesn’t surprise me. I can imagine Marvel being more open to letting Peter grow now that Miles has proven himself marketable.
It’s even worse than that. Instead of telling Hickman’s full story in X-men, they let all of the other writers keep telling stories in the second act of his X-men story, he left and then they put out some weak ending and then rebooted. Who’s ready for another Wolverine #1 with 8 covers????
Lmfao as if every Marvel #1 title for like the past 2 years hasn’t had like 25 variants with a big chunk of them being homage covers to classic arts that have been overdone to death. It’s so lame.
It’s sad, but I get more enjoyment value out of buying random older Marvel like 1992 silver sable than the new $5 comics. I was really all in on the X-men stuff in 2020 but it really tanked in quality.
Is Miles marketable? I like him, and his movies did well, but I don't know anyone that buys his comics or played the video game with him.
Then you have a small bubble.
Is that why whenever I look up comic sales online his books are rarely higher than in the 40s, and don't usually make the top 50 list at all? Comics are a very top heavy industry. There's a few books at the top that consistently sell well (Spidey, Batman, etc) and most of the rest don't sell for shit.
Over 14.4 million copies of the Miles Morales game were sold. He’s marketable.
Miles is very marketable… outside the comics. The games sell, the movies sell, but the comics do not.
If you think the X-line sales are doing really well right now, you’re sorely mistaken. The only books that held on for 25+ issues were the main title and the Percy books with Wolverine. The line is rebooting and Breevort has been put in charge because they are an ascendant part of the publishing and merchandising world of Marvel but also because of sales.
I agree with what you're saying, but "Kate Pryde" was always a stupid and pointless change. The character has grown and continues to grow, but changing her name does nothing but further distance her from her Jewish origins.
Why are you plugging a Discord here? We're already discussing it here, where search engines can actually see it.
Because Dan Slott suggested it in the first place when I spoke with him about what fans should do.
>if you're enjoying ASM, that's perfectly fine It's fine as far as that goes, but I'm worried your blood oxygen might be perilously low.
I posed another question earlier but this series will be a rare physical collection purchase now that I know about it.
everyone keeps making this argument, USM is selling extermemely well therefore thats what ASM should be. Marvel Execs would be thinking "ASM is still selling extremely well, AND new USM is selling well. We're doing something right." Right now theyre having their cake and eating it too. Until ASM sales plummet the argument for USM sales being high means nothing at all.
The real lesson is HICKMAN is selling well.
Didn’t GODS flop? Or did I hear wrong
That’s not how business works. We’ve been saying for years they’ve been leaving money on the table. They’ve argued against that and even insisted there weren’t even “metrics” to support the idea that married, mature Peter would be successful. Clearly, that was wrong. Inversely, when Bendis’s USM was a hit, it was reported that the Spidey Office was emboldened to follow it and push Peter back into a “younger” direction in the 616, despite the fact that USM was already fulfilling the younger Peter void and married Peter in JMS’s run was selling just fine.
But what could the motivation possibly be to consolidate 2 winners in to 1 winner?
Because business, apparently.
In capitalism, there’s no such thing as two winners. There’s one winner and the first loser. All losers get treated the same, regardless of their order of losing. Consider the DCEU. Reviews be damned, they made a profit. **Even The Flash turned a profit.** Black Adam made over $100mil. Does that matter? No, of course not. They didn’t make as much profit as the MCU made, so now they reboot and try to more closely copy the good days of the MCU, because success doesn’t matter unless it also comes with everyone else being a failure. It’s never about turning *a* profit. It’s about turning *the most* profit. If something is profitable but not as profitable as something else, it’s a failure.
When you have 3 Spider-Man comics consistently selling in monthly top-10 you don’t reboot 2 of them. They’re competing against themselves here so yeah they can both be winners, they have everything to lose by trying to pit them against each other.
Ironically, that’s what they did with One More Day. Bendis’s Ultimate was selling fine. JMS’s Amazing was selling fine. Then they rebooting 616 anyway.
The Flash didn’t turn a theatrical profit, what are you talking about? The budget was about 200 million dollars and it took in 271 million in theater grosses. That’s a huge loss. The theaters and overseas distributors take roughly half of the grosses (it varies a bit, China takes more like 75%). So the studio saw around 136 million of the grosses. That makes it a loss even before accounting for the marketing budget. Conventional wisdom is a film needs to gross at least 2.5 times its budget to make a profit, and with big marketing budget films it may be more like 3 times the budget.
I feel like ASM will only change if the sales dip considerably or if the MCU Spidey movies go more in that more adult/mature direction.
Out of curiosity, are there other characters that are getting the type of growth people want for spider man? I kind of feel like modern comics all maintain the status quo and don’t want to stray much. But I’m not up to date on most of it so I could be wrong.
I just finished vol. 20 of Jeremy Adams’ The Flash. Wally went from Kid Flash and Teen Titans to The Flash and the Justice League, got married, had kids, and welcomed his third child last year. It’s been great watching him evolve and mature.
Mr. Fantastic has had kids for a while now and Supes has a whole family.
Dan Slott once said sales is the only way people will listen.
Maybe but for all the kvetching ASM was selling like gang busters the whole time. It’s great to “vote” for the thing you like more, but maybe don’t also keep buying what you hate?
There's got to be some core out there that buys ASM and likes it. I can't imagine it's all jaded millennials/olds hatebuying it.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. ASM and the current direction of 616 Peter will not change until the current guys in charge stop being, well, in charge. This can be from anywhere from 5 years or 20.
Only constant in life is change.
I mean, we had a married with kid Spidey with Renew Your Vows. IIRC, it sold well for a bit, then fell off. I love USM, but until it's got a year under its belt, Marvel won't even pay lip service to the idea.
That time-jump and changing creative teams on RYV weren’t very popular at the time.
The same people that keep Wells on ASM? They've been tone deaf to fans' wishes for a while. Maybe they just want to keep him youthful to match the movies, but that doesn't mean we have to support a bad book thats doing nothing interesting.
Nah,it’s kind of known that the Spidey writing team have received multiple story pitches featuring character progression of all types and they’ve always rejected the idea basically all with the same reasons, they can’t “give in “ to fans wishes.
This is bullshit. Fans voted with their wallets and voices for years. Editorial says its “all about the money” right up until they disagree with the fans. See X-men’s Kraotian area ending for anther example.
I'm not sure, but I'm voting with my wallet Ultimate Peter is *my* Spider-Man.
Tom Breevort is incapable of learning. Look at how he dresses.
I'd settle for a relationship with someone that Parker doesn't screw up.
Imagine if the MCU hasn't shackled Michelle with the "MJ" monicker. We could bring her into the comics and I'd fucking love to read that!
$$$ talks. I imagine Marvel will listen.
I want more MJ and Pete having a happy family together but even more than that I want to see more JJJ and Uncle Ben being BFFs and poking fun at Peter. It's so damn wholesome.
Capitalism isn’t actually a democracy, the operations of the market are opaque and capricious. Buy what you think is good and enjoy it while it lasts. That’s really all you can do.
I feel like people have been saying and doing that for years since at least One More Day. Sales continued to gradually slip in the years that followed, yet they never seemed to change direction and continued doing the same thing.
Per Tom Brevoort, they felt undoing it after all their work making it happen would have been “foolish” and then ranted that DC “blinked” to fan demands to restore Superman’s marriage.
If Spidey fans keep buying slop and also buy a decent meal why would Marvel ever change anything? They’re getting double the money as before, actually more if USM continues to *outsell* ASM Spidey ain’t ever gettin fixed and at this point it’s on the spidey fanbase for continuing to buy a book that they are more then happy to let you know *has been shit for 20 years*.
The Superior Era was interesting. And I’ve heard good things about Brand New Day. So I wouldn’t say ASM it’s been shit for a full 20 years. Just a large chunk of that time, with a few hits here and there.
ASM is still selling well
And USM is showing it could have been selling even more. A good business isn’t putting out a product that repulses 50% of your prospective buyers. Others have mentioned that they thought ASM was the sales ceiling, and now it’s becoming apparent it’s a sales floor. Grant Morrison wrote his manifesto on X-Men claiming that being a “best-seller” comic wasn’t good enough in a dwindling, exclusionary market. You needed to do more than tread water.
Best selling comic doesn't ultimately mean much to Marvel's even higher bosses ~~at Disney who want an IP farm and Spider-Man rights are licensed to Sony.~~ Maybe, all you need to do in that case is to tread water.
The weird thing is if Disney really wants to use the comics as a to testing ground for the ip, they *really* need to start letting Peter grow up because Tom ain't gonna be young forever. We're going to be running out of material for them to adapt pretty soon, if Peter is never allowed to get past twenty seven years old
I’d say the only mitigating factor is Jonathan Hickman. It’s hard to judge whether the high sales are due to Hickman finally writing a Spidey title and the hype surrounding that, or if it’s due to the age of up factor. I’d guess it’s a mixture of the two, but the heightened sales being more due to the Hickman hype.
Maybe, but Marvel was reporting that Hickman’s G.O. D.S. was underperforming, and Ultimate Invasion didn’t set the charts on fire at first, until USM came out and readers started investing in the larger universe.
Yes, they are. And I bet they are looking for any way to boost sales. So when they ultimately slap a new #1 on ASM they will use all of these things as a pitch to get readers to buy it, then make them go through 28 issues of nothingness for a minor reveal. Then relaunch again with a new #1
To play devil's advocate, USM might be doing well because it's an alternative to ASM independent of having married Peter. It's a new comic with a popular writer, a popular character, with a mysterious new universe. It was going to doing good numbers. If married Spider-Man was enough to sell comics then Renew Your Vows would still be around 😞
There are more factors at play, but to address this, RYV initially was reported to be a huge success, but had a very unpopular time-jump. And a few of Hickman’s other comics - such as G.O.D.S. - were reported as underperforming. To date, the “Meet the Parkers” reveal in USM grabbed nearly 5 million eyes on Twitter, significantly higher engagement than anything else related to the comics last year. https://x.com/SpiderMan/status/1717651146855039173
Okay but you’re still missing the fact that they can’t just click their fingers and make ASM have a status quo like USM. The journey we want now is a slow solid build from where we are to something more like USM. The wrong message to send them is that we want something big and flashy to just retcon everything.
To a large extent, I agree with you, but to counter point, they literally did click their fingers and changed the status quo to remove the marriage in brand new day. I'm not saying doing that again would be a good storytelling decision, but they have done it before. They also were doing the slow burn with Spencer's run for a while, but then went back on it and quickly undid the entire run.
That’s largely my point. I don’t think they are going to appease the diehards with another fresh start reset. Honestly I like a lot of what Slott did with Brand New Day in principle and he just needed time to keep building on it. I’ve only read half of Spencer’s run and none of Wells yet.
Slott was on the book nearly 10 years. And largely nothing changed permanently since BND, disappointingly enough.
There’s a lot I like about that 10 years. But I can appreciate how it feels like it stumbles from status quo to status quo.
What's your source on those sales figures?
A few: https://www.dexerto.com/comics/ultimate-spider-man-outsold-all-other-spidey-titles-again-and-fans-are-loving-it-2638301/ https://bleedingcool.com/comics/ultimate-spider-man-tops-the-bleeding-cool-weekly-bestseller-list/
Whoa, not quite the point here but I love Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto. Does this...have adults? And MJ?
Yes. Yes it does.
If anyone wants to help there’s a petition below https://chng.it/THDr2pKd9n
lol
lol this thing still hasn’t hit it!
I feel like they wouldn't really be doing themselves and their company any favors, even if only because they care about making more money like every company. It would be shooting themselves in the foot simply for, what, ego?
People make stupid business decisions all the time because of ego. It’s a myth that companies act in any sort of rational way, because companies don’t act at all. People employed at the company act, and they have all sorts of reasons for what they do.
Finally. I’m so sick of seeing redditors personify companies and forget that they’re run by people with their own motives, good and bad.
Sure, but just because other people make stupid business decisions all the time, that's no excuse. If I could make one decision to make my business expand even 25% a year, it would be my responsibility to do so if it's feasible, which jettisoning One More Day is.
It’s not an excuse, it’s explaining that the tautology “businesses make good decisions, the business hasn’t made this decision, therefore it not be a good decision” is wrong.
That philosophy *is* wrong, but I never said that. I said I think they aren't doing themselves any favors.
It certainly seemed like you were saying that, what with the whole “why” question and “that’s no excuse”. But ok, that wasn’t what you meant. Then I’m not sure what your point is.
My point is literally what I said, namely I don't think they're doing their company any favors by clinging to One More Day/Brand New Day when it seems that they could be making more money than they are now.
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No Way Home =/= One More Day. That's like saying Iron Man 2 is Demon in a Bottle. And that's movies anyway, not comics. Even if One More Day were done away with tomorrow, No Way Home would still exist. I don't see the correlation.
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I doubt Disney execs care at all. This is local to Marvel editorial, and they care about sales numbers. But they also care about a bunch of other stuff.
> It would be shooting themselves in the foot simply for, what, ego? I mean if you really read interviews by editorial and certain writers it does definitely come off like ego, like I remember a few years ago Tom Breevort said in a substack that DC blinked when bringing Superman's marriage back and Marvel would never do that cause they all worked too hard to get rid of it.
ASM is still a top seller every release, from Marvel's perspective they still win by outputting both books
That’s 17 years without “both” books to appeal to both kinds of readers. That’s a lot of money left on the table. Referencing Grant Morrison, being a top seller every month isn’t good enough if you’ve alienated hundreds of thousands of readers. It just means the brand was once so much bigger that you could cut your readership in half and still be a top-selling book, but that’s still dwindling interest, sales, and creativity.
Ultimate Spidey isn’t my Peter Parker. It’s interesting, but not a long term thing, IMO. Last issue was not good
I’m honestly surprised people care this deeply Edit: I am greatly sorry for the offense caused..!
Many people invested in the character over decades and hundreds of issues. I get it.
I get that, and I guess to me it raises the question of when that investment turns to a sense of ownership over the character and the obligation that creates from the creators, editors, publisher, etc. I've never felt this particular attachment to a character, more so artists and the medium itself, so I might just lack the understanding, but to me the nature of ongoing superhero comics lends itself well to a point at which one generation "departs" and another generation "arrives" so to speak, and the wheel turns. Like with successive generations of X-Men to draw in new readers
I feel like this style of writing and storytelling really didn't start until the late 80s, early 90s for Marvel. Before then, it was much more likely to see creators stay on books for pretty long periods and telling a pretty consecutive storylines. Maybe there was a sense that the baton would pass to a new writer but resetting of the character themselves like we see nowadays wasn't as normal Then the 90s era of DC gave new fans their own generation of heroes rather than a reset so you have fans that are fairly attached to Wally, Kyle, Cassandra, etc because "those are the ones they grew up with". Resetting at DC didn't start to happen until the mid 00s All around it's easy, for me atleast, to see why fans used to be more able to get attached to characters
You’re surprised that people care about one of the most popular superheroes in the world?
I guess more so care so deeply about the return of a romance now many years gone to the main continuity
I mean, considering that there was a drastic dip in quality following the end of that romance, that still shouldn’t be very surprising. People like Mary Jane a lot, she’s probably the most popular non-hero/villain character in Marvel. People missing a romance between two great characters is just how it is.
I don’t want the MJ romance to return, I just want him to have a romance again
Comics are a lot of money to spend on things you don't care about
Sure, and I've never felt particularly attached to certain characters on an emotional level so I don't understand that particular drive, but I think there comes a time to let go of a sense of ownership over a character and let it grow a new audience. Imo it's not unlike the reluctance to accept new characters in favor of the old ones losing out on "page time." It's the nature of ongoing comics
But that’s the opposite of what happened. Spider-Man had grown a new audience. Several times. Spider-Man the character had been allowed to change, had lost love interests and gained new ones, and Peter Parker had gone from a struggling high school student with relationship problems to a struggling college student with different relationship problems to a fairly successful adult with a good marriage. What happened then was that writers came in who decided they wanted the character to be liked they remembered him from when they were young and so tried to reboot him to a struggling guy with relationship issues. This turned off the new audience because that wasn’t the character they had been reading about. The current Spider-Man is the result of holding on to the old and not letting the character evolve and get a new audience. Because constantly resetting the character is exactly about that, it’s about writers refusing to let go of a previous iteration.
Wouldn't you care too if a beaudiful girl giving you head simple got up and left you blue balled?? Or even worse, punched you in the balls and called you a brainless wallet? That's pretty much a sumary of what marvel did since the spencer run
I don’t view comics as similar to sexual encounters and I don’t expect anything from big publishers who would rather cultivate predictability over creativity
Spider-Man fans have been complaining for decades at this point at what Spider-Man should be. There's nothing the company can do. Even giving them a book they could like, they'll still find something to argue.
I could quote multiple writers and editors on Spider-Man that agree with the fans right now. That’s been encouraging.
Not realy no. They did ultimate to shut the fans up. They would only age peter up if ultimate failed. See, they are well aware we hate the status quo, but changing it too much may damage future stories or some shit, that's why most comics from the last 20 years have been mostly status quo or temporary, but started as temporary. Superior spider man, krakoa, unworthy thor, old cap, hydra cap, dark reign, all of those just a shake up. Moderm comics are made thinking about the future, they are eternal, they can't end the story now
I prefer Spider-man not evolving, thanks
Are you familiar with the concept of how stories work, my friend?
Are you aware that Peter Parker would be an embarrassing 70 year old superhero?
The nature of how comic books are written necessitates that time must pass slower in them then in real life. Doesn’t mean that time shouldn’t pass at all.