Is it really THAT much of a “progression” when most of them were basically him using old ideas (which didn’t stick around after he left anway)?

Plus a lot of the stuff he set up was either poorly handled by him or better handled by other writers.

Ezekiel started out an interesting take on the “Spider-Man gone wrong” template but was revealed to be just another generic villain that becomes indistinguishable from all the other evil Spider-Men. He was so much more fascinating when he was a guy who wanted to be a hero but never got around to it.

MJ’s return was basically just fixing the previous creative team’s mess but I never really thought he wrote her that well. And then there’s the OMD thing he wrote that invalidated all the MJ parts of his run anyway.

The teaching job was a cool idea but Kirkman and PAD did FAR more with it in a handful of MTU and FNSM issues than JMS did in his entire run. JMS basically abandoned that entire plot point after the first couple arcs.

I like the idea of May knowing. I LOVED finding out that she always knew in AMZ400 so I was REALLY ticked when they retconned that away. As far as I’m concerned May finding out again in JMS’ run was just fixing a mistake the reboot made. Unfortunately he did a TERRIBLE job writing May. I’m really baffled that people love his May so much when she does things like practically out her nephew in the silent issue (and then talk him into outing himself in CW) and not realized that Otto is Doc Ock even though she’s seen Otto fight Spider-Man on her front lawn before. Was he trying to write her as if she was senile?

And then there’s the totem stuff. I HATED the concept when it was introduced. It took other writers (many of which only got short stories in Unlimited) to make me realize the potential. Connecting Spider-Man to Anansi is darn cool if you really think about it but all JMS did with the totems was explain the reason for all the animal-themed villains and introduce a Morbius knock-off that eats animal-themed characters.