User blog comment:Jamie/Episode 10 - Cancelled Comics Cavalcade/@comment-1895174-20140611070902/@comment-4651179-20140613015053

You're asking the wrong person whether Marvel NOW! was worth it. You should ask Marvel, but I still can give my opinion that it did, as it made Marvel overthrow DC as the leader of the market, with now ~35% vs. ~25% of DC. And the "Did X character of all characters need a relaunch?" question can be applied to the mayority of the Marvel NOW! relaunches. In conclusion, did Spider-Man need a relaunch? I don't know. But Marvel wanted to relaunch it as it relaunched 99% of their titles? Yes. Marvel wanted the series to follow their scheme: 1) Cancel title. 2) Relaunch it. 3) ????. 4) Profit. And there was profit, not only Superior Spider-Man sold more than Amazing Spider-Man, it got a lot of printings. Amazing Spider-Man #701 wouldn't have sold as much as Superior Spider-Man #1.

Trust me, it is completely different. The essence of the character was mostly untouched. It was "Great power, great responsibility" with just a blond Spider-Man. Here is a villain replacing the hero, a villain with a different perspective, goals and vision to someone who even had Peter Parker's memories as his own, and learned the way in which Aunt May and Uncle Ben raised Peter Parker as he had been there.

Except this is not a storyline. This is a status-quo change. It even had storylines within it. Superior Spider-Man was not a storyline.