Is There A Mandate That Spider-Man Can’t Be Married?

9 Comments

1. Just learned about this listening to the Spider-Man Crawlspace podcast. Thanks Sarah you rock! Seriously though mandate / preference, it’s really the same thing. I love the marriage personally. Hope it does come back but it won’t under the current regime.

2. A bit late.

   Will add to stuff said by xonathan and the ever familiar Kyle Chrise.

   — BND was in fact the highest sales drops in ASM history. The fans did vote with their wallet multiple times and rejected the attempt to get rid of the marriage. The “voting with the wallet” is something invented and parroted by BND people…and my advise is don’t bother thinking in their terms because you are not dealing with people with good faith here. People voted with their wallet for the marriage which had the highest sales in the title’s history, they voted against the clone saga when they said Peter was the clone and that led to a decline the titles never recovered from. They voted against Mackie during MJ’s “death” and voted for JMS. And they voted against BND the last time before Marvel stopped sending Statements to Comichron after which they basically had the license to doll up sales figures however they wished.

   The point is it’s not how people vote, it’s about who counts the votes, and in the case of Marvel under Disney, it’s about whose wallet it is. Disney sees the comics as a boutique and as such it can write different targets since the real money is in the merchandising and also in the Donald Duck comics that make more money.

   — As for Kyle Chrise…Renew Your Vows was successful. Later issues under Jody House including #13 outsold Dan Slott’s in the Diamond charts that month. You’ve been told this before so it’s a bit odd why you keep repeating original positions arguments after they’ve been debunked.

3. Also another thing. Im not opposed to a single Spider-Man. The comic is called “the amazing Spider-Man.” But what I cannot tolerate is the constant teasing by dangling MJ in front of us while shoving down our throat reasons why they can’t be together. It’s disgusting. I also cannot tolerate bad characterization and story telling. Writing Spidey like an incompetent man-child has got to stop. These two reasons are why I can’t stand modern Spider-Man comics. Is there a “preference” for Spidey to be an incompetent man-child too?

4. Money talks. And Marvel is a business that needs to hire talent for them to sell product. If selling of this product had tanked in BND Marvel would have reverted course. They didn’t. It means that sells were not affected. Us Crawlspacers and old fans live in a bubble thinking that our disappointment is shared by the rest of the world. It is not. Spider-Man comics will sell regardless of the marital status. And I suspect most writers prefer to write a single Spider-Man. It’s easier to write about one character than two. And they put them all together in the BND committee at that time. So if it’s easier to hire talent that prefers single Spidey -because there’s more of them- and the sells won’t change regardless of the marital status, as a business, why even bother marrying Spidey? If once in a while a writer comes that wants to put them together, Marvel will let them. Like with Nick. But they prefer is the status remains unchanged for the next writer. So at what point is it called a “preference” vs a “mandate” if the preference comes from high up? Does it matter the word they use? So I understand where he’s coming from but I don’t like the result.

   After 60+ years of continuity I’m starting to think continuity is a burden. Writers should be allowed to write whatever stories they want without this burden. If Nick wanted to write about married Spider-Man he should be able without SO much explanation about deals with the Devil. Just write about a slightly older Spider-Man. Just have them be married. If the next writer wants a single one then he writes about him a bit younger in his career and be single. It would be obvious that the stories are at different times. Continuity is worthless. Any event that happens does not have any significance because anything can and has been undone, so why even bother keeping score.

5. Nicely said.

6. Honest answer. All these fans should’ve bought more Renew Your Vows when they had a chance to let the marketplace speak

7. Atta girl Sara!!! Good job!! Especially getting on video!

8. I’m guessing Aqu@ has already answered this question, but when the bottom line is earning money, and so many people have been vocal about their distaste for the state of Peter’s relationship status, it seems as if too much is at stake to justify a mere “preference.” Nick Spencer had a preference, too. Why can’t Sara be given a true answer?

   I wonder where this disdain comes from. I suspect if Peter and Mary Jane are apart, Marvel is counting on the “will they/won’t they” to drive sales. It just feels like every happy ending Peter has ever been given has been in vain. As Chi-Town said, if there’s no character development or evolution — no learning — what’s the value of a story? For being a “grounded every man,” Peter sure doesn’t seem to learn or grow, like all of us would, except in alternate dimensions.

9. “Is there a mandate against marriage?”

   *heavy breathing and sweating*
   Cebulski looked at the crowd. There, sitting amid them, a familiar mouse, lightly smiling at him, with a photo of C.B.’s family in its gloved hand.
   “Ehrm…. No…. There’s no mandate, just a preference.”