After 100 years of movie dramas, what stories are left to tell? After untold “coming of age” novels, what more stories are left to tell? After 400 episodes of “The Simpsons”, what stories are left to tell? Etc, etc.

These are all silly statements that are about personal taste and nothing more. To some people, superhero comics are the same thing over and over. To others, there’s nuance that’s interesting and worth exploring - and to each their own.

While they were investing less importance onto it in the way of building the universe, I would argue that the marketing and general notion of it was to revitalize the Spiderman character, one which is a major franchise and moneymaker, and if sales are to be believed, they’ve utterly failed in doing that. Especially when you consider the claims that they’ve dragged a lot of new readers in, which could very possibly mean they’ve actually managed to alienate half or more of their previous audience completely.

The goal was for sales to either stay the same or go up but with higher frequency. That has not happened by any means. Thereby failure.

Relevence or not, Countdown was fronted by largely minor and neglected characters who people just didn’t care about. And DC’s at fault for this, but at least they didn’t manage to sabotage the major fanbase of a franchise character.

That said, I cannot argue the promotion of Secret Invasion vs. Final Crisis. FC is better quality, but that’s not everything and DC should have realized that. Now Darkseid is being beaten in sales by Skrulls. Oy.

You guys comparing sales numbers on ASM, another thing to consider about the thrice monthly publishing is that Marvel also has to pay the creators thrice as opposed to once/month.

They may still sell more copies combined in a month but the expenses to do so is also higher. I can’t see how they can view this as anything other than a disappointment.”

You do realise that people working on all 3 Spider-Man books got paid each month, not just the ASM team right?

#1 was shipped the same day as:
GIANT SIZE ASTONISHING X-MEN #1
UNCANNY X-MEN #498 DWS
WOLVERINE FIRST CLASS #3
X-FORCE #4 DWS
X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #12
X-MEN LEGACY #212 DWS

Add in a really odd cover that really didn’t tell you it was an X-Men related title and this one was completely invisible on the shelf. I had it displayed on the counter with the other big X-books that came out that day and most people assumed it was a Buffy tie-in.

They may still sell more copies combined in a month but the expenses to do so is also higher. I can’t see how they can view this as anything other than a disappointment.

Is Spider-Man so unbelievably popular he should be immune to the trends? Nope. ”

STOP MAKING SENSE!

Is Spider-Man so unbelievably popular he should be immune to the trends? Nope.

Marvel 1985 had 3 covers (a 50/50 split and a separately orderable one), plus IIRC some incentive covers.

At least in my store, Anita Blake sells as well in HC as in the monthly comics.

All of Marvel’s Soliel titles, including Sky Doll, are $5.99.

I hope this helps!

My feelings about the marriage were neutral tending toward negative - it just doesn’t seem like much interesting material ever came out of it, and a lot of irritating stuff (MJ is targeted by a villain; MJ sits at home and worries) came out of it. I’ve got no problem with them ending the marriage, but the whole deal with the devil thing was a stupid way to do it, and mucking around with a bunch of other bits of history (Harry’s back, etc.) adds a bunch of unnecessary complications.

I’ve generally enjoyed Brand New Day - I like the tone, and most of the stories have been acceptable. It’s an interesting experiment. It really was about time the book got back to just telling Spider-Man stories, after 2 or 3 years of nonstop EVENTS. Once they get back to mixing in traditional villains with the new guys, I think it’ll improve.

I am a new reader of Amazing Spider-Man and am enjoying it a lot, particularly given that Slott, Wells and Waid are three of my favourite writers, and artists like Marcos Martin and Chris Bachalo are keeping me coming back for every issue. I was not interested in reading Amazing Spider-Man prior to this, and have picked up every one since the BND relaunch. As far as I’m concerned, the experiment can only be counted as a success.

Also, I loved Dr Horrible and every Whedon fan I know did too. I’ve literally lost track of the number of people I’ve talked to about it who thought it was great. This is mainly down to the fact that I haven’t been counting, due to it being utterly irrelevant to the ongoing discussion of anything whatsoever.

Actually, the divisive reaction that Dr. Horrible has received, even from a lot of former Whedon die-hards, is precisely the backlash that I’m talking about. For all the fans who love it, just as many fans have finally decided that Dr. Horrible is to Whedon’s career what The Village was to M. Night Shyamalan’s career, in terms of being the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ve literally lost track of the number of reviews of it that can be summed up simply as, “AGAIN, Joss?”

Personally I have stuck to my guns and not read Amazing Spider-Man issue since “One More Day.” I do browse through each new issue that comes out but the “Brand New Day” direction just does not interest me (and I’ve been a Spider-Man fan for decades and liked the fact Peter and MJ were married). These new stories remind me of filler issues which don’t seem to matter all that much if missed. All I’m seeing in the pages of ASM these days are third rate new villains and mediocre looking storylines. I want better from what was once the premiere title of all the Spidey books.

I have to say though, I am a bit curious about the upcoming storyline with Anti-Vemon and the Green Goblin drawn by Romita Jr., so maybe I’ll give that storyline a try. I dunno.

I’m really happy about Nova. If there is one book that deserves to INCREASE sales (without event tie-ins and crossovers) it’s Nova. There seems to be a small but loyal fan base; hopefully the Nova readers will buy Guardians of the Galaxy, too.

My apologies to all, especially Paul who works so hard each and every month on this.

In the 5 months in the first half of 2007 where all three Spider-Man titles were published, sales were as listed with average after the semi-colon—

203600;67867
255100;85033
244500;81500
217979;72660
214163;71054

For those 5 months, the overall sales and average—

1135342;75689

Sales for May and June of this year have been below that average.

Of course, overall Spider-Man sales this year will seem much higher, as there were only 4 Spider-Man titles published in the last 4 months of 2007. Notice also that all 11 Amazing Spider-Man issues published in 2007 were over 105,000 in sales.

The experiment has failed. Time to start a new one.

I haven’t read Runaways yet (that’s a trade series for me) and I thought the X-book was okay.

The only criticisms I usually hear about his work are the standard ones: always with the young teenage girl protagonist and the killing of a beloved character out of nowhere.

Spider-Man leading a team? Different spiders getting iradiated/genetically altered and tested on various people? (Whatever happened to the Kingpin’s metahuman lab?) Spider-men (and -women) of different countries? Kick him through the multiverse? Center a cult around him? Focus on the supporting cast, some whom haven’t been seen for some time? Bring back the Spidey Buggy? Give him some closure on his grief so he relax?

He’s already time-travelled (Marvel Team-Up). They’ve brought back clones, twice. They’ve retroconned at least two periods (Untold Tales, and that fiasco with Gwen in London, not counting the Clones). They turned him into Superman. He’s been a six-armed freak.

Sorry…. this thread is getting off topic… The only Marvel titles I bought on this list were the director’s cut of Kick Ass, 1985, and ClanDestine. Nothing else interests me, except She-Hulk in trade.

By which I mean, at a bare minimum, the first issue of NWtD MUST do better than the 7-percent issue-to-issue sales spike that BND received from Wolverine’s guest-starring appearance. And let’s not kid ourselves, it’ll probably do at least that well, at first - which is not to say that this means it’s free and clear. If, by the end of this event, sales are back down in the 60-70K range, that’s still a failure, because there’s really nothing else that BND can do to bolster its sales anymore.

Throwing each new writer onto a three-issue arc to start with was a huge mistake, because it simply reinforced how utterly generic all the writers are going to be on this status quo. If you’d done six or nine issues of Slott, and THEN gone to Guggenheim, you could have seen some serious sales bumps, but as it stands, rotating them all three-issues-at-a-time only made them seem interchangeable, and variant covers (and Wolverine) sales bumps aside, NONE of the writers aside from Slott really got any sort of “first issue by a new writer” bump.

In terms of “big name” writers who are left, I suppose we’ll see how well Kelly did this month, but neither he nor Waid have been measurable sales draws in years (much as I might have wished otherwise in certain cases). Millar? He already did Spider-Man, so I don’t see much novelty appeal in him doing BND. Bendis? Maybe, maybe not, for the same reasons, although what’s funny is that his teenage version of Peter Parker in USM is about a billion times more mature, intelligent, sympathetic and easy to relate to than the Peter Parker in BND, in no small part because Ultimate MJ and Aunt May are in on his secret. Now, if Whedon were to come on board, I could see sales jumping … or maybe not, considering the current backlash against him, but I also don’t see him doing it.

What should concern Marvel is that, aside from old-school fans in their 30s, I don’t really hear anyone praising this book, and even a lot of those fans are sort of qualified in their praise, saying things like, “It’s not MEANT to be exciting.” I suppose this is where I disagree with Paul, because I recall Paul once asserting that Spider-Man works best when it’s a formula, except that all of the best Spider-Man stories were either written BEFORE their style became calcified enough to qualify as a “formula,” or else they BROKE the formula. The only reason a story like “The Night Gwen Stacy Died” seems like a formula Spider-Man story NOW is because countless talentless hacks referenced it to fucking death, to the point that, much like “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” it’s a great story that I almost wish had never been written, simply so that I wouldn’t have to suffer through every other writer trying to rip it off.

I mean, has there been ANY positive mainstream press about this? At ALL? Every single story I’ve seen, by non-comics industry journalists, has referenced the deal with the devil to the exclusion of all else, and half of those called it a “divorce” between Peter and Mary Jane, which was precisely what Quesada DIDN’T want people to see it as. I try and explain the current state of Spider-Man’s continuity to non-comics readers, and they’re convinced that I’m lying to them, because they can’t believe that a company like Marvel would publish a story that stupid. Outside of nostalgic longtime fanboys, I really don’t see this as appealing to anyone at all.