#dan slott

In other words the last pre-OMD year before Civil War, Back in Black or OMD, which obviously were going to artificially spike sales with temporary interest due to the Unmasking, movie tie-in nature and OMD being OMD vs the first four post-OMD years, the immediate fallout.

Unless I am massively misinterpreting the results, it is not what I expected.

My expectation was that the sales would be the same at worst but probably higher. The 2008 market was not that different across the board to 2005 therefore ASM should be selling similarly or better for the following reasons:

a) Moving to ASM three times a month means the collectors will buy ASM three times as much as before

b) Because ASM autosells higher than non-ASM 616 Peter Parker Spider-Man titles, replacing FNSM and Sensational with ASM would inevitbly result in a sales increase

c) Whilst not the case for most issues out the gate in 2008, even in 2008 some issues had variants and the frequency of variants increased over time. Variants as well all know artifically inflate sales.

d) The star power of creators. By 2008 Marvel had already moved into a model wherein they were emphasising the super star writer and o a lesser extent super star artist. And in 2008, believe it or not, Dan Slott, Mark Waid, Joe Kelly, Steve McNiven, John Romita Junior, Bob Gale and many other BND alumni (though definitely not Zeb Wells) were indeed names that had their own draw to a lesser or greater degree. As hard to believe as this might be now, Slott was a fan favourite many fans (not me btw) were clamouring to write ASM due to his popular She-Hulk run (which had great moments for Spidey and other Spider-Man characters) and his beloeved Spidey/Torch mini-series. Joe Kelly was very well known for his Superman run (He wrote the iconic issue that Superman vs the Elite was based upon) and was regarded as the GOAT of Deadpool creators. Mark Waid had a lot of acclaimed work under his belt albeit his House of M SPidey mini had been poorly received. Nevertheless circa 2008 many people knew him from his popular F4 run with popular Spidey artist Mike Wieringo. In fact the duo were originally going to helm FNSM but it wound up being Peter David instead. McNiven had very recently drawn Civil War (2006). Bob Gale co-wrote Back to the Future! There was A LOT of star power thrown at Spider-Man post-OMD. Anfter BND Ramos became the regular artist and whilst I dion't like his work personally, many adore it so he had some star power too. Oh, and lets not discount those sexy J Scott Cambell covers

e) Huge coverage from the comic book press. As much as Spider-Man typically got Marvel through their influence in outlets like CBR were pupming out positive spin piece articles and huge promotional stuff. Which was easy enought o do given the rotation of talent at play.

f) Frankly, I presumed people had been hate reading Spider-Man or reading out of at least curisity, even if it was morbid. Like what WAS the state of play in the wake of the most controversial Spider-Man/Marvel story of all time?

The star power stuff and ASM tri-monthly was clearly a hail mary bid to cushion the fallout from OMD because Marvel KNEW ASM automatically sold higher and were hoping the star power would attract people. Slott being the fan favourite at the time not so surprisingly was the first writer of BND and was given the honour of penning ASM #600 and the first event story New Ways to Die with historic artist Romita Junior and featuring Green Goblin and Venom.

Slott also took over as ASM's sole writer in 2010 when ASM switched to twice a month instead of three times a month. Now obviously, that'd impact sales, but its still selling double what it was in 2005 in terms of collectors because collectors will buy no matter how much they like the content. They just want ASM for their collection and/or because they want to collect every Humberto Ramos or Romita Junior bit of artwork.

So, even with ALL these factors helping it, how were ASM's sales in 2008-2011 compared to 2005?

Well, the Total PAID circulation (avg) in 2005 was 112,564

Remember, that is JUST ASM, it is not including any of the other monthly or 616 Peter Parker titles from back then.

So, what were the The Total PAID circulation (avg) of ASM in the first 4 years after OMD:

2008: 105,948

2009: 77,403

2010: 72,663

2011: 70,418

...Holy shit...35161

For years I was WAY off!

I was walking around with the blackpilled presumption that between hate buying and Marvel gaming the system the sales were sufficiently cushioned that Marvel could spin the narrative that clearly fans didn't REALLY care about OMD or the marriage being removed.

But, unless I am misinterpreting these results, the exact opposite was true.

Even with ALL the sales inflators applied, even with all the stuff that was boosting and bolstering ASM's sales...it LOST readers.

It lost them immediately in 2008 by over 6000 people, which is survivable I admit but when you consider that that number is in fact inflated due to all the stuff they were doing to help it out it becomes more damning. Either way it seriously hurts their narrative of BND and a post-marriage Spider-Man being a success. Especially when you consider you got like 36 issues of ASM in 2008 with a wide variety of stories and writers and artists so it wasn't as if there wasn't sufficient material to judge it on. People were judging older ASM runs based upon 12 issues of a year.

But by 2009 onwards though, when apparently fans had satisfied their curiosity, they HAD abandonned ASM in a big way. Like by 2009 over 25% of the 2005 readership was GONE and that number kept going down. You can't even blame this on inconsistency due to a rotation of creators because in 2011 (unless you want to honestly count occasional fill ins) ASM only had one writer and Ramos was the main artist.

The numbers seem to prove that post-OMD Spider-Man was a financial FAILURE but one Marvel kept to due to their ideology.

You WERE going to have your unmarried/not with Mary Jane Spider-Man whether you wanted it or not.

It is exactly the same kind of psycholigcal pehnomenon you can observe in Hollywood of the mid-2010s onwards. Finanical realities, audience goodwill (which translates to future financial stability) is not valued as highly as the internal beliefs of the people making the creative works.

The audiance has never said they wanted a rebooted Ghostbusters but make it clear they do want Ghostbusters 3. No, you WILL have Ghostbusters (2016).

The audiance and viewer numbers indicate they DON'T want a follow up to Kurtzman's Star Trek Discovery and its associated spin-offs, but they DO want a follow up to Star Trek Picard Season 3. No, you WILL have Starfleet Academy and you WILL NOT have Star Trek Legacy.

Reception and performance of Ahsoka is poor. Performance of Andor is not great but imrpoves over time whilst reception goes from middling to acclaimed? No, there will not be an Andro season 3 but there WILL be an Ahsoka season 2.

Audiences and ratings of Doctor Who decline under Jodie Whittaker in a more significant way than under Peter Capaldi. This particularly happens in the wake of a huge retcon to the main character's origin. People DO NOT LIKE the Timeless Children backstory. The next tenture with the consequent Doctors opt to double down on it along with other elements the audience do not like.

Arkham-verse Bruce Wayne is incredibly popular and the foundation of your shared Video game franchise. So let's make him evil, insult him, in essence claim he made things worse instead of better then have a gag character murder him on a fucking bench when anyone with any common sense would tell you that that's OBVIOUSLY going to cost you money.

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