Spider-Man: One More Day

This is the one where they're retconning everything back to Peter being a bachelor living with his spinster aunt, right?

Far as I know, yeah. I think Dr. Strange is going to help Peter wish the bad times away.

I heard it was Mephisto.

Either way, Straczynski's run on the title has been pretty universally awful, so ending it all in a giant Deus Ex Machina doesn't surprise me.

Mephisto? Really? Huh. Well, Peter recently talked to God, so why not talk to the Devil as well.

All honesty, Aunt May should have kicked it awhile ago. I am a bit bummed that the Peter/MJ marriage is going to end - I felt that it never really saw its potential realized.

All this because Joe Quesadilla thinks Spider-man should be able to jerk off to internet porn. Thats what the kids relate to these days, don't yah know? And yah see. If Peter hadn't met MJ, she would have become yet another hot, big boobed, superhero. What a world.

It's hard to believe people ever thought Queseda's art was good. Holy Mongoloid faces, Batman.

The story is utter garbage, too. How many months has Peter been moping around, whining about Aunt May and promising that he'll do WHATEVER IT TAKES to save her? Seven months now? Eight?

The John Byrne Aunt May switch is officially the worst ret-con I've ever heard of in mainstream comics. Which is saying a helluva lot.

Straczynski has been writing the same crappy issue for about 9 months now.

-Aunt May is dying/brain dead
-Mary Jane tells Peter they're running out of money
-Peter whines about how revealing his secred ID put everyone in danger
-Peter goes out in his black costume and tries to act like Charles Bronson (because the gloves are now off).
-Peter vows to do whatever it takes to save Aunt May.

NEVER COME BACK, STRACZYNSKI.

And the whole baby thing was handled horribly. It's not even worth talking about.

This... this is why I pretty much abandoned mainstream Marvel, and stuck to Ultimate Spider-Man - somewhat fresh, updated take, a bit talky and wheel-spinning but much more enjoyable to me than this dreck (spider-totem anyone?). Ever since just before Civil War, the Marvel universe has become as depressing as a decade of Funky Winkerbeans.

I missed the free comic book day debut of Jackpot but when I did see a picture of her I laughed my fucking ass off for a good five minutes. The sheer wrongheadedness of what they are doing is just priceless. So awful that you can't help but laugh.

DC AND Marvel... shitty and proud of it.

Why can't Peter and Mary Jane just get divorced? That's how people in real life ret-con.

Yeah, this story sucks.

Wait a minute, is Jackpot a real character in the official continuity? I was positive that Dan Slott was just having fun and fucking around with people.

Joe Quesada used to be a pretty good artist. His latest stuff is horrible though.

This whole event is a disaster, the only good thing about this is Straczynski finally leaving.

My favorite thing about Quesada's quest to ruin Spider-man is his constant reassertion that the Peter/Mary Jane union makes it difficult for younger readers to relate to Peter as an everyman...

because every twelve year old can relate to having their first love raped by their grey balls arch nemesis. I mean I guess a lot of readers CAN relate to having their friend's dad fuck their under-aged girl friend BUT WHO IN THE FUCK WANTS TO RELATE TO THAT?!?!

Even if that did happen to me I wouldn't want to be fucking reminded of it.

Spider-man hasn't sucked for the last decade and a half because he's been married to a hot model... Spider-man has sucked for the last decade and a half because every writer in that time period has been trying to top the death of Gwen Stacey...

Hey fellas I've got an idea for a retcon... how about Mary Jane made a porn with Karen Page during the eighties and she was DPed and shat on by The Rhino and Doctor Octopus then bukakked by The Vulture.

I'm all in favor of getting rid of Mary Jane. She's nerd wish fulfillment, not an interesting or three-dimensional character. And there's no denying that Spidey has been stuck in a rut for years now. If a Spider-Bachelor fucking his way across New York can breathe some life back into his books, great.

That said, there needs to be a divorce or a death. Magically retconning the marriage out of existence is the laziest, most boring solution imaginable.

Look, it's been like a year of him crying about Aunt May being shot and on death's door. If he got divorced from MJ it would be like 2 1/2 years of sad divorcee Spidey. If MJ died it would be like 5 years of sad widower Spidey. They just want to go straight to provocative stories like caught masturbating by aunt may spidey and Possible STD spidey. I certainly don't want to wait 5 years for statutory rape Spidey.

Yes because of all the divorced or widowed middle schoolers who can really relate to that. The whole point of Spider-man is that he is specifically NERD wish fulfillment.

Spider-man isn't in a rut because of the characters. There are no shitty characters only shitty writers (Perfect example of this is The Winter Soldier, an idea that sounds like shit but is executed in a way that makes Bucky one of the most badass and well developed characters in comics.) and Spider-man has been plagued by shitty writing for the last twenty years. I started reading comics in 1990 so basically Spider-man has been the worst written popular character in comics for the entire time I have been a comic book reader. Just fucking ass horrible storyline after ass horrible storyline. Carnage, Maximum Carnage, The Clone Saga, that shit with the Spider Totem, The Other, The Rapidly aged Goblin children, The Death of Aunt May, The Death of Mary Jane, The Resurrection of Mary Jane, The Spider-baby, The Divorce of Peter and Mary Jane... etc etc etc. And now we've got people advocating the Re-Death of Mary Jane or The Redivorcing of Peter and Mary Jane... Hey, why not bring back Ben Reilly and have Peter marry him. There's a story that evokes real world events just like Civil War... call it Civil War 2: Civil Union and have the heroes pick sides based on their views on gay marriage and have a great big war!

Because you know that if it's magically undone, there will inevitably be a storyline where it's revealed that it's their destiny to be together and we get to do the whole courtship/marriage thing all over again.

If they ditch Mary Jane I will be super-pissed.

You want nerdy young unmarried Peter Parker? That's what Ultimate Spider-Man is for.

And I support the idea of Civil War 2: Civil Union.

Nailed it. Plus the fact that there were WAY too many Spider-Titles ensured they were going to use up story ideas at a fairly rapid rate. A lot of those ideas sounded great on paper, but the execution became a mess.

I like Mary Jane, and I know plenty of folks in the real world that have lucked out in the dating/marriage pool and got someone above their station (my sister-in-law is quite a hottie. Her husband is a head and a half shorter than her, and has a face that looks like a fist with eyes, and they're head over heels in love with each other), so Quesada's arguement is, at least to me, bullshit. The problem with Mary Jane is bad writing - if a writer is having a hard time with the character, write something that makes her interesting! She's too pretty for Pete? Give her a scar, effectively killing her modeling career. Hell, there was a time they were considering making her and Peter the Nick and Nora, or John Steed and Mrs. Peel, of Marvel - why not pursue that? And can we give Gwen Stacy a rest already? She was as bland as people accuse Mary Jane of being, and only got interesting after she got whacked.

I will say, though, that I think Aunt May got a lot more interesting since she discovered Peter was Spider-Man. She went from this one-trick pony to someone that actually had quite a bit of potential to her.

Seeing Peter single again, and watching him go through his dating woes again, and worry if Aunt May was going to keel over from her 75th heart attack - shit's been done, and is readily available in the Masterworks and other trade collections.

Whatever happened with the rich old guy who had spider-powers? Did he turn out to be a crazy bad guy?

He got eaten by a giant spider, I think.

So would this retcon mean that now no one knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man again? Or did they already worm their way out of that clusterfuck? I don't know because I don't buy shitty comics.

Was he able to impart Peter with more of that ridiculous Spider-God theology before he was a snack for Shelob?

No, it turns out he lied about all that.

I only know of "One More Day" from what I'm reading in this thread, so... consider me perplexed.

Simply put : Over the past ten years or so, Marvel has had Spider-Man written into such a corner that, rather than even make the attempt to move the character forward and have him and the stories evolve slightly, they're wishing the past thirty years or so into the Cornfield.

A++

Last time Marvel wanted to go back to the good old broke bachelor days, they made Spider-man a clone, dyed his hair blonde and put him to work in the DAILY GRIND coffee shop.

I can't believe this shit. Time to seize control of Marvel's editorial department for their own good. Can't we have the law step in?

Everyone complains that Marvel characters don't change or evolve, that every story is about preserving the status quo. And then when a major change does come along, the fanboys bitch and moan. They send Marvel nasty letters and organize online petitions and make sure the news media--who doesn't give a shit and is just looking to fill airtime--is aware of the horrible TRAVESTY taking place.

Mary Jane and Peter have been married for twenty years now. Longer than most of the people in this thread have been reading comics, probably. And in all that time, not one writer has found a way to make her character truly work. She's either A) a nagging cunt who makes Peter feel guilty about being Spider-Man or B) the ultimate nerd dream girl, a bland fembot whose only desire is to wash Peter's costume and bandage his wounds and then fuck his brains out. She's a nothing.

So honestly, who cares if they get rid of her? The worst case scenario is that the writers are forced to work a little harder on Peter's personal life. I can't imagine how that's a bad thing.

Since when is Peter Parker still a nerd?

Is this really legitimate change, Slater? You said so yourself, if they want to write her out, that's fine, but don't do it with a magic McGuffin that effectively just ERASES it. That's cheap writing, and THAT'S what bothers me about this. I'm not truly bothered, however, because for a mainstream superhero, this is pretty much par for the course.

My question is, where is Smeagol to tell us how much worse DC is?

Rectoning counts as "evolving" a character?

No, I totally agree with you there. This monkey paw bullshit is just proof that JMS couldn't write his way out of a wet sack of farts. But look around the internet...the fanboys don't care how she's being written out, they just don't want mommy and daddy to split up. Waaah.

Quesada's had such a hard-on for splitting Peter and MJ up for so long, it's a certainty it'll happen. Knowing Marvel, however, they'll probably get back together again anyway. May take a couple of years, but sooner or later - probably in time for Spider-Man 4.

Nothing, or MY EVERYTHING:



She can do laundry AND anal. That's like a superpower right there!

You can't separate the way the change from the horrible story that "enables" it. One would hope that there was a more mature and interesting story that brought any change about, but of course people are going to whine about this it's absolutely ridiculous.

I think it's amazing that you equate this with character development and evolution, when we all know the obvious desire is to just revert Peter to what he used to be because they don't have the creativity to work with what they have.

I have no idea whether this will evolve his character. In the hands of a talented writer, maybe. Considering this is Marvel, probably not.

But by trying something new, at least there's a potential for interesting stories. I don't see that same potential in keeping their deathly dull marriage chugging along for another twenty years.

But honestly, if the Spider-split doesn't work, you know Marvel will retcon it away in no time flat. So if the idea works, it might breathe some much needed life back into the books. If it doesn't, everything will go back to business as usual. So why get bent out of shape?

Because this is lazy, it's almost like Clone Saga II and it borders on "Superboy Reality Wall Punches" stupid.

Listen, I'm not about to buy this garbage so will someone please tell me exactly what happens. Full spoilers.

Of course it's lazy and stupid. Who's denying that?

If it's a lazy and stupid marketing event that leads to a run of interesting stories, great. If not, who cares? It'll all be Marveled away in a year anyway.

So far, Spider-man goes to Dr. Strange to get him to use his magic whammy to fix Aunt May, after she is shot and the doctors say no natural medicine will save her. The doctors also want to dump ol' Aunt May off in the charity ward, cuz Petey can't pay the bills. He goes to Iron Man and demands some money, but Tony says he can't. Jarvis, Tony's Alfred, who was gettin it on with Aunt May, goes to the hospital and writes them a big fat check to take care of her. Peter tries to use Dr. Strange magic crap while he's not looking, and tries to stop Aunt May from being shot, but he's not able to physically intervene and some monster things attack him. I haven't even bothered to read the second issue yet, but it's more of Peter trying to get Doc Strange to help him, until Pete finally leaves. We see a red bird (Mephisto) fly into an alley and when Spidey enters the Alley its a 8 year old girl with red hair wanting to make a deal. The girl is probably the embodiement of Pete and MJ's daughter, who disappeared when Aunt May came back.

Jesus Christ. Sorry I asked.

(Thanks, Mike)

I like how Peter's deal with the devil is a literal deal with the goddamn devil. JMS, master of subtlety.