Now hardcore marvel fans can’t make fun at DC’s constant retcons when marvel just retconned the last 20 years of stories for the simple fact that the editor in chief did not like the whole marriage idea. This contradicts everything that marvel has stood for, the constant evolution of a character, the very ideals of lee, kirby, ditko, etc.

Someone else said it here first – but Joe (and Didio for that matter) have jumped the shark in their respective positions.

That’s not a bad thing, Joe’s had a great run, but a creative leadership role should only last so long anyways to keep a company fresh.

I’m allowing for 6-12 months to see if this retcon plays out well and actually helps the Spider-Man comics, or else its time for Buckley to start posting at Monster.com.

SINGLE MOST INSULTING COMIC FROM YET.

To assume that readers would think this story is justified cannon as opposed to Joe Quesada’s cop-out for being uncreative is simply insultling. I’ve read the issue and i’m proud to say i didn’t pay for it, and i won’t be buying any spiderman cannon until this is corrected. I’m sorry, why would satan want Peter to give up his Marriage for his Aunt? Seems to contrived for me to accept it as “good” writing. I don’t blame, JMS, and even if it was completely his idea, I’d be the first to tell him it was the wrong one. Nothing to do with breaking a marraige, despite who the parties are, this just has to do with poor creativity in the House of Ideas, I house i love.

I’m not boycotting marvel books, i’m not holding a picket sign outsite Marvel studios, I’m just insulted.

But the story of ONE MORE DAY taught me one thing: that i can go make a deal with mephisto to forget everything that happened with Joe Quesada as Editor and Cheif of Marvel and all of One More Day, I woke up and Aunt May was fine and Peter and Mary jane are still married and guess what? Writers are still telling good Spider man stories, shocker.

I’ll Give JOey Q this, eveything can be solved by making a deal with the devil without consequences.

-SW

“It goes beyond all the Post-Crisis retcons of Hawkman”

See, this is the kind of hyperbole that make the discussion very hard for me. I can see that there are problems with this level of retcon, but this is nowhere near as bad as all the stuff that happened to Hawkman. Hawkman had complete continuity wipes multiple times. Hawkman had multiple versions of himself fused into one guy, *twice*. This doesn’t even compare.

Is the story itself good or bad? I can’t tell because so many people were saying it was horrible since before the first page came out. I am absolutely unable to judge the story on its own merits at this point, largely because of all the anger that started seeping into these conversations before the first page was drawn. The people who are still saying it is horrible can’t all be objective readers who set aside the feelings they had before the story started.

I can see the problems with doing a large retcon. I can see how this contradicts things that Joe Q. said in the past. But Clone Wars killed sales, which doesn’t seem to be happening with One More Day, and Hawkman’s mishandling made DC itself call the character “radioactive” and stop using him for years, which definitely isn’t going to happen from this alone. It’s hard for me to discuss the problems when people are exaggerating the effects.

This is total BS. The marriage thing, for me anyhow, was never the issue to be resolved. It was the secret identity thing. I knew that could only go on so long, but this is bunk.

Frankly, anytime anyone has done anything radically new and innovative with any of the characters — Morrison on X-Men, for example — someone’s got to go roll it back to the status quo, ripping what’s been done to shreds.

Joe Q has basically taken a big piss on all the wonderful stuff JMS has done with the character and title over the years, all for the sake of “comfort”. Let’s go back to telling the same type of stories we did 30 years ago, shall we?

Bunk. I’m buying ZERO Spider-Man titles from now on, folks. There’s much more interesting stuff to be found elsewhere. If I’m interested in the way Spidey used to be, I’ll go dig up some old trades.

Marvel, you guys suck.

Boycotting 616 Spider-Man books as of… NOW! Don’t care if Jesus and Mary Magdalene join the supporting cast. I read the Lee/Romita run years ago and don’t need to have them rehashed.

It’s a BLAND NEW DAY!

The CBR interview by e-mail in which Quesada attempts to justify the ending to “One More Day” is a good read, because Quesada’s reasoning is pathetically weak. He uses not one but two straw men as opposing arguments. The “con” side supposedly consists of fans who want the stories to occur in real time, with the married Parker eventually having children and grandchildren, etc.; the “pro” side, favored by Quesada, supposedly wants Parker to remain a static, soap opera-type character, with presumably, a series of temporary love interests, a never-ending cycle of fights with familiar foes, etc.–and they want Parker handled that way for the sake of future generations of readers.

I’m certain that neither group of readers Quesada refers to actually exists in significant numbers. Practically anyone who’s read comics for more than several months will know that characters don’t age in real time; readers who will willingly pay to read pure formula fiction, in which material is deliberately recycled, endlessly, are esthetically retarded, if they exist at all. And, if Quesada had considered, even for a few seconds, how long it would take for Parker to have grandchildren (!) within stories written in real time, he’d never have brought up the matter of aging.

I believe it’s likely Quesada made the arguments he did because he, like Marvel editors before him, believes that marriage is bad for characters, not because marriage in itself is bad, but because marriage prevents writers from grinding out formulaic plots that have Parker chasing one girl after another, or being torn between competing affections. Given Marvel’s increasing reliance on screenwriters and new writers who might know next to nothing about a character’s history, making Spider-Man’s past irrelevant certainly makes him easier to write–and that might be all that matters to Quesada, et al.

One can refute the anti-marriage argument by pointing out that two complementary characters can make for stronger story material than either character alone would. There were alternate ways of handling Mary Jane, obviously; one wonders why Aunt May is considered essential, while Mary Jane is a hindrance. One can also attack the reasoning underlying Spider-Man’s status as an icon, since TV series have natural life spans. Recasting the role of Spider-Man was an option, even if Quesada didn’t want to consider it.

Since the argument Quesada makes in the CBR piece is a nonstarter, it remains to be seen whether he will follow Marvel’s usual pattern of claiming that visceral responses to the story by readers mean that the story is good, and denying that readers can even react critically. Since Quesada also seems to believe that the “Spider-Man” readership consists largely of “kids,” fans should insist on seeing evidence that the readership is actually that young. I doubt that it is.

Then there are the potential effects that “One More Day” will have on sales of “Spider-Man” reprints, back issues, etc., since his past has been made irrelevant. Comic book dealers should object to the storyline on that basis.

I doubt that there’s a cogent argument that anyone can make in favor of the reboot; Quesada’s failure to make one would undercut anyone else’s attempt. It remains to be seen whether other characters will suffer he same fate as Parker–whether Quesada, et al., are trying to make their jobs as undemanding as they can be. That’s not how one goes about building a reputation as a creator.

SRS http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12664

“cannon”

You’re doing it wrong. The word you are flailing for is “canon” and it does not apply, people misuse it all the time, but many of them know enough to spell it correctly.

My only complaint is that Joe didn’t have the balls to just kill MJ off, or have her revert to her true character as slutty party girl and cheat on Pete giving him reason to leave her.

I have never believed the Peter/MJ marriage. It never made sense to me, and she’s never been right for him, IMO.

MJ is an uninspiring downright annoying character.

I wish she was gone for good. But obviously she’s not.

I do so love watching the people who liked this wrongheaded idea(the marriage) wring their hands over it’s destruction.

Spider-Man being married I might be able to handle if it was to a character I liked.

But to MJ? God no. It is wrong.

ElCoyote you’re entitled to your opinion but you’re also wrong. Plus it’s impressive that for over TWENTY YEARS (Way to NOT celebrate their anniversary BTW) you were unconvinced by the marriage. Spidey was probably married longer than you! (If not I apologize in advance.)

I’m pissed but I’m ignoring the story completely because I won’t read a comic in which 616 Spidey isn’t married again.

What’s funny is everyone compairing this to the colne saga. Don’t you all understand? THE CLONE SAGA DIDN’T HAPPEN NOW! Joe Q took the massive pile of dung that was that story and blew it away with a massive tornado of crap!

Hmm. With the sweeping changes hinted at in the final issue, I’m becoming more and more of the opinion that getting rid of the marriage was only an excuse. The real reason for this retcon was to erase all the horrible bloody ideas that have been grafted onto Spider-Man in recent years, many of them by Straczynski himself. No wonder he wanted his name taken off the final issue: it erased everything he’d done with the character.

And maybe all that stuff needed to go. Spider-Man had become a happily-married school teacher who was some kind of spider avatar(*), and whose identity was publicly known. The Daily Bugle was no longer an important part of the series, and it was revealed that his sainted dead girlfriend had secretly had kids with the man who killed her. That’s a far cry from the character’s fun and simple core concept of “lovable loser bitten by a radioactive spider.” With the Ultimate Spidey title featuring a more traditional version of the character, and selling better, I can see where the company might have felt like they had a problem.

I dunno. On the one hand, I certainly think they could have crafted stories about a married Spidey that would have had mass appeal. It also would have been easy to have him go back to the Bugle. Even the secret identity might have been fixed with a little help from guys like Dr. Strange and/or Matt Murdoch. But there was just so much that needed to change, and the stuff that I found most damaging to the character (spider avatar, the Gwen Stacy thing) would have been harder to get rid of without a reset button. And if you’re going to do a reset button, having the characters punch that button themselves, making a gut-wrenching decision to destroy their own happiness to save a loved one, is certainly the way to do it.

So. This whole thing strikes me as a necessary evil. I think Marvel made the best out of a bad situation. And at least Quesada was man enough to come onto the title and do the dirty work himself. With Straczynski very publicly washing his hands of the story, Quesada’s taking the heat. And I’ve got to respect that.

*I should admit that I only followed the Straczynski Spider-Man from afar, and have no idea if that “spider avatar” idea was still floating around at the end. I assumed The Other had something to do with it, but I really don’t know. If they weren’t connected, The Other grafted enough bad ideas onto the character all by itself, and I would argue that my criticism still stands.

Is Norman Osborn’s sex face still in continuity?

To be fair, the events of Marvel Comics don’t really affect me anymore. They’ve driven me away so badly (Civil War, evil Tony who’s apparently just means well, Ellis’ Thunderbolts, Claremont’s Exiles, killing Quasar, etc) that by the time OMD came along it was just raindrops on a long occupied gravesite.

All I can think of is “I made it through the Clone Saga.” Not sure if that’s a good thing & a hopeful “things’ll get better, everybody” commentary on OMD.

But somehow, I’m thinking not. Gone are the days, it seems, when Pete smacking MJ because he flipped out after discovering he was the clone was the worst thing he’s ever done.

Also, I’m still wondering if the deal with Mephisto falls under “great power” or “great responsibility.”

If I had wanted to read issues of Peter Parker as a hipster I would have gone out to buy back issues (or Ultimate Spider-man or Spider-man Loves Mary Jane or Marvel Adventure Spider-man). Why not just start up Untold Tales of Spider-man again?

I’m 20, I was born the year that Peter and MJ got married, all my life I’ve know that as the status quo. And as a hero I looked up to the marriage was not something I could not relate to (hell, he’s out of college with a job, can ANY kid relate to that?), the marriage was something that I saw as a goal. I lonely geek I saw Spider-man’s life as the light at the end of the tunnel. If he can have it that good, why can’t I? There’s not reason to say that the marriage kills the character, it gives something for kids to look up to and hope for, and emulate. Something which skirt chasing should NOT do.

The handling was horrible, enough people are talking about that so I’m not going to go into it. All I will say is that it was out of character, out of style for the series and completely poorly done. Even if this was to have gone this way, it could have been much better done.

By the way, What are supposed to think of the last “true” issue of Spectacular Spider-man? The one where God himself goes to Peter and explains that it is May’s time? Does this mean that Peter is not the strong willed hero I grew up believing him to be?

I think I’ll go read the Clone Saga for a pick me up, I need something to wash the taste out of my mouth.