Dan Slott Returns with new Spider-Man Ongoing

14 Comments

1. I like Slott’s run. I think you guys know that.

   It’s going to be interesting if there’s a change in the response to his work when he’s not the main guy writing Amazing Spider-Man, when he’s one voice among several. Granted, at this moment, the other voices are all from Brand New Day, although I imagine that’ll change soon enough.

2. @ ac

   While éditorial has been -and still is- a problem for the past 15 years with ASM, most of the blame is still on the writer.

   Slott CAN write a great story. I personally thing 801 is a masterclass and if his run would have been at that level of quality, it could have been one of if not the, best run in ASM history.

   But most of the run saw him write a dumb Peter Parker, incapable of beating a vilain without back up, while newer characters such as silk or Spock are insanely effective (but still written as 2d cutout)

   Most of his character are as 2 dimensional as the paper these stories were printed on. That’s not a mandate, it’s bad writing.

   Meanwhile, Spencer or JMS had to deal with mandates too, but their characters where fully fleshed out, and the universe made sense (at least until the end,. Where they both crashed and burn)

3. Not a Dan Slott fan at all, and i’m not going anywhere near this book, but I think some of Paul Penna’s point is valid.
   I think a lot of people agree that Spenser started off really well, and ended poorly, quite possibly because of editorial interference. Editorial is a huge problem with Spider-Man right now, and Stan Lee could come back from the grave and write Spider-Man and it would have problems thanks to the higher ups. Slott gives Editorial exactly what they want. So of course they give him Spider-Man stories to write. If Editorial wasn’t so busy making a series of bad decisions could Slott’s run have been much better? I personally don’t think so, but I could certainly see an argument for it.

4. When I wrote this for my review of Savage Spider-Man #1 I had no idea how bad it could get;

   “This is something that is bothering me and since I have this soap box I’m going to voice it. I’m concerned about the limited number of people Marvel allow near Spider-Man. Since Brand New Day, anytime a new series or creative team has been announced, odds are it’s someone connected to Brand New Day. Other than Nick Spencer and Tom Taylor it seems like Marvel are quiet willing to keep going back to the BND well and grabbing a Zeb Wells, a Joe Kelly or a Mark Waid. I’m sure it’s because the editors know and trust them. But I’m disappointed that nearly 15 years since BND our creative pool has not really changed. Wells on Amazing, Kelly on the B-Title. I would have been interested in seeing a Kelly Thompson or a Jed McKay Spider-Man ongoing, instead it’s just more of the same, which results in issues that read like they’re from 2008 instead of 2022”

5. The problem with slott is that he has great concepts, but very poor execution.

   The loss of spider sense compensated by kung fun? Amazing idea. Dropped after what 5 issues?

   Horizon lab, and it’s ressources, allowing peter to improve the world with his brain and not just his power? Great concept. Went nowhere.

   Spider verse? Amazing concept… Except peter doesn’t shine! He takes a backs it in the crossover that should show why he is the best spiderman!

   Superior? Written so badly everyone looks dumb for not figuring it out right away. But when other writer took a shot at it (superior 6.au, team up…) It worked wonderfully.

   So ya I have low hope for this series. I hope I am wrong, but i mostly see a flat, 2d man child spiderman coming in the near future. And for course no MJ.

6. Never was his biggest fan and I’m so tired of Spider-Verse but I understand why they keep coming back to it, Marvel refuses to let Peter Parker have growth so it’s easier to develop side characters and concepts

7. Slott is not a good writer by the measures by which writing is judged. His dialogue is hackneyed and on-the-nose. His plots do not feature rising/building action, but are merely repetitive action until a deus ex machina comes out of the blue to solve the problem. His characters are not three dimensional humans but are malleable mannequins twisted, punched and pulled to fill whatever plot hole he needs to fill; their actions can be inconsistent even within the same scene while they also lack anything resembling an inner life. His writing shows no knowledge of the basic storytelling concepts of scene/sequel or action/reaction.

   Nick Spencer’s run, on the other hand, had three dimensional characters with inner lives and motivations, with natural sounding dialogue and storytelling that showed instead of Slott’s telling in shouty capitals. J.M. DeMatteis’s recent Ben Reilly miniseries is a masterclass in how to tell a compelling, beautifully written story with incredibly well-developed characters in just a few issues. So, no, Slott’s limitations are not dictated by the constraints on the character nor by the nature of modern Marvel comics. Slott’s limitations are his and his alone.

   Slott writes candy. It’s brightly colored and attention grabbing, it’s a simple recipe of dopamine pleasing sugar and corn syrup, it doesn’t require much effort to chew and swallow. Specifically, he writes circus peanuts. And circus peanuts can taste good. Sometimes you really want a circus peanut.

   But ten years of eating nothing but circus peanuts – which are artifically flavored marshmallows that go stale very fast – does no one good.

   As for new writers, Marvel has supposedly made a commitment to diversity and opening up to new voices. Saying they can’t give new writers a job because jobs can only go to the same old people who have already been given ample opportunities is defeatist, regressive, and means comics will never truly be representative and reflect the world around us.

   And writers don’t have to come just from comics. Christos Gage wrote for television first, for example. And Marvel is capable of hiring diverse voices. Ta-Nehisi Coates came from essay writing and fiction and Saladin Ahmed was an award-winning science fiction author before writing comics. Leah Williams wrote YA fantasy before going into comics; Marjorie Liu wrote paranormal novels and tie-ins before her first comics assignment. But they are the among the few exceptions to the rule. Meanwhile, Zeb Wells got his first Spider-Man assignment straight out of college, so his age obviously didn’t stop him. Slott was a Marvel intern.

   If Marvel was tuly believed in expanding the diversity of voices on their characters – and if Marvel really believed that Spider-Man is about youth which they obviously don’t, that’s just a cover for editorial’s personal biases, because younger readers are more diverse than ever before – then they would look for established but diverse voices for their satellite book (remember, Slott isn’t returning to ASM) which doesn’t have the same expectations/demands as the flagship title.

   But they aren’t so they don’t.

8. Dan Slott is a good Spider-Man writer, I know there are fans who don’t enjoy his writing, and I haven’t enjoyed every story he’s written, but he had a very successful run on the character. So, I’m looking forward to his run on this new title.

   I can’t help but feel a lot of the complaints levelled at Slott have very little to do with him. Yes, he kept Peter and Mary-Jane apart, but it’s worth understanding that is something the higher ups at Marvel want. And Peter didn’t have much forward momentum, but again, Marvel doesn’t want Peter Parker to grow up, so it makes it very difficult to push the character forward.

   Slott did the only thing a good writer could do, and that was to go off on interesting side trajectories. You can’t develop Peter? Okay, make Otto Octavius Spider-Man instead, and develop him as a character. It really is a smart approach.

   As to Marvel putting a “new” “young” writer on Spider-Man, no way they’d ever trust any “new” writer with their star property. You need to spend years proving yourself before they’d let you anywhere near Spider-Man. The whole comic book industry isn’t really friendly to new writers anyway, even if you prove yourself as a competent writer, they always prefer to hire established talent. As an actual comic book writer who has even had a professional gig under his belt, I can attest to this. It’s an industry wide problem which isn’t going to be solved any time soon.

   And, even if they were to hire a “new” writer (I use the invert commas, as any “new” writer would have spent years writing to even be hired by Marvel, so “new” just means new to Marvel) then they too would need to keep Peter and MJ apart, and would have to think up interesting way of avoiding giving Peter any forward momentum, because that’s the job you would’ve been hired to do. If you pitched an idea where Peter and MJ got back together, and got married again, then the editors would shoot it down and probably fire you from the book.

   The reason I think Dan Slott is a good writer, and is obviously the reason why he keeps getting hired to write Spider-Man stories, is that he has a very good idea what the higher ups at Marvel want from a Spider-Man book, and can work within that framework.

   If Slott’s writing simply doesn’t match up with your tastes, fair enough. That’s a complaint that can be levelled at any writer. But that simply means you don’t like his style of writing, not that he’s a bad writer. If that’s the case, just don’t buy the book.

   Sorry for the long post, but a lot of folk do tend to complain about Slott, and to my mind often unfairly. There are people you have to answer to when writing a company owned character, and many of Slott’s writing choices merely reflect that. And he’s done interesting stuff within what you’re allowed to do as a writer of Spider-Man.

9. And here I thought it was Gage who ended the overly trite Spider-verse stories, with a decent series which fixed a lot of the questionable choices made by Slott himself. How silly of me!

   Honestly, I feel Slott never really understood Morlun’s character, to the point of giving him a family (!), explaining all his misteries with ordinary science fiction (clones…) and making all of them insanely fixated on spiders. It’s like he never read Straczynski’s run.
   So I’m not happy with the announcement.

   But, hey, there’s a bright side: it’s not Bendis. LOL

10. The past week has dealt several hard blows, but learning Dan Slott is returning for another round of imcompetent manbaby Peter Parker and tying into Well’s book, which probably means Mary Jane Watson will continue to be poorly mischaracterized and her relationship with Peter tossed on the dustheap to be trotted only as bait for readers, is just the rancid cherry on the dumpster fire sundae.

    Even if I enjoyed Slott’s style of writing – and I do not, it’s hackneyed with two-dimensional characters, forced dialogue, repetitive action instead of plot building, tells instead of shows, and relies far too heavily on deus ex machina that come out of nowhere to resolve the plot when Slott gets tired of whatever he’s writing – this just smacks of creative desperation at Marvel. Can they seriously not get a fresh, young writer to write a Spider-Man satellite book? Maybe an author of color? Or a woman? Or a writer from the LGBTQ+ community? Or even someone who hasn’t had a chance to write Spidey yet? I mean, right now the people writing Peter Parker’s continuity are Zeb Wells and Dan Slott, who both first started writing the character fifteen years ago.

    Instead of Brand New Day, this is Been There Done That Past the Expiration Date Groundhog Day.

11. I’m a fan of Slott and Bagley, so I’m looking forward to this.

    Incidentally, on the Crawlspace list of Top 50 stories, Slott was second to Stan Lee among the writers in terms of number of stories on the list, while Bagley was tied for first place with John Romita Jr. among the artists in terms of number of stories on the list.

    https://www.spidermancrawlspace.com2017/05/the-crawlspace-top-50-spider-man-stories-master-list/

12. I’m not entirely sure satellite books are a good idea with Spider-Man, but this has a better chance of succeeding than most. The creative team is impressive, and you could easily imagine them on Amazing Spider-Man (they’ve been, recently.)

    Adjectiveless Spider-Man is a title that doesn’t carry baggage, shared with blockbuster movies and the best-selling Spider-Man comic ever (Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man #1.) It’s not automatically a second priority to what’s going on in Amazing Spider-Man.

    Finally, this launch follows up on a major event, and I’m guessing it’s setting up comics meant to come out around March ’24, when the Beyond the Spider-Verse film comes out, so it’s going to be easier to convince readers that this project matters.

13. The thing is, there are PLENTY of writers, those with the time and would love to have a crack at Spider-Man. Yet, they keep going back to Slott, hoping to get more blood out of the rock. His recent leaving of Fantastic Four was more he finally, finally got to tell the Reckoning War, which was really, OK. His 15 year She-Hulk subplot paid off, but really the book was spinning between reused stories “Hey, let’s have Johnny’s Powers go out control again, because people didn’t get tired of that the first 7 times since 1974.” Plus, Slott is trying to basically play: “Hey, if it wasn’t for me, Into the Spider-verse, wouldn’t exist, so I get special treatment.” I love Mark Bagley, but no, I’m not picking this up. Tired of Slott, tired of Morlun and I’m tired of Nick Lowe never catching a clue or the rest of the Marvel Editorial and ESPECIALLY Joe Q.

14. Dan Slott back on Spider-Man? Oy.

    Sorry, but I was never a fan of Slott’s Spider-Man comics and I’m not exactly thrilled to see him back with a new ongoing monthly. Also, I’m getting burned out on Mark Bagley’s Spider-Man stuff. He’s been doing a lot with Spidey over the past few years and I would like to see someone else take a turn at drawing Spidey, his friends and his rogues. Then again, I’ll take Bagley’s art any day over John Romita Jr.’s blocky art on “The Amazing Spider-Man”. At this rate, I’m getting the feeling we keep getting the same people back like Slott and Bagley because they’re the best/easiest to work with on the limits and mandates that Marvel has been doing with Spider-Man’s comics since “One More Day”.

    With all due respect, for Spider-Man’s 60th anniversary year, none of the stories and choices that Marvel has been doing have been to my liking. I’m still bitter about turning Ben Reilly into Chasm, the relaunch’s time jump, the lack of interest in explaining what Peter even did, having Peter working with Norman, giving Peter another new suit with Goblin-like gear like a glider, and having Peter and M.J. split up yet again after we got them back together. With Slott back onboard, I have a feeling that it’s going to be even longer before Marvel gets Peter and Mary Jane back together. I’m disappointed by Marvel’s choices, but I’m sadly not a bit surprised.

    I hope you all are having a great day and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe, True Believers.