This thread's for the Spider-Man comics and spin-offs, whether they're decades old or brand new.
- Apart from the main Marvel Universe titles, Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man "What If?" stories, crossovers, guest appearances in other books, Alternate Universe tales and things like Marvel's manga adaptations are all on-topic here.
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- Characters and comics that originated in Spider-Man but are no longer directly connected to the spider-franchise (e.g. Punisher, Silver Sable) are not on-topic, unless you're discussing historical connections and crossovers. If in doubt, check before you write a long post. If this isn't the right place, there's a more general Marvel Comics thread
which covers them.
Technically, Marvel's Infinity Comics (and their predecessors, Infinite Comics) are webcomics, not comic books, but it's fine to talk about their Spider-Man stories here.
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Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 10th 2023 at 10:58:13 AM
Oh god, I'm a goof, I got Stegman mixed with Ottley. My bad. It's probably because both have the first name "Ryan"
Yeah, Stegman did do RYV very briefly, perhaps he's going to be a stop gap if Wells is leaving, until they're ready for the next guy long-term? That's what happened with Ottley, just finished off the book and then they swiftly moved on to a relaunch with PKJ.
Edited by Zarius on Jun 26th 2023 at 2:51:57 AM
Is there any guarantee of Lowe leaving? Wells has been a good writer on X-Books and elsewhere, and I do wonder how much of the current direction was him and how much was editorial.
If the shock death and MJ/Paul plot were editorial fiat (and I suspect the death was), any new writer is going to be working in the same restrictive space.
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Stegman is promoting a story with Spidey and the Lizard for Marvel Age#1000, which he's written and drawn. He said he was going to write more books in the future and more info will be revealed soon.
I made the mistake of saying Stegman had covered for Cates on Hulk, but that was actually Ryan Ottman
Lowe was in charge for Spencer and Beyond where Peter and MJ were together, editorial only intervened when Spencer leaned too heavily into undoing OMD and pivoted to undoing Sins Past instead.
Wells has openly said he was looking to do a controversial run with this and would take ownership if he messed it up. He thinks MJ is Peter's endgame regardless of what he does with her and Paul.
Edited by Zarius on Jun 26th 2023 at 4:29:38 AM
If the shock death and MJ/Paul plot were editorial fiat (and I suspect the death was), any new writer is going to be working in the same restrictive space.
I wish there was a guarantee! So far, we only have hunches and context clues to work with. Some have noticed that apparently Lowe has been a lot quieter in social media lately. And if he was entrusted by the top brass to prepare you-know-who for you-know-what synergy via the shock death, then boy, he screwed it up so hard.
Like, it seemed that Dead Language (the Peter vs. Rabin arc) would just be on that and the Peter/MJ elephant in the room and the shock death would (literally) be a different story. But it's likely that Lowe sprung the shock death on Wells like halfway through the planning on Dead Language. So instead of a proper explanation of the Peter/MJ elephant in the room, our attention is forced on a completely different elephant who's juggling chainsaws.
And suffice to say, it didn't seem to occur to anyone just how gross and misogynistic the shock death is.
Of course, reigns can only last for so long. And if it took years before Dan DiDio finally got the boot because he wouldn't stop micromanaging, then hopefully the same can be said for Lowe if we keep getting news about unsold copies of this ASM run just shelfwarming at LCS.
Well, that monkey's paw sure had plans for him, because this is probably going to go down as the worst Spider-Man story since OMD.
And if he really does believe MJ is the endgame, he hasn't really made it apparent so far.
Actually, me neither. Apparently there's a video
that seems to say that the editorial is the true villain in Spider-Man's life, no matter who's the designated writer. And as Mrph1 mentioned, Wells's run on Hellions and Ant-Man are particularly great, so it makes Wells's run on ASM all the more baffling. There's clearly something going on that we don't know about completely.
Weird. Other writers kept writing spider man after he married MJ
I guess other writers have more imagination, even the ones who didn’t like the wedding and still wrote it
Forever liveblogging the AvengersDoesn't help that besides MJ and Black Cat, none of the love interests introduced in BND were any good.
Do Carlie Cooper or Michelle Landlady have any fans?
Edited by RedHunter543 on Jun 27th 2023 at 12:31:51 AM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"Kraven Past Hunt happened while Peter was a married man.
In fact it was because Peter was married did the writer J.M. De Matteis decide to make it a Spider-Man story as Peter would have a hell of alot left to live for after being buried alive.
Until a post OMD story can give me that level of storytelling I will call BS on Peter marrying MJ is the end of Spider-Man.
Edited by FKJ10 on Jun 26th 2023 at 9:38:09 AM
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Fans have only really been invested in a handful of Peter's romances. When was the last time a new love interest really caught anyone's attention in a good way?
(Ultimate Peter and Kitty, maybe?)
There's Gwen (RIP), MJ, Felicia and anyone else is just received as a Replacement Scrappy, including characters like Cindy/Silk.
I mean, there might be other superhuman/costumed Marvel characters Peter could date (maybe Nightcrawler could introduce him to Weaponless Zsen from Legion of X?
).
But I don't think any new civilian/normal love interest is going to win over the crowd. And anyone who's not civilian/normal moves Peter's life further away from 'classic' Spider-Man premise.
(You could probably set up another Dating Catwoman thing, but we already have Felicia, so what does that add? Or there might be scope for a doomed fling with an immortal, maybe? But not as a long term thing)
And we've got so much history with both MJ and Felicia that it's not "will they or won't they". They already have. And haven't. And then have again. Lots of going in circles.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jun 26th 2023 at 5:40:58 PM
Really for Peter and love interest its only these 3
Gwen Stacy: The tragic one that got away especially after TASM movies. Considered generally "sacred" and don't remind fans about Sins Past. Her legacy still has fans on the fence about Miles and her Earth 65 self not helped by marketing dressing up 616!Gwen as Spider-Gwen.
Felicia: Generally considered the fun alternative to MJ. Ironic considering MJ was the fun alternative to Gwen. As of late people have been pushing Felicia as a serious love interest when in earlier comics only cared about Spider-Man not Peter.
MJ: The classic thanks to the Raimi movies, 90s TAS and decades of happy marriage in the comics that marvel editorial wants you to forget. Fans and every other piece of Spider-Man media but the main comics will have these two together to the constant frustration of fans.
Like with Silk, Carlie only started being like or at least tolerated by fans long after she was no longer a love interest and got better writing.
There's also the irony that her most popular ship is with Felicia whom she was initially supposed to replace as Peter's primary superhuman love interest.
Honestly, re-reading BND, the writers did do their best to make Carlie likable. She's introduced way in the beginning, but doesn't become Peter's love interest until much later, after her own unique relationship to the cast is set up, like her best friend is secretly resentful of her, and is also a super-villian.
She also has a professional relationship with Spidey as a police examiner — incidentally addressing a common complaint with MJ, that a super-model job doesn't lend itself to generating stories for our main character like Lois' reporter job. She and Peter like each other well enough, but something comes up before they really get to talk. And when they finally do, then they click.
Honestly, I feel a lot of the grievances against Carlie was that she wasn't Mary-Jane Watson, and a very loud part of the fanbase refuses to even consider anything else.

Looking at The Other Wiki, he has co-writing credits with several other creators for RYV.
Hadn't spotted that before. But still - it would be a big risk to put him on a flagship title without history as sole writer on a successful ongoing. Marvel haven't always been that cautious, of course, but...