I don't know. FOr a long time MJ was always named top supporting character in fan polls and there was a lot of complaints when she was removed from the book.

I think they have a significant audience for both keeping and removing MJ and that is a problem for them.  Though maybe less so now that Ultimate and the movies have also established MJ, even more than the real Spidey-verse did for years.

Peter isn't in a nightmare. He's married to a beautiful woman. Why would he want to wake up?

Mike is right in what he says - most fans (and Quesada) think the marriage is not conducive to good stories. How do you get Peter out of the marriage without alienating fans? Kill MJ (maybe she could be raped before she is whacked, that would be a cool and novel idea for superhero comics); divorce Peter as he is a) secretly gay, b) not so secretly a spider pretending to be a man or c) she's fallen in love with Steve Rogers (I'd put my money on the last one); or pretend it was all a dream and send Peter back to when he was 16, obviously this is the most stupid idea of them all.

I'm not sure how the Clone Saga affects him at all anymore. It isn't a barnacle.

The marriage is there-like i said i approve of it when written right and I think it can be and still be true to the character.

Spider-totem? Well, sometimes even JMS ignored it. Seems to me it is something that will be ignored come later writers.

Superman had dropped in popularit. Spider-man -compared to the other sales on the market-has not on a relative basis all that much. 

I'll admit JMS's act has worn thin.  I am hoping Peter David might be able to do some fun stories though. Although Spider-man has starred in plenty of good dark stories over the years.

This is where the whole "real time" and "aging" bugaboo comes to the fore. If Parker is 16 and has money troubles and sometimes behaves recklessly -- well, that's called "being a teenager". If he's 28 and still dealing with the same stuff (in the same way!) that's called "being a loser".

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I remember feeling this way as a kid when I learned that Sting (then still with The Police -- yes, I'm old) was married with kids -- suddenly all those "nobody loves me" and "nobody understands me" songs felt wrong.

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I'm not sure how the Clone Saga affects him at all anymore. It isn't a barnacle.

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The clone saga is very "illusion of change." You can just ignore it. You can't ignore that Peter is married (a situation that is unfixable unless Mary Jane is revealed to be a clone) or that Aunt May knows his identity. These are drive-by violations of the character.

I liked the Dan Jurgens Spider-Man with Ben Reilly, because it had the elements of Spider-Man that first got me interested in the character. He was struggling with making it to his job on time and dealing with romantic problems in his civilian identity, while fighting crime as Spider-Man.

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Yet doomed for two reasons: Ben wasn't Peter Parker. The name "Peter Parker" is up there with "Bruce Wayne" and "Clark Kent." As long as he's not using that name, he's going to be considered a "fake." You also lost the great supporting cast if he can't be "Peter" and since he'd been established as having lost five years of his life, it would be hard for him to ever really seamlessly go back to it.

Again: Mary Jane should have been the clone. You solve everything there. Put Peter back in college and never mention his age or marriage again and just start writing him as a teen.