Marvel Comics Editor Tom Brevoort Said Marvel Has "Concluded Decisively" That No Amount Of Fan Outcry Would Bring Back The Spider-Man Marriage

Marvel Comics editor Tom Brevoort stepped in it again on his Substack, reiterating that Amazing Spider-Man is unlikely ever to have Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson married again because “Amazing Spider-man has been consistently our bestselling title.”

Earlier this month, X-Men line editor Tom Brevoort mocked fans who wanted to see Mary Jane and Peter Parker back together and married as a “couple of yahoos” harassing Marvel Comics editorial, despite there being long evidence that fans in general demand Spider-Man to be married and have a family.

Fans always point to bestselling titles like Spider-Girl from the early 2000s, showing a happy family for Peter Parker, as well as Ultimate Spider-Man, with its peak sales as a top-selling Marvel title for over a year, as a reason to go back to the way things were before J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada torched the character in the One More Day storyline, ending Spider-Man’s marriage by making him have a deal with Mephisto that reset reality.

Since then, all kinds of changes have happened in Amazing Spider-Man, including bringing back Harry Osborn to life magically without an explanation that made little sense and invalidating a lot of wonderful, emotional storylines from the past that made Spider-Man the character he is.

To prove it’s not just a couple of yahoos, Brevoort keeps getting asked about the question of the Spider-Marriage, and he received another ask this time, which he summarily dismissed once again.

The commenter asked, “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?”

Brevoort responded, “You never say never, Brandon, 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.”

What’s interesting is that the commentator asked if there would be a threshold to make it happen, but the answer was no. It’s clear that Marvel editorial doesn’t look at sales of what the potential could be if readers were satisfied, but they are going to continue moving along with Amazing Spider-Man in a way readers don’t like because they’ll simply buy it at an acceptable level anyway.

This kind of attitude and inability to listen to the readership is why the comic industry is in such trouble that its major distributor is going bankrupt, bringing several publishers along with it. If Marvel Editors didn’t have carte blanche to treat readers like this because the books were simply being used as IP farms for Disney movies, we might actually have to see them answer these questions in reality.

For now, it appears as if no amount of fan outcry or sales will impact the line. Which begs the question: why be a fan?

What do you think of Tom Brevoort dismissing the spider-marriage again? Leave a comment and let us know.

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