I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view…

That said, I haven’t bought a Spider-Man comic in 15 years, and don’t intend to start, so for me this is rather like getting news that an old friend I’d lost interest in keeping up with has come down with Alzheimer’s.

i seriously don’t know. on the one hand, it *is* a book meant for young adults . that’s their demographic. that’s what they should be working with.

on the other, the entire plot device is beyond stupidity. of all the retconning devices in the literate world, that’s the best one they could come up with.

sad.

stuff like this makes me happy i moved away from the pervert spandex books.

except for Whedon’s X-Men, of course.

heh.

Spidey’s a whole lot more fun and easy for kids to relate to when he’s single? How so? When was the last time a kid bought Spider-Man, or any comic for that matter? Comics are not priced or aimed at kids anymore.
Just look at the young reader line circ figures, you’ll see what I mean. Even the Spider-Man movie couldn’t get them into the shops.

Rich,

I truly wish Aunt May’s death ‘was’ inevitable.

If that were the case, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion because the One More Day storyline wouldn’t exist. Aunt May would have stayed dead in Amazing Spider-Man # 195 (or thereabouts). Or in Spider-Man # 400. That’s what makes this whole storyline so silly. How many times does Peter Parker have to watch this old hag die and come back? That’s also why he’d be an idiot if he accepted Mephisto’s offer.

1) It’s common knowledge that anyone who deals with the devil, loses. The devil is the great deceiver, a liar so why would he make a deal with him? It’s an insult to the character’s intelligence and the reader’s intelligence if he does. It’s also anti-heroic.

2) As an editor, I’d be more worried about making Spider Man look dumb to accept a deal with the devil than having him be fun and single. If Peter Parker is a loser, he can’t have fun so that too is an oxymoron statement. Being a loser isn’t exactly fun.

3) Getting back to Peter’s response to Mephisto, really, he should tell Mephisto to fuck off.

‘Go ahead Mephy, TRY and kill her. Greater editors than you have tried. Aunt May, she’s like The Terminator.

‘She’ll be back.’

But really, this whole yarn is an example of why stories in comics have become less and less readable. They have ZERO credibility. What’s written today will be undone tomorrow. So why bother reading them to begin with? Joe Q undoes the Spidey Marriage, Dan Didio undoes Crisis and unleashes 52 earths in the DCU.

What a mess. This a sign of creative bankrupcy upstairs. Forget changing or retconing the characters. Change the company leaders.

1. Spidey should NEVER had been married to begin with. IMO, the marriage ruined the character. So I’m all for the marriage ending.

2. The decision to marry him in the comic was and EDITORIAL one.

3. Using Mephisto to get rid of the marriage is a DUMB idea.

4. From the rumors I heard about OMD, JMS’s original idea wasn’t much better then Quesada’s idea. Hell, I think both their ideas SUCK.

5. I pretty much figured out how OMD will end and what the end results will be for Spidey. In fact, I knew for about a year. And from the rumors I heard, I was pretty much dead on.

I don’t know how they could have worked this in … but Aunt May dying is inevitable. The death of Gwen, however, is something of which Peter never really forgave himself. Peter loves Mary Jane … but I gotta believe that at least once a month, something reminds him of Gwen. And at least once a year, there must be some quiet, wistful moment where he wonders what might have been. If Mephisto proposed this, it would REALLY have had drama …

Although I like the suggestion, “Hey, Mephy, go F*** yourself!” Telling Mephisto off would instantly make him THE coolest character of all time.

As for waking up from a black-out threeway with the Black Cat and the Gwen Clone … I shudder at this thought … I feel guilty for even being amused and a little intrigued at the thought.

If by “older men,” you mean Joe. Q, I’ll go along with that. Otherwise, the “aging fanboy” argument is just as stupid and shallow today as it was when it became “cool” a few years ago.

As a 39-yr old, I stopped reading all the SPIDER-MAN titles 15+ years ago because they didn’t interest me any longer. I thumb through them occasionally, or purchase one issue per year, just to see what they’re doing. Kinda like the annual phone call to an old dear friend with whom you no longer have anything in common.

Retconning the marriage away won’t get me to start buying them again.

For Marvel’s sake, I hope the last issue of One More Day does not hit on a slow news day or hit the radar conservative pundit shows.

Good for Joe, I’m all for it. Now if they can just get him back in high school…

BTW, the exterior shots for How To Murder Your Wife were filmed on the block on which I grew up, albeit ten years before I was born. I just saw a bit of it on TV a couple weeks ago and it’s a scream. From what I gather from its IMDB entry it’s a remake of an Italian film which also starred Lisi, though in that version her character was meant to be Greek.

IF Marvel HAVE to end the marriage, it should be because of internal character motivations, not due to some external other-worldly force. And it should be predicated on a deep rooted sense of history for the character. My suggestion, that I have touted elsewhere, would go something like this:

”
The way I would have handled this marriage break-up, if Marvel absolutely had to do it? Green Goblin. Norman Osborn viciously beats and pounds on Aunt May, right in front of both Peter & MJ. Peter would snap, and react with such savagery that he absolutely explodes on Norman, and viciously rips his heart right out of his chest. This unbridled anger and unseen side inside Peter scares MJ so much that she flees, feeling her heart break at this soul-killing destruction of the man she loves. And she just vanishes into thin air. May survives, barely, but is considerably weaker than before…I guess regressing her to the helpless old widow she once was, so Peter has the responsibility of caring for her. Yet he’s so wracked with guilt, he can’t bear to face MJ, let alone look for her. And, being members of the same team in the Avengers, Dr Strange takes pity on Peter, and gently removes his love for MJ from his mind. Peter is whole again, and happy. Joe Q gets his wish that the marriage is undone, there is room for Peter to move on, and a real responsibility given back to him.”

Is that what you want Joe, huh, is it?!?!!!???!!

Aunt May has more lives than a black cat, owns more tombstones than a cemetary.

Parker’s response should be ‘Hey Mephy — go F*** yourself. There isn’t enough dirt in the Marvel Universe to keep my Aunt dead and buried.’

That said, is anyone really shocked about the delay on the Spidey titles? It’s Joe Q on art. He’s never shipped a book on time in his entire career.

Peter and MJ will figure that they can beat the devil. They have always shown a near delusional level of optimism, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they figured they would be able to get back together so it would be worth it. Either that or MJ goes ahead and makes the decision for Peter.

Reed Richards ASSAULTED HEAVEN to bring the Thing back to life, people.

OK, so Iron Man won’t supply money. You mean to tell me that Spider-Man has forgotten that Danny Rand’s a millionaire?

Hell, if Peter’s willing to make a deal with Satan, why isn’t he willing to make a deal with Norman Osborne? Or Doctor Doom?

Or that there are HOW many cosmic-level beings who screw with the fabric of reality on a daily basis, yet are somehow forbidden or unable to interfere with one old woman in a hospital? Especially considering the number of them that actually owe him, big time?

And even on the more mundane basis, the whole “it’s just her time, you have to accept it” argument that’s being handed out doesn’t wash when Reed Richards BREAKS INTO HEAVEN to bring the Thing back to life.

When Marvel makes such a big deal out of the interconnectedness of it’s universe in crossovers like World War Hulk and Civil War, it’s silly to try to handwave all that away when it’s convenient for the plot and it ends up being conspicuous by it’s absence.

Ancient aunt who’ll probably shuffle off this mortal coil all on her own within five years… or…

Lifetime of happiness with gorgeous, sexy woman who’s crazy about me.

Hmm…

I’d yank the plug on Aunt May faster than Pietro Maximoff with a bladder infection.

“Well turn it around. Would you let your grandma die so you could marry Heidi Klum?”

I don’t even know who Heidi Klum is, and I think that’s an obvious “yes”.

Ew.

I really enjoyed JMS’s run on Spiderman, it brought me back to Marvel after being away for many years. It is interesting that he disagreed so strongly with the new direction the character is taking. I don’t think I’ll be picking up the “Brand New Day” run of Spiderman, but at least I can still enjoy Ultimate Spiderman (which has been better than the 616 Spiderman, IMHO).

I think what he did was make Peter and Mary Jane as interesting as Spider-Man. Some of my favorite scenes in the book were ones where the characters were just talking to each other. No need for vroom-socko, just a couple with a very strange life being funny, or sweet or interesting. Mary-Jane was trying to be an actress, and not succeeding all the time and she was also an old hand at the whole superhero rescue game. I remember one instance of her leading people out of a building calmly while her husband battled some beastie. She was worried, but she also knew how to handle herself. In short, she wasn’t just “the wife”, she was a fully-realized character in her own right.

When the whole Civil War nonsense started I stopped picking up the book. I really could care less about whatever sales stunt marvel is pulling this month. I think it crapped all over several years of much better writing by JMS and led to this silliness we see now.

Erasing Mary-Jane from existence via a deal with the devil? This makes the characters so much more relatable than having them deal with grief, loss and death how exactly?

I don’t think this is about making Spider-Man someone teens can relate to at all. I think it’s about giving older men (the 40 year old superhero fan of much ballyhoo) some kind of thrill in imagining that they’re not only a a hero, but also young and single and carefree. Double your vicarious thrills! Something that only makes the books that much more unappealing to me.

Assuming this isn’t part of Joe Quesada’s carnival of misinformation, I think JMS’s declaration marks a turning point in the post-Jemas era. When I read interviews with Marvel’s top tier writers (Millar, Bendis, Loeb, Straczynski, and Brubaker, more or less), it’s hard to find hidden messages suggesting strife between creators and editorial. And believe me, I look. Mostly what I see are a bunch of statements intended to make you think of Marvel’s most prominent writers as a bunch of swell raconteurs, kind of a nerd version of the Rat Pack with Quesada in Sinatra’s position as enlightened despot.[/b]

JMS doesn’t screw around with his fans, as those who follow his comments either on Usenet or through email digests of his Usenet postings have known for over a decade. WHile he may fumble the ball with a storyline here or there (Uh, Sins Past), he’s never been a part of any disinformation campaign — it, like, sort of goes against his philosophy as embodied by his slamming of disinformation campaigns through the Nightwatch subplot on Babylon 5.

IOW, Quesada is off the rails. OTOH, as with the last time Aunt May died, this storyline can be retconned away at any time, especially since Mephisto is the source of it and, well, anything of a supernatural source can be retconned at any time.

So, okay, Peter and MJ won’t be married until either Joe Quesada steps down as Eeeck of Marvel or Spider-Man 4 hits the screens, whichever comes first, but this, too, will pass.

— Rob