Since opinions on “One More Day” keep threading their way into other posts, even though they are of no relevance, I figured the simplest thing was to begin a comments thread for it even though I had nothing to do with it.
What do I think of it? Well, I have not read it, to be honest, since I knew the story particulars for months now. Let us just say that it is not the direction I would have taken things.
PAD
• 
Hope “One More Day” doesn’t do the same for others out there
Back in 1996, none of us had the mutliple canons and alternates we have now. We can pick and choose Spidey timelines now at ease, changing the channel.
The sad thing is I stopped reading at the Unmasking. Not because they actually did it nor how they did it in such an absurd way, but because I knew they weren’t going to do it justice. It wasn’t about SPider-man it was about other books and yet I doubt you heard about it much in issues of the Fantastic Four. It’s supposed to be the biggest thing to ever happen to a superhero, you ever see Superman or Batman get a reveal like that?
It should of been completely about Spider-man, no Civil Wars or New Avengers. Though they could show up. It would be a great joke. “That’s Spider-man? What a disapointment.”
But more importantly, the reason I stopped reading was because I knew they would never do it justice, because of all these things and that’s the style of writing now at Marvel. It’s not as important as the next big deal. The OTher, New Powers, New Costume, Unmasking, New Costume… etc.
I also knew they were going to undo all of this, and it would be a waste. Because somebody at Marvel (Q shall remain nameless) complained that Spider-man being married limited all the stories somehow. So basically, they do something that had never been done, ignore it, and complain some more about how the stories possibilities were limited. It’s just a waste. Oh yeah, the Mephisto thing. Worst. Idea. Ever.
I would just like to say the following: I agree with Iowa Jim on many of his points. I think the idea that a father cannot be a hero shows that Mr. Quesada has some daddy issues. Not only are most dad’s heroes, dad’s SHOULD be heroes.
I disagree with Jim on one thing: Quesada is not an idiot, he’s a boss. Like most bosses who have one, or in Quesada’s case a string of them, they all begin to think that they genius’ and can do no wrong (IE Vince MacMahon and some of the wrestiler characers he’s come up with)
House of M, Ultimates, Civil War, World War Hulk, hiring Garth Ennis to do Punisher, hirring Peter to do Hulk and X-Factor again, shows that he’s a smart guy.
But he’s an arrogant guy too. And One More Day proves that.
One of the reasons I read Marvel over DC is because they have never done a Crisis/ Countdown history change, until now. This is a bad idea.
First of all, as many have pointed out if Quesada wanted an unmarried teenage Spider-Man he already has it in both the Ultimates-verse and in Marvel Adventures. Second the idea of taking Peter Parker back to his late teens and starting again from there is silly, because long-term characters grow up anc change. For example, by the time Star Trek 6 came out in 1991, Captain Kirk was no longer the same man he was in the pilot “Where No man has gone before”. Yes he was still the great explorer, but he had a harder edge and he was wiser.
To take that away from either Kirk or Parker it just a slap in the face to fans and does a disservice to the character.
Third, Spider-Man and whole of the Marvel universe are supposed to be characters in change, growing and devloping. This is one of the things that set them apart from the same old same old DC stuff of the early 60’s. Peter’s marriage, growing up, going to college, getting a job, having a family, loosing his aunt; these are all part of life and that’s the key thing about Peter Parker, a normal guy with super powers. For those of you think this makes Spider-man too much of a soap opera, I’ve got news for you: If you want a character who continues for years and years, you have to give him new things in his life, not just new powers or new villains, but new things in his life that are worth fighting for. Also I rarly see soap ad’s in comic books.
If Mary jane had just been killed by the sniper’s bullet, I could live with that. But the gut 20-30 years worth of comic books is just wrong! Also to say that Peter’s marriage makes him harder to write is not a writing problem, it’s a sign of a bad writer. Quesada had a great writer in JMS and he removed him when he told him something was a bad idea. This was a mistake.
I understand Mr. Quesada is the boss and that he can do has he pleases. Fine, it’s not his job to keep the Parker’s together, it’s his job to make money for Marvel comics, so let’s all do the one thing that will get his attention. Let’s not read Spider-man
Josh Pritchett Jr
> I’m gonna quote a guy you probably don’t know named Phil Hunn, whose one of the staff at comixfan.com.
Speak the name of the devil, and he shall appear 🙂
Yes, I am now very firmly of the opinion that Quesada doesn’t want to please the fans. He wants to please himself by taking “his” characters back to “the good old days” of the 1970s, and he clearly expects the fans to simply bend over, grab their ankles, and take it like men (the respective returns of Captain Mar-Vell/Nova/Iron Fist/Luke Cage to prominence is another indication of said nostalgia-overload. I mean, The Immortal Iron Fist is a great comic, as is Nova, but was anyone other than Quesada actually crying out for these characters to return? I don’t think so). I mean, he wanted to bring back Gwen bloody Stacy, of all people, in addition to Harry Osborn, as if that was in any way, shape or form a good idea.
Clearly, clearly, this should have been viewed as a terrible idea right from the frickin’ start. Not to mention that there are already two “teenage unmarried Spidey” titles at Marvel at the moment (the Ultimate and Marvel Adventures Spider-books), so why it was necessary to reboot the 616 Spider-Man into the exact same thing, I’m not sure. Wouldn’t it have been better to, I dunno, keep one title with the Parkers as a married couple so that everyone was happy?
Oh, wait, that title is obviously Amazing Spider-Girl, the book that Quesada keeps trying to cancel. Gosh, what a coincidence…
I dropped the Spider-Books a while back, but I’m now considering dropping all of my other Marvel titles as well. There’s only so far my patience can take me, after all…
I haven’t seen *any* comics for a couple of months, but reading these comments, one thing is clear:
Someone said that the clone saga is now the second-most-hated Spider-Man continuity?
*I* think Shooter has just given up First Place…
Oh, wait, that title is obviously Amazing Spider-Girl, the book that Quesada keeps trying to cancel. Gosh, what a coincidence…
You know, I think Phil’s hit the nail on the head here. We still have a book we can go to where Peter & MJ are happily married.
What kind of message do you think it would send if Amazing Spider-Man’s sales plummeted and Amazing Spider-Girl’s sales skyrocketed…?
What a way to end the year 🙁
I’ve always thought that Peter’s greatest achievement was finding the love of his life. After everything else that’s happened, all the Hëll he’s been through, he deserved that one thing.
I join all those who support the retcon being retconned. Fortunately JMS has left a backdoor. I direct your attentions to ASM 504, page 24, panel 5….
Fer: interesting question there re: “Mayday” Parker. A large number of people will be interested in pursuing that option. Ditto for Ultimate Spider-Man, for different and yet similar reasons.
As a wise man once said:
“A shared universe, like any fictional construct, hinges on suspension of disbelief. When continuity is tossed away, it tatters the construct. Undermines it.”
I will continue to buy ASM, provided that as long as they’re going back to telling 1970’s stories, they’re also going back to charging 25 cents an issue.
After these last couple of days and reading all the comments by everyone I’ve decided to destroy my copy of OMD and send it back to Marvel. If anyone want’s to join me mail your torn up OMD issues to:
Spider-Man Editors
Marvel Enterprises, Inc.
417 Fifth Ave
NY, NY 10016
Posted by: Phil Hunn at January 1, 2008 08:31 AM
Speak the name of the devil, and he shall appear 🙂
Eek! The devil! Flee, flee!
(Hey man, good ta see you here.)
Posted by: Fer Goodnough at January 1, 2008 10:13 AM
You know, I think Phil’s hit the nail on the head here. We still have a book we can go to where Peter & MJ are happily married.
What kind of message do you think it would send if Amazing Spider-Man’s sales plummeted and Amazing Spider-Girl’s sales skyrocketed…?
You know, I might pick up that book now. I liked reading Spider-Girl back in the day, and if it’ll help send a message now…
OMD was a crappy story.
Peter Parker doesn’t make a deal with the devil to avoid feeling guilty about May getting shot.
They must be rolling in the aisles over at DC. Q just made the Superboy punch look GOOD.
Maybe Quesada is just projecting his own doubts about his marriage onto the Peter Parker/Spider-Man character?
I’m upset with the story’s outcome, too, as much for the undoing of Spidey’s unmasking, Aunt May’s knowing his secret, etc.
But I can’t get TOO upset with it, because I’m looking upon this as another alternate reality storyline like “Age of Apocalypse” and “House of M.” I think that, eventually, someone (Doctor Strange, Thor, whoever) with a LOT of power will come along and undo the whole mess.
It may have to be when Marvel sees sales on these issues come back, but I think it’ll happen.
My thoughts from OMD are this:
No matter what, there will ALWAYS be someone first in Peter’s life.
That person isn’t Mary Jane.
Mary Jane knows this to be so, or else she wouldn’t have gone through with the decision in the first place.
Let’s face it, while I don’t condone Aunt May’s death, I do think her still being alive limits Peter. Her death is something that Peter is going to have to go through in order to progress more as a person.
Does MJ care about May? of course she does. But I think even she would know that a time would come for Peter to say goodbye to his beloved aunt. But I think she also knows that some of Peter’s actions as of late lacked the great responsibility she knows he has. So maybe this will be the most painful lesson for him.
But I think JQ will have to realize very soon that this will indeed cause problems with the history on a major scale. I think merely this was to just push sales and if it did, it succeeded for him. But he has to know that this event wasn’t really major to the world, really. Now if Superman and Lois got divorced, that would be on every news outlet possible.
I would have done things differently as well.
Here’s what I would have done.
1. Not written Peter into a corner that this was absolutely necessary. At the end of Back in Black, a Deus Ex Machina save was the only thing that was going to save the Spider franchise.. how many years of Peter on the run could actually be milked? Peter committed how many crimes at the end? It was necessary on some level.
2. I would love to have seen JMS notes on this because reading Babylon 5 script books, his bible on Spiderman must be awesome.
3. Keeping the same idea in place, Mephisto does the deal.. but Peter always thinking has told one other of the deal before accepting… Doctor Strange.. Stephen calls his friend and Mephisto enemy, Silver Surfer, for help…
4. With the combined might of the Sorcerer Supreme and the Power Cosmic, Doctor Strange cannot stop Mephisto but he can make some changes along the way…
5. Amazing Spider Man#546-549 by JMS and JRJR
Details what subtle changes were made by Mephisto’s meddlings and Doc Strange’s saves..
A recap of the Spider Man mythos..
550 – Brand New Day
I think this was an opportunity not only to bring Peter and MJ out of marriage and into a not working relationship (whatever), Harry randomly alive (how does this effect Thunderbolts for example), and the web shooters back(thanks for the Order except it probably never happened) but clean up a lot of the Spider continunity. They missed it.
And they will be missing my dollars on Spider Man. I was buying Spider Man twice a month because two great writers were writing it. I’ve followed Peter to She Hulk and JMS to Thor. I will catch Mr. Guggenheim on other projects. I don’t need to read Spider Man three times a month. I will miss Peter and MJ but as PAD said, there are the trades I will be buying instead of the older stories.
So goodbye for now to Spider Man. A book I’ve enjoyed reading in some form since Peter Parker 96 or so and the beginning of Web of SpiderMan.
Enjoy the Brand New Day without me.
Until later
John
I just want to chime in with my support for this storyline. It was needed. I love MJ too, and I love Peter so I want him to be happy but I recognize the marriage is bad for the character. Peter marries a super-model and lives happily ever after should be a “Spider-Man: The End” story not mainstream continuity.
The marriage to a “perfect” woman undid some of the key things that made Spider-Man great as a character. 1) It made him seem older – Peter was a lead Super-Hero who was still in school. 2) Peter was alone – all the craziness that happened to him he had to deal with sans the support of an all-forgiving wife (and aunt).
Everyone who is threatening to stop reading the comics because of this…yeah right! Who are you kidding? If you care that passionately about him to write these things, you’ll be back even if you never admit it. And for those few who really do jump off in “protest” I say more power to you but my guess is you’re going to miss some really fun Spider-Man stories that will take the character in directions unavailable for almost 20 years.
Everyone who is threatening to stop reading the comics because of this…yeah right! Who are you kidding?>>
Talk is cheap. Not buying the books is the only way to show my choice.
Peter left the Incredible Hulk … so did I. He made me love those characters but he left so did I. I came back for Peter’s small re run and left right after.
I liked Judd Winick and Tony Bedard on Exiles. Chris Claremont came on, I gave it a chance. Why? Because I did like Chris on Uncanny (even though I haven’t like anything that much he has done since) and I really enjoyed those characters. Gave it a few issues and was done and will not be there for the New Exiles.
I was a SpiderMan reader for years. Amazing, Web, Peter Parker, I was there. Dropped off for a bit after Maximum Clonage. Read Untold Tales instead. Read JMS and PAD’s work. Stayed away from MK Spider Man title.
I will leave Spider Man now. Don’t like how the ended One More Day and the few pages that give me a glimpse of Brand New Day.. do not interest me. I will go back and buy the trades of the older stories I’ve enjoyed. I would love to see a Marvel Visionaries Peter David: Spiderman for example 🙂
It may only be one penny in the giant Marvel bucket but my penny isn’t going into Brand New Day, three times a month.
Until later
John
Oh and I suppose you had nothing to do with poor Pluto being eaten by Borg, either?
(that was a joke, by the way)
Bit late to the conversation, but I can see why marvel decided it was a good idea to free up Peter Parker from all his attachments. Sadly I also hated the way they did it in a way that nulled an awful lot of character development over the years, both his and his supporting characters.
Him being married is undeniably annoying for some writers. If, say, a writer wants to write in a romance between Batman and Wonderwoman/catwoman/a down to earth nurse/the mutant lovechild of Satan they can (as much as DC will let them 😉 ). If readers don’t like it or it stops being interesting they can simply break up. Obviously new romances, sexual intrigue and the like are ‘good things’TM in the soap opera that is most comic book characters lives and keeps things fresh and interesting. While you can’t really get away with big obvious changes in who an established character is (changing spiderman too much or so on) you can shuffle the scenery near them around and romance is often a good way to do it. Buffy does this a lot. Rather than looking her into a love for Angel the writers introduced new potential mates which created new storylines. All of them follow the usual stages of love but in different enough ways to keep the audience engaged.
In some cases being married and unlikely to cheat is fine. The fantastic four are probably the best mainstream example of this because it’s a team book. Sure you can’t really split up the married fantastics – but Johnny and Ben can play around and you can spin stories out of the happiness/misery they encounter. The cast is big enough with no one definable key character that this is possible.
In the case of Peter though he is the central character. His marriage locks him into a romantic dynamic with Mary Jane that means any romantic interests are nixed because him pursuing another girl makes him look incredibly unheroic (and her leaving him would make her look like an unworthy mate – which is unfair to a character who’s been well rounded over the years). So I can see why Marvel was keen to change this and a broader range of stories out of spider-man.
That said what I REALLY objected to was the whole ‘no one remembers who spider-man was’. That seems a horrible decision for a few reasons.
Certain characters relationships to Peter were defined by them knowing who he was under the mask. Obviously Norman Osborne springs to mind as does Felicity. Felicity in particular is an annoying one as her whole break up with him, eventually getting past it and them becoming close actual friends (and presumed attraction to him as an actual person) later on was all based on her awareness of his identity.
Then there’s the characters who found out his identity and while not vital to their history were still improved by knowing it. Aunt May is a biggy here. She’s a bit of a one note character who was given a lot more to do by awareness of her nephew’s big secret. There are others (Flash, Johnny Storm, the other avengers etc) who should know.
lastly – even if you ignore the obvious flaws of having characters forget his identity – it’s a bit… problematic in a lot of cases. Reading the recent spider-man I found myself confused as to the age/era I was looking at. I felt there had been a big push to get spider-man back to where he was in the 70’s. Problem was comics as a whole have moved on since then and the audience is older and more sophisticated. I’m not sure how many of us want spider-man to be stuck living with his aunt, penniless and so on eternally. I accept he’s unlucky. I accept he’s the sort of guy who’d help a girl he loves get marries a la Cyrano de Bergerac or lose a great job because he stopped to help an old lady cross the road. I just find it hard to accept his life is basically that of a 17 year old student – where misfortune happens because it just feels like he bumbled into it.
Ah well – we shall see what happens. I’m sure Marvel will try and bring their A game to the comic this year to convince fans it was a good idea 😉
One weird note – didn’t John Byrne basically come up with the idea for this story ages ago? I remember him blogging about it a year or so back… and was surprised no one mentioned this anywhere.
While I didn’t necessarily enjoy how the story was handled (nobody on the entire EARTH can save Aunt May from a gunshot wound? :P) or the treatment of the fans was considered, I don’t necessarily think BND will be utter crap.
Purely as speculation, I think it would’ve been cooler to see Peter handle a devil’s deal with larger stakes.
– In exchange for his marriage, how about Mephisto offering Peter the chance to change history and save Gwen’s life instead of killing her?
– Even more dramatic: Uncle Ben’s life for Peter’s marriage.
I know… I know. Those would have been HUGE retcons. But seeing Peter wrestle with such a decision would have been incredibly interesting.
Call me an old foggy, but I personally stopped reading Spiderman after the whole ‘MJ is Peter’s ideal woman that he is so in love with that he acts like an idiot’ cliche started gaining impetus.
I was OK with Gwen’s death and Peter getting together with MJ who had been flirting with him -and tons of other guys for years- when she stuck to him after Gwen’s death because she was a true friend and Peter eventually recognized it.
MJ knew from the beginning that Gwen would always come first for Peter but she was OK with it and Peter eventually got over Gwen’s death and started appreciating MJ’s true qualities. That was actually very realistic and showed their tender side in a way that made up for the shock killing first of Gwen’s father then Gwen herself: a much more mature log-term romantic storyline than one would expect from a comic book.
But Marvel lost me when they started retconning history so that Peter started being all goo-goo eyed and romantic about MJ: before that, they had had an adult relationship -as opposed to the very idealized loved Peter had for Gwen- and they both respected and genuinely loved each other. Then, apparently overnight, Peter acts like a teenager in love? Spare me. That worked with Gwen because they truly were in ‘romantic’ love and college sweethearts, by which I mean still teenagers, but it rang false with MJ because it was out-of-character for Peter.
When you start rewriting Peter’s character so that MJ is the ‘love of his life’ and suddenly he is all silly and jealous about her, you lose any intelligent reader. And when you bring back Gwen to try and demonstrate that it’s MJ Peter loves, not Gwen, you’ve lost me.
So if you now want to erase 20+ years of Spiderman history, do I care? Nope. Let’s just hope your marketing strategy will get you the teenybopper audience you are looking for (I am being ironic, because I doubt the younger generation reads comicbooks: they fool around in MySpace instead, and no retconning will change that).
*romantic, but not a 15-year old anymore, which is perfectly understandable for someone who started reading Spiderman when Peter was still crushing hard on Betty, long before Gwen’s character made an appearance!*
This’ll be the end of my Spidey reading. I don’t necessarily mind the War on Marriage but this tremendous undoing of SO many things all over the Marvel universe is, to me, just sloppy. Spidey shows up all over the MU and if we’re undoing The Other and the unmasking then… what else?
The only answer I can come up with is “potentially everything.” And that’s just annoying. I was okay with comics not having perfect continuity, but if the publisher is going to make an effort at it and try to pump sales with crossovers then I expect them to do it right.
So, eh. I will vote with my dollar. I might like the new Spidey direction okay, but I already spend more than I want on comics and there’s other stuff that I have no reservations about.
On the bright side, this resemblance of a story wraps up what I sometimes saw as a “tapestry” of continuity and so I no longer feel compelled to collect the continuing adventures of anything in order to keep up on the status of the Marvel Universe.
If anything this gives me a chance to “collect them all”… with the belief that if I worked hard enough I could amass a saga with a beginning, a middle, and at least a point where there is no canon afterwards.
If the new Spidey stories are good I’ll pick them up in my convention sweeps and fifteen-cent long box runs.
Although I’m still tempted to look at anything Brubaker writes at the other titles I buy nothing until it has been read and enjoyed by another and sold to comic shop. There are some other franchises I’ll come back to read now and again but comic book reading is a wait and see sort of thing.
I like the message that Quesada is sending to the kids that dealing with the devil is better than divorce.