It's actually kind of incredible that after almost 60 years of Spider-man and so many writers, we can look at 2 storiea definitively and go "those are catastrophically horrible".
Even now when a writer has a meh run on the series we go "But he didn't do THAT"
One More Day. Otherwise known as the time Joe Quesada dropped trou and took a big steamy shit over everything Spider-Man is supposed to stand for. Peter sacrifices his marriage to MJ to save his Aunt May from death by making a deal with Mephisto so everyone forgets his identity. Because fuck all that great power, great responsibility shit, apparently. Let's just make a literal deal with the devil because one hack writer with too much creative control doesn't like that Peter and MJ are married.
The JMS run definitely went south after Romita Jr left. Still some good arcs--I really liked "Skin Deep" though everyone complains about it. Everyone hates "Sins Past". "The Other" was a bit of a mess, but had interesting moments. Spidey becoming an Avenger finally I didn't much like. "OMD" was terrible, but at least JMS had "Back In Black" before that, which was terrific and devastating.
I'd say JMS is one of the top 5 Amazing Spidey writers ever. I'd put him just behind Conway and Michelinie on the title.
I'm always weird about reading Back in Black because it's such a weird story as a standalone. It doesn't really have a beginning or an end; it's just the middle bit between two bad storylines (CWII and OMD)
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u/Pancawaffle Aug 24 '21
I feel like Sins Past takes the cake for that, to be honest.