This has not upset fanboys at all.
CBR’s Kiel Phegley and Marvel e-i-c Joe Quesada engage in a massive, week-long tell-all on the subject of One More Day, and its current retcon in One Moment in Time — O.M.I.T. OMD, you may recall if you have been near a comic book website in the last three years, retconned the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane out of existence because of a deal made with Mephisto. It was a hugely popular story element ridiculously controversial and fans complained loudly and continually for three years.
AND NOW, O.M.I.T. has made that story never happen. So despite the memories people may have of the touching Shea Stadium Watson/Parker nuptials, that storyline is now as leveled and buried as Shea itself.
And it turns out that…none of the things that made it never happened happened either. And the behind the scenes of how and why is not pretty….
Yes. During and after all the back and forth, arguments, public statements and other silliness, we had to editorially go back in and rework the two remaining issues so that they made sense with where Brand New Day was going to begin. As we did this, the one thing that became obvious was that we weren’t going to be able to answer all the questions in the two issues that were left as was hoped. So a conscious decision was made to get through the story, have Peter and MJ have their confrontation with Mephisto and do it in a way that would make sense with the sequel when the time came to tell that story while also trying to use as much of what JMS had given us to that point in order to keep a tonal similarity with the first two issues. At this juncture, everything we did was with one single goal in mind, to serve the upcoming Brand New Day and to make sure that those creative teams had a clear runway to take off from. Am I happy that we had to perform triage on those issues in order to make the story work? No, not at all. Did it make for a totally satisfying read? Of course not, how could it have? There were too many unanswered questions for the reader. But, as E-i-C I’m confronted with decisions like this all the time, some bigger than others, but when I’m left between 37 years of continuity disappearing or leaving a story open ended to revisit on another day, I feel I made the absolute right decision.
Part two of this disclosure epic is up now. While we’ve never been emotionally invested in any of this — it makes way more sense to keep Peter Parker in his bachelor state from a licensing standpoint — it is interesting to see that the statute of limitations on behind the scenes is now three years — or at least behind the scenes involving people who are now exclusive with another publisher.
You know what? I don’t care. I’m sure there’s a flowchart somewhere which explains it all, but does it matter? Perhaps they should just reboot the entire title like they did with Ultimate Spider-Man and Heroes Reborn.
I buy Marvel Adventures Spider-Man. It’s self-contained, and uncomplicated. No Mary Jane, but that’s okay, because Chat Sanduval is even better.
Well, to avoid doing a controversial storyline with Peter Parker getting divorced, they umm… my head hurts. Oh well, he’s still Spider-Man right? I mean he still web slings and makes the jokes, right?
A single Peter Parker is arguably a better character than a married Peter Parker, depending on what a writer has in mind for a story, but generally, from an editorial standpoint, insisting that a single Peter Parker is better displays a preference for plot-driven stories. Plot material is all that a steady relationship or marriage interferes with, or restricts.
If the objective of the writer is to get the reader inside the hero’s head and make his emotional conflicts meaningful, make the reader feel his depression, his exultation, his swing of moods, then a marriage isn’t limiting at all. The more complex the character is, the more relationships he has, the more opportunities there are for stories.
I’m not claiming that character-driven stories are always better than plot-driven stories; after all, if the reader doesn’t know how the story is going to end, the plot provides suspense. But in the context of a serial, character-driven stories can provide conflicts, even intense conflicts, that plot-driven stories can’t provide.
SRS
Wasn’t Spider-man growing up, losing his glasses and going to college one of the main reasons Steve Ditko stopped drawing Spider-Man in the first place? Steve was right all along.
Oh – man I just did a poop
Joe Quesada is sick, really.
He just can’t stop talking about it. CBR is doing a week long interview with him and it’s like, damn. Get therapy dude, you need to get over it already. We get it, Spider-Man isn’t married anymore.
It’s really tragic, because after all this, who won? I’d say if undoing the marriage would have 1) brought in their targeted kid readers, 2) bought in ANY new readers 3) cured Quesada of his unnatural obsession, I’d say it was worth it.
But it accomplished nothing. No new kid readers, no new readers of ANY kind — not even after the Obama issue which sold plenty. Joe Quesada is still obsessed and worst, post BND stories are terrible, they make no sense and the character is suffering from the lack of a professional editor.
Which is probably because Steven Wacker spends almost all day long on the CBR message boards arguing with fans. It’s mindboggling because he comes off like an angry fanboy himself, nasty and snarky as some of the worst.
A friend of mind showed me a few of the threads he saw and we laughed because you want to say ‘Hey, don’t you have Spider-Man comics you should be editing? Because they’re not very good right now…’
One More Day, Brightest Day, Brand New Day, Daylight Come and Me Wanna Go Home.
Brett, I must ask you: have you actually read any of the post-OMD stories you’re dismissing as “terrible”? Because the title has seen some really strong work in the last few years, particularly from Joe Kelly, Fred Van Lente, Zeb Wells and Mark Waid.
You can have issue with Wacker’s professional conduct, or the decisions made going into “Brand New Day”, that’s fair, but I just want to make sure you’re not dismissing or flat-out slagging on work you haven’t actually read – because it’s long past irritating to read the Quesada-haters spewing ignorant vitriol at a series that’s in reality been pretty damn good overall.
I really didn’t think they’d be able to screw up Spidey more then the clone saga, but Joe Q’s British-level hatred of gingers did just that.
I read the interview and now…BRAIN…HURTS…
Lance Roger Axt
AudioComics, LLC
What the heck did MJ whisper?
Do people even still read the Spiderman books anymore?!?
But back then, superhero comics were written for children. A Spider-Man who was perpetually teen-aged wouldn’t appeal to adult readers. If he hadn’t aged to adulthood, he and his series might be dead now. That’s probably why many or most of the Marvel heroes and heroines are supposedly in their 20s.
However, the non-aging also presents serious problems over the years. Aging forces people to make decisions. Playboys in their fifties or sixties can be repulsive, but Tony Stark hasn’t been forced to make decisions. The idea that Stark can reinvent himself might have intrigued people, but he did that in “Extremis,” and once was enough.
If Spider-Man is going to be a perpetual loser at love and life generally, there’s no reason to get interested in him. The pre-OMD Spider-Man wasn’t a loser.
SRS
The only point of “One Moment in Time” seems to be that Joe Quesada really enjoyed picking at the scab that was finally starting to heal over the knife wound to the back of many Spider-Fans.
As one of those fans, I wasn’t happy about what Quesada did to the marriage with “One More Day” but eventually decided to give AMAZING SPIDER-MAN the chance to win me over and to some extent it did, even though most of the stories could have just as easily been told with a married Peter Parker instead of a rebachelorized one. None of the stories, however, have been true classics that make me want to pick up a collected trade paperback or hardcover to read over and over again.
Also, while it used to be interesting to see Peter Parker struggling with money problems, now it’s just plain embarrassing for me to look at. In this current economic culture, seeing Peter as a perpetual loser who functions in life solely on the charity of his friends and loved ones is a big turn-off. This isn’t just Peter not living up to his own potential anymore, it’s become pure stupidity, which makes it harder for me to take him seriously as the hero I’ve known for years.
I hope something is done about this soon, because I want to keep reading AMAZING SPIDER-MAN as I’ve done for years and years. I just don’t know if I can take all this nonsense anymore.
Fantabulero:
I tried a couple of issues and they turned me off, especially when they had Peter bed hopping. Because a bed hopping Peter Parker is more suitable for kids than a married one?
BTW: To everyone who says it makes more sense from a licensing standpoint to have Peter Parker single, can you back that up with some facts?
Because Parker was married for twenty five years and it didn’t seem to hurt his licensing at all. In fact, the Spidey movie and all the merchandising from it, occurred while Peter Parker was married in the comics and I didn’t hear about any licencees turning down the property because he was… shhh… married.
You know, come to think of it, there was a licensing bonanza while Todd McFarlane drew the book, especially when he did his Spider-Man #1 which sold a few million copies more than any issue did when he was single, whose famous pose adorns statues, busts and t-shirts everywhere… that occurred while he was married.
So please, if it makes so much more sense to licensing, show us how licensing was damaged during the 25 years he was married.
Man, I wish all the Aspergers-esque whining and moaning about OMD/BND and JQ would stop. It was tiresome three years ago.
I’ve been reading Spidey comics for over 30 years – way before he was married – and I gotta say I prefer the single, unmarried Pete. He’s just a more fun character that way.
I think the great irony of all this myopic hysteria is the fact that its on record that the only reason that Peter & Mary Jane were married in the comics in the first place was because Stan decided to do in the newspaper strip and Jim Shooter didn’t want the comic book to be outdone and decided to beat the strip to the punch.
Heck, at that time Peter and Mary Jane were BROKEN UP in the comics and had to be hastily reconciled to make the wedding story work.
So, in the end, even the marriage in the first place was an editorial decision — not an organic storytelling decision.
It’s been going on, not because the marriage was ended, but because the way the marriage was ended was grossly defective. Quesada’s been reinforcing that point with his latest material.
If Mary Jane had been killed off in a well-done tragedy, readers might have been upset, but they’d accept the ending eventually. That’s the effect a well-done story has on readers.
Artificially ending the marriage badly and then keeping M.J. around is upsetting to readers for a variety of reasons. Reading comics is escapist entertainment, but escapist entertainment can still be done well. Altering Parker and his world clumsily and then offering various reasons for the alterations, none of which has anything to do with the actual mechanics of storytelling, is. . . unsatisfactory. Quesada, et al., should be able to recognize and accept valid criticism when they see it instead of implicitly arguing that the “illusion of change” policy is the only one that they and their writers can employ because any other policy requires too much creativity and imagination.
SRS
Ack I do NOT WANT TO SEE MJ KILLED OFF.
I haven’t read a Spider-Man book in a while (sorry Dan Slott et al) but if I do I am content in knowing that Peter is single. I am aware of and open to that character.
Likewise, before the shift, I was comfortable with and open to the married Parkers.
VALID STORIES CAN BE TOLD IN BOTH WORLDS. It’s not like Peter Parker suddenly starts shooting webbing out his ass or something.
As far as it goes, I’m with Joe Q! New Marvel, new movie empire, new audience for the characters — use a version they are more familiar with.
I agree that killing off MJ wouldn’t be necessary; an alternative would be to have them grow apart, but how can a writer do that if none of the characters grow? If there was a family crisis and Peter sided with the outsider instead of MJ’s ____, that would cause discord. If they became fervent about opposing political causes, if MJ discovered various things about herself that made her rethink marriage — the marriage could have been ended in dozens of ways, but most of them would require changes or exploration of aspects that don’t exist in superhero stories.
SRS
Now that I think about it, a divorce would have been most appropriate, both to the character and the times. The older I get, the more of my friends’ marriages are collapsing. It fits right in with the lovable loser that is Peter Parker. Missed opportunity.
@Synsidar – I was being a little sarcastic in my comment. But to be honest, Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man is still the one I keep coming back to. The last Spider-Man story I read was Brendan McCarthy’s Fever. I enjoyed Mark Millar’s short run, but as for Spidey being single, there are two other titles that one would have thought should be satisfying that need. Adventures and Ultimate.
Maybe it is finally time for Marvel to do a Crisis reboot. I mean, “Adventures” is doing what the Ultimate line was originally meant to do. Why not merge the Marvel and Ultimate universes? Keep the Ultimate Spider-Man where he never married MJ and you’re back to normal.
Whatever ‘normal’ is this week.
Feeling like this means you’ve invested too much of yourself into a comic and you need to back off and go hang out with your family and see how they’re doing back in the real world.
Clearly there are two schools of thought when it comes to long running characters. Some prefer the DC mentality where characters are never-aging icons that recieve only cosmetic changes to their status quo in order to update them for whatever decade. Personally, as a kid I always found DC’s unaging characters boring, and was excited by the fact that, if I dug up back issues of Spider-Man or the X-Men, that they were younger as well. They changed and evolved over time, which made it feel more like glimpsing into a window to another world with real people, rather than cartoon characters being written by a staff.
When I discovered the X-Men comics after the X-Men cartoon, the comics version immediately felt like the “real” version, characters that had a history. If I’d seen the movie version of Spider-Man first and then discovered in the comics that Parker and MJ had eventually married, that would’ve made the comics seem immediately more real to me.
Today’s Marvel never would’ve allowed Parker to graduate high school, let alone college, and personally I find that extremely beyond dull. But clearly there are others here who have a different preference, and are happy just knowing their preferred status quo exists, whether they actually read still or not.
So characters can be allowed growth while for others it doesn’t work with Spider-Man just like Superman they both worked being married.
I have no use for Spidey being single again, that phase of the character is long dead and seems incredibly forced now.
He grew up and was a better person and hero and then they shoved him back into a box in some wild and utterly ridiculous hope that kids would read his comics. They were wrong you didn’t need a crystal ball to see how wrongheaded and foolish that decision was.
Now Spider-Man once again for has become a mess, you’d think that they would have learned after the Clone Saga debacle. But this to me is even worse, and all the justifications and excuses are useless now the damage has been done and thanks to inept editorial it seems it won’t be fixed anytime soon.
“It’s not like Peter Parker suddenly starts shooting webbing out his ass or something.”
Have you ever seen the parody “Spider-Babe” on late-night Cinemax? There’s actually some pretty awesome parody of the Spider-Man films in there. But, uh, it’s not her ass that she shoots webbing out of, if you know what I mean ….
Do you knw, I was halfway through the comments and then I realised, I don’t really care. But still feel the need to express an opinion because Spider-Man was one big reason I got into comic books in the first place. I don’t read any Marvel except Punisher MAX and, they lost me round about the beginning of the “Clone Farago”. I’m wish the millions of Spider-fans around the world the best of luck, but this won’t bring me back.
Heidi,
I’d be right behind you saying, that yes, Joe Q is and was right, that its a new movie, a new audience and they deserve what’s familiar.
Except that the audience from the movie didn’t translate to new readers and there was three of them and none brought in new readers, just check the sales figures at the time the movies came out. In fact, most ‘non-comic’ readers who DO read about Spider-Man do so because he’s in the newspaper and in the newspaper, he’s married.
Additionally, an entirely new generation of readers jumped on board when Todd McFarlane did the book, when Parker was married. That new generation of kids that discovered Spidey with Todd didn’t grow up feeling ‘cheated’ or emotionally traumatized by having to read about a married Spider-Man.
Companies and their creators always complain that ‘readers don’t like change’ when that is farthest from the truth and couldn’t be seen more clearly than what Marvel has done.
Joe Quesada did this because he feels every kid should grow up with a single Spider-Man, because HE grew up with a single Spider-Man.
And the irony is, he’s changed the character into a character that will never change…
If Quesada’s argument holds weight, why stop at Spider-Man? Why not unmarry Reed and Sue and do away with Franklin? Doesn’t every kid deserve to read about an unmarried Reed and Sue? Oh wait, Joe Quesada didn’t grow up with an unmarried Reed and Sue.
I’d watch out kids, Joe Quesada grew up without a computer or a cell phone and if you’re not careful, he might try and retcon them out of existence too.
For what it’s worth, Brett, “Brand New Day” got me to pick up Spider-man regularly after having ignored the title for about twenty years. (Long before the Clone Saga and MacFarlane’s run.) Additionally, the movies got my wife interested in reading the issues I picked up.
Not saying you’re statistically wrong (although I’m pretty sure I remember that there was a decent sales boost, before the “4 issues a month” fatigue started setting in), just saying your absolutist argument might be a bit full of it.
Just so I am clear, we all still hate Mephisto right? I mean, we can at least all agree that he’s a dick (in addition to being a terrible plot device).
If you wanted an unmarried Spider-Man you had Ultimate, Marvel Adventures, every TV show and every film. That base was well covered.
A deal with the devil shouldn’t be part of Spider-Man’s story. That’s way off tone for the character.
Spider-Man used to be the superhero things happened to and they stuck. His girlfriend and main bad guy were killed. He graduated and got married. He was a superhero but he had the most realistic home life of any Marvel or DC character. Time passed for him and it made events that happened matter. Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman kept getting rebooted but Spider-Man moved in a straight line, he had a life and that life had consequences.
But then Marvel started to chicken out. Aunt May dies and died well but they brought her back. Norman Osborn was brought back. They tried to bring in a clone to basically reboot Spider-Man then killed him. He had a baby and they got rid of it. Big things happened but then got reversed and had no impact. He died and ended up with stakes in his arms. Shock for shock’s sake. Spider-Man has always been about actions and consequences. Take away the consequences, you take away responsibility and now he’s just a generic super hero. He’s a better t-shirt image much less of a character.
__________________
What so many fanboys don’t seem to grasp – be they in positions of power by editorialship or by voting with their wallets – is that the one thing that makes great literature ‘great’ is the journey from point A to point B (and to point C, if need be, and so on).
In short, characters (like people) need to grow. Or they wither & die.
Say what you will about JMS’ tenure on Spider-Man, but goddammit, he FORCED Peter Parker to grow & change & move his life forward. So much so, that I, who have never cared much for the character or bought a Spider-Man comic in my life, happily devoured his run, warts and all.
What Joey Q (a man worthy of respect for his many accomplishments, despite this glaring gaffe) did with this whole Mephisto/Mary Jane nonsense was fall back on what DC seems to do every couple of years: “Oh oh! We done painted ourselves into a corner and we ain’t got the smarts to build us a door or nuthin’… Time for a Crisis!”
What IS it with you lot that you feel this… need… to constantly “fix” things by making deals with demons or blowing up and/or taping back together multiverses or going back to the beginning of time and re-writing history or slapping on magic gloves and twirling around 3 times… ALL OF THIS to keep your characters predictable & stagnant.
Growing up. Growing older. Falling on your ass & then getting back up again. Learning. Forgetting. Falling in love. Falling out… it’s as if this is some kind of middle-aged fanboy weird-ass wish fulfillment… “Yeah, I’m divorced and fat and losing my hair – but at least Peter Parker is still a swingin’ single whiny bitch.”
Isn’t that… you know… kind of pathetic?
i dropped spidey at the time he revealed his identity (WTF) to the world. i guess joeQ and co. couldn’t get out of that mess without making it part of the pathetic deal parker made with the devil. was it ever explained why mephisto threw parker a bone and made that part of the deal, and since when is it ok for heroes to make deals with bad guys to get something they want. i always thought what made these guys heroes was making the tough choices and sticking to them no matter how much they hurt. having aunt may stay dead would be perferable than making a deal with the devil. hell, why didn’t parker ask for uncle ben and gwen stacey to come back too? the deal made parker look that much less of a hero. and now that parker will never get married, why should i (or anyone else for that matter) give a rat’s rump about his romantic life. no matter who he’s with, no matter for how long, the relationship is never gonna go anywhere, so who cares. they might as well change peter parker’s name to archie andrews and have a blonde and brunette (or red head) chase him around for years since it won’t make any difference, he ain’t gonna marry any of them. if this is marvel’s idea of a “new marvel” for a “new audience”, i’m glad i got off this train wreck. thanks for letting me rant!
The systemic problems I see in Marvel’s current comics (I gave up on Superman in ’71 or so) have made some writers the caricatures other writers mocked decades ago. Aspiring writers were advised to read widely and learn things, so that their story ideas wouldn’t just be regurgitations of comics stories they’d read. But that’s what readers often get now, because name recognition is all-important, so an old villain will be reused with a superficially different plot. Decompression has eliminated the subplots that used to appear in, e.g., AVENGERS and spotlight characters.
Superhero comics have a limited readership, but that might be due less to readers being ignorant of conventions, not knowing how to read balloons, and not knowing just how wonderful Spider-Man, Thor, and the other characters are until a reader gets into the stories, than it is to assuming that the characters are unchanging icons, love interests are just plot devices, the stories’ plots are tired formulas, and that reading Marvel comics is generally a waste of time and money.
Anyone who’s interested in the systemic problems with comics storytelling could look at SIEGE and the current NEW AVENGERS and AVENGERS. In AVENGERS #5, a time travel issue, an old Tony Stark explains a situation by referring to the movie GROUNDHOG DAY from “100 years ago.” Why on earth rely on that instead of saying “We’re stuck in a time loop.” Because neither Bendis nor his editor knows what “time loop” means?
If the creators and editors keep assuming that changing/developing the characters and appealing to advanced readers will lose existing readers and fail to attract new ones, they’ll never know whether a more sophisticated approach to storytelling can attract new readers in large numbers.
SRS
“was it ever explained why mephisto threw parker a bone and made that part of the deal, and since when is it ok for heroes to make deals with bad guys to get something they want.”
Because Joe Q cribbed the idea from a part of the Morrison/Waid/Millar/Peyer Superman 2000 story proposal, but Spider-Man doesn’t really have anything else close to a Mr. Mxyptlk.
As I recall, most of this was in the public domain anyway. Straczynski already explained quite some time ago that chapter four had been drastically re-written. I recall Quesada saying some time ago that this was done partly to make sure that the story complied with the work already in progress for Brand New Day – though I’m not sure he’s previously been quite so explicit in accusing Straczynski of simply ignoring a clearly agreed plan and submitting a story which had already been explicitly rejected.
Incidentally, while people may wish to credit Straczynski with “moving the character forward” and so forth, bear in mind that his version of the story was also going to end with a massive hammering of the reset button – if anything, an even more drastic reset than the one that saw print. I recall him mentioning in interviews that this was the plan for his run at least by the time he was writing “Sins Past”, and that would certainly make sense given that the last year or so of his run writes the character into a corner from which there seems to be no way out other than the Cosmic Reset.
I think most of the comic book readers have no big issues with resets. DC is doing them quite regularly and they keep selling decent numbers.
What most fans have issues with is how this reset was accomplished. To put it mildly: it was bad writing. Nothing more, nothing less.
And now we have CBR doing a daily column for JQ to try to explain the whole mess. It should be very obvious to him that if he needs so many comic book issues and so many articles to do this then something is not right…
We could go on discussing the reasons behind this executive choice, but I find it rather pointless. To quote something I read in another forum: “Memo to Marvel’s future EiC: Next time you reset Spider Man’s marriage status please just divorce him!”
“Growing up. Growing older. Falling on your ass & then getting back up again. it’s as if this is some kind of middle-aged fanboy weird-ass wish fulfillment…”
Yes, it is exactly this. If one genre is 100% unsuited for things like growing up, it is superhero comics. If you strip away all the illusion of change, the often minor adjustments to a changing society, you remain with Batman punching thugs in dark alleys or Spider-Man swinging about roof-tops.
Wow. When did reading about how comic stories come about become more interesting than the actual stories themselves???
The simple, awful truth about this “event”, and many other such “events” from both DC & Marvel of late is that they are rubbish. Rubbish. Rubbish. Rubbish. The very fact most of the debate centres on the reasons behind the creation of the story, as opposed to the story itself, is rubbish.
The very fact that Joe Q feels the need to explain every single facet of the story means that it doesn’t work, people don’t get it, and have not, most importantly, enjoyed it. If you have to explain, after publication, why a story is good, what the story means, what else you need to read to get a better understanding of it etc, then then the creators have not done their job properly.
The truth of the matter is that many of us (myself included) have been reading about these characters for way too long. People have pointed out that the MJ/Parker marriage was an editorial mandate, but I bet most of the readers at that time were kids, who probably didn’t realise this or buy all the trade mags to get the inside dope on all the things going on behind the scenes with Shooter and so on. They just read the stories and they either liked them or not.
There’s no magic now. We all peruse sites such as CBR, Newsarama, The Beat etc. and are pretty much fed all the story beats before we’ve even read the comics. Each interview tells us “everything will change”, “someone will die” etc etc, only to have not a lot change really, and anything that does change go right back anyway. Where’s the magic in that?
I stopped buying a lot of stuff after the Infinite Crisis/Final Crisis/Secret Invasion/Civil War glut awhile back. All of them promising a lot but none really delivering. Won’t be starting again because I want to enjoy reading comics, not the explanations/dissections of comics.
I like Joe Quesada. I also think he’s wrong. In that interview, he’s trying to come across as smarter than he really is. It doesn’t work. Trying to talk nonsense about how this didn’t happen because that happened is just damage control and in no way reflective of how things really are. Every “rebottled genie” has resulted in me becoming less and less interested in what Marvel has to offer. House of M–hated it. One More Day–hate it. There’s no doubt that good stories have been written since these events took place, but there’s also no doubt that they were just mandatory changes from on-high which is the standard Marvel way of doing things and the reason I’ve hated the Marvel “Universe” for quite some time. Time and time again they’ve sacrificed good writers making moves on previously bad books which have become good as a result of said writers in order to serve the plots and crazy ideas of editorial.
That’s why the only good Marvel book is a Soleil Marvel book.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again. The magical undoing of the marriage would have been less controversial and less hated by fans if Peter and MJ had made a deal with Loki (who owes Spidey a favor for saving his daughter’s life) instead of Mephisto. Until Marvel retcons the whole “deal with the devil”, many fans are going to continue to b***h and moan about OMD.
“Do people even still read the Spiderman books anymore?!?”
Apparently 30,000 people don’t read Spiderman anymore.
@wraith – if parker did make a deal with loki, what would be loki’s motivation to break up parker’s marriage (epescially if loki owed parker a favor)? answer: none. the whole point of the deal with mesphisto was to break up parker and mj. bringing back aunt may was a means to that end, and regardless if parker made a deal with loki or meshisto there would still be that whole “parker making a deal with a villian/evil being to get what he wants” that would still make parker look like less of a hero. parker saved loki’s daughter ’cause it’s the right thing to do, not because he was looking to gain favor with loki. does loki even have the power to alter reality? for that matter since when does mephisto have that power, and if he does why hasn’t he used it for his own evil goals? ah, no matter what angle someone looks at this it was a poorly conceived plot device that in the context of the story – sucks. there could have been many other ways to break up parker and mj. why they settled for the meshisto angle is beyond me (and many other folks).
p.s. – i haven’t been to the shop in a while, tell irene and bishop i say “hi!” and hope to drop in soon.
Wait, Peter and Mary Jane were already broken up and amnesiac, so One Moment In Time did…. what, exactly?
I offered Marvel a story to get MJ and Spider-man back together. I was quickly turned down and am now posting the story across the web. To read this Google Mary Jane: Trial by Fire.
Enjoy and please Review.
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