I might add Exiles (even though it may have taken XMHY's place), the beginning of the current ASM run, beginning of the FF run under waid/weiringo (even though Bill J f'd that one up, allegedly), beginning of the current DD run (started nicely, terrible after the first 5 issues or so), end of Avengers run with Kieron was VERY good, i thought.  That's about it.......in fact, I would say Geoff's Avengers run BEGAN my shedding all of my marvel books.  The exact OPPOSITE of how his writing attracted me BACK to DC books.

Anyway, I'm going a bit off topic.....

"As an aside, anytime M!"£$%^&*()l try anything even slightly different with their core characters, this place goes bloody mad!"

There's a certain tightrope you have to walk.  I mean, Spider-Man is supposed to be "the hero who could be you".  Ask almost anyone- even Sam Raimi- what the major appeal of Spider-Man is and they'll likely say something like "He's a young man who faces the same problems everyone else does."  Even the marriage- while fairly damaging to the core Spider-Man concept- didn't take the character outside the realms of reality or empathy.  I do have young married friends, and could see myself getting married one day (not to a supermodel, mind you...).

However, when you get to the point where SPOILERS Spider-Man is a one-eyed avatar of the Spider-Totem living in Avengers Mansion...I mean "Avengers Tower", the Spider-Man concept has clearly gone off the rails a bit.  Yes, JMS has done "new" and "different" things with Spider-Man, but how many of them hold true to the central rules that Stan and Steve set down and most subsequent Spider-Man writers and artists followed for roughly 25 years?

Perhaps I should not bite the hand that currently
feeds me. . . .

Point well taken. 

Something to note, however, is that those of us sharecroppers who managed to create our own memorable runs, did so by looking at what had come before and then trying to extrapolate, not repeat, what we saw. Thus you get Walt on Thor, Frank on Daredevil, Roger on Spider-Man, me on the FF and, of course, Chris and me on the X-Men.

I'm reminded of an instance that Mark Waid talked about. He has said that then-Marvel EIC Bob Harras told him that "We consider writer-driven comics as an experiment that's failed."

And Mark was thinking, "Hmm, bet that's new to Stan Lee!!"

But I think that has become Marvel's mantra for a long while now. "Writer-driven comics are an experiment that's failed". The company is run now by editors, and the writers are just tools to deliver the goods. The writers are easily interchangeable.

"I think it's kinda funny that you expect writers and artists to follow the rules that others ahve followed for more than a generation  AFTER Lee & Ditko on a thread that was started when Byrne asked why Marvel doesn't do something new more often."

JB also pointed out that "...us sharecroppers who managed to create our own memorable runs, did so by looking at what had come before and then trying to extrapolate, not repeat, what we saw".  JB, Frank Miller, Walt Simonson, et al made an honest effort to "play by the rules"- and when something was changed, it was something that one could change back with a minimum of fuss (eg She-Hulk, new uniforms, and Four Freedoms Plaza over in FF).  Doing something "new" doesn't mean "trash the character and ignore the original creator's vision";  it means build upon it.

Now?  JMS is constantly taking Spider-Man farther and farther away from what makes him...well...Spider-Man, unless I missed the SPOILERS one-eyed avatar of the Spider-Totem living in Avengers Mansion...I mean "Avengers Tower" appearing in Spider-Man comics from '62 to '85.  None of JMS's changes to Spider-Man are logical extrapolations of the original Lee/Ditko stories or Spider-Man's character as it was presented for decades. 

It was that simple thing which made Marvel so very different from -- and superior to -- the books DC was producing at the same time, most of which were editor-driven.

Fairly typical MAN OF STEEL Syndrome. Too many writers think their mandate is to blow everything up and start from scratch.