I can’t imagine how it must feel to have seen another Clone Saga of sorts show up after having been a fan since the 70s haha. The worst kind of deja vu.

While I don’t agree with everything you’re saying, I understand it. Slott has definitely overstated his welcome and the best selling character at Marvel skews his value. I wanted to throw up my heart when it looked like Stark was moving in on MJ. Just put them back together dammit, we all want it and nobody cares about any other woman in his life. Marvel has to know that given that Renew Your Vows exists.

Clown Conspiracy has it’s moments, but it’s just too cartoonish and detatched from Spider-Man’s sense of reality, and is no less convoluted than all of the other Clone Sagas over the years. To me, the best attempt at the saga was the 2009 rewrite of the story from Tom DeFalco and Howard Mackie.

It is high time for change at the top and a new Spider-Man writer to take the helm of ASM, and for the love of god bring back Mary Jane.

I never liked Ben Reilly (and I never understood the fan appreciation for him or his ugly costumes). I never liked Kaine. I never liked any of the stories where the Jackal was the villain, except maybe wayyyy back when he first appeared, and then only for a moment. He always seemed like a cut-rate Green Goblin to me, right down to the reveal that he was actually someone Peter knew personally.

Bringing Jackal and all the clones back just feels like desperation to this old Spidey fan… Like they’re just playing his greatest hits (and misses) for the younger crowd. In my youth, we had Marvel Tales reprints of those old stories for that. Now they just re-make the stories with modern references, instead.

I don’t think the problem is Slott. He’s a solid writer who has done more good than harm to the Spider-Man mythos. I think the problem at the top. I was hoping the recent Secret Wars event would be the Marvel Comics opportunity to do a bit of a soft reboot on the whole line, but instead they’re using it to radically change the existing Marvel Universe, and not always for the better.

I think having Peter Parker go from average guy to billionaire with lots of amazing gadgets and corporate responsibilities has altered him enough to make him uninteresting. If I wanted to read about a billionaire with lots of amazing gadgets and corporate responsibilities, I’d be reading Iron Man or Batman. I’m not saying Parker has to be a broke, down-on-his-luck sadsack forever, but that there’s a HUGE jump from one point to the other, and having him be marginally successful and comfortable is very different from having him become a rich and powerful head of his own corporation. I mean, his ENEMIES were those guys. Now he’s become one of them. It just doesn’t feel very Peter Parker-ish to me.