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
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Sidebar first: Are the last few pages of OMD supposed to be set in current time, or was that a flashback – or, indeed, a harryback – to the time when Peter and MJ split from the path that led to matrimony?
In terms of general feedback, I’m as schizoid as ever on this one…
Professionally, Joe Q speaks for Marvel and Marvel own Spidey. End of the day, he has to care about numbers sold, and if flushing a huge chunk of continuity out the airlock makes Spidey more accessible to the millions who know him from the movies as opposed to the hundreds of thousands who buy the comics then it’s a numeric no-brainer.
I think JMS is going to get a degree of flak he doesn’t deserve, just by having his name and fingerprints on the smoking gnu, when all he’s doing is being a professional. As a contractor, you take the company dollar, you sing the company song…
Personally.. personally, after a year where Marvel have produced some of the best written comics I’ve seen in 40 years of collecting this turn of events is just unacceptable.
I hate that they got rid of the marriage, I hate the way they got rid of it, and I absolutely hate, loathe and detest that they undid the reveal of Peter’s identity.
That reveal, for me, was the absolute comics highlight of the year, but hey, guess what, it never happened…
So.. Professionally I know and understand that fan loyalty counts for zip when a company is looking at the bottom line.
Personally.. Chances of me buying any more Spidey titles for a while, pretty dámņëd slim methinks.
If there’s no mileage in caring about the characters and what happens to ’em, I’m not putting my money down for the books, simple as that.
Cheers!
Personally, I’m still waiting for the big news outlets to release the “Marvel advocates satanism, Spidey makes deal with devil” story.
Last time I checked, the poll figures showed 80% of the respondents in the “didn’t like it/hated it category”.
I’m coming around to the notion that we’re all being hosed, scammed, “fished in” as Wayne would say.
All of the anti-marriage talk? Just pre-event publicity. Remember pre-Civil War, he went on a tear about Speedball, “We’re gonna kill him”.
Then the fan base keeps watching, wondering when he’s going to die.
How long has the publicity been out for this story line? How long has it been delayed? Wasn’t Brand New Day supposed to start in October?
How long have we known the “spoiled” ending? The wait to see the car crash of a comic story has been almost sadistically engineered.
We’re being played, here. How could an editor-in-chief not realize what a bad idea this is? not realize what the reaction would be? Not realize how poorly executed it all was?
He’s looking at 80% disapproval and saying that’s my sales base when I pull a mea culpa, “the fans have spoken”, and we launch the 12 issue, $5.99 a pop, reset button series, with multiple zombie variant covers.
The man’s a genius at promotion.
Or maybe he is just an idiot.
In a rare public comment on the issue, JMS quoted Dave Sim to make the point that he accepted the EiC’s discretion to determine the direction of the storyline. I’ve heard others refer to Sim’s accomplishment as a self-publisher why JMS used him to make his point, but the state of the market over the last 20 years had even Sim admit no one can repeat his accomplishment, and Sim is also someone who lost at least half his circulation for persistently (to say the least) portraying women who don’t take orders from a man as unworthy of any fidelity. So I took the Sim reference as an implication annulling Peter & MJ’s marriage, at best, caters to the misogyny of the reading audience.
I think this is just a chapter in the bigger story that is playing out. I mean come on when you make a deal with the devil…
Its kind of bittersweet for me. I didnt mind the marriage. It was the lack of doing anything interesting with it that bothered me. Mind you I dont think this is interesting.
Screw Marvel. Screw Joe Quesada. When one of the Civil War editors stated quite frankly that continuity was not important and when asked about the constant ignoring of history stated that people who have been reading for over 5 years are not the type of reader Marvel caters to (and have probably been reading too long anyway), I knew my time of reading Marvel comics was coming to an end.
Now Joe Quesada has taken it a step further, and has basically slapped me and every long-time Spider-Man fan in the face and said “HA HA SUCKER! Those last 20 years don’t matter!” This is the man that, when he came into power at Marvel, proclaimed that he was a fan and would never let something as horrible as the Clone Saga ever happen again. Now we probably find ourselves wishing for those days in the face of what Quesada has done to Marvel.
So yeah… screw Marvel. I know my protest won’t make any real difference, because by and large the comic community will tend to be pathetic lemmings… they’ll whine and cry about the changes, but they’ll show up every month to buy a book that they claim to hate. Me, I’m done with it. I won’t waste my time reading Marvel… I won’t even read a free copy that I could download.
Marvel has been telling me for months that they don’t want me as a customer. Finally, I’m listening to them. How about the rest of you?
Mike, I took JMS’s Dave Sim quote as someone quoting a relevant funny line from a (at the time) funny person. Reading a layer of mysogeny in that is just reaching, in my opinion.
I never want to see you lose a book, PAD, but I’ll just say that I’m glad that you’re no longer having to worry about F’N Spidey after OMD.
Poorly written, poorly drawn, poorly thought out, poorly executed. And it really feels like because of all of the above, and Joe Q’s comments over the past year, he’s sitting there with a fat grin on his face while giving us the finger.
I usually don’t get that worked up about retcons and character changes and all that stuff in comics, but this whole thing just comes across as downright insulting to anybody who reads Marvel comics.
What a colossal joke.
I wouldn’t have minded ending the marriage, if it had been in a ‘normal’ (for the MU) way. Using Mephisto as a plot device just works against everything Spider-Man is supposed to be, the street-level, everyman hero. When he was in Starlin’s Thanos story, he commented about how out of place he felt. This just strikes me as more stupid than any DC retcon; Quesada can no longer mock ‘Superboy punches.’
I haven’t read OMD, but I’m depressed to hear that they’ve undone the marriage (which I had heard of some time ago), and Spidey’s identity revelation. Given what Scott Bland related about that editor who stated that continuity wasn’t important, I’m guessing that Jeph Loeb and the editors of The Ultimates are of the same mentality, since the The Ultimates 3 totally ignores the premises in the Ultimate universe that are so different from the main universe Avengers, without any explanation whatsoever. I was so disgusted that I’m not going to continue with that title, even though I otherwise like Loeb, and adore Joe Madureira’s art. It’s the for the same reason that I generally stay away the big corporate franchise books like the X-books or Spidey books, unless it’s a single book written by someone like Peter, who tends to stay away from the “big events”, and writes something because he thinks it’d be a good story, and does just dump 20 years of continuity simply because he personally “doesn’t like” some change to it that occurred 20 years ago, even if fandom has come to accept it.
While the commentary has been primarily focused on the relationship of Peter and MJ, what I find totally uncharacteristic was the portrayal of Mephisto.
“Here’s your greatest desire in one swoop” he offers to Peter & MJ. The life of Aunt May.
I was waiting for the final pages when Mephisto grants their wish and the next page would show Aunt May getting run over by a car (or some other tragic ‘accident’) right in front of the couple effectively doing to Aunt May what had happened to her in the first place, putting her at death’s door for the (final?) time – negating everything Peter and MJ wished for.
That’s the Mesphisto I’ve come to know. Who was that wanna-be player impersonationg Mephisto anyway? OR that could be the way out of the Brand New Day storyline….. it has happened before.
I thought the same thing that someone mentioned earlier when comparing Quesada’s “anti-marriage” hype to his “kill Speedball” hype. I thought “he’s pushing this idea way too hard for it to be real…At the very least, it’s going to be part of a larger story.” But noodle this for a second: Quesada’s Speedball fake-out led to Penance, one of the most ridiculous things done to a character in all my years of reading comics…
One More Day disappointed me on so many levels…I find the way the retcon came about as deplorable as the retcon itself. Spider-Man makes a deal with the devil?! Where’s the sense “Great Responsibility” here?! It was so out of character I couldn’t believe what I was reading…
Pete Poole: I’m not trying to mock you for making a completely understandable typing error, but I can’t help but wonder what a “smoking gnu” would look like…:)
You know, thinking about this some more, I see a way out of this if sales of ASM are affected by this move: MJ is a Skrull, and thus just made the deal to try and screw Spidey over.
Then they can retcon the retcon.
Either way, I think it’s now safe to say that the clock is ticking on when Steve Rogers will come back from the dead.
After all, seeing as dead isn’t really dead in the MU as Joe Q said it was, and they can’t even keep Spider-Man unmasked for 2 freaking years, I don’t want to hear any more of this kind of bs from anybody at Marvel.
Has anyone else thought through just what this means for Mephisto – he’s got to be the most powerful entity in the universe to do something like this?!?! You would at least think that a retcon of this propotion would have to go through the Living Tribunal – now we know its Quesada’s face under that hood.
Really though, I have never identified with Spidey and/or Peter, so really I don’t care either way. I like good writing with charaters that are interesting and this change isn’t going to get me to start picking up his book (3 times a month!).
1From the last few pages of the book it should be evident that Joe’s goal was more than just to break up the marriage,he wanted to undo a hëll of a lot more than that! He wanted to undo a lot of bad storylines that has led Spiderman man in a direction that as EIC he thought was wrong,(The Other storyline for instance),the strange thing is that he ok’d those storylines. Siderman as a book and a character had gotten too dark over the last few years,and despite PAD attempts in FNSM it was not going to change unless there was a major revamp. The last revamp of Spiderman was in the Chapter one failure of the early 90’s so that clearly was not the path Joe was going to take. So lets start talking about how the marriage was a wrong turn that needed to be fixed,that gets the creators of the last few years off the hook.Aftter all they all turned in excellent storylines under the guidance of Joe and Alex Alonso. Joe created the greatest MC Gauffinn in comic history to bring Peter back where he needed to be but make no mistake the dynamic of Peter’s and MJ”s relationship can still be in play.
Apart from all of my other disappointments with the story, I thought that they had a PERFECT Peter Parker moment sitting in front of them. Pete is wracked with guilt over Aunt May getting shot. He is literally offered a deal with the devil to undo it. His choice: May lives or May dies.
He says No to Mephisto. Because he knows that M never makes an offer at face value, that there’s some horrific twist coming up, or that at the very best, handing over his marriage is just a small but significant contribution towards one of Mephisto’s larger and darker goals.
So he does the responsible thing and accepts May’s death, but the guilt of having turned down a chance to save her life (regardless of the terms) is a burden he carries until the end of his days. First Ben, now May; Spider-Man has had a hand in BOTH of their deaths…first by ignoring his responsibilities, then by living up to them.
But hey, I’m sure this other way will be just as awesome. Maybe we’ll get to see the Spidey-Mobile again! Teens LIKE awesome custom cars!
1Posted by roger Tang at December 31, 2007 02:40 AM
Actually, I don’t think it was “limiting.” In many ways, it simply wasn’t possible. In a lot of ways, having a wife and children makes it impossible for Peter Parker to be a hero.
Please explain this to me. A wife and children do not keep policemen and firemen from being heroes. What would be the difference with Spidey?
You know, there was this period when JMS came to the title and he was working with JR jr and I was extremely happy.
The biggest reason I liked the run was that JMS bought some new stuff to the table. He took everything that had been built up through the years and just put a new slant on it.
It was refreshing because it said something about how it isn’t necessary for a writer to use hackneyed stunts to generate interest in a book and to make it fresh again.
Then, we had this event where they tacked on a the rape of Gwen Stacy by Norman Osborn and subsequent birth of twins due to that act of violence.
Well, they lost me after that.
I picked up PADs run (on the other Spider title) because it was just ‘fun’ in a sense.
There have been so many characters to traipse through the Spider Man universe through the years, there is a wealth of material you can take and have fun with. It’s really that simple. To do it though you have to have the support of both the editorial staff (including the publisher) and the sales figures to back it up.
Over the years, I’ve watched Aunt May die and come back, MJ die and come back, Uncle Ben die and come back… are we seeing a pattern here yet?
Honestly, how anyone can find themselves surprised or up in arms over this strikes me as a bit ironic – it’s not like it hasn’t happened before and it won’t happen again. As a matter of fact, if there is one thing you could probably call a sure bet it’s that at some point they’ll be a further retconning of the character.
Spider Man will always be Peter Parker, Peter Parker will always have some kind of problems to deal with and the cycle will continue as long as Marvel can get people to fork over money to buy their books.
You know, more than anything else it’s not so much that it affects this title (or titles) – it’s the ever increasing prevalence to have these big company wide events and crossovers that make it more intolerable. We always seem to be having the discussion about continuity in regards to the overall history of a book and what has gone on in all the preceding issues up to the present but, there is never a discussion about how much these interlocking storylines across a series of titles and all books have a way of just bølløxìņg up characters and titles.
If Marvel’s sales drop over the next few months, you can bet this kind of event will never happen again.
Will characters die and come back? of course, it’s comics. And retcons will continue to happen. But will a retcon be pushed by an EIC just for the sake of pushing the EIC’s will onto a story, stamping on a 20+-year development, and prooving said EIC a liar on multiple accounts, all in one fell swoop? No, if Marvel’s sales take a significant drop over this, we won’t see something this badly executed again.
Posted by: Rob Brown at December 31, 2007 06:23 AM
Hehe. I honestly like her and Forge together. Has old Stevie been around much? I haven’t been reading any of the X-books aside from X-Factor (unless Exiles counts).
Well, my comment about Storm and Stevie was slightly tongue-in-cheek but I think Stevie has been MIA for the better part of the past decade.
Posted by Joe Patrick at December 31, 2007 12:13 PM
” Pete Poole: I’m not trying to mock you for making a completely understandable typing error, but I can’t help but wonder what a “smoking gnu” would look like…:)”
What typo? >-)
Remember; when you assume, you’re pulling an emu out of your ášš…
The smoking gnu has a fine traditional role in defective fiction. Why else would Sheerluck Holmes have worn a deerstalker?
Cheers. Also, Happy Brand New Year!
I find what happened as annoying as the infamous scene in Dallas with Bobby in the shower: It never happened, all was a dream, an illusion – call it what you want. What is worse is that the outcome is a return to the formula Spider-Man was stuck with and from what I could see in Marvel Previews the result will be predictable fast food. That is also enjoyable (Well, I like fast food occasionally) but it is nothing special.
I hate the end of the MJ/Peter relationship. This is why I returned to Spider-Man after a long time and that is the main reason why I will leave again very soon. On top of that I hate the way it is destroying much or even all of what made the Spider-Man series interesting during the Civil War saga. The revelation of his identity never happened either. No consequences here and Iron Man/Tony Stark doesn`t have to lose sleep over this any more as well.
I have more than enough to read and will concentrate on things I enjoy more than formulatic Spider-Man comics that are stuck in past patterns.
As much as I am upset about the heavy-handedness of the OMD plot– I am much more excited that the FREEDOM CLOCK is at 385 days and counting!
I am planning on celebrating New Year’s in about 20 DAYS– which will mark less than a year in office for our current selectee… Something truly worth celebrating.
I can’t see why this story makes sense for Marvel.
Back when Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas took over Marvel oh so many years ago, one of the things Jemas wanted to build was the trade paperback program. At the time, Marvel was very inconsistent about trades. It wasn’t at all like it is today, when you feel reasonably sure that you’ll get a trade of the popular materials fairly soon after the issues wrap up.
To keep the trade program strong, you have to keep readers interested in the back stories.
But OMD just wiped out any reason to read a Spider-Man trade from after 1989. After all, the stories “didn’t happen”, so why read them?
Was the need to get rid of the marriage so strong that it was worth destroying six years of work in the trade department, along with three months of sales of Spider-Man comics (you know, the ones that didn’t come out because OMD was so delayed)? I doubt it.
The only way this new storyline could be a good thing is if it highlights exactly how much Peter and Mary Jane belong together. Mary Jane has been the one to comfort Peter when the weight of the world threatens to crush his spirit. Without her in his life, I can see him slowly crumble into a helpless wreck. Aunt May should then learn of the deal, and convince Peter that he should stop living in the past and start looking towards his future. Aunt May should then pass on to the afterlife, allowing the world to change back and reuniting the two lovers. This would be the perfect Aunt May death and Peter/Mary Jane reaffirmation.
One, in a real world context, we recognize that the demands of the job are so tough that it often comes down to choosing between the job and their family. That’s not a fair choice to put an individual through. So the police and firemen build as much institutional support as they can (and more is being built all the time) to support the families and spouses, so that the police and fire fighters don’t feel they have to choose between the job and family, that if something happens, the family is taken care of. Spidey, as a vigilante, doesn’t have that. It’s irresponsible in many ways, for him to go off fighting crime with no backup with the very real possibility of leaving the spouse/children high and dry if they’re killed in action (and that, of course, undercuts the very premise of the series).
Second, in a literary sense, a married Spider man has to choose between two sets of people when he fights crime, instead of choosing between himself and others. That’s less of a hero’s choice, and more of a protagonist’s choice…a more adult dilemma because one group of people gets sacrificed no matter what. That’s a more adult type of story, which is what, frankly, I would prefer…but may not be suited for a corporate character who is the flagship of the company.
but mr tang, with spidey in the avengers, he has the extended support structure that a (as i recall) is now government sanctioned. hëll, i am sure he is getting at least soldier level pay which isn’t too bad when you add on combat modifiers.
i’m with the the guy who said that seeing the marriage as limiting is just a symptom of writers who are limited.
i also thought of the other guy’s idea that this could be turned around to show how important mj is to spidey and how he is living in the past chosing an old lady who has died a couple of times already (and pete should be smart enough to know if she died, she’d only come back again) over someone who he pledged his life to.
I am currently reading “Speaker for the Dead” by Orson Scott Card. In the preface, he wrote how most (sci-fi?) fiction is written about juvenille characters. That is characters, no matter the age, that are free to move, change and have no real roots. It mirrors the time in life when we are not yet “adults” but more than children. It is the time in life that we can uproot ourselves, because there is only ourselves to uproot.
“Adult” fiction is about people who have “families” and “roots” for lack of a better terms.
What we see with OMD is a return to “juvenille” fiction rather than “adult” fiction (and I don’t mean the XXX kind of adult fiction).
BTW, for those who wonder why Ultimate Spider-man doesn’t provide enough of single Spider-man; I think that Marvel is getting ready to upset the Ultimate Universe so badly that USM will no longer be a viable alternative.
And the whole “undoing”; I see some benefits, but I don’t like it and especially don’t like the “how”. Only stupid people make deals with the devil and Peter isn’t stupid. (I don’t care if he desperate, he’s not that stupid.) Also, it’s just created another genie–when is the ax going to fall, because sooner or later someone is going to write the story of how “you can’t trust the devil.”
I could rant, but I just don’t care anymore. I’m done. I’ve dropped the book from my subscription list, and it’s take PAD being brought back on board to make me pick up another Spidey book.
Which is a dámņëd shame, since I’ve been a Spider-Man fan from dámņ near infancy.
Way to show us that our opinions don’t matter and that twenty-odd years of loyalty mean jack-squat. Thanks a f’n heap, Joe Q.
Well, I guess now the Clone Saga has lost its place as the “most hated Spider-Man story” in history (assuming it still happened, of course)… Even though I’m a huge fan of Ben Reilly, I can’t say I’m happy about that.
Hëll, while they’re at it, why not start the issues over at #1? If it’s “all-new”, why keep any references to the old stuff?
Posted by: Ed at December 31, 2007 09:16 AM
I’m coming around to the notion that we’re all being hosed, scammed, “fished in” as Wayne would say.
All of the anti-marriage talk? Just pre-event publicity. Remember pre-Civil War, he went on a tear about Speedball, “We’re gonna kill him”.
Then the fan base keeps watching, wondering when he’s going to die.
How long has the publicity been out for this story line? How long has it been delayed? Wasn’t Brand New Day supposed to start in October?
How long have we known the “spoiled” ending? The wait to see the car crash of a comic story has been almost sadistically engineered.
We’re being played, here. How could an editor-in-chief not realize what a bad idea this is? not realize what the reaction would be? Not realize how poorly executed it all was?
If we are being played, it’s still bloody cruel.
Posted by: Neil C. at December 31, 2007 11:31 AM
I wouldn’t have minded ending the marriage, if it had been in a ‘normal’ (for the MU) way. Using Mephisto as a plot device just works against everything Spider-Man is supposed to be, the street-level, everyman hero.
That’s a really good point.
Posted by: JosephW at December 31, 2007 03:04 PM
Well, my comment about Storm and Stevie was slightly tongue-in-cheek but I think Stevie has been MIA for the better part of the past decade.
Yeah, it made me laugh. The last time I remember seeing Stevie was at the beginning of the “X-Tinction Agenda” crossover, and there was an editor’s note saying that she was appearing for the first time in…they couldn’t even remember! So when you mentioned her, I wondered if she’d resurfaced.
Posted by: Peter J Poole at December 31, 2007 03:23 PM
The smoking gnu has a fine traditional role in defective fiction. Why else would Sheerluck Holmes have worn a deerstalker?
Gnus are notorious for wiping out entire civilizations with second-hand smoke. Oh, they’ll TELL you they’ve quit, or even act like stupid animals that don’t have the opposable digits to operate a cigarette lighter, but it’s all a ruse to make you lower your guard. Then, when you least expect it…BOOM! They light up, and you’ve got cancer. And it’s your own dámņ fault for trusting those duplicitous gnus.
Posted by: bobb alfred at December 31, 2007 02:46 PM
If Marvel’s sales drop over the next few months, you can bet this kind of event will never happen again.
I think you’re giving them too much credit. *sigh*
Posted by: Andy Ihnatko at December 31, 2007 01:23 PM
He says No to Mephisto. Because he knows that M never makes an offer at face value, that there’s some horrific twist coming up, or that at the very best, handing over his marriage is just a small but significant contribution towards one of Mephisto’s larger and darker goals.
I agree. That would’ve been great.
Btw, here’s how Christopher Bird would’ve fixed this story, and I think it would’ve been pretty cool as well (especially considering what we GOT):
http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2007/11/30/geez-do-i-gotta-fix-everything/
It starts with this
Oops, forgot to delete the thing I began writing and then decided not to. Sorry.
You’re going to take JMS using Spider-Man to explicitly challenge Jerry Fallwell’s homophobia and like it, but you’re going to take his reference to someone who sincerely refers to women as “a gender which has no ethics, no scruples, no sense of right and wrong” as an indication of his approval of Dave Sim as a funny guy? I just don’t picture JMS being that hard-up for the company of funny people.
What happens when the new readers decide to look back on this character theyve been introduced to and become addicted to the classic legacy? Theyll want the marraige restored knowing who the characters are and how Peter evolved.
We all know this wont last, it’ll be retconned, the marraige will return, but we are still the subject of harsh interviews, condescending comments, and general unpleasentness from a man renowned for not being courteous under pressure for bad decisions. It’s editorial bullying.
Spider-Girl is the true future for the character, which is hardly disputable anymore since present timelines and status quoes have now been changed by four people, Jean Grey, Wanda, Peter, and MJ. All except Jean did what they did for selfish reasons, Jean at least let Scott find happiness with Emma and will likely be back
What defines canon anymore? Everything is too diverse for anyone to care. People can pick and choose what they want. If Joe were in charge and had done this in 1998, when we had NO diversity and the company was going to tank, it’d have killed Spidey dead forever.
All of us know, from this story, and “Secret Invasion”, that Quesada’s time as EIC is nearing it’s end. He will be removed from power, not resign, du
As much as I loved what he did for the buisness, and how I’ll likely learn to appreciate him again if he returns to freelance duties, it’s time he left.
Much like Bob Harris, Joe is burned out, I pity anyone who takes this job, because you become a bitter person if you cant handle the posistion, and eventually, despite promising yourself you wont…you’ll abuse it.
And he has. Oh, how he has.
I think that ultimately writers have to write for the characters on the characters terms and that it was foolish for Quesada to take this direction in the series — especially since Spider-man is one of the hottest properties around. 3 very successful movies, dozens of animated shows, Between 5-10 monthly comics featuring the character. Why change the character in such a way when there wasn’t a fan or critical outcry to do so.
Ultimately this is going to bite spider-man in the butt and the series is going to tank. It happened with the clone saga (that essentially attempted to return spidey to an earlier time period), it happened when PAD left the hulk when editorial attempted to steer hulk back to an earlier incarnation to coincide with the movie release, and so on and so forth.
bye bye spidey for me
“Well, I guess now the Clone Saga has lost its place as the “most hated Spider-Man story” in history”
If you’re only going to judge by the fan reaction of the first few days after the comic came out, then “The Death of Gwen Stacy” was hated much, much more immediately after it came out.
Someone mentioned a bunch of comments back whether or not viewer response is a factor that marvel or any other publisher takes into account.
The answer is yes!!!
About 10 years ago Tony Burns wrote over 80 letters to marvel requesting a Rick Jones trading card. It brought attention to the character, a marvel value stamp and a baseball card of jones. And ultimately if people stop buying the book editorial will have to change its point of view.
I predict that issues of spider-man will stay consistent for the next month or so and then plummet. At first fans will wait to see if there is a silver lining or a reversal in the plot. When that does not happen or does not happen fast enough people will jump ship.
Posted by Peter J. Poole: “Cheers. Also, Happy Brand New Year!:
Likewise, Mr. Poole! The same to all of you here as well.
As someone who has always valued continuity in both the DC and Marvel shared universes, I find the fact that Marvel has begun doing this…and opting to publicly decide that continuity isn’t so important anymore…to be disturbing and also discouraging.
As a person who has seen more continuity re-boots at DC than I care to count, I find myself not all that surprised, and feeling somewhat jaded about the whole thing.
As a person who has engaged in numerous debates on the DC message boards about the importance of continuity, only to be met with adamant insistence that it “shouldn’t” be such a big deal to anyone and that only “good stories” matter, I find it amusing that now that Marvel is doing it, so many people are in an uproar. And pointing out the same things I pointed out when I began protesting it at DC…what a slap in the face it is to fans of the no-longer-in-canon stories, what a disrespect it is to the writers of those earlier tales, the ripple effect it has on continuity universe-wide, etc. Not so hard to understand now, is it?
Was Bill Watterson talking about Bob Kane?
Hmmm. Just got done reading the issue and I was not that impressed. I am not happy with the decision, but I won’t be dropping the title because of it. I will pick up the first few arcs and see if it still grabs by attention as I do like some of the writers that will be assigned to the title.
As for the prediction that sales will drop on ASM, well this is likely to occur after the first arc or two. Not because of the marriage, but because JSM will no longer be on the title.
All I have to say $10 the Richards are next in line. No one said anything when Cyclops started cheating on his wife and look where it got us…
The only “real” reason for a historical reset is so it makes sense that the characters have the right history for their ages: How else could characters who were teens in the 1960s be in their late 20s or mid-30s in the 21st century? That said, most fans don’t seem to mind this, and it seems ridiculous that Peter would think Mephisto would have his best interests at heart? Feh.
Haven’t read through all the comments, so forgive me if I repeat sentiments…
I didn’t find it believable. In fact, when it was revealed that the red haired stranger was Mephisto, I chuckled. When he said “I want your… MARRIAGE!” I literally burst out laughing and stopped reading the issue.
See, I’ve never been a big fan of JMS, until he got involved with comics. He promised a lot for B5 that just wasn’t delivered, such as “Oh our aliens won’t just be bits of plastic on the actor’s faces.” No, they have Patti Labelle hair and one is a flashlight.
Okay, it’s a little unfair to act like that. I have to admit, I never gave B5 a fair chance, because in the first season it was bumped on my local channel from one time period to another, sometimes on Saturday evenings, sometimes on OVERNIGHTS. Not very fair, and I was mostly only able to watch the first season regularly, which I’m told was not exactly the best representation of the show.
But I was a little miffed at JMS because of slam pieces he’d do against Star Trek early in B5’s and DS9’s lives… of course at first DS9 didn’t impress me much either (it also suffered from that channel’s scheduling spottiness), but eventually it’s claws were dug in so deeply that it was my favorite Star Trek ever. I never thought THAT would happen.
So I went into ASM with JMS a little wary; perhaps I’d read Midnight Nation or Rising Stars and decided to give him another shot. I was glad I did. I thought the retro-conning of Peter’s powers into a possible totem-animal based thing as really cool, mainly because he didn’t REALLY ret-con it… he just said, look, you can look at this from a different point of view. I liked that.
But it was obvious that editorial decisions were screwing with certain storylines. The Other was just a mess… I still don’t remember what it was that Peter was sick from. They’d get to the end of each issue and say… “Oh yes Peter… you’re going to DIE… from something…” and then never tell you what it was. Man, I’m not sure if they ever did.
“Sins” was just… well. I could have done without it.
By that time I’d lost interest, although I have no idea if it was JMS or JQ who caused this. I picked up the first issue of OMD hoping that something important was being accomplished, but no… no.
You know the kid in the sandbox you hated while growing up? The one who had every toy possible? And he’d never let you play with them or do anything cool with them? That’s how I view some writers and editors now at Marvel. They’re in the sandbox and they have all these cool toys and they’re THEIRS and if you don’t play by their rules THEY’LL JUST GO HOME.
Suffice it to say, if I couldn’t take the Mephisto issue seriously, I think it’s safe to say that OMD isn’t for me. I’ve never really been much of a Spider-man fan anyway, so that’s okay. But I did like being one for a while. I’m sad that’s over with.
PAD,
Ok. Now I am depressed. Because if there was any sort of secret plan to reverse this idiotic nonsense, I doubt you or JMS would have politely expressed your objections.
Joe Q is an idiot. No matter what happens next, he will be known for this storyline. This is not a minor character.
As others have said well, the idea that great stories cannot be told about a Peter who is married is insane. I realize his being married does close some doors. But his not being married also closes some doors. Perhaps not as many, but it does. Let me name two: No matter how close a dating couple are, there is no replacement for marriage. The commitment that is made is very different on so many levels. If nothing else, there are now legal entanglements if they get divorced. More importantly, it is a dedication to one person for life (at least that is the normal hope).
More importantly, Peter is now the biggest selfish jerk in the Marvel universe. He makes a deal with a version of the Devil and trades his wife for his aunt. Obviously those new spider powers have warped his mind.
I am glad, PAD, that you are no longer writing a Spidey title because I would not be reading it. I am not sure I can keep reading New Avengers either. While I have not liked a lot of things lately at Marvel (especially making Tony Stark a jerk), it at least followed the story line. This time it was a giant reset button that does for Marvel what the first Crisis did for DC — fixing one “problem” creates 50 others.
I’ll check back in a year or two with Spidey since I doubt fans will tolerate this change very well.
Iowa Jim
Actually, I don’t think it was “limiting.” In many ways, it simply wasn’t possible. In a lot of ways, having a wife and children makes it impossible for Peter Parker to be a hero.
Hmm. Guess that means Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) is not a hero. (Or Clark Kent / Superman?)
Does it make it difficult? No doubt. Just like it does for anyone who serves in the military, as a police office, a fireman, etc. What about the person willing to testify against a drug lord, knowing his or her family might be in danger?
Having a family in no way makes it impossible to be a hero.
Iowa Jim
This storyline started to fall apart on me almost immediately. Spider-Man goes to everyone on the planet that might be able to help Aunt May and no one can? Not a single person can help her recover from a gunshot wound? I could maybe understand that if she was suffering from a Rigelian Death Virus or something, but someone in the Marvel universe should be able to handle that request.
Then the one person who does say they can help is a little girl. (If this was a movie, this is the point where I would be yelling at the screen.) It threw me off because I thought sure Mephisto was going to show up. Then it turns out he was disguised as the little girl, or something like that. (The story was making my head hurt too much to try and remember details like that.) Following that is the most ludicrous offer from the devil that I’ve ever read.
I actually skimmed the last issue of One More Day in the bookstore today, to see if maybe, just maybe, it had a decent ending. What I read was ridiculous and insulting – Spider-Man does not make deals like that. Heroes find a way to win that does not involve giving in to the bad guys.
I came back to Spider-Man because I thought Marvel had learned its lesson after the Clone mess and Chapter One, but apparently not. So I’m dropping the title again as of now. At least I can still enjoy The Amazing Spider-Girl where Peter and Mary Jane are still together.
Not for me, thanks. Not interested in OMD/BND. I’ll wait this out until the “fix” is repaired.
Okay, I’m in a different boat than the most of you. I haven’t read Spider-Man in years.
I haven’t read Spider-Man since it was revealed that he was a clone.
You see, I didn’t start reading Spider-Man until around issue 200 and revealing that Ben was actually Spider-Man meant that I NEVER read Spider-Man.
I just dropped all the Spider-Man titles then because the long time investment I had in the character was completely thrown out the window. I know Marvel reversed their decision because of the negative reaction but it was too late for me. I follow writers to books but I never considered picking up Peter’s Spider-Man book because the clone saga destroyed my interest in the character.
Hope “One More Day” doesn’t do the same for others out there.
How wrong is Quesada?
He WANTED TO BRING GWEN BACK, but had to be talked out of it.