Effect said:
I just wish they would grow some balls and stick to an idea instead of caving in when some fans cry out they hate something. Clearly they had to have thought the idea had some merit and would be interesting for the character. Or it never would have gotten the green light I think. I really doubt they'd think the idea sucks and would be horrible and hated it and then wrote it anyway. I don't buy that at all and it makes no sense at all.
What it seems like to me is that Q and JMS might be telling the vocal fansbase what they want to hear to possiblly shut them up.
I think if they did anything they really wanted with Spider-man and allowed it be logical that the character would still be extremely popular.
Well, of course Marvel didn't intentionally said to themselves "hey, this idea sucks." Then again, Joe Q and JMS were so hell-bent on "altering the status quo" that they didn't stop to think about it. After all, Joe Q himself said that "The Other" would likely "piss off some fans" even before it came out. And, looking at the actual story, seeing how it left a lot of unanswered questions, dangling plot threads, shifts in tone, art mistakes (MJ's miraclous healing being one) etc., it was pretty clear that it was hastily put together. And it wasn't the idea of Spider-Man getting new powers that was bad but rather they really didn't add or improve upon what he already had, and, with regards to the stingers, were such rip-off of Wolverine it's amazing nobody at Marvel realized it.
Question, I know a lot of people seem to hate the clone saga or at least some are very vocal about it. Was there a serious sales drop off? When Ben Reily became Spider-man. Were the issues filled with dislike for the idea in the form of letters? Did sales drop because people stop reading or was there just an outcry of dislike among all fans or just some fans and Marvel gave into pleasing the most vocal (perhaps the smallest group) fans that disliked it?
What was the actual real reason for undoing it?
Well, the Clone Saga actually did sell well in the beginning and that was one of the reasons why, thanks to the money managers at Marvel, keep stretching it out hoping to sell more issues. But once it was "revealed" that Peter Parker was a "clone" and Ben Reilly was the "original," the backlash was enormous and sales tanked. Even after Marvel fixed it, the stain of it was still there and the Spider-Man comics took a long time to recover. It some ways they still haven't.
For an insiders look into the whole clone saga, check out this excellent site:
[url=http://www.newcomicreviews.com/GHM/specials/LifeOfReilly/1.html]The Life of Reilly[/URL]