“which is what most of the critics are.”

Uhm, no, if they were level headed they would understand that the marriage has lead to nothing but bad Spider-Man comics.

If they were level headed they would realize the truth. They can trot out maybe a handful of stories. But 20some years later, married Spider-Man was still mediocre even in the hands of PAD and JMS.

Simply put: You can’t DO SHIT Peter Parker married to MJ. Because he won. He got the girl and he wins. How the hell am I supposed to feel anything for this guy with a model wife? He gets to go home and **** a model. I can’t relate to that. I meet a guy like that in real life, and I wonder what the hell he’s doing hanging out with me and not ****ing his MODEL WIFE.

It was a boneheaded, dumbass mistake that took a boneheaded dumbass story to fix.

All I care is that it’s fixed. Hopefully forever.

At least Joe Q had the balls to admit the truth.

Sales do not equal quality. In my opinion such sweeping changes to comics history shows a real lack of understanding of the characters involved, and an inability to write awesome married characters is just sad.

As with a lot of series-sweeping storylines coming out of the Big Two, I’m just waiting for the reboot for the reboot.

“and an inability to write awesome married characters is just sad.”

How many times does need to be said: THIS IS NOT ABOUT MARRIED CHARACTERS.

This is about a Married SPIDER-MAN. Peter Parker married to Mary Jane.

It did not work. They should’ve realized after a couple years of crap stories, but they wasted 20some years on trying to make it work, and NO ONE COULD DO IT.

ElCoyote, weren’t you the one whining on comicboards.com/smb with this:

“Anyone who has a problem with me is sad, pathetic and weak and can’t take someone telling the truth.”

Do you really need to start lying in the titles in order to get people to read the story? Seems kinda crude

I Agree I Loved The New Amazing. We Sold About 140 Copies And After Over 20 Years In The Biz Thats Not Bad. People That Didnt Like It Did Not Buy It, Not A Problem. People That Did Had No Problem. I Liked It But Then Again I’ Ve Read Legion For 27 Years!

Oh man, in combination with the comment you made about Joey Q sacrificing Captain America on the alter of mainstream news, you are 2 for 2 for silly comments.

Don’t ever change Graeme!

The headline is pretty off the Mark, Graeme. Tom saying that he liked the book and believes in its future is no the same thing as “because I say so.”

I think there are good arguements on both sides of the issue, but exagerations obscure the good points.

And you T Vort can leave with Quesada. Marvel sucks now Tommy. YOu may have a fast knowledge and no all the trivia about Marvel there is but you are so off base you should be ashamed of yourself.

“It’s nice that Tom took one of the most extreme posts about Brand New Day instead of one that really comes from a level headed person who disagrees completely with this direction, which is what most of the critics are.”

“Uhm, no, if they were level headed they would understand that the marriage has lead to nothing but bad Spider-Man comics.

If they were level headed they would realize the truth. They can trot out maybe a handful of stories. But 20some years later, married Spider-Man was still mediocre even in the hands of PAD and JMS.”

Come on now… a level-headed commenter would realize that this is just comics… entertainment and fluff in the bigger picture… and OMD won’t matter in a year. What’s changed now will be undone or changed further by future writers. Such is the nature of the game. Remember how crappy the clone saga was during the ’90’s? Does any of that even matter today? Writers and fans will choose to ignore or acknowledge OMD as much as they did the clone saga, which is to day, probably not much.
-r-

It’s just ink on paper. Some of it I like, some of it I don’t. But I’ve always respected Brevoort. Still do. Welcome back, Graeme. Good job fostering reaction, as you always do and will. And it’s always enjoyable. Thanks.

Two things none of these remarks will change:

1) I grew up with Spider-Man and won’t buy his book when it says everything I read din’t happen.

2) Spider-Man is actually STILL married. A vow made before God cannot be undone by the devil. So Marvel really just made him a cheat.

Hey, Waid, while I’ve got you here, where is Salvador? I really enjoyed that book.

And as a consolation prize for Mr. Brevoort, Sub-Mariner kicked ass.

I have to say, Graeme, I took that post to mean “Look, when I say I like something, I genuinely mean it. Stop telling me that I hate it really and I’d say so if I could.”

In other words, I think Tom is implying that if there were to be, hypothetically, a Marvel comic that he wasn’t totally convinced by, he would just avoid talking about it instead of going around claiming it was wonderful.

Brevoort has resorted to the “it sells, so it’s good” argument before to fend off criticism. In this particular case, the content of ASM #546 is entirely dependent on the content of ASM #545, so many fans are complaining about and criticizing both issues. He can’t defend the content of ASM #545, so I don’t believe he’ll try.

SRS

Actually the headline was representative of what Tom B said.

“I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again today: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #546 is a good comic book. I don’t say that because I have to, I don’t say it because I’m “spinning”—I say it because, as far as I’m concerned, it’s true.

And like with any other book my office puts out, I don’t see any need to debate its merits—the proof is in the book. Again, if it wasn’t to your tastes, that’s completely okay. But I know a good comic book when I see one.”

I understand that Tom doesn’t need to (nor probably has the time, nor in my opinion has the ability to) PROVE the book is good. But what was his response to the poster?

In a nutshell is, “it’s a good book because I know a good book and say it’s a good book.”

And that’s what Graeme’s title represented.

“But I know a good comic book when I see it.”

Meaning if you don’t think its good, then you don’t know a good comic book.

But that doesn’t mean stop questioning his authority right?

Only, it does.

No Steven, we’re not misrepresenting his statements.

Tom never says that continuity doesn’t matter. He never makes that statement at all. He makes arguments about why the books that are coming out are good. He makes a case that some people are saying that it’s the details that are the problem when they were mad about the break up before those details were revealed. These are reasonable points. Maybe points that can be reasonably argued against, but they are reasonable for him to believe. However, raising a good point is not the same thing as saying that all other points are invalid.

Personally, I don’t think the continuity changes were a good idea. I wouldn’t have supported this story and this reboot plan if I worked at Marvel. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good arguments for it. To say that Tom is saying “forget the past” even though he never says that is putting words in his mouth. So I don’t think I’m misrepresenting him when I say that he didn’t say that.

Look we need to lay off Tom. As much as I firmly believe that ASM #545 is completely reprehensible and will be voting so by no longer buying most Marvel comics I also know that Tom has little to no say when his BOSS is dictating the direction of the book so badly. Plus BND is a totally new story and should be treated as such despite the royally crappy circumstances. Just because it advocates adultery, artistic cowardness and reliance on the corporate status quo doesn’t mean the book itself isn’t good. It’s not Tom’s fault his boss is a jerk.

He also said it because he WORKS for the company.

I’ve never heard Tom praise a DC book. Ever.

To only be slightly facetious, I think there are many, many posts on this site and elsewhere that show exactly how low my standards are more than this one, and I really don’t see what this post has to do with a gut feeling (I don’t even see what it’s a gut feeling about - One More Day? Brand New Day? Tom Brevoort?).

I didn’t mean to misrepresent Tom’s position, and to be honest, didn’t really think that I was, with this post - I found it, and still find it, amusing/interesting to see that the response to the idea of criticism of a book was to say “I know a good comic book when I see one, and history will back me up,” because it felt (again, to me, at the time) as if Tom was dismissing criticism out of hand instead of responding to it. YcollectiveMMV, and obviously does, but I was not intentionally trying to spin Tom as saying something that I didn’t think he was.

I am genuinely sorry to Tom, for what little it’s worth, but deny malicious/spinning intent against him beyond traditional gossipy sensationalism.

Does anyone else find it funny that Tom B’s holding up “Civil War” and “Disassembled” as examples of quality comics in defence against his critics?????

That’s like Bendis using “House of M” as proof that he is a good writer, rather than say “Daredevil”, “Powers”, “Alias”, “Jinx”, “Ultimate Spider-man”, “Sam and Twitch”, etc.

If your whole defense is going to be to point to good comics you have produced, why not use examples of comics that were universally beloved, instead of reviled?

When on earth will the Civil War hype machine ever stop? The series is over. The trades are out there. If I wanted to buy it, I would have by now. Seriously, Tom, you can stop trying to convince me that it is a good comic at this point.

One thing Marvel could do to address the OMD controversy would be to publish a Spider-Man series featuring the pre-OMD version, concurrently with the new version, using one of the regular Spider-Man writers, see which version the fans prefer, and, after some months, merge the two characters and their supporting casts.

Aside from that, Marvel Editorial’s response to the OMD controversy, from what I’ve seen online, has been to continue to treat the fans as useful idiots. The company personnel value the money the fans give them, and appreciate the compliments when fans give them, but if any one of the fans has the temerity to criticize a storyline substantively for anything other than an obvious production glitch, he’s routinely dismissed as a know-nothing.

We should be well past the times when writers and editors claimed secret knowledge about how comics were produced. Recognizing a deus ex machina, mischaracterization, storyline discontinuities, character as plot device, and other storytelling weaknesses, and knowing when stories are being told under the “illusion of change” policy doesn’t require an advanced degree. For the most part, what’s required is common sense and some critical thought.

As has been noted, Brevoort has occasionally admitted to some mistakes, but failing to stop writers from using bad judgment (see comment #31) in stories that turned out to be inconsequential is far different from responding to severe criticism of a storyline by pointing out where the critics are mistaken. Given his position, he should be able to do that with “Avengers Disassembled,” ODM, MIGHTY AVENGERS #6, or any other editorial disaster that comes to a fan’s mind. If he can’t, then he’s failing to do his job.

People around the Web have mentioned a roundtable discussion in which it was decided that Parker shouldn’t be married. Note that all of the participants, as I recall, had worked under, and/or enforced the “illusion of change” policy. It’s not surprising that they would agree that writing formula fiction, with Parker moving from love interest to love interest as needed would be better (and easier) for the creators and editors than having them obliged to treat a married couple as adults. Formula fiction is all about ease of writing and editing, providing material to reliably undemanding readers, and nothing else.

SRS

Does Ben Morse work for Marvel?