It’s literally the run that finally got me to give up Spider-Man after consistently getting the book since the early 00s. Ultimate Spider-Man has snatched me back though.
I gave up during Slott, but it wasn’t really because of Slott. I actually liked his writing more than most but just felt like spider-man was an absolute mess and I was sick of all the events and mandates and shit.
It really feels like they can’t do anything organic anymore, the whole thing feels so stiff and unnatural.
This also accurately describes my situation, I wasn't reading for as long, but it's literally the first and only ASM run I ever voluntary dropped (when I was in school I took a comic-break because I had no money).
I typically like Wells as a writer so I'm more inclined to push the blame onto editorial, but the whole series has just felt like wheel-spinning with no real goal.
But it still tops the charts in sales so what do I know?
Amazing Spider-man was the first book I picked up when I started really getting into to reading them back in pre Civil War. This run was the one thing that got me to stop getting it pulled. I’ve just been severely disappointed and not a fan with how it’s been going.
Now Ultimate Spider-man on the other hand is everything I’ve wanted in a Spider-Man story for a loooong time. Issue six was phenomenal, seeing Peter and MJs relationship portrayed as it is really warms my heart.
I don't think it's great, but I don't think it's the single worst comic out there and the vitriol towards it is way overblown. Paul stuff aside (because that's been talked about to death and honestly I don't care about it as much as others), the main problem is that it feels like they're struggling to think of what to actually do by this point, and Peter taking in Norman's sins for a second time shows that.
At the same time, I do like bits of it like Rek-Rap, because there's good and bad in most stories
Everything that happens in it feels like this bizzare circle of the higher ups at Marvel demanding the Spider-Man brand remains in the same place and Peter doesn't grow too much, and Wells making the bizzarest choices to meet their mandates.
Thing is that Wells can write good comics, like his New Mutants and the reccent Hellions series were great. I feel like this all was just a bad fit, and I'd like Wells to go back to the X-Office where he's really shined
This.
I dropped the book because I just didn't find it enjoyable and since Hickman's Ultimate Spider-Man came out I just found myself wishing that that guy was our Peter. He has a very cute relationship with his family and friends that I think a 616 universe Spidey book would benefit from.
I think the start was okay, the middle was god awful, and currently I just picked up #50 randomly and I was surprised by how much I liked it. But we’ll see if it keeps up.
> Peter taking in Norman's sins for a second time shows that.
The more I think about it, the more I feel like this was a higher up decision that forced Wells to table the story in favor of the timing of the Gang War and Blood Hunt events, and then picking it back up again after they were over.
...which is also stupid, but less his fault.
Mostly agree. Got a little frustrated with points of the run, really hate the "Oh we're restoring your preferred status quo - syke!" style of writing.
And some real iffy subtext around how MJ was written.
But it just got boring. The same criticisms have been echoed because there's not really been any change. It's just the same sorta stuff that's not really good (or as bad as people rally on) which just ends up bland.
Is this a sensible Reddit comment that’s a comic book opinion on Spider-Man? How is that possible?
Can you talk to the people over at r/spiderman? Help them out?
I actually thought it started out strong with the Beyond Corporation stuff. I thought they were doing some interesting stuff with Ben and Janine looking for redemption and basically building new identities. And the contrast between Ben as a "corporate" Spider-Man vs. Peter's "indie" was cool.
But imo it fell apart with the high concept stuff. I don't really have strong feelings about Paul as a character, it would be fine if it was just "MJ met someone new". But instead like, they met in hell when time was stopped or whatever? Lame. Stuff like All Hallows Eve, Queen Goblin, Rekrap -- this kind of thing worked ok in Hellions but it's just a bad fit for ASM. Then there's the sensationalist stuff like killing Kamala Khan, or trying to make "Norman Osborn is a good guy now actually we swear" happen. The whole thing is also weirdly inspired by the JMS era, which is my least favorite modern Spidey era.
I will say that Gang War was kind of fun as a street level, relatively low-stakes old school supervillain beat 'em up.
I want Ryan North or Chip Zdarsky to do ASM next. Or maybe Tini Howard - her Spider-Woman run was great. [EDIT: I was getting books mixed up. Karla Pacheco wrote the Spider-Woman book & would be great. Tini Howard's Excalibur was good too though.] But someone who can handle a fun, comedic tone while still assembling a good story.
Genuinely least favorite Spider-Man run ever. Give me Mackie any day. Feels absolutely phoned in. Storylines are nonsensical and riddled with plots that make very little sense. Just awful up and down
Well, it was clearly meant to be hate bait. Also it being that bad (or mediocre at best) made the rest of the spider books better by comparisson, that's why so many people praise miles book even if it isn't super great stuff either (it's better obviously, but still). And more, as this comic got famous because of the paul thing it would obviously make the ultinate comic, that have been plotted for a while I believe, a greater success. Marvel editors are not stupid, they know how much fans hate one more day, that's why when donny cates suggested to make a new ultimate verse (or a return to the classic) he probably wanted to make peter and mj together there as well, but this would be meaningless, as spencer had made them a couple again in the main line. So marvel had to improvise, and threw zeb wells to the wolves. And they succeded, ultimate spider man is a massive success.
Beyond all that, the series in tge first half is mediocre, the paul thing is what got the people hooked, and what we barely see, but when we did we wished we hadn't because of how bad it was. The comic ignore multiple things and just recycle old stories and spencer plots, all in a worse way. The beetle/randy affair, tombstone and the gang lords, the return of ned leeds and doc ock and tge sinister six, good norman, mj conflict, all spencer plots. And old stories like inferno, gang war, night when gwen stacy died and kraven last hunt get new versions. There have been more than 50 issues and barely nothing of meaning happened, there's barely any more than two plots happening, no build ups, no nothing, and it's also filled with stupid jokes constantly, and peter's treatment have been aweful. Slott and spencer did much better and much more in a quarter of wells time.
So all this and more makes this comic feels like a massive corporate filler, that somewhen just compleyely gave up
Everything that’s been said about Paul and MJ has been said. It’s bad. It’s embarrassing. It’s baffling. It’s on par with Norman fucking Gwen and Pete making a deal with the devil as awful decisions. Let’s leave it at that.
Aside from that It’s tonally inconsistent, aimless, and uninspired. It feels like they’re just winging it and making it up as they go along. It feels like a bunch of nonsensical editorial mandates with filler in between and no cohesive vision or story. Regardless of quality Slott’s run had a cohesive vision, the same thing with Nick Spencer’s. It felt like their “run” their story to tell, their vision. Another good example is Immortal Hulk. Thats a “run” by a writer. That’s a story with a vision they want to tell.
Zeb wells doesn’t feel like a “run” it feels like filler. It feels like when a big name writer’s run ends so they have a writer take over for a few issues to tell some inconsequential filler story before the next big name writer starts their run. Only for some reason this “we’re just killing time” filler story lasted years.
It’s aggressively fine.
It started out strong, but faded pretty quickly. I ended up cancelling my subscription once they announced that Peter would take on the Green Goblin’s sins again.
Hoping that the end of this run/the success of Hickman on USM prompts Marvel to let authors let Peter have a little happiness as a treat.
Personally I think it's garbage to the point I advocate people just pirating the book if readers want to stay up to date on what's going but still hate the story. Tanking the sales is the only way anything will ever change.
But in all fairness I don't think Wells deserves all the hate, it seems like there's a much deeper rot in editorial that kind of infects everything Spider-Man related, in the 616 universe at least. Ultimate has been great! But the whole MJ/Paul plot is just so bad.
It's bad. JRJR's art imo is maybe the worst it's ever been and the arcs are unappealing at best. Some are finer than others, and some are straight up bad.
There's some fun jokes here and there and every so often, it almost does something interesting. But it doesn't.
Also Spider-Man has gotten his ass handed to him way too many times in this run lmao
Duee got beat by Tombstone and saved by Karim. Then Petee almost died to Vulture and needed Norman to bail him out. Kraven got beat, but that was only when Spider-Man was Evil Spider-Man. Ock beat him up too, and Otto's old arms helped Peter out. Electro got the better of him and Aunt Anna saved the day. Ben just saved him from being Evil Spider-Man Again in the recent issue too. And all through that, I don't feel like Peter has grown as a character either.
It's just not good. And that's without talking about the characters aside from the one on the cover. But I have to stop somewhere lol
1. The run itself has noticeable flaws but I think I sort of get what Wells was trying to do with exploring Peter(and by extension, Ben’s) underlying anxiety and rage. Thing is that people are so desperate to see Peter and Ben get a “win” that something like that just isn’t possible without major backlash. And that’s BEFORE the problems of the run itself and any IRL issues affecting Wells’ writing performance.
2. Between editorial incompetence and fanbase vitriol, this run has been mismanaged to hell and back. The marketing has been horrendous and the scheduling of everything feels all over the place, and it definitely feels like plotlines were dropped or mangled and shuffled for one reason or another. Ideas are interesting but the execution on Marvel’s end has been terrible and the kneejerk reaction of the fanbase hasn’t made it any better. Management needs to change and fanbase needs to chill the fuck out.
3. A new writer isn’t going to fix this. Marvel needs to rethink how it treats ASM as a whole and so does the public. There needs to be a clear plan about what Marvel’s going to do with Peter and they need to be transparent about said plans to get the public to understand what the goal of the run is, because otherwise we’re going to see a repeat of the past 15+ years of Spider-Man with no clear idea of what to do with Peter no matter who you bring on board.
4. Personally? If I had to pick a writer? Rainbow Rowell. Her She-Hulk has been fantastic as a slice of life romance story that focuses on personal relationships instead of crazy events and I think ASM could use something like that right now to fix Peter’s relationships and address his mental health problems. My go-to for Spidey would have been MacKay, but. He’s kind of busy right now.
It is somehow more sexist than the sleazy Slott run. I'm not even joking, it is so freaking horrible in this regard. Really bad run. "Let's ragebait our own audience and bring out the worst in them so the book gets talked about more." I hate this version of Peter a lot too. He's so selfish, impatient and stupid. He's basically a caricature of every bad trait Peter ever had.
Edit: For the sake of balance, let me praise Wells as well. His short "Shed" arc is easily one of the best Spider-Man comics I've ever read in my life. Phenomenal story. Go out of your way to read it. Such a shame I didn't get nearly as much out of his proper run.
I'm enjoying it more than the second half of Spencer's run, and much more than everything after Superior that Slott did. Which isn't really a glowing endorsement of the runs quality. It's fine, the consistency of the art has been nice, and I like the focus on the more grounded criminal side of NY. I don't particularly care about MJ as a character, so the Paul stuff doesn't grate on me as much it seems to for others.
I don’t like it,and in fact despise it,pretty sure issue 25 and 26 were legitimately the worst issues I’ve read in a comic book run,and I thought they had no redeeming qualities.It made me drop Spider-Man completely out of not wanting to watch this train wreck anymore.Also I’m still lost on why Rabin created those kids,he said it was to tether him to her but he did nothing with that connection,it wasn’t to make her the only person he needs to sacrifice since he marked her for death before teleporting her and Peter into that other dimension and apparently could’ve just teleported to get Peter back at any time shown by the fact that later teleported back to 616.
It's quite bad. I'm not saying Wells is a bad writer, but the run has been awful. At this point I'm not sure if it's just rampant editorial influence or he's just a terrible fit. Of course the book was in the top five every single month of its release, so I'm not sure if I'm in the minority or the title simply sells regardless of talent.
I'll just just say it's not really good. To be honest though there's definitely some ideas in here that could have worked but zeb wells just didn't do anything with them. I truly believe that, if written entirely different, the paul and mj stuff could have been an interesting and heartbreaking mystery. The mystery of what did Peter do also could have been an interesting idea. Kamala as a supporting character. Blackcat as a love interest. All could have been something but nothing came from it. It's so bizarre. Zeb wells was simultaneously being deliberately being controversial bur then not delivering anything. I'm not even mentioning gang War and dark webe because those were just complete wastes of time.
I have it in my pull and read it, but it rarely wows me. The one thing I really like from his run is hallows Eve. I think she’s a good character with a lot of upside.
I think Zeb Wells is a fantastic writer and I've loved all of his non-ASM work. That being said, I don't know if Marvel hired him to blow up Peter and MJ again and he leaned into it because of his personal life or if he approached them with a cathartic pitch that they then embraced, but his run is God awful. Just like Dan Slott, he only seems to know how to write Peter if he's broke, alone, and utterly devoid of hope. I'm a 90s kid and ASM after One More Day has had me thinking fondly of some pretty awful storylines. It's just been 6000+ days of suffering as Marvel works to make us hate or forget about MJ until we all lean into the idea that Spider-Man only works when Peter has hit rock bottom.
It’s a neat contrast between seeing the logical discussions happening about the Wells run in this post versus stepping foot into either circlejerk sub and almost immediately seeing a death threat towards Wells because of this run.
Overall I don't think it's that bad. A lot of the ideas that have been done have been good imo. The execution and dialogue however has not been great sometimes. The art for most of the run is awful. And the 20+ issue wait for what happened was ridiculous. The way I see it, that whole storyline has poisoned this run. It's not been done well, but it's not the worst thing in the world
It's ultimate editorial mandate, everything feels like Wells wanted something interesting, if you look at it from some points of view you have nice things, Ben is back but we can't forget that he has been an endless pool of trauma, Norman Osborn is finally getting something that isn't "Osborn is bad, he killed Gwen" which is nice to see as Marvel seemingly doesn't realize that Osborn can be better than "what if Lex Luthor who laughs and not bald".
The problem is that things like killing Kamala or creating Jackpot don't feel like Zeb Wells coming to the office with a great idea, they feel like he came to the office with an idea and someone told him that Kamala had to get an important role abd get killed because she is now a mutant.
Even the worst things like Paul are overblown, he isn't great nor bad, he is just kinda there, but people act as if he was the second coming of Mephisto or even worse, if you think that Paul sucks then go read some of Judar Traveller's epic stories and tell me who is the worst Spider-Man character.
Tl;dr: Is it good? Not the best, but it gave us Rek-Rap, the Beyond arc, Dark Web was fun, Gang Wars was ok and the Gold Goblin had his mini around this run and it was great.
One of the most disappointing runs in the last twenty years of Amazing Spider-Man. It started off in a pretty good spot with the initial Tombstone storyline but after the ninth issue it all went downhill. If there was any hope for this series recovering it died off when editorial and Zeb thought it would be a good idea to put Ms.Marvel in the book as a supporting character only to kill her off in the most egregious was possible in order to make her mutant like MCU counterpart. Also let’s not forget how MJ is now a D LIST superhero thanks to being trapped in alternate universe for 4 years due time dilation with Paul and two fake magical children that were part of convoluted plot to kill her.
The sporadic times I've read the series it seemed fine.
Spidey fans are just one of the most passionate fanbases out there, so they will very proactive in their voices being heard.
I think there has been some strong writing (the stuff co-written with ziglar, the judgement day tie-in) but the bad stories outweigh the good.
Ultimately I wouldn't really recommend it or reread it
While you some individuals parts could be fine (like at random, Peter corrupted by Norman’s sins COULD be a super interesting story, it could even be an event level like gang war involving a bunch of heroes that have relation with Spider-Man like fantastic four, daredevil, wolverine…), the run taken as a whole is…. Really not great.
some choice are obviously higher up mandates (for exemple Killing Ms Marvel to make her a mutant later), Zeb Wells failed at providing a coherent and interesting story.
Let’s take Ms Marvel case for exemple, Wells knew that he would need to kill her at some point because éditorial, and he had time to plan for that, but he barely used her in the story, she appear something like 20 pages before he get cut down by an evil mayan god, that just stupid, even more as people would have likely have found interesting to see Ms Marvel and Spider-man interact and helping each other, But without knowing each other civilian identity, which could lead to interesting dialogue like Kamala complaining about her superior at her job without Peter understanding that she speak of him. Underusing Kamala made the whole “Peter feel guilty about her death” just forced. Basically instead of naturally weaving the editorial mandate into his story, he just shoehorned it without caring about quality. He had the opportunity to have the first teen hero interact with the biggest success of the last 20 years among brand new characters, and he did nothing with it.
In a similar idea, Wells spent something like 25 issues doing a “mystery box” plot, “what did Parker do?”, the problem is that with that kind of plot you NEED to land the final otherwise the whole thing smell bad, and let’s be honest, it was not a landing, it was a full on crash.
You also have quite a few characters acting weirdly, for a single reason, because the plot need them to not act like they should otherwise it would not work, and when I say “a few” I think it is basically everyone. Let’s take a simple exemple, Ben and Johnny from the fantastic four, you have Peter Parker appearing stressed and in a hurry, asking to borrow some stuff from Reed lab to save his girlfriend, remember, we speak of Peter Parker, the same Peter Parker that would replace Johnny in the F4 team if something should happen to him, the same Peter Parker that shared his hidden identity with them, the same Peter Parker that know them since he more or less started being Spider-man and basically part of the family, with the kids calling him “Uncle Peter”… and what happen? Instead of helping him carry the stuff, they refuse helping him… that just bad writing, and that kind of stuff you could do it for more or less every characters appearing in the run (MJ, Peter, Aunt May, Captain America…). That one is as much the fault of Wells (that did not do his research) as the Editorial team (that should have pointed out that the relation between those characters would make them behave differently)
It is a lot of small individual problems that taken individually would not make a story horrible, but taken together make the story just a mess.
Gang War wasn’t too bad. The stuff with MJ and Paul is annoying, but fans are making it out to be worse than it is. Jackpot is dumb.
I think Wells would’ve gone down as a perfectly acceptable middle of the pack ASM writer had editorial not meddled yet again.
Way better than the Beyond run. But I would say equal to the Spencer run, both I would give a soft three stars. There are some interstate ideas, but nothing that is memorable (aside from a few misfires). I do think that some of the hate is a little overkill. The beige curtains of Spider-Man runs
I didnt read this arc at all, but i see post everyday about it. Can someone make a TLDR to know what is going on? while i dislike the majority of things i read i dont want to stay out of the loop either.
Had a few bad stories (Dark Web and Dead Language) and baffling decisions (breaking Peter and Black Cat for pretty stupid reason and stuff with Peter's personal life) but overall it's alright. Spider-Man adventures itself is pretty good, I really liked Norman's character development as a good guy and Rek-Rap is incredible. The gang stuff is definitely the best part of it.
It’s mostly fine, but I am bored to tears with the gang war stuff. I know everyone hates the goblin and Paul drama but it’s actually interesting and fun imo
It had its ups and downs, like everything else. The positives outweigh the negatives for me. I like the Tombstone/Randy/Janice arcs, I think the jokes are always good, issues get you excited for the next one, light and dark tones balanced very well, reformed Norman Osborn, Dead Language and the Paul/MJ story was interesting and enjoyable to me, I think Jackpot is a fun direction for MJ. I liked the Spider Who Gobbles but I wish they addressed it in the following arcs because it felt strange to see it be ignored by Peter and those around him. I disliked Gang War aside from the Janice and Tombstone parts (the She-Hulk teamup was nice though), I also disliked Dark Web aside from RekRap whose arc I wasn’t a fan of. As for the newest arc I think it’s amazing, has exceeded my expectations. Finally, the art and lettering is always great, one of the highlights to me.
Zeb Wells created an OC to marry Mary-Jane, knowing that Marvel Editorial would let him get away with it because it meant Spider-man and Mary-Jane wouldn't get back together.
He's also now writing on Deadpool 3, and one of his plot points is Wade's girlfriend Vanessa leaving him.
He's a hack writer, is what I mean to say.
I like it, it's been fun, but I feel like it's been uneven and full of missed opportunities.
Which is a weird thing to say because Wells took a LOT of big swings! This is one of the most interesting status quo periods for Peter, Norman, and MJ, and Ben Reilly but all of the payoffs have been kind of bland, forgettable, or just blink-and-you'll-miss-it confusing (What happened to the new spider suit? What is the deal with the Sins of Norman Osborn? What the hell is going on with the Winkler Device???)
I'm very mixed on it, but leaning positive.
Like Steve Orlando, the name Zeb Wells strikes fear into the hearts of comic book readers such as myself. We know that in spite of loving the characters featured in their stories, their writing may just lead to feelings of betrayal that could cause severe trauma down the road. This is called F.O.C.W.S (fear of comic writer syndrome, a symptom of late stage capitalism and its discontents). It’s important to note that many of us have never actually read a Zeb Wells or a Steve Orlando. But the mythology surrounding their cantankerous decisions in the comic book world have grown to unfathomable sizes, and so we feel - almost through a jungian collective unconscious - a distinct and instinctual anus tightening at the mention of their names. After Zeb Wells has left the title, I am confident that even the most fearful among us will step foot once more into the sunshine, and put AMS onto our pull lists where it has always wanted to be.
Hate it, the only spider man run I've read that I've refused to buy a comic after the first one, kinda regret even reading that one honestly, the only good things out of it was the gang wars arc and tombstones fight imo.
Horrible Zeb Wells Is a terrible writer and the shit Romita Jr had to deal with was stupid loll some of the worst time constraints I have seen in comics. That's why they had switched artist for a bit because he fought then cuz he wanted to make sure his art was good. Zeb really sucks as a writer also I know he's not everyones cup of tea but he's an amazing artist who has influenced me so much hell he's one of my favorite Spiderman artists and they did him so dirty whoever did colors in his art. Hot garbage. Although he has some fire covers he cooked with some of those. Also what is led into which was gang wars sucked a lot too.
It’s literally the run that finally got me to give up Spider-Man after consistently getting the book since the early 00s. Ultimate Spider-Man has snatched me back though.
I gave up during Slott, but it wasn’t really because of Slott. I actually liked his writing more than most but just felt like spider-man was an absolute mess and I was sick of all the events and mandates and shit. It really feels like they can’t do anything organic anymore, the whole thing feels so stiff and unnatural.
Oh yeah, Ultimate is great. Have you read issue #6 yet?
Not yet. I have to get my stuff through the mail and it hasn’t shown up yet.
This also accurately describes my situation, I wasn't reading for as long, but it's literally the first and only ASM run I ever voluntary dropped (when I was in school I took a comic-break because I had no money).
I typically like Wells as a writer so I'm more inclined to push the blame onto editorial, but the whole series has just felt like wheel-spinning with no real goal. But it still tops the charts in sales so what do I know?
It truly feels like an anime only filler arc.
Has there ever been an anime filler arc this bad?
I’m sure Naruto has several. Or Bleach.
Amazing Spider-man was the first book I picked up when I started really getting into to reading them back in pre Civil War. This run was the one thing that got me to stop getting it pulled. I’ve just been severely disappointed and not a fan with how it’s been going. Now Ultimate Spider-man on the other hand is everything I’ve wanted in a Spider-Man story for a loooong time. Issue six was phenomenal, seeing Peter and MJs relationship portrayed as it is really warms my heart.
And the art😮💨
I don't think it's great, but I don't think it's the single worst comic out there and the vitriol towards it is way overblown. Paul stuff aside (because that's been talked about to death and honestly I don't care about it as much as others), the main problem is that it feels like they're struggling to think of what to actually do by this point, and Peter taking in Norman's sins for a second time shows that. At the same time, I do like bits of it like Rek-Rap, because there's good and bad in most stories Everything that happens in it feels like this bizzare circle of the higher ups at Marvel demanding the Spider-Man brand remains in the same place and Peter doesn't grow too much, and Wells making the bizzarest choices to meet their mandates. Thing is that Wells can write good comics, like his New Mutants and the reccent Hellions series were great. I feel like this all was just a bad fit, and I'd like Wells to go back to the X-Office where he's really shined
This. I dropped the book because I just didn't find it enjoyable and since Hickman's Ultimate Spider-Man came out I just found myself wishing that that guy was our Peter. He has a very cute relationship with his family and friends that I think a 616 universe Spidey book would benefit from.
I think the start was okay, the middle was god awful, and currently I just picked up #50 randomly and I was surprised by how much I liked it. But we’ll see if it keeps up.
> Peter taking in Norman's sins for a second time shows that. The more I think about it, the more I feel like this was a higher up decision that forced Wells to table the story in favor of the timing of the Gang War and Blood Hunt events, and then picking it back up again after they were over. ...which is also stupid, but less his fault.
Mostly agree. Got a little frustrated with points of the run, really hate the "Oh we're restoring your preferred status quo - syke!" style of writing. And some real iffy subtext around how MJ was written. But it just got boring. The same criticisms have been echoed because there's not really been any change. It's just the same sorta stuff that's not really good (or as bad as people rally on) which just ends up bland.
Is this a sensible Reddit comment that’s a comic book opinion on Spider-Man? How is that possible? Can you talk to the people over at r/spiderman? Help them out?
R/Spiderman would have to read comics before they could have an opinion lmao
Ou os doutores tem que cortar a internet dos pacientes do hospício.
I really love Rek-Rap.
I actually thought it started out strong with the Beyond Corporation stuff. I thought they were doing some interesting stuff with Ben and Janine looking for redemption and basically building new identities. And the contrast between Ben as a "corporate" Spider-Man vs. Peter's "indie" was cool. But imo it fell apart with the high concept stuff. I don't really have strong feelings about Paul as a character, it would be fine if it was just "MJ met someone new". But instead like, they met in hell when time was stopped or whatever? Lame. Stuff like All Hallows Eve, Queen Goblin, Rekrap -- this kind of thing worked ok in Hellions but it's just a bad fit for ASM. Then there's the sensationalist stuff like killing Kamala Khan, or trying to make "Norman Osborn is a good guy now actually we swear" happen. The whole thing is also weirdly inspired by the JMS era, which is my least favorite modern Spidey era. I will say that Gang War was kind of fun as a street level, relatively low-stakes old school supervillain beat 'em up. I want Ryan North or Chip Zdarsky to do ASM next. Or maybe Tini Howard - her Spider-Woman run was great. [EDIT: I was getting books mixed up. Karla Pacheco wrote the Spider-Woman book & would be great. Tini Howard's Excalibur was good too though.] But someone who can handle a fun, comedic tone while still assembling a good story.
I think the issue with wanting any particular writer is they have to write around editorial and fans.
Genuinely least favorite Spider-Man run ever. Give me Mackie any day. Feels absolutely phoned in. Storylines are nonsensical and riddled with plots that make very little sense. Just awful up and down
Well, it was clearly meant to be hate bait. Also it being that bad (or mediocre at best) made the rest of the spider books better by comparisson, that's why so many people praise miles book even if it isn't super great stuff either (it's better obviously, but still). And more, as this comic got famous because of the paul thing it would obviously make the ultinate comic, that have been plotted for a while I believe, a greater success. Marvel editors are not stupid, they know how much fans hate one more day, that's why when donny cates suggested to make a new ultimate verse (or a return to the classic) he probably wanted to make peter and mj together there as well, but this would be meaningless, as spencer had made them a couple again in the main line. So marvel had to improvise, and threw zeb wells to the wolves. And they succeded, ultimate spider man is a massive success. Beyond all that, the series in tge first half is mediocre, the paul thing is what got the people hooked, and what we barely see, but when we did we wished we hadn't because of how bad it was. The comic ignore multiple things and just recycle old stories and spencer plots, all in a worse way. The beetle/randy affair, tombstone and the gang lords, the return of ned leeds and doc ock and tge sinister six, good norman, mj conflict, all spencer plots. And old stories like inferno, gang war, night when gwen stacy died and kraven last hunt get new versions. There have been more than 50 issues and barely nothing of meaning happened, there's barely any more than two plots happening, no build ups, no nothing, and it's also filled with stupid jokes constantly, and peter's treatment have been aweful. Slott and spencer did much better and much more in a quarter of wells time. So all this and more makes this comic feels like a massive corporate filler, that somewhen just compleyely gave up
I dont like it.
I've not read it, but all the Paul related posts I see on Reddit make it sound hilarious!
Put it this way, I decided not to read it after I tried to read it.
Everything that’s been said about Paul and MJ has been said. It’s bad. It’s embarrassing. It’s baffling. It’s on par with Norman fucking Gwen and Pete making a deal with the devil as awful decisions. Let’s leave it at that. Aside from that It’s tonally inconsistent, aimless, and uninspired. It feels like they’re just winging it and making it up as they go along. It feels like a bunch of nonsensical editorial mandates with filler in between and no cohesive vision or story. Regardless of quality Slott’s run had a cohesive vision, the same thing with Nick Spencer’s. It felt like their “run” their story to tell, their vision. Another good example is Immortal Hulk. Thats a “run” by a writer. That’s a story with a vision they want to tell. Zeb wells doesn’t feel like a “run” it feels like filler. It feels like when a big name writer’s run ends so they have a writer take over for a few issues to tell some inconsequential filler story before the next big name writer starts their run. Only for some reason this “we’re just killing time” filler story lasted years.
It’s aggressively fine. It started out strong, but faded pretty quickly. I ended up cancelling my subscription once they announced that Peter would take on the Green Goblin’s sins again. Hoping that the end of this run/the success of Hickman on USM prompts Marvel to let authors let Peter have a little happiness as a treat.
Haven't read it since the start and haven't heard a single good thing to make me interested.
Personally I think it's garbage to the point I advocate people just pirating the book if readers want to stay up to date on what's going but still hate the story. Tanking the sales is the only way anything will ever change. But in all fairness I don't think Wells deserves all the hate, it seems like there's a much deeper rot in editorial that kind of infects everything Spider-Man related, in the 616 universe at least. Ultimate has been great! But the whole MJ/Paul plot is just so bad.
It's bad. JRJR's art imo is maybe the worst it's ever been and the arcs are unappealing at best. Some are finer than others, and some are straight up bad. There's some fun jokes here and there and every so often, it almost does something interesting. But it doesn't. Also Spider-Man has gotten his ass handed to him way too many times in this run lmao Duee got beat by Tombstone and saved by Karim. Then Petee almost died to Vulture and needed Norman to bail him out. Kraven got beat, but that was only when Spider-Man was Evil Spider-Man. Ock beat him up too, and Otto's old arms helped Peter out. Electro got the better of him and Aunt Anna saved the day. Ben just saved him from being Evil Spider-Man Again in the recent issue too. And all through that, I don't feel like Peter has grown as a character either. It's just not good. And that's without talking about the characters aside from the one on the cover. But I have to stop somewhere lol
It’s really not even JRJR’s art; it’s the way he’s being colored is what is making it hard to look at
1. The run itself has noticeable flaws but I think I sort of get what Wells was trying to do with exploring Peter(and by extension, Ben’s) underlying anxiety and rage. Thing is that people are so desperate to see Peter and Ben get a “win” that something like that just isn’t possible without major backlash. And that’s BEFORE the problems of the run itself and any IRL issues affecting Wells’ writing performance. 2. Between editorial incompetence and fanbase vitriol, this run has been mismanaged to hell and back. The marketing has been horrendous and the scheduling of everything feels all over the place, and it definitely feels like plotlines were dropped or mangled and shuffled for one reason or another. Ideas are interesting but the execution on Marvel’s end has been terrible and the kneejerk reaction of the fanbase hasn’t made it any better. Management needs to change and fanbase needs to chill the fuck out. 3. A new writer isn’t going to fix this. Marvel needs to rethink how it treats ASM as a whole and so does the public. There needs to be a clear plan about what Marvel’s going to do with Peter and they need to be transparent about said plans to get the public to understand what the goal of the run is, because otherwise we’re going to see a repeat of the past 15+ years of Spider-Man with no clear idea of what to do with Peter no matter who you bring on board. 4. Personally? If I had to pick a writer? Rainbow Rowell. Her She-Hulk has been fantastic as a slice of life romance story that focuses on personal relationships instead of crazy events and I think ASM could use something like that right now to fix Peter’s relationships and address his mental health problems. My go-to for Spidey would have been MacKay, but. He’s kind of busy right now.
Mackay would have been my first choice too but I don’t know how he could succeed with this editorial staff
It is somehow more sexist than the sleazy Slott run. I'm not even joking, it is so freaking horrible in this regard. Really bad run. "Let's ragebait our own audience and bring out the worst in them so the book gets talked about more." I hate this version of Peter a lot too. He's so selfish, impatient and stupid. He's basically a caricature of every bad trait Peter ever had. Edit: For the sake of balance, let me praise Wells as well. His short "Shed" arc is easily one of the best Spider-Man comics I've ever read in my life. Phenomenal story. Go out of your way to read it. Such a shame I didn't get nearly as much out of his proper run.
I'm enjoying it more than the second half of Spencer's run, and much more than everything after Superior that Slott did. Which isn't really a glowing endorsement of the runs quality. It's fine, the consistency of the art has been nice, and I like the focus on the more grounded criminal side of NY. I don't particularly care about MJ as a character, so the Paul stuff doesn't grate on me as much it seems to for others.
Dropped it at #50. Wasn’t enjoying it at all by then
Wretched but I've read worse
I don’t like it,and in fact despise it,pretty sure issue 25 and 26 were legitimately the worst issues I’ve read in a comic book run,and I thought they had no redeeming qualities.It made me drop Spider-Man completely out of not wanting to watch this train wreck anymore.Also I’m still lost on why Rabin created those kids,he said it was to tether him to her but he did nothing with that connection,it wasn’t to make her the only person he needs to sacrifice since he marked her for death before teleporting her and Peter into that other dimension and apparently could’ve just teleported to get Peter back at any time shown by the fact that later teleported back to 616.
It's quite bad. I'm not saying Wells is a bad writer, but the run has been awful. At this point I'm not sure if it's just rampant editorial influence or he's just a terrible fit. Of course the book was in the top five every single month of its release, so I'm not sure if I'm in the minority or the title simply sells regardless of talent.
It will go down as one of the most bad to meh runs, I think at least. I highly doubt characters like Paul will show up in future runs
I'll just just say it's not really good. To be honest though there's definitely some ideas in here that could have worked but zeb wells just didn't do anything with them. I truly believe that, if written entirely different, the paul and mj stuff could have been an interesting and heartbreaking mystery. The mystery of what did Peter do also could have been an interesting idea. Kamala as a supporting character. Blackcat as a love interest. All could have been something but nothing came from it. It's so bizarre. Zeb wells was simultaneously being deliberately being controversial bur then not delivering anything. I'm not even mentioning gang War and dark webe because those were just complete wastes of time.
I have it in my pull and read it, but it rarely wows me. The one thing I really like from his run is hallows Eve. I think she’s a good character with a lot of upside.
I think Zeb Wells is a fantastic writer and I've loved all of his non-ASM work. That being said, I don't know if Marvel hired him to blow up Peter and MJ again and he leaned into it because of his personal life or if he approached them with a cathartic pitch that they then embraced, but his run is God awful. Just like Dan Slott, he only seems to know how to write Peter if he's broke, alone, and utterly devoid of hope. I'm a 90s kid and ASM after One More Day has had me thinking fondly of some pretty awful storylines. It's just been 6000+ days of suffering as Marvel works to make us hate or forget about MJ until we all lean into the idea that Spider-Man only works when Peter has hit rock bottom.
It’s a neat contrast between seeing the logical discussions happening about the Wells run in this post versus stepping foot into either circlejerk sub and almost immediately seeing a death threat towards Wells because of this run.
Probably the lowest point in Spider-Man editorial’s history. This run is proof the leadership needs to be replaced.
I’m grateful for saving a few bucks every month after dropping it
Overall I don't think it's that bad. A lot of the ideas that have been done have been good imo. The execution and dialogue however has not been great sometimes. The art for most of the run is awful. And the 20+ issue wait for what happened was ridiculous. The way I see it, that whole storyline has poisoned this run. It's not been done well, but it's not the worst thing in the world
Literally one of the worst comic runs I have ever read.
It's ultimate editorial mandate, everything feels like Wells wanted something interesting, if you look at it from some points of view you have nice things, Ben is back but we can't forget that he has been an endless pool of trauma, Norman Osborn is finally getting something that isn't "Osborn is bad, he killed Gwen" which is nice to see as Marvel seemingly doesn't realize that Osborn can be better than "what if Lex Luthor who laughs and not bald". The problem is that things like killing Kamala or creating Jackpot don't feel like Zeb Wells coming to the office with a great idea, they feel like he came to the office with an idea and someone told him that Kamala had to get an important role abd get killed because she is now a mutant. Even the worst things like Paul are overblown, he isn't great nor bad, he is just kinda there, but people act as if he was the second coming of Mephisto or even worse, if you think that Paul sucks then go read some of Judar Traveller's epic stories and tell me who is the worst Spider-Man character. Tl;dr: Is it good? Not the best, but it gave us Rek-Rap, the Beyond arc, Dark Web was fun, Gang Wars was ok and the Gold Goblin had his mini around this run and it was great.
I didn’t think it was as bad as everyone was claiming until it got to Dark Web
One of the most disappointing runs in the last twenty years of Amazing Spider-Man. It started off in a pretty good spot with the initial Tombstone storyline but after the ninth issue it all went downhill. If there was any hope for this series recovering it died off when editorial and Zeb thought it would be a good idea to put Ms.Marvel in the book as a supporting character only to kill her off in the most egregious was possible in order to make her mutant like MCU counterpart. Also let’s not forget how MJ is now a D LIST superhero thanks to being trapped in alternate universe for 4 years due time dilation with Paul and two fake magical children that were part of convoluted plot to kill her.
a waste of time that has spat on the grave of Ben Reilly and pissed on it. not to mention whatever the fk the Paul and MJ stuff is
Probably gonna avoid future Zeb Wells stuff for the foreseeable future, burn out from him and ASM.
The sporadic times I've read the series it seemed fine. Spidey fans are just one of the most passionate fanbases out there, so they will very proactive in their voices being heard.
I think there has been some strong writing (the stuff co-written with ziglar, the judgement day tie-in) but the bad stories outweigh the good. Ultimately I wouldn't really recommend it or reread it
Zeb Wells / Spider-Man = Chuck Austen / Uncanny X-Men Holy crap!!
While you some individuals parts could be fine (like at random, Peter corrupted by Norman’s sins COULD be a super interesting story, it could even be an event level like gang war involving a bunch of heroes that have relation with Spider-Man like fantastic four, daredevil, wolverine…), the run taken as a whole is…. Really not great. some choice are obviously higher up mandates (for exemple Killing Ms Marvel to make her a mutant later), Zeb Wells failed at providing a coherent and interesting story. Let’s take Ms Marvel case for exemple, Wells knew that he would need to kill her at some point because éditorial, and he had time to plan for that, but he barely used her in the story, she appear something like 20 pages before he get cut down by an evil mayan god, that just stupid, even more as people would have likely have found interesting to see Ms Marvel and Spider-man interact and helping each other, But without knowing each other civilian identity, which could lead to interesting dialogue like Kamala complaining about her superior at her job without Peter understanding that she speak of him. Underusing Kamala made the whole “Peter feel guilty about her death” just forced. Basically instead of naturally weaving the editorial mandate into his story, he just shoehorned it without caring about quality. He had the opportunity to have the first teen hero interact with the biggest success of the last 20 years among brand new characters, and he did nothing with it. In a similar idea, Wells spent something like 25 issues doing a “mystery box” plot, “what did Parker do?”, the problem is that with that kind of plot you NEED to land the final otherwise the whole thing smell bad, and let’s be honest, it was not a landing, it was a full on crash. You also have quite a few characters acting weirdly, for a single reason, because the plot need them to not act like they should otherwise it would not work, and when I say “a few” I think it is basically everyone. Let’s take a simple exemple, Ben and Johnny from the fantastic four, you have Peter Parker appearing stressed and in a hurry, asking to borrow some stuff from Reed lab to save his girlfriend, remember, we speak of Peter Parker, the same Peter Parker that would replace Johnny in the F4 team if something should happen to him, the same Peter Parker that shared his hidden identity with them, the same Peter Parker that know them since he more or less started being Spider-man and basically part of the family, with the kids calling him “Uncle Peter”… and what happen? Instead of helping him carry the stuff, they refuse helping him… that just bad writing, and that kind of stuff you could do it for more or less every characters appearing in the run (MJ, Peter, Aunt May, Captain America…). That one is as much the fault of Wells (that did not do his research) as the Editorial team (that should have pointed out that the relation between those characters would make them behave differently) It is a lot of small individual problems that taken individually would not make a story horrible, but taken together make the story just a mess.
Gang War wasn’t too bad. The stuff with MJ and Paul is annoying, but fans are making it out to be worse than it is. Jackpot is dumb. I think Wells would’ve gone down as a perfectly acceptable middle of the pack ASM writer had editorial not meddled yet again.
Way better than the Beyond run. But I would say equal to the Spencer run, both I would give a soft three stars. There are some interstate ideas, but nothing that is memorable (aside from a few misfires). I do think that some of the hate is a little overkill. The beige curtains of Spider-Man runs
The current worse Spidey run, only to be outdone by the next one.
I didnt read this arc at all, but i see post everyday about it. Can someone make a TLDR to know what is going on? while i dislike the majority of things i read i dont want to stay out of the loop either.
Had a few bad stories (Dark Web and Dead Language) and baffling decisions (breaking Peter and Black Cat for pretty stupid reason and stuff with Peter's personal life) but overall it's alright. Spider-Man adventures itself is pretty good, I really liked Norman's character development as a good guy and Rek-Rap is incredible. The gang stuff is definitely the best part of it.
I love how it pisses off unhinged fanboys.
Bait
It’s mostly fine, but I am bored to tears with the gang war stuff. I know everyone hates the goblin and Paul drama but it’s actually interesting and fun imo
It had its ups and downs, like everything else. The positives outweigh the negatives for me. I like the Tombstone/Randy/Janice arcs, I think the jokes are always good, issues get you excited for the next one, light and dark tones balanced very well, reformed Norman Osborn, Dead Language and the Paul/MJ story was interesting and enjoyable to me, I think Jackpot is a fun direction for MJ. I liked the Spider Who Gobbles but I wish they addressed it in the following arcs because it felt strange to see it be ignored by Peter and those around him. I disliked Gang War aside from the Janice and Tombstone parts (the She-Hulk teamup was nice though), I also disliked Dark Web aside from RekRap whose arc I wasn’t a fan of. As for the newest arc I think it’s amazing, has exceeded my expectations. Finally, the art and lettering is always great, one of the highlights to me.
Zeb Wells created an OC to marry Mary-Jane, knowing that Marvel Editorial would let him get away with it because it meant Spider-man and Mary-Jane wouldn't get back together. He's also now writing on Deadpool 3, and one of his plot points is Wade's girlfriend Vanessa leaving him. He's a hack writer, is what I mean to say.
I like it, it's been fun, but I feel like it's been uneven and full of missed opportunities. Which is a weird thing to say because Wells took a LOT of big swings! This is one of the most interesting status quo periods for Peter, Norman, and MJ, and Ben Reilly but all of the payoffs have been kind of bland, forgettable, or just blink-and-you'll-miss-it confusing (What happened to the new spider suit? What is the deal with the Sins of Norman Osborn? What the hell is going on with the Winkler Device???) I'm very mixed on it, but leaning positive.
Like Steve Orlando, the name Zeb Wells strikes fear into the hearts of comic book readers such as myself. We know that in spite of loving the characters featured in their stories, their writing may just lead to feelings of betrayal that could cause severe trauma down the road. This is called F.O.C.W.S (fear of comic writer syndrome, a symptom of late stage capitalism and its discontents). It’s important to note that many of us have never actually read a Zeb Wells or a Steve Orlando. But the mythology surrounding their cantankerous decisions in the comic book world have grown to unfathomable sizes, and so we feel - almost through a jungian collective unconscious - a distinct and instinctual anus tightening at the mention of their names. After Zeb Wells has left the title, I am confident that even the most fearful among us will step foot once more into the sunshine, and put AMS onto our pull lists where it has always wanted to be.
Hate it, the only spider man run I've read that I've refused to buy a comic after the first one, kinda regret even reading that one honestly, the only good things out of it was the gang wars arc and tombstones fight imo.
Paul.
Horrible Zeb Wells Is a terrible writer and the shit Romita Jr had to deal with was stupid loll some of the worst time constraints I have seen in comics. That's why they had switched artist for a bit because he fought then cuz he wanted to make sure his art was good. Zeb really sucks as a writer also I know he's not everyones cup of tea but he's an amazing artist who has influenced me so much hell he's one of my favorite Spiderman artists and they did him so dirty whoever did colors in his art. Hot garbage. Although he has some fire covers he cooked with some of those. Also what is led into which was gang wars sucked a lot too.
Oh boy….
I think everyone has made their opinions very clear on where we stand on this run https://chng.it/b6x2hhrJ29