Speaking as a reader who came back to Spider-man after the clone sage, because of Ben Reilly (and Dan Jurgens and that nice Spider-man costume) I really wish that Marvel had stuck to their guns because the first five or six months of Ben as Spidey were actually pretty damn cool comics and I wish the editors had stuck to their guns.

The clone saga itself? (Which I read after I started picking up Ben-Spidey to see what the anger was). A good story idea that was simply strung out for way too long which made the story pretty boring and incomprehensible.

One more day? I think they'll sell a lot of comics in the short term but with the way they did it, you know there's some writers out there itching to get on to the character so they can restore their childhood status quo which was Peter married to Mary Jane.

I think I've become so jaded that so many of these changes have been done away with so easily that I no longer believe in the changes. When I heard about Gwen's and Norman's kids I simply shrugged my shoulders and wondered how long it would be before they managed to undo that. A few years later and it's undone.

Should a backdoor be built into these stories so that if a new writer wants to do it they can? Sure, an out clause should be built into a comic book death so that somebody else can play with the toys.

You want to kill Batman so Nightwing can become Batman? Sure, but build it in such a way that Bruce Wayne can come back if another writer would prefer to write Bruce Wayne. Thus you can move forward while also providing the illusion of change because no change is permanent. 

They did this a lot in the silver age (though usually in the space of one issue) Superman would die and be replaced by a new hero only for it to be revealed at the end that it was Superman all along and he had a reason to pose as a different character.

Leave yourself an out that makes sense so that you DON'T have to do something as ridiculous as a deal with the devil in order to restore the core of the character.

Yeah the DVD to TV analogy is a little flawed - apples and comic books!

But Marvel and DC have saved titles due to high trade sales - most vertigo and WIldstorm books take into account trade sales when considering the monthlies (Y the last man, Transmetropolitain, the Losers, Desolation Jones) - the trades have saved the monthlies in those cases.

Same thing happned with the runaways series from marvel - the digest and trade sales were so strong the monthly series got a new lease on life.

Also strong trade sales after the fact have heralded the return of some series - the house of M trades were so strong that Marvel commissioned a new House of M mini series.

But it is true that monthly sales cannot dip beyond a point or else it just makes no sense to continue on..i wonder what the monthly sale/trade sale cut off point is...how long can a monthly go even with strong trade sales? i guess it depends on cash flow and other matters.

According to JMS one of the outcomes of his version of the ending of OMD was undoing "Sins Past."

Found the quote from the piece on Newsarama:

QUOTE: And yes, I wanted to retcon the Gwen twins out of continuity, which was something I always assumed I could do at the end of my run. I wasn't allowed to do this, and yes, it pissed me off. I felt I was left holding the bag for something I wanted to get rid of, and taking the rap for a writing lapse that I had never committed.

QUOTE: Are there even plans to undo that storyline?

I think the current plan is to let it go the way of Bruce Wayne's crazy brother.

Bruce Wayne's crazy brother.

Or the Super-sons? <vbg>

The Super-Sons were stated as being real, in at least one of the editorials in the letter column; that, what with all of their adventures, we just hadn't seen this aspect of Superman and Batman's lives. Y'know, them getting married and having teen-age kids part of their lives.

Even as a kid I thought that was whacked.

Now, back to Spider-Man . . .

<<Yes, the change in editorial leadership did affect things to a large extent.
As I recall, the overall plan, from the start, was to really replace Peter
with Ben Reilly (Although Tom DeFalco says that he insisted that a back
door should be built in to put things back the way they were if need be.
What that back door should be was not agreed upon until pretty much
the last minute.) The ultimate goal was for Ben Reilly to take back the
Peter Parker identity and we'd have a single, struggling-to-make-ends-
meet Spider-Man again. Howard, if I'm wrong about that, please let me
know, because as you pointed out, you were there from day one and I
came in a little later. >>

This is true... Tom inisted on a back door, so that we could react to any overwhelming negative reaction from the fans(i.e. sales). And just to be clear... my recollection is the wavering, and the stretching of the story, started before Budda became the EIC--I just feel he bogged us down FURTHER in the mud.

<<When Bob Budiansky was EIC of the Spider-Man Group, he was wavering
back and forth on whether to go ahead and make Ben the real guy and
Peter the clone. My memory is that he sent out the issue featuring the
"revelation" that Ben was the real guy, and immediately upon its
departure, wished he could have called it back and revised it. At one
point, after the revelation issue, Bob actually made a commitment to
keeping Ben in place, until he had a conversation with Dan Jurgens in
which he became convinced that Peter had to be restored. >>

Your memory about this period will be much better than mine... "WAVERING" doesn't begin to cover it. The non-stop flip-flopping and micro managing had that story spinnign in place with some of the worst stories of the era--can anyone else say VIRTUAL REAILTY SPICER-MAN?

<<So I agree fully with Howard that the Clone Saga was not derailed because
of the readers rebelling. A lot of indecisiveness, fear, and pressure from
Marketing to keep it going as long as possible were the real contributing
factors. >>

I truly believe that if we had been allowed to commit to the story... end it the way the  writer's intended it... let it sit... let the readers "rebel" ... and utilize the "back door" as needed... we would have been in a far better place then where we ended.

Howard