Yeah, it kind of makes me sad. Maybe we all just get nostalgic for things to return to the era where we started reading. Me, I started reading in /91, so there were 4 decidedly different flavors of Spidey to read. Amazing was being done by Michelinie and Larsen, and it was so much fun! New villains, Big stories, one and done stories, good times! Spider-man was being done by McFarlane, and it basically inspired an entire generation of future comic artists (myself included). I remember trying to draw like McFarlane and Larsen every time 11 year old me picked up a pencil! Then you had Spectacular, which was doing Harry's turn to the Goblin...and it was so dark and awesome...but it gave so much reverence to the past!! More than anything, it was SSM that got me to want to go back and read the old stuff! Then you had Web, which was probably the lesser of the books, but was not bad by any means! Alex Saviuk continued to draw the Spider-man comic strip long after Web ended! He may still draw it. I'm not sure if it still continues. Either way, that's a testament.
Sorry. I had a point. That being that, the creative teams on those books stayed consistent and you didn't have a jarring change in tone, except on Spider-Man when McFarlane left. Larsen took over, which was awesome, but then it became the weakest of the lot. Rotating creative teams with inconsistent artists, haphazard stories, and some that made you really think the title served no purpose...which it didn't. It was a book created for a creator who left it after 16 issues, one of which had to be a fill-in issue (no fault of his own, he was injured in a baseball accident).
Look at the quality of the stuff back then, though! 4 good Spidey titles! All on time.
I wish Mr. Zdarsky the best of luck in wherever he goes from here. The Spidey books will be poorer without him, that's for sure!
