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frogoat · 22 days ago

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Will people buy and read ASM be happy? No, not under this current editorial regime. Because it is betrayal pornography.

A more thorough respose to this video. Will ASM readers be happy? Under the editorial regime of the last 17+ years, it is highly unlikely, but most people enjoyed Nick Spencer's run until the tail end when editorial sabotaged him.

'Willl they ever say 'this is great, this is what we all wanted for years'?' No, because for years they've been outright betraying us. Nick Spencer put in the hustle to repair stuff, we liked that, we appreciated that, but he wasn't allowed to go far enough. When he tried, they sabotaged him.

You say long time readers dropped out but kept in the know since the Clone Saga, but a lot of those readers returned in the early 2000s when Straczynski and Paul Jenkins salvaged the title. Not everyone loved what they were doing but it wasn't the case that the Clone Saga irreparably broke the readership. Remember also, this was during the speculator bubble bursting, so a lot of people were buying because they thought the issues would be worth something someday.

I don't really know why you are distinguishing between the Clone Saga and the Ben Reilly era when 99% of people who talk about the Clone Saga are referring to when Ben Reilly showed up in 1994-when Ben Reilly died in 1996. The whole thing was understandably controversial because they invalidated 20 years of Spider-Man canon. People didn't even hate Ben Reilly himself, they hated that Peter Parker from 1975-1995 had been delegitimised as the real Spider-Man. Which only happened, in part, because Marvel wanted Spider-man to not be married. Even when they were trying to reverse gears on the Clone Saga they tried desperately to have it end in such a way that Peter and Mary Jane were not together and there was no baby, ultimately settling for 'the baby was kidnapped but Spider-Man thinks it was a miscarriage'.

You jumped to the John Byrne era, or as it is often referred to the Mackie/Byrne reboot era. I should point out you entirely skipped over the era between the Clone Saga and Byrne showing up. Two years of stories that were slowly but surely rebuilding trust in the readership, before Mackie and Byrne sabotaged it with the Gathering of Five/Final Chapter storylines which set up the relaunch of ASM. Bear in mind, relaunches back in 1999 were NOT common and it was felt that it was insulting to the historical value of ASM to ditch the numbering so close to ASM 500. As it was, we never celebrated ASM 450 or 475 as a result. In 2004 they did restore the old numbering but that was the first time such a practice had been done. As far as readers in 1999 knew they would NEVER see ASM 500, 600, etc.

More importantly, this era was once again *understandably* maligned and controversial. John Byrne was deleting and re-writing Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's run on Spider-Man. This was insulting on principle, but what was worse his 'updates' were objectively inferior. Not only did they retoactively cause problems to later storylines (ASM 200 could no longer make sense) but they also were stupid in and of themselves, for example having Spidey get his powers as a result of a radioactive EXPLOSION!, which was actually *less* realistic than his 1962 origin. This stuff wasn't just a mini-series, it was referenced in the (at the time) modern day stories, the height of the cringe being Captain Power.

The modern Mackie/Byrne stories were also cringe, depressing, incompetent and insulting. They regularly character assassinated Peter and Mary Jane, had them bleet about how they were 'too young' to be dealing with this insane lifestyle. Peter lies about being Spider-Man. MJ lies about having a stalker. MJ is killed off because Bob Harras mandated it, thereby making Spider-Man a depressed widower. Byrne had Spider-Man kiss an under age girl. The new green Goblin mystery was wrapped up by making him a clone of nobody who then melts, purely because John Byrne hated Green Goblin and wanted to spite the fans. Oh, and Aunt May's beautiful death story in ASM 400 was retconned by saying it was an actress who'd had plastic surgery. And again, ALL of this happened because Marvel editorial didn't want Spider-Man to be married and wanted him to be more youthful.

By the way, there wasn't really a new writer in between Byrne and JMS. Howard Mackie had been co-writing ASM with Byrne beginning in 1998 and Byrne left in 2000, leaving Mackie as the only writer.

You say JMS did a soft reboot. Its more accurate to say Paul Jenkins over on Peter Parker Spider-Man UNrebooted Spider-Man. He literally requested that he be allowed to ignore John Byrne's rubbish. JMS was picking up Spider-Man with his Lee/Ditko history already restored. He wasn't rebooting anything, he was tasked with rebuilding Spider-Man at a point in time when sales were at cancellation levels.

JMS' totem stuff was indeed controversial. And understandably so. Spider-Man had been defined as a grounded relatable hero born from science. JMS was floating the idea that actually he was the product of magic and a child of destiny. In a different way to what Byrne did or what the Clone Saga did, it was messing with the fundamental foundational core of the character. Now, I said controversial, I didn't say bad. Those guys in your comic shop weren't alone in feeling the totem stuff was stupid. However, they, and many others, both misunderstoof the narrative and its purpose. JMS never actually CONFIRMED Spider-Man was mystical or a child of destiny. The arc concluded by saying whether it is magic or science doesn't really matter, in fact they could be one and the same. Which is the exact same sentiment JMS expressed in the film script for Thor (2011). Thor says magic and science in Asgard are one and the same. It was a way to have the cake and eat it too, but the deeper purpose of it was to have Peter look inside himself and question who he is, emerging with more certainty about who he is, what he should be doing. Which was in turn a way to *reconstruct* the character after Byrne and Mackie had destroyed him. Additionally, the controversy drove people to buy the book and thus salvage it from cancellation. In hindsight, most fans don't love the totem stuff per se, but they appreciate the reconstruction of Peter's character it facilitated. There is also, it must be said, an age divide with the millennial fans like myself being more aprreciative and understanding of what the totem stuff was doing vs the Gen X or Boomer fans who dismiss it out of hand (much the way Boomer and early Gen X fans dismiss Venom and Carnage on principle).

You jumped straight into OMD but this skips A LOT of stuff. The totem stuff in JMS' run is wrapped up in 2004 (exempting the Other in 2005) but JMS remained on ASM until the end of 2007. A lot of people (not me admittedly) liked the Civil War stuff.

One More Day. Do I really need to explain why OMD is to this day despised? Can we honestly sit here and say this is Spider-Man fans just never being satisfied when in reality it was the actual worst example character assassination and thematic betrayal in the history of Marvel? OMD made a lie out of Peter Parker's 'with great power, comes great responsibility' philosophy because when it *really* mattered he did the most irresponsible (and btw, out of character) thing imaginable. In the process, in a way astronomically *worse* than the Clone Saga or Byrne did, 20 years of Spider-Man stories were deleted and delegitimised, which in turn retroactively made older stories more confusing. Like the OMD made the *Clone Saga* even more convoluted. And, once again, OMD only happened because Marvel insisted that Spider-Man should not be married because he is about YOUTH.

As for Sins Past, J. Michael Straczynski only wrote that story because he was under the belief that it would very soon not matter because One More Day was going to *delete* that story when it rewrote Spider-Man history. Only for OMD to not rewrite Spidey history in the way he expected. You should know that Joe Quesada at one point fully intended to resurrect Gwen Stacy with OMD until Tom Brevoort talked him out of it. JMS' original idea for OMD was going to involve altering history not as far back as Pete and MJ's wedding but actually as far back as Harry's drug problems. OMD changes history from 1987-2007 but JMS intended it to be changed from like 1971-2007. Presumably, this would have somehow involved Gwen and Norman never hooking up so no Goblin twin babies.

You aren't pro-Mary Jane all the time? Does this mean you are pro-MJ *some* of the time?

Let's talk about Brand New Day. You say they are not memorable. So, given how we nuked the character, nuked the canon, nuked Mary Jane, nuked Peter and MJ's relationship, nuked the idea of any romantic relationship Spider-man has as mattering at all (because OMD signalled that Marvel will NEVER let any relationship he has last)...I'd argue being unmemorable is actually a creative sin. BND had an unenviable task, but nevertheless, it had an obligation to *justify* what had led to it. It had to be top tier Spider-man stories almost every time and more importantly, stories that couldn't have worked in the prior status quo where Spider-Man was married.

The fact that they were unmemorable in your opinion is frankly a damning indictment of their failure to be that.

More importantly...unmemorable was the least of their problems. Brand New Day was an inferior Ben Reilly era as Spider-Man. A new version of Peter Parker created to supplant the noe delegitimised version. It was just that this was a new timeline version of Peter, not a clone. And yet, Ben was more in character to Peter Parker than post-OMD timeline Peter was.

BND era Peter Parker was a Loser with a capital L, a pathetic flanderisation of the character. Peter was previously a normal guy with as much luck as you or me, with worse things happening in his life a biproduct of his choice to be a hero (see Spider-man 2 the film for more details). Under BND they just kept piling failure on top of him. Worse, they had him act straight out of character on numerous occassions to the point where fandom dubbed him 'Spider-Douche'. The worst example is perhaps in Peter Parker Paparazzi, by Dan Slott. Putting aside how this story trolls fans by presenting MJ in a clearly intimate relationship with some new douchebag, the story involves Peter learning the lesson that, people have a right to privacy, even if they are celebrities, so being a paparazzi photographer is bad. This is a lesson that Peter shouldn't needed. He hated paparazzi photographer Nick Katzenburg from the 90s. He dated a famous actress and model who was the victim of paprazzis more than once. He himself as a superhero would KNOW the importance of privacy. His identity was public knowledge just 1 year earlier!

Peter was far from the only character assassination victim. Virtually all the villains and supporting cast got their personalities rewritten and/or flanderised, their histories ignored due to inconvenience, Harry Osborn and Black Cat being the prime victims of this. The new villains were lame. The new supporting characters were worse running the gambit from Carlie Cooper (a Mary Sue) to Michelle Gonzales, a racist/sexist sterotype of Latin American women who physically assaulted Peter and destroyed his property, moments disgustingly played off as jokes. BTW, yes a normal human woman was able to punch Peter Parker, yet another problem with thie wretched era; the utter nerfing of Spider-Man.

All this an juvenile humour and indulgant sexual fantasies. Peter can't be married to MJ because it is unrelatable for him to be married to a supermodel. BUT he can break and enter hotel rooms in order to have have no string attached festishtic mask sex with a leath-clad, platinum haired criminal nymphomaniac a chest like Pamela Anderson. The entire era was essentially a bunch of middle aged men working through their mid-life crises by living out their juvenile sexual fantasies throught he avatar of their childhood hero. It was as pathetic as it was insulting. ANd bear in mind I was well within the target demographic they were chasing at the time.

So, once again, the fans are disatisfied for entirely justifiably reasons.

Dan Slott's run. Hoo boy. I'd argue, in terms of runs, not individual stories, no writer has ever *damaged* Spider-Man as badly as Slott did. This man didn't understand Spider-Man on a fundamental level. His Paparazzi story should have proved that alone but it was systemic in his run. Just like the Paparazzi story, Slott delighted in having Peter behave in ways inconsistent with his established personality and history and then wag an imaginary finger at him for behaving in those ways. This guy was nothing more than extension of BND in the worst ways possible.

You say you liked Spider Island. I didn't because I found it belittling to Peter to have the whole city get his powers and magically be practically as good at using them as he was, with Mary Sue Carlie Cooper getting extra glazed by the story. The Jackal is back in Spider-Man for the first time in nearly 20 years and he never has a big confrontation with Peter. Jackal wrecked his life twice. He traumatised Peter. Peter doesn't think or feel any particular way about him being back now?

You enjoyed Superior. I respect your subjective enjoyment. But your subjectively enjoying it doesn't demonstrate at all that the folks who disliked it are impossible to satisfy. Not least of all because the story in its execution was incompetent and contrived. If Peter Parker simply tells the Avengers he's been body swapped, Superior doesn't happen. If Mary jane or aunt may are in character and thereby able to tell Otto isn't Peter (they've been able to distinguish the Chameleon impersonating Peter, when he was much more subtle than Otto) Superior doesn't happen. If the Avengers did a brain scan on Otto and actually brought along any of the brainy Avengers vs the brawny Avengers in Superior #8 Superior doesn't happen. If Dan Slott didn't character assisnate Peter in Superior #9 by having him *endanger the life of an innocent child* and feeling called out by it, Superior doesn't happen. If in that same issue, Peter doesn't believe he is inferior to Doc Ock because he didn't kill Massacre, Superior doesn't happen. Bear in mind, that last point is literally the opposite of what happens in Maximum Carnage so we were going all out on the character assassination. If ANYONE who knows Spider-Man even remotely points out it is extremly unusual for him to lead an army of goons in a giant mech suit and invade Shadowland, Superior doesn't happen.

Do you see? Superior's chain of cause and effect is broken. It is fundamentally contrived. This is to say nothing of how it legit turned Doc Ock into an attempted grapist in Superior #2 and had him jack off to Peter's memories of being with MJ whilst Peter's ghost screamed for him to stop. Classy. This isn't disgusting or a betrayal of the characters and readership at all. Clearly those pesky ASM readers just can't ever be satisfied.

I will add that I find it on principle to be creatively bankrupt to replace Peter with Doc Ock. Its real easy to generate new stories when you have simply started to write about a new character in the first place. Its much more impressive to tell new, engaging stories that fit the themes and history of the same character.

The same is true when you take the same character and the new thing you do is turn them into a rip off of another characcter, which is what happened with Parker Industries.

You say a lot of people were annoyed with Peter being turned into a Tony Stark character. Is this *really* a case of fans being unsaisfied or is it a case of fans when they read Spider-Man wanting:

a) Spider-Man, not Doctor Octopus, to be the main character and

b) wanting Spider-Man to act like Spider-Man, not act like Iron Man

Like bro, Spider-Man's appeal in his how he is grounded and relatable. Its why fans tend to balk at multiverse, magical, time travel, outer space stories for him. He is optimised when he is in New York dealing with stuff you could deal with in real life alongside villains who are crooks/businessmen with high tech gear/victims of science gone wrong. Similarly, his own tech is modest, something that someone smart could believably cobble together from stuff could get from a university campus of the local Radio shack. He should be noticed on the street maybe by someone who read about Mary Jane and be lower middle class at best.

Now, compare that to...

Peter Parker the internally famous head of the world's leading tech conglomorate who is also the globetrotting, nano-tech suited hero Spider-Man foiling astrological themes terrorists seeking to time travel.

Is this something bold and new and different?

Yes, but only because everyone prior to this era understood the character well enough, and wasn't stupid enough, to do this. There are in fact such things as bad *ideas* as well as bad execution.

But as it was, Parker Industries didn't even have good execution. If it did, we wouldn't have had Spider-Man *invading a country with his own private militia*.

You really enjoyed Silk. Can you in good concience not see how fans can have a legitimate problem with retconning that the dying spider that bit Peter somehow crawled all the way over to someone else and bit her. That Ezekiel never mentioned her. That She is practically as competent with her powers as Peter is despite no experience. How she and Peter are played as lovers in a creepy way because they are compelled to want to mate with one another (which is extra weird since it is the same spider that bit them, so like sort of incest?).

Again, YOU enjoying it doesn't mean the fandom en masse disliking it = they can't be satisfied. Perhaps *you* have tastes out of the ordinary for the majority of the readership? More to the point, I have myself no end of experince being told I am wrong for liking certain Spider-Man stories. Our subjective enjoyment is neither here nor there. Love whatever you want. But it is good practice to maintain a critical eye as well. I love Spider-man Torment and Maximum Carnage, but both are objectively bad, with Boomer fans blasting them and Millennials like me enjoying them. A better example? I love Revenge of the Sith, I don't even think its a good movie and still recognise Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars film.

'Make them married again. That's not a story that's a gimmick' JMS took Peter and MJ after they'd been pushed apart by Byrne and Mackie, then MJ had been killed off, then they had been seperated and wrote a whole story arc about them getting back together. So making them married again can be a story. And more importantly, it doesn't need to be a story or a gimmick. A wedding is a gimmick. A marriage is a status quo, one that represents growth and responsibility, two things that were fundamental to the foundations of Spider-Man Stan Lee and Steve Ditko laid down. The absence of the marriage and the continued presence of the Devil Deal signals the continual betrayal of those foundations. No one can take Peter Parker as a hero seriously because the foundation of his current status quo dates back to OMD, the story where he was quintessentially unheroic, irresponsible and sold out on everything he stoof for. And everything we have spoken about above since 2007 is indicative of reaffirming that betrayal again and again and again.

I will add that, it is rather unfair to claim that just having them be married again would allegedly be a gimmick instead of a story....but Doc Ock becoming Spider-Man, Spider-Man becoming like Tony Stark, everyone getting spider powers, Spidey teaming up with every version of himself in the multiverse somehow *aren't* gimmicks?

You said that it isn't that case that 'everything is concrete and if you change it, it is wrong'. First of all, this same rationale is EXACTLY why Marvel made 3 attempts to ditch Spider-Man being married in the first place. Second of all, this is rather unnuanced isn't it? Certain aspects of Spider-Man undeniably are concrete and should not be changed. Other aspects can be, but this does not therefore mean you can change those aspects into *anything*. Changes must be consistent with established characterisation, world building and themes.

Case in point. It is fine if Peter gradutes high school, moves out of Aunt May's house, moves out of a shared apartment, graduates college, gets married, becomes a parent, gets a regular job. These are all changes that are stark in comparison to how he began under Ditko. But they are all consistent with what his defined desires and goals are as a person and the themes of growth, responsibility and (relative) normalcy that have defined him. These are all relatable life experiences. Losing a year of your life because Doc Ock stole your body is not relatable, and it can't even be an allegory for something relatable.

Indeed, all the eras we have gone through have been reviled precisely because they have not simply changed things but changed fundamental and foundational things in Spider-Man. It simply needs to be understood that not all changes are born equal and the character and mythology cannot be contorted into anything and everything without losing integrity. If Spider-Man can be anything, by definition he is also nothing. Limitations are integral or else it has no meaning.

Lets talk about Iron Man and Mary Jane. Frankly, this was a case of fans being, again, justifiably salty that Spider-Man best supporting character and his equivilant to Lois Lane had been exiled from Spider-Man under false pretenses. You might not recall Superior 31 and how she was written out of the story, but it was an absolute tour de force of character assassination. Not a single line of dialogue was in line with who MJ as a person was. It was contrived to reach a pre-determined destination of jettisoning her from the book.

It really boils down to people want important Spider-man characters to be in Spider-Man's comic book, not Iron Man's. The same should be true for Iron Man. Why use Mary Jane when Tony has a plethora of interesting supporting characters who could have been used instead, ones with whom he has a long history and compelling relationship dynamics to explore? The answer? Controversy and nothing more. That and cheap novelty. Bendis's penchant was putting characters drom one franchise and sticking them somewhere else. It essentially NEVER worked. Spider-Man contributed nothing in his time as an Avenger, it was superficial. The same was true of MJ in Iron Man. It didn't even make sense because Iron Man stabbed her and Peter in the back during Civil War so she should hate hated and mistrusted Tony.

Nick Spencer. The ONLY run of modern ASM done by a writer that largely understood Spider-Man and actually put the effort into researching the character. He read allegedly every Spider-Man comic book before his run. He proved his creditials multiple times.

Most people didn't hate on Spencer's run. Even afterwards there was recognition that his final story was bad but also it was obvious it was the victim of sabotage. So the argumentation that Spider-Man fans can't be satisfied is disproved by the reaction to Spencer's run. People DID like it. Because, like I said, it was the first run since 2007 in which Spider-man was being written (mostly) correctly.

Zeb Wells. Let me tell you about this man. This man is self-admitedly just in this as a job. He doesn't care. This man was hired in 2020 to be one of 3 rotating writers after he was exiled from Spider-Man in 2010 for Shed, aka One More Day but for the Lizard, which including the Lizard eating his own son alive and maybe graping a woman. This guy was a fill in writer in 2002. In all that time he was never considered good enough for the main ASM job until 2021. Because Marvel at that point were desperate.

I was there when he came onto the scene in 2002. He was never talented. Ever. He wrote 2 decent issues, neither of which were actually about Spider-Man himself, one of which Brand New Day retconned anyway.

THEN he begins with alternate reality, magic BS. Again, this is not in keeping with Spider-Man's core values and unlike with JMS, Spider-man didn't need reconstructing in 2021.

He immediately destroyed Peter and MJ's relationship after over 4 years of rebuilding it, sending a clear 'Screw you' message from Marvel editorial to the fans as they aggressively reaffirmed their 'official policy'.

And then he proceeded to write Peter as a nerfed hero and a complete loser. It was Brand New Day all over again but with worse artwork.

Again, can you *really* not see how fans would inevitably hate this rather than just being picky babies unable to be satisfied by anything?

Joe Kelly run. I've seen the same opinions you talked about. I think its too early to say one way or the other. But I will say this. Can you not understand how, after the Wells run, the Slott run and BND (which Joe Kelly was part of) Spider-Man fans understandably have been betrayed over and over and over and over again? And therefore, will treat the new run with hostility?

Like I said, you are dismissing the discussion about the marriage as mere reguritation when it is fundamental to Spider-Man's own mini-culture war that's been raging since 2007, if not the 1990s.

Simply put the readers who make Spider-Man comic books sell and Marvel who makes Spider-Man comics for people to buy hold two mutually exclusive interpretations of the character.

Marvel believes it was a mistake for Spider-Man to graduate high school (Joe Kelly in 2009 literally said Spider-Man is mentally 15, so no wonder people don't have faith in him). Marvel believes Spider-Man is fundamentally defined by the theme of YOUTH. Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort in 2007 wrote a 'manifesto' in which he literally says 'with great power comes great responsibility' is NOT fundamental to who Spider-Man is and never was until he got married.

Meanwhile, the readership believe Spider-Man IS about 'great power = great responsibility'. They believe GROWTH was foundational to the character. That him being grounded and street level is intrgral to the themes and world building of the character. That Peter Parker shouldn't be an adult by default per se, but that the 616 version of him aged into an adult and should be allowed to be written as such whilst moving forwards, including being married and having children. Hence Ultimate Spider-man is widely supported by the fandom and outsells ASM.

To put it another way, Marvel are forcing Spider-Man into a fundamental MISinterpretation of the character whilst the fans want him to be IN character.

So it isn't a case that Spider-Man fans can't be happy. It is the case that Marvel have instituionally been abusing their greatest character.

Speaking of Ultimate Spider-Man....bro....come on. You know it is a false equivilancy to say fans should be happy with Ultimate Spider-Man and therefore be okay with ASM the way it is.

USM Peter Parker has an entirely different history to his life and world than 616 Peter Parker. He became Spider-Man as an adult after he married and had children. If a character has different life experiences to another version of himself he is necesarilly going to be a different person with different vectors for readers to relate to him with. Fans don't simply want to see A version of Peter and MJ married, they want the versions whose life journeys they followed and tracked across the decades. They want the Mary Jane and Peter who began falling in love in the aftermath of Gwen Stacy's death and who began moving towards marriage when Mary Jane revealed she'd always known he was Spider-Man and revealed she too wore an emotional mask of her own.

"Just stop and let us be happy"

First of all you should be able to be happy enjoying whatever you want regardless of what others think.

Second of all, I'm sorry, but I and others are just not going to tolerate slop or low expectations for one of the greatest characters in American culture that has resonated with millions of people across the world. We expect better. We demand better. Slop is unacceptable.

"Why do Spider-Man fans attack the editor for just doing his job?"

Because he is doing his job extremely badly. An editor has to engage in quality control and consistenty control and Nick Lowe failed at this on Spider-Man and X-Men before that. He doesn't understand Spider-Man and his predecessor Stephen Wacker was even worse as he literally attacked fans and defended instances of grape in Spider-man as not depicting that subject matter.

Tom brevoort, executive editor at Marvel literally said in 2016 during the Hydra Cap era that pissing fans off was a marketing policy for Marvel.

So the editors are fa from innocent here. They are complicit in sabotaging writers like Nick Spencer, antagonising their customers and vandalising this beloved character. They also defended people like Dan Slott who bullied fans online.

"We're not worried about the sliding timeline"

I'm sorry. I honestly do not understand what that has to do with the conversation at all?

"Spider-Man's not broken. The readership is broken."

Spider-Man is more than broken he is currently discintegrated. Complete and absolute creatively bankrupt BECAUSE Marvel editorial refuse to undo OMD. Its not even about him being married as much as it is about his history being altered and him selling out to Mephisto.

The readership is 'broken' as a result of the betrayals.

'The readers are nto accepting that this character is kinda just who this characxter is'

That is because the fans can clearly see that this character IS NOT Spider-Man. We can literally slap down pre and post OMD comic books side by side and do a basic point by point comparison to prove this. I already did a little bit above when I compared Maximum Carnage with Superior 9.

"You grew up with the character at one point and now you are old"

This very easily disproven. I was 10 years old when I began reading Spider-Man and those stories werre the tail end of the clone saga. Ben Reilly was Spider-Man. Peter was married to MJ. He was an expectant father. So I was a kid who got into Spider-man when he was ALREADY grown up. And yet my views on Spidey are broadly similar to Gen X fans who grew up with Roger Stern single Peter Parker when he was in grad school or Boomer fans who began when he was in college and Gwen Stacy hadn't died just yet. Because we all knew GROWTH was fundamental to Spider-Man.

The Clone Saga, Byrne's run, OMD and most everything since 2007 has attempted to backpeddle on that growth and keep Peter Parker stuck at age 25 forever (he was canonically 30 circa OMD).

Heck, I was 16 years old when OMD happened, I wasn't old and I was the exact demographic Marvel were trying to capture. I was repulsed by BND as were most fans my age, not least of all because their idea of 'young people' was cringe and pandering.

"I'm older than some of my favourite characters"

This is an irrelevant argument.

As a 5 year old watching the Spider-Man cartoon Spider-Man was MUCH older than me to the point where there was no meaningful distinction between him and my parents.

I began reading at age 10 and the stories I was reading was a mixture of Spider-Man from high school, to college, post-college post wedding, post miscarriage. If written well, Spider-Man can be an engaging character at any age.

In my early 20s, when I was closest to the current age for Spider-Man I despised the character's then current status quo.

This isn't even to mention that from the late 1980s-the present day Spider-Man and Wolverine have been Marvel's top 2 characters. Wolverine was at best portrayed as his mid-30s and yet teenage boys lapped him and Spider-man up because Wolverine was bad ass and a compelling character.

Characterisation and substance are what matter.

"Are we as fans willing to accept that we are old and grumpy?"

It depends on how willing you are to accept the Lizard eating his own son, Doc Ock trying to rape mary jane or Mary Jane dating a man complicit in genocide?

But ofc, only old people hate that stuff. Its not like 90% of YT videos or tiktocks bashing Paul and Zeb Wells run are perpetuated by Gen Z as opposed to creaking Millennials like myself.

p.s. This is purely subjective, but I hated the Partker Industries suit for two reasons.

Its original design involved a green glow. Green visually clashes with the red and blue of Spider-Man's suit. It is the reason his villains have green and purple in their costumes, primary and secondary colours clash. it is why eventually people started drawing it as blue instead of gree

In much the way shoulder pads and puches were the silly cliche design gimmick of the 1990s, superficial glowing bits and extra lines were the silly cliche design gimmick of the 2010s

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