Need I mention that she’s coming out of the shower like Patrick Duffy?

hey…somebody remember ‘Dallas’ ?
Bobby Ewing was supposed to be dead for long and one morning Pam Found him under the shower-dong ! to be continued…

I love you Stan, I really do, and now you know why everybody love you too…

That’s why Stan is considered the best, he knows the fans and respects them. Something Joe Quesada and the editors of Spider-Man don’t, which is a shame.

Here’s hoping that whole “One More Day,Brand New Day” story becomes a dream as well.

Wow! Shocking that the Marvel writers just can’t manage to write a GOOD story with a married Spider-Man (of course since BND began they haven’t been able to write a good story with a single one either). Looks like it’s easily possible if you just try and don’t take a cheap way out.

Right on Stan!

iW

“That’s why Stan is considered the best, he knows the fans and respects them. Something Joe Quesada and the editors of Spider-Man don’t, which is a shame.”

Maybe if the fans voted with their wallet instead of their keyboard, sales would drop and Quesada would start listening to the complaints.

Just a thought.

Tom Daylight:
Stan probably doesn’t actually sit down at his computer or typewriter and physically type out the script, but even people who hire ghost writers still shape the story and plot points. There is no doubt in my mind that this is Stan’s doing. And more power to him.

Percival Constantine:
I haven’t been following the sales numbers since BND, but I was under the impresion that, after the initial bump in sales, Amazing Spider-Man has basically (not including the Obama issue) gone back down to pre-Mephisto numbers. Am I wrong in this?

Didn’t they recently release a hardcover collection of the newspaper strips, meaning we’ll eventually be able to get this in hardcover, too?

Well, at least this way everyone gets their Spidey. Married Spidey fans can read the newspaper strip, and those of us enjoying Brand New Day Spidey can have ASM.

Now if only the comic books will get the hint.

Married doesn’t equal growing and mature. I don’t understand why when Peter is unmarried he is suddenly mentally about 5 years younger.

I’m enjoying Brand New Day but if they wanted to end the marriage they should’ve just had it end, like a third of marriages do.

The root cause of all of this was JMS hanging on for three years too long. If he had just left after Book of Ezekiel, so much of this could’ve been avoided. I hope he doesn’t make that mistake with Thor.

Here is the previous strip, you guys are taking this way out of context.

http://joshreads.com/images/09/05/i090523spidey.jpg

“The numbers on a monthly basis are still high, which is misleading.”

How so?

“BND Amazing Spider-man has really killed sales, especially with fans who were picking it up every month. I know at my LCS we’re down from 8 -10 people picking it up to myself and the owner being the only two left.”

You’re assuming a correlation where none might exist. Comic prices are going up, the economy is bad, people are on budgets, and comic book sales are down across the board. They’re down for Spider-Man, but they’re also down for everything else.

All three issues of Spider-Man keep showing up in the Top 20. It seems to me that the book is doing well for the way the market is right now.

Tell me one single story where a marriage is written well that isn’t ABOUT the character being married?

The only well-written married super-hero I can think of is Animal Man and part of his schtick is that he is a married super-hero.

I wish this would end the current disturbing trend of Spidey comics. If not guess we can look forward to Spidey calling on Mephisto again in 5 years to retcon is newest marriage when he decides he is more appealing as an everyman single loser than happily married. And to those who say you can’t tell an interesting story about a married person, it’s that exact outlook that makes it fail in your eyes, nothing else.

“All three issues of Spider-Man keep showing up in the Top 20. It seems to me that the book is doing well for the way the market is right now.”

“They are barley in the top twenty and they are falling out of it.”

I think what you’re missing is that all three issues of Spider-Man keep showing up in the Top 20. They’ve been doing that since BND started. The only time all three Spider-Man books have been in the Top 20 together is in the short term when they’ve done events like The Other and Kraven’s Last Hunt.

“Face it, the book is losing readers left and right and sales are going down for this book much more than the sales of the other books.”

No, they’re not. They’re losing sales as much as the other books. If they were losing more than the other books, all three of the Spider-Man books wouldn’t have been in the Top 20 zone since the start of BND.

I hate Mary-Jane.

“I think what you’re missing is that all three issues of Spider-Man keep showing up in the Top 20. They’ve been doing that since BND started.”

They are crawling down the top 20 and some of them are even out on it. The reason all three are in the top 20 is the fact that you need all three to complete the story and even that’s not working with the drop in sales.

“They’re losing sales as much as the other books.”

Its losing more sales that the other books, it lost almost half its readership and its still losing it. Like i said, if it was not for the variant covers that pad up the figures, it would be even lower then they are.

Do you guys like logic problems? Me too. Let’s try this one:

Spider-Man, the strip, marries off Spidey so the monthly does too.
Spider-Man, the monthly, erases the marriage so the strip does too.
Spider-Man, the strip, reinstates the marriage so the monthly….

Hmmm…. This is a tough one.

It would be easy to suggest that OMD/BND was a simple ego play on JoeQ’s part, to reinstate the Spider-Man HE grew up with. However, I suspect that there’s something else at play here. DC Comics.

Marvel saw how much success that DC had with 52 and perhaps wanted a piece of that weekly pie. With 3 Spidey titles already, Marvel only had to shift their creative plans and brand a 3 titles uniformly.

This would create a situation where the readers could no longer choose 1 good Spidey title and not buy the 2 “bad” ones. It would ALSO allow Marvel to erase the marriage, something which JoeQ feels makes for uninteresting characterization. (Must be a pleasant guy at home, eh?) ON TOP OF THAT, Marvel could hide his identity again.

So, it would seem to be a triple. win for Marvel. More sales, since those people who didn’t buy all 3 now do, and the eradication of that most unholy of institutions, marriage.

PLUS… Marvel could test the waters for a (nearly) series without announcing it as such – or at least not have the same expectations of something like 52.

If things didn’t work out, Marvel could always write that the Faustian pact with Mephisto was somehow broken and things revert to the original status quo. After all, we never did get the specifics. It was only ever suggested. Even the HOW of it all hasn’t been fully disclosed. Marvel could retcon the retcon if they wanted. Easy cheesy. Like falling off a bicyclist.

Unfortunately, thing haven’t quite panned out like Marvel seems to have planned.

Sales haven’t skyrocketed. In part, that’s the bad economy and the shifting prices at state. However, that’s also due to some VERY spotty writing and characterization.

New characters such as The Spot, Mr. Negative, Menace, Vulture #398, and Anti-Venom have failed to captivate the readers. Stories like the mayoral campaign and the Spider-Tracer Killer have proven to be unreasonably drawn out and utterly forgettable.

New supporting cast members have about as much life or personality as lint, with JJJ Sr. just BARELY being interesting. Jonah taking the President Lex / Norman Osborn route in this “Dark Reign” climate rolls back any and all of the depth and humanity that he had developed in the 5-10 years prior. Harry’s back, alive, and seemingly well, but… WHO CARES!?! Post-OMD Harry is a pale shadow of the man who sacrificed his life years ago.

Let’s also not forget that the Mephisto Pact erased his new powers, suggesting that the story itself never happened either. Frankly, I liked the organic webs. I liked the enhanced Spider Sense. I even kinda dug the OCCASIONAL use of the retractable talons.

With all of the changes I hate, I’ll admit to liking a few things. A few new characters like Screwball interest me, in as much as she’s a modern, less hokey take on someone like Rocket Racer. Mark Waid’s writing ALMOST makes reading ASM interesting again, although he clearly has to put the changes from OMD/BND far into the background.

However, I’d consider this post-OMD title to be a flop.

For characters who were never married, it seems odd that Marvel would suggest that they somehow remember the pre-BND status quo. It would also seem odd that, if Marvel wanted to re-mask Peter, that they’d have both the entire Fantastic Four and the entire New Avengers know his secret identity again.

With current sales being more or less the same as pre-OMD sales, one has to wonder if it was all worth it. Had Marvel reduced Spider-Man to a ONCE monthly title, it would seem unlikely that Amazing would have this 190k readership.

This whole thing reeks of a failed attempt at a weekly book. With the strip returning to form, it seems increasingly likely that Marvel proper would put OMD/BND back where it belongs… with the Clone Saga.

It probably won’t be in the next 6 months, but I strongly suspect that things will return back to normal by early 2010.

And if not…. well…. JoeQ has been EIC for nearly 10 years. That’s about as long or even longer than most past EICs. His time is nearing its end, regardless of what he may say. A new EIC may as well come in and reverse some of his decisions, as he did with regards to his own predecessors.

It’s just a waiting game at this point, people. The “it’s magic” disappearance of the marriage, the re-masking, & the thrice monthly BND continuity has left a big hole in the hearts of MANY long time readers.

BTW, I _HAVE_ voted with my wallet. I choose to screw Marvel over and read the book at the store instead. Yeah. That’s not kosh. I know. Still, f*** `em. Undo this colossal crap heap of a retro world catastrophe and THEN you can have my money. Until then, I’ll just linger by the racks like a hobo. LOL

“And there’s, you know, Reed & Sue Richards. Various writers of the Fantastic Four have had their ups and downs, but on the whole, they’ve been a really well-written couple. And that’s been going on 30 years or so?”

Yeah and the whole point of The Fantastic Four is that they are a family and Reed and Sue are married. I think you just helped my side of the argument.

Y’know, Rob, although I don’t agree with most if not all of your opinions, I respected your point of view until I read the following from you:

“BTW, I _HAVE_ voted with my wallet. I choose to screw Marvel over and read the book at the store instead. Yeah. That’s not kosh. I know. Still, f*** `em. Undo this colossal crap heap of a retro world catastrophe and THEN you can have my money. Until then, I’ll just linger by the racks like a hobo. LOL”

Actually, Marvel doesn’t give a crap about your not buying their three monthly Amazing books. Who you’re actually hurting is the store owner who’s books you’re reading for free and not paying for. What your doing is akin to shoplifting and in case you’re hazy on this, that’s illegal.

If you really wanted to make a sincere attempt to boycott Marvel’s current direction for Spider-Man, go all the way and stop stealing comics. Then you can proclaim your critiques honestly without coming off sounding like a loser.

Starting with #1149, Comic Shop News will be adding the daily Spider-Man newspaper strips. We carried strips in the past, and this seemed like a good time to add it again. The dailies will be printed nice and large, 7.5″ wide, and in color. CSN is available at over 600 of the world’s best shops.