Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort Attacks Amazing Spider-Man Fans Who Want The Peter Parker and Mary Jane Marriage Reinstated As Just "A Couple Of Yahoos"

Recently, X-Men editor Tom Brevoort seems to be bitter about Marvel Comics fans disliking the current direction of major characters. After last year attacking critics of identity politics in X-Men calling them “alt-right” and “cretins,” he’s attacked Amazing Spider-Man fans who want Peter and Mary Jane together in matrimony dismissing them as “ a couple of yahoos.”

Tom Brevoort seems to love to embattle his line in controversy as the editor of X-Men and long time Marvel Comics employee.

Last year, he teased changes with an image labeled “From The Ashes” before arguing with fans about what would come and telling them it would be a political book, saying, “the message is the premise.”

This comment rubbed fans the wrong way, who have been upset in general with Marvel and DC Comics going more woke over the last several years, seeming to make everything about the LGBTQ agenda after a decade of pushing almost all of their characters into interracial relationships to virtue signal on the skin color level.

Clearly frustrated with fan reaction, he followed up on his Substack saying, “First off, I think the ill-defined accusation of being “woke” is nonsense. I tend to turn off and tune out whenever it comes up in almost any context. The people who are using it, and who brandish it like a sword to attack whatever they don’t like, tend to be mostly, well, cretins.”

“They aren’t making a good faith argument,” Tom Brevoort continued, “they’ve just come up with an all-purpose term, an infinitely adaptable scarlet letter that they can hang on anything they don’t like for any reason. That all laid out, I’ll tell you what I said previously on social media when a version of this question came up: for X-MEN, the message is the concept.”

Toward the end of last year, he pushed back on a fan concerned about negative sales trends for comics, something that has objectively been happening for years and causing many shops to go out of business because the companies don’t provide content the customers want.

He wrote, “You know, whenever one of these alternate universes sparks some momentary heat, there are always some fans like yourself that ask this question, bic. But the obvious answer is no, of course not. For one thing, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the way the mainstream Marvel or DC books are selling.”

Now with a new blog, he responds to a reader with more tone-deaf statements showing he doesn’t care what the fans think whatsoever.

A user said, “Over in the Spider-Man arena on Reddit, there is a recurring idea that the success of the new Ultimate Spider-Man (with a married Peter Parker) is an indication that the regular 616 Peter's marriage to MJ should be reinstated, and that it is a fault of the editor(s) over there for not recognizing that and thus reaping similar sales success. I don't necessarily agree, but wondered about your thoughts about how the one book's success affects the other.”

Brevoort replied, “Yeah, I’ve been hearing from a couple of yahoos whose idea of a good time is to send us the same form letter about MJ and Paul every single day , Glenn. But here’s the thing: I think the point of view that you’re talking about is simply incorrect. First off, the difference in sales between ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN is relatively slim. It’s not like ULTIMATE is doing twice or three times the business or anything. And secondly, I don’t think that the success of ULTIMATE at the moment is just down to Pete and MJ being married within it. I think it has a lot more to do with the quality of the work that Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto are producing. So I get that people who want Pete and MJ back together are of course going to point to that series, but the truth is that it doesn’t really make a convincing argument to me at all. I’ve been around this particular sort of block too many times over the years to mistake the signals.”

The idea that the people who want Peter Parker and Mary Jane married in regular continuity is “a couple of yahoos” is insulting to comic book readers, and is a complete mischaracterization of the room. Yes, Ultimate Spider-Man sold on the premise that there was a marriage and family, giving readers what they wanted after decades of refusing to do so.

It is interesting to point out that as the book has gotten into the tens of issues, that Ultimate Spider-Man is no longer selling double or triple what Amazing Spider-Man was. It seems the excitement for the Ultimate Universe is wearing off and even the prospect of a Spider-Marriage couldn’t retain that level of interest in comic shops for very long.

Readers at this point understand that everything gets reset, nothing matters to continuity, and eventually these side-lines like the Ultimate Marvel Universe get canceled, making it difficult to be a fan of any of these properties because of the way there’s no purpose to the storytelling.

Perhaps if Marvel listened to its readers, they might realize that the sales problems they constantly face are their own doing. Instead, they insult their fans calling them “cretins” or “yahoos” any time they get feedback they don’t like, and this comes from the upper levels of editorial at the company.

With Tom Brevoort continuing this trend of talking down to readers and treating them like they’re idiots, it’s a wonder how Marvel Comics is still in business.

What do you think of Tom Brevoort attacking Spider-Man fans who want Peter Parker and Mary Jane together? Leave a comment and let us know.

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