Brian Miller: "Have they pretty much stopped all references to his web-shooting? From reading what posters have said, his new ability to shoot webs from his own body pretty much hasn't been referenced since he gained this power. Do they not bring any attention to it at all? Used to be, in or about every issue, you'd see Spidey check his web-shooters or heck, he'd even run out of fluid while falling or something. It was always there. A mention here, a line there, but it was there. Now? Do they talk about it at all?"

Not been mentioned since Paul Jenkins did it.  Which begs the question "Why?".  Alas I am now no longer a member of the 'still read Spider-Man' brigade.  I stuck with the Spider-Totam stuff because, up until Aunt May discovered Peter was Spider-Man and *didn't* freak out, it was just another story.  Following that JMS did some pretty decent issues that reunited Peter and MJ and I almost quit with SINS PAST but didn't because I couldn't believe it was true.  JMS's reasons for doing this to Gwen ("It gave her depth") reeked to me of an author hiding something so a new and better story was obviously waiting in the wings.

Apparently, I was wrong.  This shite makes that issue of WEB OF SPIDER-MAN that Jim Shooter wrote where Spidey played football with aliens look like genius. A Peter Parker that has his eye gouged out and *eaten* and then mutates into some Jeff Goldblum reject whilst embracing "The Spider" before chowing down on on some guys head (!) is not my Peter Parker.

This pains me on every level.  I love Peter Parker as if he were a real friend.  He's seen me through the good times and the bad.  Peter's life should be a reflection of our own with the Spider-Man stuff kept as separate as possible ("The Hero that could be YOU!!!!", remember?).  Spider-Man is Peter's escape when his cooker blows up or he stand in dog shit or he has to queue in the bank for hours.  Stories that have Peter's life crossing with Spider-Man's, be they Aunt May almost marrying Doc Ock or Peter moving into Avenger Tower, DO NOT WORK!!  EVER!  The one exception is and always was Norman/Harry Osborn. 

Spider-Man is my favourite fictional character.  Hell, I still believe that he isn't entirely fictional and when I eventually get to visit New York I'll see him darting between buildings.  RIP Peter.  I'll miss you.

Andy

This shite makes that issue of WEB OF SPIDER-MAN that Jim Shooter wrote where Spidey played football with aliens look like genius.

************

The sad thing is, I remember this issue, and vividly remember the cover to it.

Oh, c'mon... what's not to love? :-)

(Edited to add - I type this up before the previous post.)

Andrew,

From what I hear, Jenkins did it because editorial asked him to.  To get him in line with the movies maybe?  Didn't know about the talking to insects thing.

Glenn: You worked in the biz at the time so I'll take your word for it, but I remember digging through a recent edition of THE STANDARD CATALOG OF COMIC BOOKS and looking at all the statements of ownership. Even just after the market crash, Amazing Spider-Man never fell to 70,000 copies.

"To be fair, that's not true. Spider-Man sales were lower than that in the mid to late 90s, following the downturn of the entire industry. Spider-Man was one of the last characters to really be affected, but when he finally was, he took a big tumble.

70,000 isn't great, but it's better than what it once was."

One of the worst legacies of the bust was that certain properties like X-Men and Spider-Man used to sell better than anything, almost no matter what that anything else was.  No matter how good Superman or Batman or Hulk were, they wouldn't sell better than Spider-Man because there were a lot of casual readers (folks who only read a few comics or read them infrequently) who used to just read Spider-Man.  That entire audience has now been lost and we've basically got the same hardcore group that reads everything.

Mike

After doing some research (and these are all pre-order numbers; Diamond switched to actual sales numbers a couple of years back).

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #418 (between 92,500 and 122,100) Oct 1996

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #428 68,000 Sep 1997

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #431 63,800 Dec 1997

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #438 61,900 Sep 1998

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (current volume) #6: 71,800 April 1999

...

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #525 79,520 Oct 2005

So you were right, Glenn, though it wouldn't surprise me if actual sales with reorders added on to those old pre-order numbers pushed sales above current figures. AMAZING has been steadily dropping and will probably hit 1999 levels and then 1998 levels shortly.