Tom Brevoort says the marrige will never return

Brevoort talking about the marriage AGAIN!

In his most recent Substack column, Marvel Executive Editor, SVP and X-Men Group Editor Tom Brevoort was asked by a reader "In your opinion, is there a threshold that a book like Ultimate Spider-Man (or Renew Your Vows, or Spider-Girl, or any of the other "Peter and MJ are a married couple" projects through the decades) could reach that would cause editorial to say "okay, Amazing is losing to this other book, clearly the thing the audience is responding to is married Spider-Man, we should bring that back into main continuity"?"

To which Brevoort said:

"You never say never, but I don't believe that there is any such threshold because that's not what publishing ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN or RENEW YOUR VOWS and the like is all about. Those aren't test cases, they are alternatives for those who desire those alternatives. But I believe that we've concluded decisively that the best platonic ideal of Spider-Man is one that is unattached, and that conclusion isn't going to be changed by a particular alternate interpretation momentarily performing well. And AMAZING SPIDER-MAN has been consistently our best-selling regular title for a decade and a half, so another book selling better than it isn't cause for concern, it's cause for celebration. but ASM sales continue to click along just as they've consistently done, so pointing to ULTIMATE and concluding that the one and only factor contributing to its success is coincidentally the one factor that those fans would like changed about ASM is working backwards from a desired conclusion."

Brevoort's a fucking liar but I believe him on this. The second half of Spencer's run got mangled because he tried to bring it back. Marvel is sticking to it. Peter sold his marriage to the fucking devil and that was it. Marvel would rather sacrifice a virgin every year rather than bring the marriage back. But they'll tease the fuck out of it and allow it in alternate universes.

They'd get far less shit for it if they moved on from it themselves by not teasing it so much. They whine about the fans wanting it back so much, but you don't keep poking a bear with a stick and expect it to not take that shit lying down.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN has been consistently our best-selling regular title

Because it's Spider-Man...

he's right though and it sucks for spidey fans

the casuals will buy it. because it is simply ASM. it doesn't matter if it's JMS, wells, spencer, slott, a rotating room of writers, it's the flagship title, it'll always sell. so they can do whatever slop they feel like

spidey fans need to stop buying it and just buy ultimate to send the message but it'll never happen so we're all fucked. victim of spidey's success

Tom Brevoort says the marrige will never return

good

another 20 trillion for the ultimate imprint

At this point it's deliberately antagonistic. Openly telling the fans to go fuck themselves always works well.

They're not though. Not really. Even their big selling titles are sub cancellation numbers of what they used to be back in the day. Now there's a lot of reasons for that beyond just this but you can't look at the pitiful sales and think this is a win.

those fans would like changed about ASM is working backwards from a desired conclusion.

Except OMD has been the main topic of discussion when it comes to ASM for damn near twenty years. At this point that dark cloud isn’t going to be leaving the title until it’s actually addressed. Eventually someone will be in charge of Marvel who either values sales over what they think the character should be or someone who grew up with married Spider-Man and it’ll be back. All of this “it’ll never be back” bullshit from Marvel writers and editors and them just flat out lying to back up their claims is just getting embarrassing. They just need to say “considering our comics are long form storytelling that have gone thru hundreds of creators hands it’s impossible to say whether or not it’ll ever happen but under the current administration there are no plans to have Peter married to Mary Jane in Amazing Spider-Man”. Why is that so hard?

The point is: nothing will change for ASM because, good or bad, people keep buying it. You can complain and all, but, while the public doesn't stop to buy the book, what won't happen, the staff will keep making regular stories at best, and terrible at worst.

Because people love hate Spider-man stories.

Funny thing, someone on the comments section of Bleeding Cool was saying that we're coming up on the generation that grew up with OMD,

Oh god we are. But yeah, just because that generation grew up during it doesn't mean they grew up ON it. They're more OMD Spider-man adjacent than anything else. They don't care. The whole past era could have been a giant blank void and it wouldn't matter. There is no OMD era fan.

nothing will change for ASM because, good or bad, people keep buying it

Sales have nothing to do with it, it’s just what editorial wants. Comic sales are such a minuscule source of revenue for Disney they really don’t give a shit what’s done there…Amazing Spider-Man sales have been slipping hard, especially since Ultimate Spider-Man became a thing, that anyone who genuinely cared about sales would have hit the brakes and course corrected a long time ago (remember when Hulk beat Batman in sales one month and DC immediately fired the writer on Batman and replaced him with a more “meat and potatoes” writer?) but Marvel Comic sales fly so far under the radar they can continue to run the ship based solely on ego and what editorial wants to see. It would take a “all-new all different marvel” level disaster for things to really change on a dime.

They actually changed their mind and decided they were going to try and make the marriage work

The cockteasing is one of the only things they have to keep people reading. For all the claims about how the marriage limited stories and ideas they have done nothing new or interesting with the character since it ended so they have to keep teasing pathetic fans with the hope things will go back to when the character was good. "Hey guys maybe we'll do it this time!" It's like Lucy with the football.

Guys, marriage ain't even a good idea IRL.

Yeah, that's my point. That generation is more likely to have grown up on the movies (MCU, Spider-Verse) or the Sony games. But of the ones that do read comics, they hate OMD.

Smart money would have been to write Mary Jane out of the book for like ten years after One More Day…no mention of her, no Peter pining for her, no cockteases, she’s just out of the book for like ten years. And not let writers (namely Slott) engage in pissing contests with fans online about it. They never gave fans the chance to move on because less than a year after MJ comes back into the book regularly and from the start you had Slott being a complete asshole online about it

Who gives a shit about IRL, you uncreative hack

the customers are telling us what they want!

...better just needlessly antagonize them over the stupidest fucking shit imagineable because I want to pretend that marvel comics deeply respects and cares about its characters and their arbitrary, artificial drama!

This guy is probably gonna be fired before the end of the year.

Guys been doing this for decades, he won't leave until he dies. Hopefully he dies soon though

Bro, chill. It ain't that serious. It's just comics.

The only social media I use is Anon Babble so I don’t know where these people are asking Brevoort these questions else I’d ask myself but has anyone asked why, if the marriage has no real affect on sales, they’ve been consistently cockteasing Peter and MJ getting back together since at least 2012?

They can be together without being married. Don't get why you guys specifically want them married. Nostalgia? Autism?

What I want to know is how well is his X-line really doing? X-Men and Uncanny are top sellers for Marvel, but ASM was Marvel's top seller in 2023 and that was a year when retailers were reporting problems with sales, and even decades-long stores closed down

Liefeld talked to two retailers recently one who sells at conventions on the west coast and another who runs a store that's been around since the 80s. They both reported there's been a loss of interest in the X-line months after From the Ashes started. What's it like everywhere else? Cause if that's doing bad, it makes me wonder how badly everything else at Marvel that isn't the Ultimate line is doing

Slott did it because he was an asshole. Spencer did it because he genuinely wanted it to happen and was willing to burn any future he had at Marvel to make the attempt. Lowe didn't tease it at all, and Kelly's clearly a Felicia man who won't be teasing it either.

Don't get why you guys want Spider-Man to remain unmarried. Nostalgia? Autism?

Giving into stated preferences is a rookie movie. It's all about revealed preferences, and for the past nearly-20 years that's "most Spider-Man comic purchasers don't care one way or the other" so the editors' preferences win out.

Spencer did it because he genuinely wanted it to happen and was willing to burn any future he had at Marvel to make the attempt.

Hell arguably he had no future at Marvel at the time he started ASM, because they let him do Secret Empire which had the biggest PR shitshow that Disney had to step in and eventually part of the reason Alonso was booted. Ironically in the time since his reputation recovered because he put more effort into doing a Spider-Man people wanted to read compared to the BND crowd

It's really galling when people try to say it's all for the sake of character development by undoing one of the most important and, till then, permanent character developments the character has ever had. If marvel really wanted to push the character forward they could have had him actually have a kid. That's the next logical step. You don't need to kill Aunt May off either. Her being a grandma/aunt would make for some interesting hooks itself. Imagine her baby sitting and somehow the Spider-baby keeps climbing out of it's pen.

Spencer did it because he genuinely wanted it to happen and was willing to burn any future he had at Marvel to make the attempt. Lowe didn't tease it at all

I know Spencer was genuinely trying to fix it but what I’m not understanding is if everyone at Marvel, including Disney according to Slott, feels that Peter and Mary Jane should absolutely not be married and them being married is a detriment to sales, why did the editors allow Spencer to get so far as he did in undoing it? Was Strange’s “what’s wrong with Peter’s soul” like to Mephisto ever get addressed?

that's industry wide though, everything is down. but ASM continues to sell and that's all that matters to them

it can't be all completionists and variant collectors, because it's always in the top. 3 of the top 15 books in january were ASM. they will continue to slop it up because the know the fags will buy anything with it in the title

They have no issues with Peter and Mary Jane dating. They just weren't paying all that much attention to where he was going because he had already been told he couldn't touch OMD and they didn't imagine he would try to pull a fast one.

Was Strange’s “what’s wrong with Peter’s soul” like to Mephisto ever get addressed?

No, that got bait and switched into "Dr. Strange rescued Harry's soul."

it can't be all completionists and variant collectors, because it's always in the top. 3 of the top 15 books in january were ASM.

You do realize that's all relative right? You can still be in the top three if the top three all sell like shit. The fact that their other books are doing worse does not mean ASM is doing well.

I don't get why they won't at least let Peter get the win over the devil even if that doesn't restore the marriage

Comics are niche and make ass money. Film, tv, and merch are what moves units.

How much does Tom pay you to keep posting lip service?

They just weren't paying all that much attention to where he was going because he had already been told he couldn't touch OMD and they didn't imagine he would try to pull a fast one.

This is such bullshit I’m convinced you’ve gotta be somebody running defense on Marvel editorial. Anyone with half a fucking brain could tell that’s where Spencer was going.

They are. I wouldn't bat an eye at all if it turned out they were fabricating the sales numbers for ASM to justify their creative decisions

i'm going to assume that marvel/dc can adjust their budgets internally in a declining market to make sure which books are still profitable. yes everything is selling worse but if it's all similar decline rates then the message still won't be sent to editorial.

ASM SHOULD be selling in the top 5, he's fucking spider-man. he should be there with absolute batman/USM, but he's not, that in itself is editorial malpractice, but marvel might have a long-term outlook on the line and view USM as a short-term thing and know when they want to take hickman off it (which then the sales will promptly plumet)

70 year old boomers who treat comic collecting as a business/drug addiction and don't give a single shit about comics as an artistic medium killed Spider-Man more than editorial did

Idk I kinda get it. It would only paint the character into a corner. Look at how DC mishandled it. Superman has a grown adult son. Let that sink in, bc while we're used to it it's still weird to consider. He canonically has an adult son, who DC has NO idea what to do with, whose history has been clunky at best and contrived and controversial at worst. And you can say, well Marvel wouldn't have to be retarded about it. And that sounds easy but wherever they go will have similar bumps along the road. Peter and MJ have a daughter who ____ insert some bad decision some writers likely to make that can't easily be undone etc.

The two universes with Ultimate and similar alt U's may be the best way to approach it to avoid this kinda thing.

I don’t give a fuck who these people are I just read what they write and if it’s dogshit I don’t read.

I would never know who tf this guy is if Anon Babble wasn’t obsessed with them

He used to have a small boy son until Bendis fucked shit up. That wasn't a problem until they decided it needed to be one. Peter very easily could have a kid. USM is doing just that and is outselling Amazing. He had a daughter in another book.

When Jon was a kid and Clark was raising him with Lois shit was perfect. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think this era was the last time supermans book was consistent in its sales

Peter's been stuck in a corner for years though and it has nothing to do with the marriage

Somehow still can't hold a job

Thanks to some BND bullshit he's not even allowed to be a photographer anymore

That means we almost never see the Bugle cast

Jonah doesn't even work at the Bugle anymore and hasn't for years so we almost never see him too

Peter's other friends are either dead or sucked up into Symbiote bullshit

His love life consists of dating the writer's new OC or other safe pick (usually Felicia) until the run ends so it gets reset

Quesada actually bragged about how "we're not like DC, we actually EXPLAIN our retcons" but in reality doing it DC style by just saying "yeah the universe got reset and the characters are younger now" would have been infinitely preferable to permanent character assassination.
Even though I don't want this, Marvel could at a bare minimum have Spider-man fight Mephisto to free himself from the bargain, and then he and MJ could say "we were still apart for so long and our lives have changed so much that we can't just go back to married life."
I want them to be married again, but this would unburden Spider-Man from the dark cloud hanging over him.

haven't touched ASM in 18 years
I also indirectly blame civil war for this

if we wait 30 years, people will no longer care about OMD thus we were right

>Somehow still can't hold a job

Going through the old comics it's honestly surprising how rarely this was the same level off issue it is the way people today think it was. Like he's never SUPER well off but he's not struggling to by ramen every other issue. You can honestly just have him semi well off based on his photography gig. I remember a few issues even suggesting he was pretty good at it to. He could easily be the clark kent of photography if they'd let him.

If unattached Spider-Man is the best, why isn't he having sex with a bunch of random women and avoiding paying his bastards' upkeeping?

I remember when I first got into Spider-Man it was right before spider island and the complaints back then are still here damn near 15yrs ago

Peter's good at photography but because he just leaves the camera on a web, his pics are bad. IIRC he got roasted for it. Something along the lines of "you could be the best but you're too lazy."

Another way to end OMD "prematurely" is having Peter rape MJ, thus forcing editorial's hands into a hiatus and hard-reboot to salvage the character

I also indirectly blame civil war for this

These are facts. Civil War doing the dumbfuck shit of making Peter reveal himself was the downfall of 616 Peter he also should’ve never sided with Ironman over cap

true

Wasn't the opposite true before? Webbing it up gave him the best, most impossible shots and angles and that's why he got hired in the first place?

Webbing it up gave him access to shots no one else could, but the compositions were typically pretty lousy.

He's taking action shots of super hero battles there's no really a lot any one can hope for art wise. But Pete could make some pretty wild city shots if he was inclined to.

Civil War ruined many things

If they trust you enough to write one of their main ongoings, they trust you enough not to intentionally undermine them by doing something they told you not to do.

>The Nick Spencer run gets a round of applause when a fan mentions it, but says that they felt a "sharp shift in direction" midway through the run. "I wouldn't say halfway through," Cebulski says, but towards the end, there were storylines that had to be adjusted. "There wasn't anything dramatic or anything we had to force down anyone's throats," he says.

The last issue of his run is an incoherent mess that contradicts itself multiple times because of those rewrites.
Marvel is also inconsistent with this. Under his watch, Paul Jenkins revealed that Curt Connors was a psychopath who was always pretending to be a victim and always 100% in control of the Lizard with Mark Millar acknowledging it in his Marvel Knights run. The next time he showed up, that story was ignored entirely and never brought up again.

The problem is the writting, not the status quo.
What always soured the disolution of the marriage was the need to use a pact with Mephisto and paint it as a good thing. After that it was always s series of bad editorial choices that keep pilling up until the actual point that have turned ASM into a similar state of a zombie sitcom that half of the people just hatewatch.

so pointing to ULTIMATE and concluding that the one and only factor contributing to its success is coincidentally the one factor that those fans would like changed about ASM is working backwards from a desired conclusion."

He is right about this part though. Like imagine someone who was crazy and thought the Kingpin should only ever be a Spider-Man villain and pointed to Ultimate as proof of it

Or like imagine someone who was crazy and thought Spider-Man should only be single and young and pointed to Bendis' Ultimate as proof of it

For some reason the BND group was really hostile to the idea of Peter just being a regular photographer forever that they had to go and make sure he could never get that kind of work again by having him outed as a photoshop-using fraud (for a good cause).

They likely thought of Miles as a replacement for Peter in BND, they treat Peter they way they do because they weren't allowed to retire him back then

If they trust you enough to write one of their main ongoings, they trust you enough not to intentionally undermine them by doing something they told you not to do

Sorry anon, I just don’t believe you. If you’re that concerned about something you don’t just go “eh I trust the guy not to do it” even tho he’s spent literally years building up to the thing you told him not to do. It’s either gross incompetency at their job (which tbf I can kinda buy with Marvel editorial), they were going to let him do it but got cold feet at the last minute (most likely scenario), or knew cockteasing it would bring in sales and hype but cut it off at the last second because fuck you fans we’re doing what we want (second most likely scenario)

But that doesn't make sense, Miles was created for the Ultimate Universe and there weren't any plans to bring him into 616 till around Secret Wars

I guess Brevoort is just the Sin Eater and has to deal with Marvel fans? Why is he dealing with Spider-Man crazies

Brand New Day was like 5 years before Miles existed?

It's pretty obvious that Lowe is a really hands-off editor. Sometimes that results in something fantastic like Nextwave, but with the wrong writer you get Zeb Wells's Amazing run.

It’s either gross incompetency at their job (which tbf I can kinda buy with Marvel editorial),

I believe it could be that, but there's also other things to consider:

Spencer just came off of Secret Empire. Remember that the PR for that was so bad that Disney had to step in. This might've made editorial a little gun-shy and they just let people do whatever as long as they didn't get people pissed off to the point where Disney gets involved.

Then the second thing that happened was COVID and the resulting lockdowns and then DC ditching Diamond. It's possible with all that going on someone almost missed what was going on.

I don’t think the Spider-Man editors or writers during that time thought of the consequences of their actions.

Yeah and in the last few years it's like the eagles have come home to roost for them

They were paying enough attention that they demanded that Ben be removed from the spider squad and that Peter wasn't allowed to visit Daredevil in jail

They could have sat on him and repurposed him for Ultimate where replacing Peter would be easier

Bendis definitely wasn't thinking that far ahead. Ultimatum hadn't even happened yet.

I'm saying Brevoort gave Bendis the idea for Miles

He absolutely did not.

You know damn well Miles is a character Tom would create solely out of his hatred for Peter

He's also a character Bendis would create out of love for blacks

That's just the perfect cover story. Miles was created because neither Brevoort nor Bendis wanted to fully modernize Peter's character

That doesn't make any sense. Brevoort's the one who wrote that whole manifesto and later some article on how Youth is the theme for Spider-Man, one of the last things he'd want is to bring in a younger Spider-Man which would make everything he said about keeping Peter young, make him look fucking stupid

Brevoort doesn't hate Peter and he wants Marvel's characters to exist the way they did when he was a kid.

But why is he bad at making him 70s Spider-Man then?

I really miss Nick Spencer's run. Last time ASM was great

Well he did edit BND line alongside Wacker and Brennen. The problems didn't truly begin until Lowe.

Pretty sure Bendis has gone on record as getting the idea for Miles from the Donald Glover for Spider-Man campaign that was happening around that time

bringing the marriage back would be nice but it wouldn't fix the rest of the damage they have done to Peter and ASM as a whole.

what does that have to do with peters marriage ?

They likely thought of Miles as a replacement for Peter in BND

Miles wasn't even a gleam in Bendis's eye while BND was going on you dumb bastard,
Fucking sick of newfags making shit up purely from their own vibes

you dumb bastard

indian ?

nta but he's right. You keep trying to make some grand conspiracy connecting OMD and Miles when the reality is that editorial is just out of touch and doesn't understand what the original appeal of Spider-Man was

Nothing but people are arguing about the origin of Miles and coming up with insane theories when like I said Bendis explained his reasoning/inspiration

You're not really dodging those dumb accusations

the best platonic ideal of Spider-Man is one that is [post OMD]

The man is literally insane and a danger to society and children.

I don't know that I'd call it great but it was at least readable. Which is saying a lot.

and pointed to Ultimate as proof of it

That is insane. 90s TAS did it best.

He'll never be Romita and he should just accept that

Then he should maybe write him like he was during that time. Because 70s/80s Pete wouldn't be half the sad sack modern Pete is. He'd be a bitter guy with anger problems.

And now Superlois is outselling ASM second only to USM, talk about irony, Marriage WORKS

CIvil War happened because Quesada wanted his own Edgelord Identity Crisis at Home, so this is also DilDio's blame since he hates the marriage and anything that isnt ditko's self projecting spergman

Brevoort hasn't been a Spider-editor since Brand New Day ended, he doesn't get any say now. But he wasn't too different from the old characterization under Brevoort, they even got Roger Stern to come back to write a few issues which he was happy to because he didn't like married Spider-Man either.

That asshole created the Mandate on which Quesada, Cebulski and Alonso were in it.
And is still enforced til this day.
The only way to put an end to this is torch the marvel's offices with him and all BND and Big Time writers in it.

Brevoort hasn't been a Spider-editor since Brand New Day ended, he doesn't get any say now

He's literally Marvel's Executive Editor and he doesn't shut the fuck up about it, also complaining that they ARE getting letters about the subject constantly. He has skin in the game.

He doesn't have total control over the books as executive editor the way an EiC does. He was seething over what was happening in X-Men under White and now he has direct control over those books and is doing things his way.

And they are bombing hard
Geoff Johns was right over he being a ConMan with nepo baby admission at Marvel due to his family and for being Quesada's friend.

Does he not? This is a legit question, not a gotcha. "Executive" always means someone who has ultimate say, and Cebulski has been little more than a prop thus far. Regardless, a lot of the people over at the Spider books worked directly under Brevoort like Lowe, so he has influence.

I love Peter with MJ but I've have never been interested in Spidey's canon fankids and that will never change.

It sells worse than it did when they were married so I don't understand this argument. There used to be multiple Spidey books all of them had a married Peter and all of them sold better than any Spidey book does now. Brevoort is just talking shit

that is because you are a silver age fag

Editor in Chief is the one at the top of the hierarchy. He can gives his opinion, but if Cebulski doesn't agree, they don't have to listen to him.

Anon, Yoshida is the one who agrees with OMD and BND

They all do. Salicrup and DeFalco were the only pro-marriage editors after Shooter.

I’ve never really liked Annie but I’ve always liked pre-Spider-Verse Mayday and Benjy. They both feel like natural extensions of Peter and MJ's personalities.

The problem with Annie is her middle name. Like honestly? Really? C'mon.

And DeFalco was unceremoniously fired during the Civil War coup because DiDio wanted his friends to control the comic industry.
Reminder that JLA Avengers only happened because those 2 retards had to fulfil the deal DC and Marvel did prior to them become EIC and the clausule being a "canonical event for both sides facing the biggest threat of all"

Anna May Parker is all of Mary Jane Watson's genes, she is literally Mary Jane if she was bitten instead of fucking Silk.

To be fair, she named after her two great aunts, it’s not Peter and MJ's fault their names happen to do that. It’s also why I headcanon that Mayday’s middle name is Anna for consistency and since it’s never been said before

I think you're confused about things, DeFalco was fired in 1995. Didio was working in cartoons back then, nowhere near comics.

Mayday looks like Peter if girl, so it evens out.