I posted a fairly neutral comment about how OMD wasn’t the direction I would have gone in, and suddenly that comment is making the rounds as some sort of proof that I “hate” (exact words) One More Day. This despite the fact that I specifically mentioned I hadn’t read it and I tend not to make judgments on stories I haven’t read.
So I shall now clarify: All I said is that it’s not the direction I would have gone in. That’s a far cry from saying that I hated it. Let’s remember I’m the person who did a three part storyline that brought back Uncle Ben and was pilloried by any number of fans for it, in some cases sight unseen. So it’s not as if I can claim to have my finger on the pulse of what makes fans happy where Spider-Man is concerned.
Hëll, lots of fans dogpiled on my run on “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,” crabbing about everything from a high schooler contemporary to a teen Peter Parker who had an on-line blog to the fact that I “wasted” two issues on a story involving Mexican wrestling, to the entire notion of how dare I write a follow-up to “The Other” (not to be confused with the fans who complained bitterly because they believed that there would be NO follow-up to the Other.) They crabbed about Todd’s artwork. Hëll, they even crabbed about the title of the comic, for God’s sake, claiming that it made it sound like a comic for kids…because, y’know, heaven forbid that kids should find anything about Spider-Man appealing.
Yet suddenly I’m embraced? Held up as the poster boy for being on the side of the same fans who didn’t hesitate to slag just about every aspect of my two years on FNSM, and lauded for my brave stance? Yeah, uh…I don’t think so. As Groucho so immortally said, I don’t care to belong to a club that would have me as a member.
There are complaints because years worth of continuity has suddenly been rendered moot? Okay, well…did you enjoy the stories when you read them? Yes? Good: You got your money’s worth. Can you still pull them out and re-read them? Yes? Good: Then OMD didn’t somehow cause the previous comics to magically vanish from existence. I mean, I *wrote* a number of those stories that, in terms of plot and character development are no longer relevant, and I’m not cracking up over it. I wrote them, they were enjoyed for what they were (or disliked for what they were), and that to my mind is the end of it.
Frankly, I’m kind of annoyed that all of a sudden my fairly neutral statement is being held up as an example of Spidey-writers uniting against some great outrage. I mean, jeez, we’re dealing with a medium in which death itself is simply a temporary set-back, and fans are treating an updating of “Doctor Faustus” as if it’s a crime against humanity.
Fandom really needs to get some perspective here. Perhaps it will lead to great stories and everyone will hail it as a great move after the fact. Perhaps it won’t, in which case it can always be reversed. Personally, I’m actually planning to pick up the new stories to see where it goes (yes, I don’t get them for free; shut up) if for no other reason than that they’re being written by some writers whose work I like. And I say that, not as a Marvel employee, but as a guy no different than the rest of you: A long-time Spider-Man fan.
PAD
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Coming in very very late to this … but it’s right before exams, so I’ve been busy with the Grading Monster.
I think the statement quite a ways upthread says volumes:
Here’s the thing: My biggest problem with the idea is that it’s lazy. It’s just lazy. Spider-Man’s married. He’s been married for ten years. You don’t want him to be married.
Too dámņ bad. That’s the character you’ve got to work with at this point in history. You work with a 30ish, married Peter Parker who’s a schoolteacher and sometimes supplements his income by taking news photos. That’s who Spider-Man is. When you work on a character with a long history, you deal with who the character has become over the course of that history, you don’t hit the Reset button to make him the character he was when you were twelve.
That, to me, is the biggest problem. I mean yes, the rampant illogic of this “it’s magic, we don’t need to explain it” quick fix bugs me quite a bit, but the sheer laziness of Mephisto/Quesada waving his hand and “fixing” the situation Quesada never liked is what really bugs me.
One of the first rules of improv comedy is that when you respond to someone, you can’t just say “no” to what they said and shut an idea down. Once it’s said, it’s said — and you can build on or try to ways to work around it, but you cannot simply remove it.
Same problem here. Good writers get that. Our host here has made his share of sweeping changes to books, but it’s always been by building on what’s gone before, not knocking over all the blocks. Other writers (Busiek, I’m looking at you) have made mining Marvel continuity an incredibly rich activity.
As I’ll be writing to JQ shortly, I’ve been a reader of the Spider-Man books since 1977. I own Marvel Masterworks covering issues 1-50, and I own issues of everything after that (Amazing, Spectacular, Team-Up, Web … the works) up through the mid-1990s.
I left during the Clone Saga, and then came back with JMS.
I’m gone again. I’m not sure what will bring me back this time, but it’d have to be pretty impressive.
Lazy, lazy work — and work that does a great deal to sever the emotional bonds fans have with the character.
No, thanks.
TWL
I’ve been thinking about this for a while…
I recently discussed the controversy surrounding “One More Day” with a friend and co-worker, and we both agreed that A) making Peter single via a “deal with the Devil” instead of via divorce or making him a widower was (to be kind) silly; and B) a better route to take would have been something akin to the Angel episode “I Will Remember You.”
For those unfamiliar with that episode, from season one of that series, Buffy Summers comes to Los Angeles to essentially demand Angel explain who he thinks he is to have show up in Sunnydale (in the Buffy Thanksgiving-themed episode “Pangs”), and not tell her, acting like a…well… guardian angel, whose unseen help he felt she needed. Before their argument gets very far, a demon attacks and in the course of the battle, Angel is exposed to its blood. For some reason, this makes him human.
Buffy and Angel seem to have what they’ve always wanted- the ability to have a real relationship- but Angel comes to realize that he’s a liability as a human; that Buffy could and probably would be killed trying to protect him. So he asks the Powers That Be to let him take back the past day and change things so he isn’t exposed to the demon’s blood. He argues that if things continue along this path, they’ll eventually lose two champions- himself and Buffy.
The Powers That Be agree to let him go back and change things, but tell him only he will remember the way things happened in the original timeline. Angel tells Buffy of his decision. They embrace and she tearfully promises over and over that she won’t forget.
Time jumps back to the moment of the demon’s attack. Angel immediately kills it (having remembered how from the battle in the original timeline), so there’s no protracted battle and he’s not exposed to the demon’s blood. Buffy says what she came to say about his visit to Sunnydale, and leaves. From her point of view in the altered timeline, she spends less than five minutes with Angel. And it wasn’t a happy encounter.
And yes, he does remember the original timeline. He says as much to Doyle in a subsequent episode.
Now imagine something similar happening to Peter Parker. For some reason (and I admit I can’t think of any- but then I’m not reading any of the Spider-Man books) for the sake of New York/the country/the world/the universe/whatever Peter must go back and change things so he was never married- but he still remembers being married. Obviously this wouldn’t be part of a deal with Mephisto (or any other Marvel analog of “the Devil”), but a decision made for the “greater good.” Perhaps Dr. Strange (or some other good guy capable of such things) arranges for it to happen. Once again, Peter Parker can’t catch a break. For a time he was happy; things seemed to be going well; and then he loses yet again.
Again, I can’t think of a reason why Peter would have to sacrifice his marriage (and all memory of same) for the “greater good”, but the “I Will Remember You” type of situation, to me, would still have been the better route to take. Peter’s (and M.J.’s, for that matter, if she were the one to step forward) decision would have been more in character than a deal with Mephisto; and I suspect it’d have been more palatable to the readers, even those who didn’t want the marriage to end.
Yes, there would still be questions of which past stories still happened and which didn’t, but these things are gonna happen when you change decades worth of published history.
Rick
I know I’m late weighing in on this, but I tend to accumulate my comics and then read a story arc all at once, so I’ve only just read all of the “Back in Black” stories and “One More Day.”
I’ve learned to not concern myself with continuity, so long as the story is good, but I must confess my initial reaction was an angry one. I don’t see myself boycotting all Spider-Man titles, but I lament the stories that might have been. Groundwork was laid for some potentially interesting stories, but now they’ve been completely negated. Now there will be no aftermath to Wilson Fisk’s humiliation at the hands of Peter Parker. Now we won’t see what will become of a Daily Bugle run by a Jameson who knows Spider-Man’s identity. (loved your last story in FNSM, PAD.) And I was actually looking forward to seeing the directions the Spidey titles would go in now that he’d been outed to the public.
I also kind of feel sorry for all of the Marvel writers who now have to consider if the story they’re working on will work in a Post-“One More Day” universe. Considering how often we’ve been told of the ripples one event can make in the course of history; (“What If …?”, “The Age of Apocalypse”,”House of M”, etc.) it was even emphasized in this very storyline; will those ripples conveniently dissipate before they reach the other Marvel books?
And personally, I’ve been reading Peter and Mary Jane as a married couple for twenty years now, and I like them together. I’ve never liked seeing the hero and heroine happily together in a movie only to separated and arguing with each other by the time the sequel comes around simply as a writer’s convenience.
I’ll keep reading, but I really don’t think this was the way to go.
Oh! And can we please not go back to Aunt May being a load again? I really like how JMS fleshed her out as a character; I’d hate to see that fall by the wayside.
Im a Spiderman fan and im boycotting all spiderman titles for atleast a few years.