I never understood why so many writers have such a hard time writing stories about married couples. It’s as if they think a couple’s story is over after they get married, which is far from the case. The Incredibles is a great example of how to tell a good story about a married superhero. Marriage doesn’t mean a couple’s problems are over, it means that they can face new struggles together. (Also, Spidey/MJ is my favorite Marvel ship, so I might be a bit bias)
I've wondered if it has something to do with how marriage have been shifting, a lot - just 100 years ago marriages were more or less just a social contract, something that happened because it had to, and was expected to, and there weren't a lot of accepted alternatives (and pure actual love wasn't always a leading factor), then the rise of divorce (as in, the courts actually allowing people to get divorced much more easily) led to, well, a lot of divorces, and things have really only stabilized over the last 20 years or so. That doesn't mean people didn't have happy marriages before now, but...a significantly larger number of people has bad experiences with marriage.
I think it's easier to write about the fun and "romantic tension" aspect of dating, which is recognizable to most younger readers, than the complexities of marriage which is more relatable to adults.
One More Day made me stop reading Spider-Man all together, and shortly after that, I stopped reading Marvel comics as a whole after the end of Civil War. I had just recently returned to Marvel comics when they pulled Hydra Cap, and once again I threw my hands up and turned my back on Marvel. They have a way of pissing me off and turning me off to their story lines that takes me a while to get over. I loved Peter and MJ, I loved MJ, and breaking them up was just weak story telling. The same goes for DC and their no Bat (or super hero) can be happily married. Their excuse for not allowing Kate to marry Maggie, which they had to follow through with with Bruce and Selina. It's all bullshit! Utter bullshit. Comic readers are no longer (never really were) the undateable loser men in their mother's basements, so stop writing as if we are. Give me happy family vibes, and health relationships, while also punching super villains in the face.
I also stopped reading Spider-Man after One More Day. The book was SO good until One More Day: intense, interesting, the stakes were super high and then it was all ruined.
@@cryptking6283 i did that too till i picked up spider-island. I saw mary jane have spider powers and worked backwards and was shocked to see julia carpenter as madame web. Slott did a few positive things. Like making kraven into a more credible threat. (I always thought he was underrated) so my favorite was the gauntlet storyline. I hated spider ock though. I knew peter was coming back so i wasnt worried but he basically gary stued for 20 issues. Despite his weird ass comments he got away with everything. Order of events were also wrong. Like peter was going to injure a small child but he was going to prevent otto from killing massacre. It was done terribly. Shadowland was destroyed in a single or 2 issues. No that was also dumb. It should have been a cross over with all of the street level heroes.
1988: Spider-Man married. 1988-present: Comics read by 15 to 50 year-old people. 2008: Marvel says married 50 year-old writers cannot write about marriage but can write about a teen Spider-Man who is no longer a teen. Real Reason: Teen Spider-Man in cartoons and movies.
I hated this book so much.... I'd been reading Spidey since "Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot", and had watched his and MJ's relationship grow and blossom, watched MJ become truly a partner, rather than a love interest. I was so invested in their relationship, and then Quesado did this. I swear, I didn't buy a marvel book for over a year after this.
All they needed to break up Peter and MJ is for someone in the future to tell them that if they stayed married then their child would destroy the world. Later, if someone wanted to remarry them the writer could retcon that the future guy was lying or the dangerous period has passed.
Yeah but then we run into the same issue with Civil War 2, where the whole thing was stupidly caused by some future seeing inhuman that resulted in Carol Danvers not being able to accept that she might be incorrect even when she had clear evidence right in front of her. Anyway if they were to do that, Id bet that when the writers revealed that it was a lie or trick, it would all turn out to be a scheme by Norman Osborn somehow.
The funny thing is, it was already done pretty well in JMS run 2002-2003 when they were separated and then finally got back together after about a year.
This was a beyond shoddy story. Especially since Parker could’ve gone to Loki, who actually owed him a favor. The Norse God even gave Pete a medallion he could use to contact him in a time of need. Running with that could’ve provided a pretty epic story that fit the character and didn’t result in a facepalming retcon.
Hornacek - Marvel just needs to do a hard line, full imprint reboot. There’s just been too many misfires over the past +20 years to keep track off. I say wipe the board clean and start again from day one.
This is an interesting angle. If the favor still isn't called in, Loki now has power over stories, including perhaps full retcon of retcon. And Loki doesn't feel too fondly about Mephisto.
One day, I hope that comic companies finally have the courage to let their characters grow and change in a lasting manner ie let people stay married, have children that aren't hyperaged or erased from existence and can hold down steady civilian supporting characters that don't get killed off for shock value.
Please please PLEASE do Luke Cage: Hero For Hire where he does a job for Dr Doom and travels to Latveria when Doom stiffs him and actually says to him "Wheres my money, honey!" Absolutely hilarious.
@@darthwolfX2 100% true. The best part is how Luke gets to Latveria. He goes to the Baxter Building and tells the Fantastic Four he needs to borrow a pogo plane (you know Reed came up with that name) and the moment Reed hears it's to mess with Doom he can't hand over the keys fast enough. He's all "Here you go Luke, have a nice trip, say hi to Victor for me" and apparently Luke learned how to fly the thing back when he was briefly on the team. Absolute riot of a story. And Luke's doing it all for something like $200. The rocket fuel to get there had to cost Reed a hundred times that. Luke's like that newspaper delivery boy in Better Off Dead, he's getting his two dollars come hell or high water.
the shade in this yes i had only heard this story secondhand at a party, so i had NO IDEA it was just a NORMAL bullet they called the devil on to retcon lmao
@@andrewgilbertson5672 Its worse. In the previous issue after May is hospitalized, May tells Peter to let her go and her time is up. Also, somehow Doc Strange is able to help Peter in the post OMD timeline but not in the pre-OMD timeline for some unexplainable reason. Also, in the post-OMD timeline, Peter saves May from the bullet wound with CPR, which for some reason he hadn't tried in the pre-OMD timeline despite having done it many times in the past, and the fact that CPR does not save someone from a bullet wound.
Marvel already had a perfectly good devil-themed character who could have got them divorced. There were so many avenues they could have gone down, from claiming that Peter wasn't really Spider-man, just the guy trotted out to play the part in the Iron Spider suit because he worked for Tony, to having MJ and May go into a witness protection type thing to avoid villain revenge plots (which could have been worked really well when Osborn became head of SHIELD, etc) to just having him and MJ divorce because she was sick of his crap or their relationship wasn't working. Hadn't they been separated for a time prior to this anyway? Instead, they went to most hamfisted way possible, neutered a bunch of potential storylines along with invalidating a lot of previous ones, and the only saving grace was that the series afterwards was very entertaining, something I think was more down to the great creative teams they got rather than resetting the character back to a place he didn't need to go. I liked married Pete, I liked teacher Pete, I liked public ID Pete. All nice growth and development of the character. Hamfist should totally be a guy in Peter Porker's universe too, if he isn't already.
I did a little digging of my own, and, while I don't claim to have exhaustively researched the matter, what I can find says that JMS was talked into doing the OMD story by Quesada: "It’s a matter of historical record that Marvel wanted to unmarry Peter (but without the political weight of a divorce) and the book was commissioned by Editorial to achieve that. I had come onto the book to reunite the two, and I loved writing them as a married couple, would’ve been happy to continue doing that forever." - JMS in an AMA on Reddit "1 year ago" Further, JMS wrote a version of the story where, rather than Mephisto magically changing a bunch of stuff semi-arbitrarily (it's magic: it doesn't have to make sense), they make one small change to the established history: back in 1971, rather than covering for Harry Osborn's drug problem, Peter helps him get into rehab sooner, meaning MJ doesn't break up with him, Gwen doesn't die, and whatever other changes the writers want can ripple effect through. Quesada didn't like it because it meant decades of comics no longer happened, and the ripples would extend to all of Marvel comics, while, apparently undoing the wedding doesn't have the same ripple effect problems because that was only back in 1987, and 20 years of altered events isn't a problem, unlike 36 years ??? Oh, and apparently it's much better to have a list of independent changes that aren't necessarily all given at once, and where the characters don't remember the previous version despite it having actually happened than to have a single event that spawned a list of consequences, that aren't necessarily all given at once, and where the characters don't remember the previous version because it no longer actually happened. I struggle to follow Quesada's "logic" here.
That was one of the main problems with the story. That it expected you to believe characters that have healed much worse couldn't heal a simple gunshot wound.
@@Xehanort10 And in the follow up story to this garbage, “one moment in time” , they had Doctor Strange wipe out all of earths memory of who Spider-man was. Doctor Strange can do all of that but not heal a simple bullet wound?!
@@brandonlyon730 Hell they had it so that Dr Doom of all people couldn't help even though Doom once used his knowledge of magic to save Sue Storm and her and Reed's daughter Valeria when they nearly died during the birth. Doom also at one point died and his soul possessed each member of the Fantastic Four. So getting a bullet out of an old woman would be a piece of cake.
@@Xehanort10 He especially would’ve tried if Spider-Man told him that Reed Richards couldn’t save her after he asked him. Doom would’ve certainly went out of his way to save Aunt May. Just so he could rub it in Reeds face later. “impossible for you to heal huh? HA! Well look at me Dr. Von Doom saving this poor woman of her bullet wound. I’ve proven yet again that I’m far better then you and your worthless PHD’s!”
I don't know the background of the Spidey Universe going on at that time, but it seems to me....implausible that the entire Marvel hero fraternity, in and out of secret identity, wouldn't rally around Peter (Civil War or no) and help Aunt May....especially as a non-combatant. The unhealable bullet, money issues, Peter & MJ having to figure all this out on their own....doesn't ring true. Basically all very contrived just to get Peter on his own again. Silly.
That was sure a sad ending to comic book run I realy enjoyed. JMS had some great ideas for Peter and he let him grow by embracing the fact that he was no longer a stragling teenager. He got a real job as a teacher, he got merried, he was going to become a father. It was a cool idea and was writen well. Naturaly Quesada couldn't let it stick and we got... this mess.
Yeah, JMS was pretty much forced to write Sins Past and OMD by Joe Quesada, which ruined his otherwise amazing run. He was one of the best writers for Peter and MJ's marriage.
I just don't get why some comics authors/editors hate domesticity and heroes getting or staying married. See also: the BatCat "wedding" and especially Batwoman where the entire creative team walked because editors wouldn't allow Batwoman to marry her girlfriend. It would've been a great opportunity for queer representation and they ruined a perfectly good series because "heroes shouldn't have happy personal lives". It's frustrating. It's totally possible to tell interesting stories that focus heavily on relationships, I think the Rouge & Gambit mini-series from last year is a really good example. I don't think I'll read this as I've barely read any Spider-Man and this doesn't seem like a good place to start. And I really don't like the art.
Probably because most of them have either never been in relationships and are bitter about it or they had relationships that ended badly and project that into their stories and onto their characters. The whole "heroes can't both be happy and focused on their superhero lives" logic is stupid.
The devil divorce was just idiotic. I liked the marriage, but you know what? Good people sometimes amicably divorce. Why is that so hard for Quesada to comprehend?
I agree. Also, MJ originally didn't even want to date Peter because he was Spider-Man and his super hero lifestyle often caused tension in their marriage. If MJ had decided to walk away because everybody knew Peter's secret, I think everyone would have been able to relate to that story.
Theyre kinda undoing it in the main verse. Kinda. May has cancer. Peter and mj are dating again. And peter asked Strange to cure her and strange advised against mystical solutions and to let nature take its course, while staying hopeful. Definitely a jab at OMD Ps this story was one of my first comics ever and I understood none of it. Although MJ's insisting on keeping her memories in tact are why i will forever love the pairing. The pain they went through after this omg. It wouldve been so easy for her to forget it all. Forget being in love with him. But she refused. Even not together she remained his closest friend
Back in my younger days (the '80, I'm an '81 model) we had three Marvel series in Norway, Hulk, X-men and, og course Spider-Man. Now guess who I was the biggest fan of? ;-) But of course Norway never had the biggest fanbase for hero-comics and so the three, together with some DC titles were phased out, spidey held on until '93 and then he was done. Enter the year '99. Now Norway is a country that now has Spawn, Witchblade that has been popular franchises for a few years at this point. So why not Spider-Man? Re-launched with a fast paced '80 origin, ina about half a year or so we catch up with "Modern" Spidey, and the now almost eighteen year old me was exited. I could be there from day one! I bought every issue since the new launch and became a fan all over again. This was the life, I had Spider-Man back! Then came Civil War, which I was sort of okay, even though I only followed it from Peter Parker/Spider-Man's perspective. Allied with Iron-Man, going public with his identity, changing sides. All fine for the most part. And then, May shot! May dying (again). Not to be Mr. Negative (hehe) but, and though I love the woman as much as anyone, I was almost hoping this would be it. That Peter could finally let her go. But no, One more Day happened and so did my stint with buying Spider-Man. I think I bought one more issue, hoping with all my heart that it was just a bad dream and that Peter would wake up with MJ (yes, I was one of the many that had no issue with their relationship) and it would all be ok. But no, no such luck. Now, I have no proof that this was the major factor but less than half a year later Spider-Man was once again discontinued and to this day Spidey 616 has not entered the Norwegian border again. Ultimate Spder-Man/X-men ran for a while in early 2000 and that was fun, big fan, but One more Day killed Spidey for me for the better part of a decade. Only the Ultimate series and the growing MCU really brought me back to that again- :-D And with Spidey finally going back into fold was Marvel-lous! ANd then Sony almost killed that off AGAIN! Argh, can things stay the same for five minutes please? One more Day, grumble. Not Marvel's greatest success. Can we retcon THAT away? Please? Pretty please? Sigh...
8:05 Forgive me if you've gotten this remark before on a video that's nearly a year old now, but I'd heard Straczynski actually *liked* them married, but was told when he started on Amazing that when his run was finished, the marriage would be dissolved somehow. Maybe he changed his mind over time? I don't buy Quesada's excuses to try and make it sound noble. You don't change an entire history, retconning something to have never happened in the first place and/or making characters behave counter to who they are, because you have any respect for what it is you're changing [looks sternly at DC]. They basically explained during Brand New Day that Reed Richards' science and Dr. Strange's sorcery combined to make everyone forget Peter's secret, so there's no reason that couldn't have been done without the Mephisto thing. Any number of characters could've healed May if Joe Q hadn't insisted on a dumb idea. It didn't grow or add anything to Parker, in fact, it *regressed* him, seeing as he was hooking up with Black Cat again, like decades before, on top of living with his aunt. I gave this "Brand New Day" era a good two years, when it was coming out three times a month. It never got as good as when Straczynski was writing, and I dropped it. It's one example why I find it hard to trust certain parties at the Big Two, let alone whatever or whomever they're currently hyping up.
@@jhornacek truth. I loved his run on spidey. Then he wrote thor and i loved that too. But marvel mandate fucked his stories hard again. If i remember right he asked to leave thor out of any marvel event until he was a ways more into his story. Then they said fuck no and created seige.
JMS's run is my third favorite on Spidey, second only to Roger Stern's in the 80's and of course, Stan Lee's. Pretty much every story was great, except Sins Past and OMD, which were forced by Joe Quesada. In Sins Past, Straczynski said he wanted them to be Peter's kids, which is plausible after Spider-Man: Blue which had come out recently, but Quesada decided to involve Norman Osborn just for the shock value.
Peter Parker and Maryjane Watson belong together. Two dynamic characters clearly meant for each other. I still get goosebumps when I read the last page of ASM #42. It’s way too difficult for Peter to have a relationship with someone else because of who he is. MJ fully understands his complicated life and deeply loves him enough to deal with it.
LOVE your channel and insightful videos, Sasha! This one really hits me hard...one more day was the reason I stopped buying spider-man comics, and would eventually be the same reason that I stopped reading comic books. Spider-Man was the very first comic book character that I could relate to as a little boy back in the early 80's when I began reading comics. His struggles were real and rooted in real life issues far beyond any other superhero arc. Peter was my childhood hero. When Marvel trashed 20 years of my life and devotion to him with this retcon, it was reason enough for me to walk away.
1. The idea that Peter himself is a clone 2. Gwen Stacey having babies in secret and...Norman being the father 3. Peter sacrifices his marriage to a demon to heal his aunt after he stupidly putted his identity. All 3 are really,really stupid editorial ideas that should have never seen print and the one who came up each needed a good slap.
Comics really seem to struggle with marriage generally. I recall in the New 52 there was only one hero who was married, Animal Man. I was enjoying the run, and then right at the end, they killed his son and had his wife leave him because she couldn't take it anymore. Made me really disappointed and a bit angry.
Uggggggh. I first heard of One More Day from Atop the Fourth Wall and just...wow. What a mess. Even your calm demeanor can't make me feel okay about this storyline. 🤣 It's such a demonstration of how out of touch many comic writers are.
I loved Spider-Man and comics, but One More Day is what made me quit. I felt extremely betrayed that all the investment I had put into the growth of Peter and MJ's characters could just be undone in sn editorial whim to make a character go back to baseline. I realized then that the popular comics genre would never allow for real character growth as there would always be machinations in place to keep the perceived status quo, which leads to a very unfulfilling reading experience. If there is no lasting change, then there are no real stakes.
This is the real danger of comics fans becoming comics creators: the temptation to use their status to undo or regress any story or character development just because they don't like it or, even worse, "because the status quo of this character/book should have been frozen in amber back when I was a kid and first discovered it, and everything that happened afterwards that actually changed anything is nothing short of blasphemy!" You can find it in Alex Ross and his "Silver Age traditionalism," Dan Didio's tenure at DC, the Superman 2000 pitch, the Bierbaums' work on the Legion of Super-Heroes during the "Five Years Later" era, every attempt to restore a team's "original line-up," and probably more than I can come up. I was a kid in the early '80s, reading Levitz & Giffen's work on the LSH, and in one issue a letter was printed from a fan who demanded that the past fifteen or sixteen years worth of Legion stories and continuity be either scrapped entirely or at least declared to have been taking place in an alternate universe. Said fan also said he would boycott the LSH until it "returned to the world firmly established" in its run in Adventure Comics during the 1960s. This happened in 1984, I think, so DC wasn't yet in the habit of doing company wide crossovers just to reboot or change continuity, so this one fan wanted fifteen or sixteen years of change and development born out of the simple passage of time in the real world to be scrapped just so what I presume was his childhood would be restored. Around this time, Dick Grayson got turned into Nightwing in the New Teen Titans in large part because the Batman editor asked the NTT editor to return Grayson back to his control. He'd just hired a new writer on the Batman comic, and the new writer wanted to permanently de-age Grayson back into a ten-year-old, effectively erasing Grayson's years-long character development, because the new writer's story plans required a Robin the Boy Wonder who was still a kid. Marv Wolfman made a counter-offer: We'll keep Dick Grayson and you can have the Robin identity, give it to a new kid. Thus we got Grayson as Nightwing and the creation of Jason Todd. As for Quesada's belief that sacrificing the marriage was more heroic than a divorce, consider also that when Mark Millar wrote the "romance comic" called "Trouble" that was supposed to ret-con Aunt May into being Peter Parker's biological mother, both Quesada and Millar apparently made statements to the effect of being more worried that fans would be upset about Peter being *gasp* born out of wedlock to unmarried parents (May and Richard Parker) then they would about the story ret-conning May and Peter's actual relationship or the potentially character assassinating depiction of Aunt May, Uncle Ben, Richard Parker, and Richard's eventual wife Mary as a bunch of dumb, immature, and sexually irresponsible teens who took summer jobs for the express purpose of getting laid ("and that's how you were conceived, Peter"). I'd guess that Quesada, who thinks divorce and being born out of wedlock are things that fans would be more upset about, was raised in a really strict, conservative, family values pushing religous family, but that's just a guess.
Most adaptations have the guts to do things the comics won't. Like permanently kill off important characters, have characters actually age, lasting relationships, permanent changes and consequences when things happen and so on.
I liked this store line a lot myself, but I had really never read much, Spider-man before it, so I think that colored my opinion on the matter, and made me enjoy it more, than other fans. But after I went back and read some of the original run of The Amazing Spider-man, I understand now why it was wasn't well received by older fans. I also will say this about one more day, it was poorly executed. But I do understand what the writer was trying to do.
If Marvel REALLY wanted this TERRIBLE story to work, what they should've done was had MJ, and not Aunt May be the one who gets shot. In this case, Peter Parker would be in a Morton's Fork in which he can save MJ's life by making the deal with Mephisto, but at the cost of their marriage. This way, he wouldn't be sacrificing their daughter because if MJ dies then she wouldn't be born anyway, and he wouldn't be essentially guilting his wife into going along with it. Also, since Aunt May isn't the one dying, then Peter wouldn't be disregarding her wishes to let her die, and be with Uncle Ben. It would still be stupid that NOBODY in the Marvel Universe can treat a simple bullet wound, but at least this would be better than what we got!
I loved them married. The were great. I dropped out of comic reading before this event (& several others) so when I heard about it, I definitely didn't like it.
I stopped reading in the late 90's, and then picked it up again around 2015. Two things happened in the meantime that nearly made me quit reading again: One More Day, of course.... and the Sins Past nonsense where Gwen and Norman Osborne had babies.... ugh. I'd rather have all the clone nonsense than those stories.
This history is what killed my interest in one of my favorites characters, since then I only prefer to read histories of him from alternated earths in which he is still married with MJ, frankly it would have been better if Marvel just finally put aunt May to rest, terrible decisions Marvel did... and still they do with their reboots like DC does.
Well a lot of people loved Peter B. Parker in Into the Spiderverse who was an older Peter who did get divorced with M.J. and are now actually working through their issues instead of selling off their marriage.
And he's a secondary character in a one off movie. Further proof that a boring, married character can't carry a story. ITSV was about Miles Morales. Weird. It's almost like people prefer to read about young, single people because their lives are more interesting and have more narrative potential.
@@thehmc Speak for yourself. Miles is okay, but I would much rather seen a movie that focused more on the older Peter. The whole high school/college student for life thing is very old and stale. Characters need to evolve, not through countless reboots, but naturally.
Undoing the entire marriage was a stupid idea, as though all marriages are storybook fantasies full of unicorns and cupcakes. Having Spider-Man married with responsibilities and marital troubles never detracted from the character. It made him more realistic and relatable.
Lol. No it didn't make him more relatable. It was bland and boring like most married characters. The only reason it works with Reed and Sue is because they're in a team book. It's an ensemble cast. But they should have just done a divorce with Spider-Man. The devil story was dumb.
@@thehmc Sure it did. All marriages have problems, and often they don't last and end in divorce. I could have handled Peter and Mary Jane going that route if their marriage had to end, but erasing it altogether was just stupid and actually regressed the characters.
I would have handled things differently. Have some cosmic entity show up and steal MJ and vanish. Peter goes to his friends for help, but all of them have the same response..."Who's MJ?" Basically from there Peter is the only one who remembers her and he has to go a whole story line without her. I'd have her eventually returned but the marriage forgotten, and her time with Peter in general, leaving open the possibility of them becoming a couple again and remarrying down the road.
My understanding is not that JMS objected to just the demon deal aspect, but that so much in issues 3 and 4 of this were changed so much there was barely anything JMS wrote still in the final version of them, and he hated the entirety the way it ended just as much as the fans did.
I've basically read everything spider-man since his first appearance in amazing fantasy and yeah, this is in my opinion the worst story they ever made with him.
What did I think of OMD? It was the final nail in the coffin of my reading Superhero comics. I was trending off of them anyway (too many cash grab crossovers and junk like that), but this faux dark way of ending the relationship was quite stupid and lazy, and certainly not clever even though I'm sure the Marvel team was celebrating it as such. I heavily invested in VERTIGO titles and similar vein, as well as the Crime Noir of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (if you haven't checked out CRIMINAL, you should). My absolute favorite title that became my official switchover out of superhero comics is a bit ironic - it was Garth Ennis' THE BOYS. Or maybe not so much ironic as it would be apt. Whatever, comics is not a monolith of one type of fan anymore than being a film buff means you like all films. I'm sure there would be some modern (2010 and on) comics I might enjoy, but I'm quite happy enjoying what I enjoy now, and I can't say that I'm missing all that much by spending my money only on a small corner of the market.
One More Day got me off reading Marvel comics for about five years. I found it to be worse than the Clone Saga, and that storyline stopped me from reading Marvel comics for a few years.
Funny thing Aunt May was suppose to die back in the 90’s during the clone saga and there was an entire issue of her death, and unlike here Peter was sad but acts maturely and said his goodbyes to her and moved on after her death. It was a great issue and most of the readers were fine with it and moved on themselves as you should when love ones die. But then an editor wanted her back in the comics again, it didn’t matter how people felt or if they even care anymore, he was in charge and wanted her be brought back. And the writers made and another issue that says that she was never dead to begin with and the one who died was some actor set up by Norman Osborn. So yeah that was dumb.
@@brandonlyon730 It's so unfortunate: JM Dematteis killed off Kraven in an excellent dramatic fashion ... and he was brought back. JM Deatteis killed Harry in an excellent dramatic fashion ... and (until a recent retcon) he was brought back. JM Dematteis killed off Aunt May in an excellent, emotional fashion. And she was brought back. They seem determined to undo all his greatest stories!
At the time I thought they would go through a year or so with them being separated then rejoin them, like the Death of Superman story arc. But when I saw this wasn't the case and with trying to keep up with the multiple Spider-Man titles, I gave up on Spider-Man and canceled all my Spider-Man subscriptions. This also happened with the X-Men, I couldn't keep up with the multiple titles and cancelled them also.
For a character that was ground breaking in the 60s for bringing more realistic aspects of life into comics, to resort to demon intervention to end a marriage instead of like usually happens in real life, it's a big slap on its face. I think going through a regular separation/divorce process would bring much more dramatic elements for the storylines. It doesn't mean they don't love each other anymore. A lot of couples get divorced and then get back together again. Even re-marry! There's this movie with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, don't remember the name or much of the plot, but what stuck to mind was that in the movie they would constantly break up and get back together again. I found that dynamic quite interesting.
I love Peter and MJ together, so I was not a fan of this story line. But, the era after this was pretty decent and easy for new readers to start reading SM comics, so that was a plus. Also, I really like the "Renew Your Vows," comics with MJ and Peter still married.
I don’t agree that they should have done it, but, if we’re going to split them up, surely they could have come up with a better reason, for why they had to sell their marriage to Mephisto; instead of it being to save the life of a 2000 year old walking corpse...sorry Aunt May. I mean, I don’t understand why it was a deal Peter even considered taking; well, apart from him having a severe case of “plot-itus”. If she had found out what he was contemplating, I think even Aunt May would have said: “Jeez, looks like I’ve raised the dumbest human being that ever walked the earth! You’re gonna give up decades of potential love, and happiness, to save my wrinkly, decrepit, old hide?! What the fuck is wrong with you!? Did one of those supervillain’s you fight hit you too hard, and give you brain damage?!” ...or something along those lines; that would have been my reaction, if I was Aunt May. I mean, to give up your marriage- to the women you supposedly love, in order to save the life of your very, VERY elderly aunt; it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. But then, neither does the fact that NONE of the smartest, most powerful people on the planet, could save an old woman, who was shot with a regular, vanilla bullet...riiiiiiiiiiiiiight! Yeah, ‘One More Day’ seems like a complete shit-show, with very little internal logic; obviously superhero stories often expect you to accept weird, bogus science, and other strange goings on in their world. But if a story starts making you question the motivations behind a character’s in-world actions, it really takes you out of the narrative; as there’s no real rational reasoning, for Peter to accept such a deal, it just makes you question the motivations of the people behind the piece- whether they wanted to tell a story, or were more interested with breaking them up, and didn’t really care how they did it. It seems they didn’t particularly care how it was accomplished, so long as it ended with Peter back the way he was before the marriage. Which seems like a pretty big FU to the fans, in my opinion; I mean, not only did they break up Peter and MJ’s marriage, but they did it in a shitty story, that made absolutely no sense, and was full of such gaping logical holes, you could drive a train through them haha. Yep, it’s easy to see why this Spidey arc his despised so much; it appears to deserve every bit of hate, and vitriol, it has received haha.
Years before OMD, at DC, the demon Neron took the love between Wally West and Linda Park in exchange for something (I think it involved saving some lives). Neron ended up insisting on giving it back like an issue later, because having so much pure love in him was really hurting his ability to be a demon. So that all worked better because it was about the purity of their love and how it prevails above all, and by the end of the arc everything was back to normal.
What really annoyed me was that when peter revealed his identity (and all the marketing around it) marvel said "promise, we will not undo it, we swearrrrr" (or something like this). But when mephisto made the deal with pete and MJ it was heartbreaking. And i loved the idea that MJ told mephisto "i want to remember everything", and imagined that MJ was evolving in a world being the only one to remember their love
This pretty much single handedly turned me off of comics altogether. I decided to start reading comics (starting with Spider-Man and Archie Sonic) a few years after "One More Day" I was about 12 or 13 at the time and as I was browsing through trying to get a feel for comics and figure out where to start I came accross this story and it just destroyed all hope I had in comics. Years later I'm finally picking them up again. Starting with the originaly Spidey comics, Archie Sonic again, and currently, Green Arrow Longbow Hunters (and a big reason for GA is because I like the dynamic between GA and Black Canary. I like Super Hero couples in general lol.). My hope is that I'll be able to just read through the good and develop my own head-cannon leaving out the bad. That's kinda what I've always done with movies and tv anyway, so might as well try it with comics again. There's such a rich lore and stories that I feel I'm missing out on and didn't want to let "One More Day" keep hanging over my head and keeping me from enjoying the really good stuff. After all, other media adaptations have only gone so far. So here's hoping I can make it work this time. Re-entering into the world of comics is very interesting and daunting but something I'm wanting to do for sure. Hope it lasts this time.
These 4 issues is what made me quit buying comics altogether. There are so many couples that get teased and never get fully realized because cowardice of either the writer, editor etc... So when you have one that works Peter/Mary, it stands out and I guess just because it stands out it's not relatable to everything else around it. So it needs to change, and it needs to change quickly. Which leads to poor thought out ideas and cheap ploys implemented to achieve the desired goal. It's a bitterness that has faded over time with comics but talking about it now-a-days is top level cringe for me. So if this barely makes any sense, I get it. And well, have a nice day!
OMD ruined Spider-Man. I’m just happy to see the current run start to reckon with it and show that shit is NOT right in Spider-Man’s work because if Mephisto’s interference. Hopefully we can see the whole thing retconned away and Peter and MJ going on with their marriage as if nothing happened
Much Love for the fleshed out explanation of the removal of their marriage. It was forced like multiple other things Marvel does. How can their only be one married superhero couple in the Marvel universe? Are ALL the writers members of the "He-man woman haters club?" How does being happily married move Peter away from his who he was. Spiderman is like 60! If he can't be married, fight crime and save the world, what hope does that leave for us BLERD's NERD's and Geeks? Please keep up the GREAT work Sasha!
I find it hilarious that they made such a big deal about Spidey needing to be relatable in order to be successful, then very soon after this Dan Slott started his popular run where Spidey works for a giant tech company making wacky sci-fi inventions.
It's worth noting that One More Day wasn't JMS' last story at Marvel, just his last Spider-Man story. As he did an excellent run on Thor right after. Before leaving to work at DC due to Marvel Editorial fucking him over again, because Siege was a story that just HAD to be written apparently. I feel like that's where my contempt for Bendis really started because the event sucked.
Everything about Civil War was awful and it should be forgotten forever.. of course it kinda has been memory holed while pretending it still happened, but not reallly.
yeah i agree about the if you think a work that is by the vast majority considered bad or a work that is by the vast amount considered good that doesn't mean you have to view the work similarly to how others view it which alot of people can feel weird and embrassed that they don't dislike or are into remotely as close as others
This story was a bad idea from the get go. There were other ways they could have re-masked Peter, simple ways. They had already done a story where the Iron Spider suit had chameleon features. It would have taken zero effort to say that cloaking power was why Peter seemed to be Spider-man, and the public would soon forget all about it because of course they would. The marriage... it was great, it had provided MJ with so much character development, and all of that was washed away with this event. But if it had to end, you didn't need a deal with the devil... Mundane reasons like witness protection/goes into hiding for her safety/ or any variation of that would have made more sense. OMD was bad, and the follow up OMIT was no better. Marvel has been dumping on their flagship character since the 90s and I am not having it.
Oh noooo. Nobody could heal aunt May. It's not like there are probably a couple dozen mutants with that ability, or some weird technobullshit device that could help, or some weirder magical thingamajig that could save her. Nooo, aunt May faced the most horrid of experiences in a comic book. A non instant death gunshot. How devastating.
I've never before heard that JMS wasn't a fan of the marriage. Everything I've ever heard or read places the blame squarely on Quesada'. I actually liked OMD as a story as I was expecting that the reason that nobody in all of Marveldom (At that point both Doctor Doom and Loki had said they owed Spider-man a debt) could save May was due to infernal shenanigans. Because Mephisto cheats. Then I got to the end of the story and Pete and MJ actually accept the deal!!! I was not expecting something that out of character and I quit reading Spider-Man for years until I got my hands on the Ultimate Spider-Man TPBs. I'm still not happy with that ending. I cheered so loud when I found Renew Your Vows that I'm embarrassed to go back to that shop.
My personal theory is that the daughter(who I will refer to as Mayday Parker) was someone who Mephisto was genuinely afraid of, perhaps she was destined to kill him at some point. And so this is why he did this.
If I was writing a spider-man story at marvel right after civil war happened, I would have taken a much different approach. Instead of trying to retcon everything back to the status-quo, I would try and continue the story logically, try and figure out, "What is his every day life like now that the world knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man?" I probably also wouldn't immediately go for the whole "Aunt May got shot!" thing. I don't really believe that people would really want to go after Spider-Man's loved ones unless they wanted to draw him out and kill him, cuz Spidey's villains have a grudge against him specifically, not the people he cares about. (Unless in the story they were trying to snipe him, but shot May on accident, which I guess I get, but it's still a little... eeeeh.) If May absolutely must get shot, then I think either I would leave the consequence of her dying without any caveats, or I would have someone from the marvel universe actually be able to help her, and the rest of the story would be Peter, MJ, and May overcoming the trauma of the moment, becoming closer than ever, and maybe even a plotline where Peter tries to figure out who sniped her and bring them to justice (justice in this case being finding them and taking them to the police). Possibly he would try and have some of his super hero friends guard May or something after all this, or would devote himself to protecting her on his own. (Keep in mind this is all very "off the top of my head" stuff, so a lot of what I said might be very jumbled up and would need some further fleshing out, but it's the best that I could come up with in this short amount of time. Also I'm not super knowledgeable about comic book Spidey. I'm just starting to get into Marvel comics, in fact; so a lot of what I said might not mesh well with his character or the world that he lives in. If some of what I said doesn't work with the continuity... sorryyyyyy, I tried my best. XD)
Man, I thought Clone Saga was the worst but then again people like Ben Reilly. I guess the good that came of OMD was Renew Your Vows, we got to see Peter and MJ being awesome parents.
This is the story that ended me buying any more Spidey Comics. Before this I bought all the books but after this... Not one more penny to Marvel. Peter and MJ's marriage was one of the most sacred marriages in Marvel right up there with Reed and Sue. Also the way this was done was soooo bad! Had they just broke up for MJ's safety and she run off and get like a fake ID, That would have made it tolerable but cosmic deal with the devil retcon.... OMG so bad.
I could see a new Marvel writer coming in wanting to show a new or existing character more powerful than Mephisto by essentially undoing the marriage steal in front of him. Curious how the fallout would be. Or maybe they even farther by not only bringing back the marriage of MJ with their daughter, but also bringing back Gwen and their son from the House of M story. Like what would Gwen, MJ, and Peter do?
Ugh, what a mess. Civil War was awful, just Mark Millar making characters do whatever his plot needed them to do with no regard for 50 years of their previous characterizations. For me, Reed and Tony were both significantly damaged by it, and in fact I mostly stopped reading Marvel afterwards. And in a universe where time travel exists, a deal with the devil was a really silly way to dissolve the Peter / MJ marriage. I wasn't a huge fan of the marriage either (I ride for Gwen, her blandness be damned) but this storyline was just completely misconceived. It could have been salvaged at the very last moment though, and led to some real growth for Peter: Peter should have said no to Mephisto's deal, and owned up to the fact that it was his fault his Aunt got shot, because he stupidly revealed his secret identity to the world without thinking about the consequences. Then they could have let Aunt May die and Peter could have learned a hard lesson, and grew a little. Personally I want Marvel to do a Crisis-style reset so I can read the books again without the accumulated weight of all the shitty events of the past twenty years ruining things for me. (How many Spider-people are there now? How many times have characters been killed and brought back?) My idea: Peter gets thrown back in time to the day the Goblin killed Gwen, and he saves her. And that changes everything for everyone. Simple. (I like Gwen.)
People object to OMD because it doesn't make sense for young people to give up their futures for an old biddy who's got, what, a year or two at best? But I don't buy that objection AT ALL. Superheroing is all about people acting altruistically, and not performing a cost/benefit analysis before saving lives; Peter and MJ giving up their marriage would be very much in keeping with that. In-story, the big objection I have is, deals with the devil are ALWAYS a bad idea. You should never trust that the devil is going to hold up his end of the bargain, or that he isn't getting something out of it you can't anticipate. Maybe he's playing a long game, where if Peter and MJ have a child, that child will eventually disrupt Mephisto's plans. Or maybe Aunt May dying means Peter and MJ will move into her house, which means Peter will be in the right place to save someone's life who will eventually disrupt Mephisto's plans. Or something. This is real butterfly-stomping territory.
Never forget "One More Day" was originally pitched for Superman to soft reboot him in a pitch known as "Superman: 2000!" All the beats were there but The Devil is swapped for Mxylpdlx saving a dying Lois Lane for Superman's marriage.
I liked your explanation. I've read so many dumbass Spiderman comic books that there is no way I can pick a "worst story line" in a storyline full of worst storylines.
Dr. Strange was a surgeon, he would know how to fix a shot to what looks like into the lower lung, on top of that he has magical abilities, one is time travel. On top of that Spidey know's Wolverine and Deadpool whose blood has been a deus ex machina many, many times. Oh and he also knows a guy who created a means to regrow limbs (Lizard). If they simply wanted to reverse the unmasking, they have several options, heck they were going to end a run anyway just say Peter and his family got plastic surgery, explain the new art style that way too.
I see from a quick review that I wasn’t the only one to ditch serious comic collecting after this storyline (in truth, it was this storyline on top of the bloated Civil War and being weary of multi-issue and title “events” that were always for money, and story and character were irrelevant. The same old corporate story, they were, at best, more concerned with getting new readers rather than the longtime reader. Quesada’s implication that a happy marriage was boring and the overt suggestion that getting a divorce was worse than implausibly making the marriage not exist via the “devil” was done because a married Peter wasn’t relatable is utter nonsense. Given the number of divorces and even higher number of separations, it is a highly relatable event. That Peter thinks his relationship with his “life partner” should be erased to give Aunt May, a woman who has always been days from death (and has “died” before) is rather sickening. Moreover, I think Aunt May would have slapped him for it. Further, that Quesada thinks a reality warping mind wipe is significantly different than a hard reboot of the series is also silly as the difference is only in degree. The comics and the relationship built over 50 years of issues were still effectively nullified. The extra Mexican Gwen Stacy issues have more right to be considered canon than the OMD garbage. But, yeah, I don’t really care. *turns into a pillar of salt*
It was basically an excuse to have a soft reboot. Now no one remembers who Spider-man's secret identity is anymore( except Hulk for some reason.), and Civil War never happened now.
i stopped reading Spiderman until this day because of the one more day/brand new day story arcs. now i dont read any comics from marvel (only old ones) at all`
The current run on ASM actually started with an extended flashback to Sensational Annual #1, and brings Peter and MJ back together by the end of the first issue, and really seems to be gearing up to confront OMD in full.
Omg, I love this so much. Fantastic content aside (it's what I expect from you), I've noticed that in CC, you have waaay more fun with your script and discussions than on Shipper's Guide. It's great seeing you titter about in this channel.
God one more day *has horriable flashbacks* Never have i hated a storyline more than it. Peter/MJ is one of my favorite comic couples and have marvel destroy their history really turned me off spider-man comics for years afterwards. I really enjoy your causal talk of comics, and can't wait to watch the next one
I worked at a comic shop when all of this went down. And in the Amazing Spider-man issues following this we were able to get quite a few new readers to it, because what followed was such a great starting point. But will agree that the story itself was flawed. Also, Morbius said they were getting one more day... then they immediately had to give up up... what one more day was that? The title is a lie! (assuming there must have been a re-write) the story was a mess but I think given what happened after it may have been a nessecary evil. Although I agree it is weird they didn't think a marriage that had been going on so long could "work".
@@CasuallyComics It was a lot of fun. The one I worked at always had us busy so it wasn't all standing and talking about comics. But as a lifelong lover of comics it was great to give back to the community. We were also paired with a book store so we got a lot of new people introduced to comics which was a lot of fun. I would still be working there but sadly I had to quit one of my 2 jobs to keep my sanity and my other job was full time, over twice the hourly pay and with benefits... so I had little choice but to quit working there. But it was easily the best job I had. A lot of work but doing something I love made it fun.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
"I want yo marriage" just might be my senior quote
Lol you have to become famous after, so years later people struggle to understand what it means.
I never understood why so many writers have such a hard time writing stories about married couples. It’s as if they think a couple’s story is over after they get married, which is far from the case. The Incredibles is a great example of how to tell a good story about a married superhero. Marriage doesn’t mean a couple’s problems are over, it means that they can face new struggles together. (Also, Spidey/MJ is my favorite Marvel ship, so I might be a bit bias)
I've wondered if it has something to do with how marriage have been shifting, a lot - just 100 years ago marriages were more or less just a social contract, something that happened because it had to, and was expected to, and there weren't a lot of accepted alternatives (and pure actual love wasn't always a leading factor), then the rise of divorce (as in, the courts actually allowing people to get divorced much more easily) led to, well, a lot of divorces, and things have really only stabilized over the last 20 years or so. That doesn't mean people didn't have happy marriages before now, but...a significantly larger number of people has bad experiences with marriage.
I prefer Felicia Hardy myself but i agree.
Shonen Mangakas are even worse. Toriyama for example.
But those comics are meant for action, adventure.
I think it's easier to write about the fun and "romantic tension" aspect of dating, which is recognizable to most younger readers, than the complexities of marriage which is more relatable to adults.
@@jhornacek Yep. Joe Q wanted him back to eating wheat cakes and dating his daughter.
I happen to like happy marriages! A controversial opinion I know...
Says the guy that ruined his best friend's marriage...
@@starhound9354 lol
@@starhound9354 'You turned her against me!'
One More Day made me stop reading Spider-Man all together, and shortly after that, I stopped reading Marvel comics as a whole after the end of Civil War. I had just recently returned to Marvel comics when they pulled Hydra Cap, and once again I threw my hands up and turned my back on Marvel. They have a way of pissing me off and turning me off to their story lines that takes me a while to get over. I loved Peter and MJ, I loved MJ, and breaking them up was just weak story telling. The same goes for DC and their no Bat (or super hero) can be happily married. Their excuse for not allowing Kate to marry Maggie, which they had to follow through with with Bruce and Selina. It's all bullshit! Utter bullshit. Comic readers are no longer (never really were) the undateable loser men in their mother's basements, so stop writing as if we are. Give me happy family vibes, and health relationships, while also punching super villains in the face.
P.S. I miss the live streams!
I miss them too hopefully going to do some soon!
I also stopped reading Spider-Man after One More Day. The book was SO good until One More Day: intense, interesting, the stakes were super high and then it was all ruined.
@@waltlikka Same here. That was the initiation of my Spider-Man Ban.
@@cryptking6283 i did that too till i picked up spider-island. I saw mary jane have spider powers and worked backwards and was shocked to see julia carpenter as madame web. Slott did a few positive things. Like making kraven into a more credible threat. (I always thought he was underrated) so my favorite was the gauntlet storyline. I hated spider ock though. I knew peter was coming back so i wasnt worried but he basically gary stued for 20 issues. Despite his weird ass comments he got away with everything. Order of events were also wrong. Like peter was going to injure a small child but he was going to prevent otto from killing massacre. It was done terribly. Shadowland was destroyed in a single or 2 issues. No that was also dumb. It should have been a cross over with all of the street level heroes.
1988: Spider-Man married.
1988-present: Comics read by 15 to 50 year-old people.
2008: Marvel says married 50 year-old writers cannot write about marriage but can write about a teen Spider-Man who is no longer a teen.
Real Reason: Teen Spider-Man in cartoons and movies.
I hated this book so much.... I'd been reading Spidey since "Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot", and had watched his and MJ's relationship grow and blossom, watched MJ become truly a partner, rather than a love interest. I was so invested in their relationship, and then Quesado did this. I swear, I didn't buy a marvel book for over a year after this.
Same
I won't be buying another one until OMD is undone. I made that promise to myself after OMD came out, and so far, I've had no trouble keeping it.
Everyone acted so out of character and as someone who studied game design, was personally offended by the Peter is a game developer possible future.
All they needed to break up Peter and MJ is for someone in the future to tell them that if they stayed married then their child would destroy the world. Later, if someone wanted to remarry them the writer could retcon that the future guy was lying or the dangerous period has passed.
Yeah but then we run into the same issue with Civil War 2, where the whole thing was stupidly caused by some future seeing inhuman that resulted in Carol Danvers not being able to accept that she might be incorrect even when she had clear evidence right in front of her. Anyway if they were to do that, Id bet that when the writers revealed that it was a lie or trick, it would all turn out to be a scheme by Norman Osborn somehow.
Me: "I'm kinda in the mood for tacos.."
Mephisto: "I want yo marriage."
Me: "Sold."
Deadpool would totally sell his marrige for tacos (if he had one.)
A more mature, later in life Peter and Peter and Mary Jane having marital separation? Spiderverse did it better
> Peter and Peter and Mary Jane
So... Ben Reilly & Peter shared Mary Jane? :P
@@ThePreciseClimber didn't they? But then it turned out that MJ was a clone too? That saga it's so long a convoluted that I don't really know
The funny thing is, it was already done pretty well in JMS run 2002-2003 when they were separated and then finally got back together after about a year.
This was a beyond shoddy story. Especially since Parker could’ve gone to Loki, who actually owed him a favor. The Norse God even gave Pete a medallion he could use to contact him in a time of need. Running with that could’ve provided a pretty epic story that fit the character and didn’t result in a facepalming retcon.
Hornacek - Marvel just needs to do a hard line, full imprint reboot. There’s just been too many misfires over the past +20 years to keep track off. I say wipe the board clean and start again from day one.
I'm told Loki was officially dead at that point.
This is an interesting angle. If the favor still isn't called in, Loki now has power over stories, including perhaps full retcon of retcon. And Loki doesn't feel too fondly about Mephisto.
One day, I hope that comic companies finally have the courage to let their characters grow and change in a lasting manner ie let people stay married, have children that aren't hyperaged or erased from existence and can hold down steady civilian supporting characters that don't get killed off for shock value.
Please please PLEASE do Luke Cage: Hero For Hire where he does a job for Dr Doom and travels to Latveria when Doom stiffs him and actually says to him "Wheres my money, honey!" Absolutely hilarious.
The 4 scariest words in the Marvel Universe
THIS IS A SAMPLE OF MY FIST!
LMBAOOO! Absolutely hilarious!
wait, is this true?
@@darthwolfX2 100% true. The best part is how Luke gets to Latveria. He goes to the Baxter Building and tells the Fantastic Four he needs to borrow a pogo plane (you know Reed came up with that name) and the moment Reed hears it's to mess with Doom he can't hand over the keys fast enough. He's all "Here you go Luke, have a nice trip, say hi to Victor for me" and apparently Luke learned how to fly the thing back when he was briefly on the team. Absolute riot of a story.
And Luke's doing it all for something like $200. The rocket fuel to get there had to cost Reed a hundred times that. Luke's like that newspaper delivery boy in Better Off Dead, he's getting his two dollars come hell or high water.
the shade in this yes
i had only heard this story secondhand at a party, so i had NO IDEA it was just a NORMAL bullet they called the devil on to retcon lmao
@@jhornacek Oh no, really? I just assumed it was 'she never got shot in the first place.' Oh man, that makes it even WORSE.
@@andrewgilbertson5672 Its worse. In the previous issue after May is hospitalized, May tells Peter to let her go and her time is up. Also, somehow Doc Strange is able to help Peter in the post OMD timeline but not in the pre-OMD timeline for some unexplainable reason. Also, in the post-OMD timeline, Peter saves May from the bullet wound with CPR, which for some reason he hadn't tried in the pre-OMD timeline despite having done it many times in the past, and the fact that CPR does not save someone from a bullet wound.
Marvel already had a perfectly good devil-themed character who could have got them divorced. There were so many avenues they could have gone down, from claiming that Peter wasn't really Spider-man, just the guy trotted out to play the part in the Iron Spider suit because he worked for Tony, to having MJ and May go into a witness protection type thing to avoid villain revenge plots (which could have been worked really well when Osborn became head of SHIELD, etc) to just having him and MJ divorce because she was sick of his crap or their relationship wasn't working. Hadn't they been separated for a time prior to this anyway? Instead, they went to most hamfisted way possible, neutered a bunch of potential storylines along with invalidating a lot of previous ones, and the only saving grace was that the series afterwards was very entertaining, something I think was more down to the great creative teams they got rather than resetting the character back to a place he didn't need to go.
I liked married Pete, I liked teacher Pete, I liked public ID Pete. All nice growth and development of the character. Hamfist should totally be a guy in Peter Porker's universe too, if he isn't already.
I did a little digging of my own, and, while I don't claim to have exhaustively researched the matter, what I can find says that JMS was talked into doing the OMD story by Quesada:
"It’s a matter of historical record that Marvel wanted to unmarry Peter (but without the political weight of a divorce) and the book was commissioned by Editorial to achieve that. I had come onto the book to reunite the two, and I loved writing them as a married couple, would’ve been happy to continue doing that forever."
- JMS in an AMA on Reddit "1 year ago"
Further, JMS wrote a version of the story where, rather than Mephisto magically changing a bunch of stuff semi-arbitrarily (it's magic: it doesn't have to make sense), they make one small change to the established history: back in 1971, rather than covering for Harry Osborn's drug problem, Peter helps him get into rehab sooner, meaning MJ doesn't break up with him, Gwen doesn't die, and whatever other changes the writers want can ripple effect through. Quesada didn't like it because it meant decades of comics no longer happened, and the ripples would extend to all of Marvel comics, while, apparently undoing the wedding doesn't have the same ripple effect problems because that was only back in 1987, and 20 years of altered events isn't a problem, unlike 36 years ??? Oh, and apparently it's much better to have a list of independent changes that aren't necessarily all given at once, and where the characters don't remember the previous version despite it having actually happened than to have a single event that spawned a list of consequences, that aren't necessarily all given at once, and where the characters don't remember the previous version because it no longer actually happened.
I struggle to follow Quesada's "logic" here.
Am I really supposed to believe that Black Panther and all his advanced wakanda resources couldn’t save Aunt May from a single bullet?
That was one of the main problems with the story. That it expected you to believe characters that have healed much worse couldn't heal a simple gunshot wound.
@@Xehanort10 And in the follow up story to this garbage, “one moment in time” , they had Doctor Strange wipe out all of earths memory of who Spider-man was. Doctor Strange can do all of that but not heal a simple bullet wound?!
@@brandonlyon730 Hell they had it so that Dr Doom of all people couldn't help even though Doom once used his knowledge of magic to save Sue Storm and her and Reed's daughter Valeria when they nearly died during the birth. Doom also at one point died and his soul possessed each member of the Fantastic Four. So getting a bullet out of an old woman would be a piece of cake.
@@Xehanort10 He especially would’ve tried if Spider-Man told him that Reed Richards couldn’t save her after he asked him. Doom would’ve certainly went out of his way to save Aunt May. Just so he could rub it in Reeds face later.
“impossible for you to heal huh? HA! Well look at me Dr. Von Doom saving this poor woman of her bullet wound. I’ve proven yet again that I’m far better then you and your worthless PHD’s!”
I don't know the background of the Spidey Universe going on at that time, but it seems to me....implausible that the entire Marvel hero fraternity, in and out of secret identity, wouldn't rally around Peter (Civil War or no) and help Aunt May....especially as a non-combatant.
The unhealable bullet, money issues, Peter & MJ having to figure all this out on their own....doesn't ring true. Basically all very contrived just to get Peter on his own again. Silly.
That was sure a sad ending to comic book run I realy enjoyed. JMS had some great ideas for Peter and he let him grow by embracing the fact that he was no longer a stragling teenager. He got a real job as a teacher, he got merried, he was going to become a father. It was a cool idea and was writen well.
Naturaly Quesada couldn't let it stick and we got... this mess.
JMS liked them together, he even brought them back after MJ was "killed" in the previous run.
Yeah, JMS was pretty much forced to write Sins Past and OMD by Joe Quesada, which ruined his otherwise amazing run. He was one of the best writers for Peter and MJ's marriage.
I just don't get why some comics authors/editors hate domesticity and heroes getting or staying married. See also: the BatCat "wedding" and especially Batwoman where the entire creative team walked because editors wouldn't allow Batwoman to marry her girlfriend. It would've been a great opportunity for queer representation and they ruined a perfectly good series because "heroes shouldn't have happy personal lives". It's frustrating. It's totally possible to tell interesting stories that focus heavily on relationships, I think the Rouge & Gambit mini-series from last year is a really good example.
I don't think I'll read this as I've barely read any Spider-Man and this doesn't seem like a good place to start. And I really don't like the art.
@@jhornacek Who thought being married is boring.
setting aside my views on LGBTQ+, i don't think it's fair to let BatCat get married and have a child but Kathy-Maggie can't marry? come on.
Because such geeks have no married life ( or girlfriends for that matter) and are still living in their parents basements.
Probably because most of them have either never been in relationships and are bitter about it or they had relationships that ended badly and project that into their stories and onto their characters. The whole "heroes can't both be happy and focused on their superhero lives" logic is stupid.
Maury Povich: Mephisto Edition.
The devil divorce was just idiotic. I liked the marriage, but you know what? Good people sometimes amicably divorce. Why is that so hard for Quesada to comprehend?
I agree. Also, MJ originally didn't even want to date Peter because he was Spider-Man and his super hero lifestyle often caused tension in their marriage. If MJ had decided to walk away because everybody knew Peter's secret, I think everyone would have been able to relate to that story.
I think I’ll stay away from this issue, as it will offend my IronDad sensibilities. Love your videos though, Queen. Can’t wait for your next post!
Fuck Stark, Iron Man is asshole.
Theyre kinda undoing it in the main verse. Kinda. May has cancer. Peter and mj are dating again. And peter asked Strange to cure her and strange advised against mystical solutions and to let nature take its course, while staying hopeful. Definitely a jab at OMD
Ps this story was one of my first comics ever and I understood none of it. Although MJ's insisting on keeping her memories in tact are why i will forever love the pairing. The pain they went through after this omg. It wouldve been so easy for her to forget it all. Forget being in love with him. But she refused. Even not together she remained his closest friend
As a huge fan, I stopped caring about Spider-Man after OMD.
Back in my younger days (the '80, I'm an '81 model) we had three Marvel series in Norway, Hulk, X-men and, og course Spider-Man. Now guess who I was the biggest fan of? ;-) But of course Norway never had the biggest fanbase for hero-comics and so the three, together with some DC titles were phased out, spidey held on until '93 and then he was done.
Enter the year '99. Now Norway is a country that now has Spawn, Witchblade that has been popular franchises for a few years at this point. So why not Spider-Man? Re-launched with a fast paced '80 origin, ina about half a year or so we catch up with "Modern" Spidey, and the now almost eighteen year old me was exited. I could be there from day one! I bought every issue since the new launch and became a fan all over again. This was the life, I had Spider-Man back!
Then came Civil War, which I was sort of okay, even though I only followed it from Peter Parker/Spider-Man's perspective. Allied with Iron-Man, going public with his identity, changing sides. All fine for the most part. And then, May shot! May dying (again). Not to be Mr. Negative (hehe) but, and though I love the woman as much as anyone, I was almost hoping this would be it. That Peter could finally let her go. But no, One more Day happened and so did my stint with buying Spider-Man. I think I bought one more issue, hoping with all my heart that it was just a bad dream and that Peter would wake up with MJ (yes, I was one of the many that had no issue with their relationship) and it would all be ok. But no, no such luck.
Now, I have no proof that this was the major factor but less than half a year later Spider-Man was once again discontinued and to this day Spidey 616 has not entered the Norwegian border again. Ultimate Spder-Man/X-men ran for a while in early 2000 and that was fun, big fan, but One more Day killed Spidey for me for the better part of a decade. Only the Ultimate series and the growing MCU really brought me back to that again- :-D And with Spidey finally going back into fold was Marvel-lous! ANd then Sony almost killed that off AGAIN! Argh, can things stay the same for five minutes please?
One more Day, grumble. Not Marvel's greatest success. Can we retcon THAT away? Please? Pretty please? Sigh...
8:05 Forgive me if you've gotten this remark before on a video that's nearly a year old now, but I'd heard Straczynski actually *liked* them married, but was told when he started on Amazing that when his run was finished, the marriage would be dissolved somehow.
Maybe he changed his mind over time?
I don't buy Quesada's excuses to try and make it sound noble. You don't change an entire history, retconning something to have never happened in the first place and/or making characters behave counter to who they are, because you have any respect for what it is you're changing [looks sternly at DC]. They basically explained during Brand New Day that Reed Richards' science and Dr. Strange's sorcery combined to make everyone forget Peter's secret, so there's no reason that couldn't have been done without the Mephisto thing. Any number of characters could've healed May if Joe Q hadn't insisted on a dumb idea. It didn't grow or add anything to Parker, in fact, it *regressed* him, seeing as he was hooking up with Black Cat again, like decades before, on top of living with his aunt.
I gave this "Brand New Day" era a good two years, when it was coming out three times a month. It never got as good as when Straczynski was writing, and I dropped it. It's one example why I find it hard to trust certain parties at the Big Two, let alone whatever or whomever they're currently hyping up.
You're right, JMS wanted them together. He even put them back together after they had been previously seperated.
@@jhornacek truth. I loved his run on spidey. Then he wrote thor and i loved that too. But marvel mandate fucked his stories hard again. If i remember right he asked to leave thor out of any marvel event until he was a ways more into his story. Then they said fuck no and created seige.
Straczynski hated OMD and has separated himself from it.
JMS's run is my third favorite on Spidey, second only to Roger Stern's in the 80's and of course, Stan Lee's. Pretty much every story was great, except Sins Past and OMD, which were forced by Joe Quesada. In Sins Past, Straczynski said he wanted them to be Peter's kids, which is plausible after Spider-Man: Blue which had come out recently, but Quesada decided to involve Norman Osborn just for the shock value.
Peter Parker and Maryjane Watson belong together. Two dynamic characters clearly meant for each other. I still get goosebumps when I read the last page of ASM #42. It’s way too difficult for Peter to have a relationship with someone else because of who he is. MJ fully understands his complicated life and deeply loves him enough to deal with it.
LOVE your channel and insightful videos, Sasha! This one really hits me hard...one more day was the reason I stopped buying spider-man comics, and would eventually be the same reason that I stopped reading comic books. Spider-Man was the very first comic book character that I could relate to as a little boy back in the early 80's when I began reading comics. His struggles were real and rooted in real life issues far beyond any other superhero arc. Peter was my childhood hero. When Marvel trashed 20 years of my life and devotion to him with this retcon, it was reason enough for me to walk away.
1. The idea that Peter himself is a clone 2. Gwen Stacey having babies in secret and...Norman being the father 3. Peter sacrifices his marriage to a demon to heal his aunt after he stupidly putted his identity. All 3 are really,really stupid editorial ideas that should have never seen print and the one who came up each needed a good slap.
Comics really seem to struggle with marriage generally. I recall in the New 52 there was only one hero who was married, Animal Man. I was enjoying the run, and then right at the end, they killed his son and had his wife leave him because she couldn't take it anymore. Made me really disappointed and a bit angry.
Nick Spencer got them back together, then Zeb Wells broke them up immediately for no reason.
Uggggggh. I first heard of One More Day from Atop the Fourth Wall and just...wow. What a mess. Even your calm demeanor can't make me feel okay about this storyline. 🤣 It's such a demonstration of how out of touch many comic writers are.
I loved Spider-Man and comics, but One More Day is what made me quit. I felt extremely betrayed that all the investment I had put into the growth of Peter and MJ's characters could just be undone in sn editorial whim to make a character go back to baseline. I realized then that the popular comics genre would never allow for real character growth as there would always be machinations in place to keep the perceived status quo, which leads to a very unfulfilling reading experience. If there is no lasting change, then there are no real stakes.
" Divorce bad, deal's with the devil, good"... "why have a legal proceeding when u can give up ur soul and happiness" that part was so funny lmaooo
Been salty about this for YEARS! Nice to hear the same sentiments coming from the Salt Queen.
This is the real danger of comics fans becoming comics creators: the temptation to use their status to undo or regress any story or character development just because they don't like it or, even worse, "because the status quo of this character/book should have been frozen in amber back when I was a kid and first discovered it, and everything that happened afterwards that actually changed anything is nothing short of blasphemy!" You can find it in Alex Ross and his "Silver Age traditionalism," Dan Didio's tenure at DC, the Superman 2000 pitch, the Bierbaums' work on the Legion of Super-Heroes during the "Five Years Later" era, every attempt to restore a team's "original line-up," and probably more than I can come up.
I was a kid in the early '80s, reading Levitz & Giffen's work on the LSH, and in one issue a letter was printed from a fan who demanded that the past fifteen or sixteen years worth of Legion stories and continuity be either scrapped entirely or at least declared to have been taking place in an alternate universe. Said fan also said he would boycott the LSH until it "returned to the world firmly established" in its run in Adventure Comics during the 1960s. This happened in 1984, I think, so DC wasn't yet in the habit of doing company wide crossovers just to reboot or change continuity, so this one fan wanted fifteen or sixteen years of change and development born out of the simple passage of time in the real world to be scrapped just so what I presume was his childhood would be restored.
Around this time, Dick Grayson got turned into Nightwing in the New Teen Titans in large part because the Batman editor asked the NTT editor to return Grayson back to his control. He'd just hired a new writer on the Batman comic, and the new writer wanted to permanently de-age Grayson back into a ten-year-old, effectively erasing Grayson's years-long character development, because the new writer's story plans required a Robin the Boy Wonder who was still a kid. Marv Wolfman made a counter-offer: We'll keep Dick Grayson and you can have the Robin identity, give it to a new kid. Thus we got Grayson as Nightwing and the creation of Jason Todd.
As for Quesada's belief that sacrificing the marriage was more heroic than a divorce, consider also that when Mark Millar wrote the "romance comic" called "Trouble" that was supposed to ret-con Aunt May into being Peter Parker's biological mother, both Quesada and Millar apparently made statements to the effect of being more worried that fans would be upset about Peter being *gasp* born out of wedlock to unmarried parents (May and Richard Parker) then they would about the story ret-conning May and Peter's actual relationship or the potentially character assassinating depiction of Aunt May, Uncle Ben, Richard Parker, and Richard's eventual wife Mary as a bunch of dumb, immature, and sexually irresponsible teens who took summer jobs for the express purpose of getting laid ("and that's how you were conceived, Peter"). I'd guess that Quesada, who thinks divorce and being born out of wedlock are things that fans would be more upset about, was raised in a really strict, conservative, family values pushing religous family, but that's just a guess.
Most adaptations have the guts to do things the comics won't. Like permanently kill off important characters, have characters actually age, lasting relationships, permanent changes and consequences when things happen and so on.
I liked this store line a lot myself, but I had really never read much, Spider-man before it, so I think that colored my opinion on the matter, and made me enjoy it more, than other fans. But after I went back and read some of the original run of The Amazing Spider-man, I understand now why it was wasn't well received by older fans. I also will say this about one more day, it was poorly executed. But I do understand what the writer was trying to do.
If Marvel REALLY wanted this TERRIBLE story to work, what they should've done was had MJ, and not Aunt May be the one who gets shot. In this case, Peter Parker would be in a Morton's Fork in which he can save MJ's life by making the deal with Mephisto, but at the cost of their marriage. This way, he wouldn't be sacrificing their daughter because if MJ dies then she wouldn't be born anyway, and he wouldn't be essentially guilting his wife into going along with it. Also, since Aunt May isn't the one dying, then Peter wouldn't be disregarding her wishes to let her die, and be with Uncle Ben. It would still be stupid that NOBODY in the Marvel Universe can treat a simple bullet wound, but at least this would be better than what we got!
I loved them married. The were great. I dropped out of comic reading before this event (& several others) so when I heard about it, I definitely didn't like it.
I stopped reading in the late 90's, and then picked it up again around 2015. Two things happened in the meantime that nearly made me quit reading again: One More Day, of course.... and the Sins Past nonsense where Gwen and Norman Osborne had babies.... ugh. I'd rather have all the clone nonsense than those stories.
This history is what killed my interest in one of my favorites characters, since then I only prefer to read histories of him from alternated earths in which he is still married with MJ, frankly it would have been better if Marvel just finally put aunt May to rest, terrible decisions Marvel did... and still they do with their reboots like DC does.
Well a lot of people loved Peter B. Parker in Into the Spiderverse who was an older Peter who did get divorced with M.J. and are now actually working through their issues instead of selling off their marriage.
And he's a secondary character in a one off movie. Further proof that a boring, married character can't carry a story. ITSV was about Miles Morales. Weird. It's almost like people prefer to read about young, single people because their lives are more interesting and have more narrative potential.
@@thehmc Speak for yourself. Miles is okay, but I would much rather seen a movie that focused more on the older Peter. The whole high school/college student for life thing is very old and stale. Characters need to evolve, not through countless reboots, but naturally.
@@dreamlandnightmare Yeah, that'll really be a huge hit. People love to read about sad middle aged people.
@@thehmc With super powers.
@@thehmc Batman exists, so, yeah
Undoing the entire marriage was a stupid idea, as though all marriages are storybook fantasies full of unicorns and cupcakes. Having Spider-Man married with responsibilities and marital troubles never detracted from the character. It made him more realistic and relatable.
Lol. No it didn't make him more relatable. It was bland and boring like most married characters. The only reason it works with Reed and Sue is because they're in a team book. It's an ensemble cast. But they should have just done a divorce with Spider-Man. The devil story was dumb.
@@thehmc Sure it did. All marriages have problems, and often they don't last and end in divorce. I could have handled Peter and Mary Jane going that route if their marriage had to end, but erasing it altogether was just stupid and actually regressed the characters.
I would have handled things differently. Have some cosmic entity show up and steal MJ and vanish. Peter goes to his friends for help, but all of them have the same response..."Who's MJ?" Basically from there Peter is the only one who remembers her and he has to go a whole story line without her. I'd have her eventually returned but the marriage forgotten, and her time with Peter in general, leaving open the possibility of them becoming a couple again and remarrying down the road.
My understanding is not that JMS objected to just the demon deal aspect, but that so much in issues 3 and 4 of this were changed so much there was barely anything JMS wrote still in the final version of them, and he hated the entirety the way it ended just as much as the fans did.
“One More Day is the worst Spider-Man comic ever.”
Sins Past: *allow me to introduce myself*
I've basically read everything spider-man since his first appearance in amazing fantasy and yeah, this is in my opinion the worst story they ever made with him.
What did I think of OMD? It was the final nail in the coffin of my reading Superhero comics. I was trending off of them anyway (too many cash grab crossovers and junk like that), but this faux dark way of ending the relationship was quite stupid and lazy, and certainly not clever even though I'm sure the Marvel team was celebrating it as such. I heavily invested in VERTIGO titles and similar vein, as well as the Crime Noir of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (if you haven't checked out CRIMINAL, you should). My absolute favorite title that became my official switchover out of superhero comics is a bit ironic - it was Garth Ennis' THE BOYS. Or maybe not so much ironic as it would be apt. Whatever, comics is not a monolith of one type of fan anymore than being a film buff means you like all films. I'm sure there would be some modern (2010 and on) comics I might enjoy, but I'm quite happy enjoying what I enjoy now, and I can't say that I'm missing all that much by spending my money only on a small corner of the market.
One More Day got me off reading Marvel comics for about five years. I found it to be worse than the Clone Saga, and that storyline stopped me from reading Marvel comics for a few years.
Here is an idea: MAKE CHARACTERS GO! Dying, ageing, quitting, loosing power, getting a civil life - MAKE PERMANENT LEAVES, CREATE CONSEQUENCES!
Funny thing Aunt May was suppose to die back in the 90’s during the clone saga and there was an entire issue of her death, and unlike here Peter was sad but acts maturely and said his goodbyes to her and moved on after her death. It was a great issue and most of the readers were fine with it and moved on themselves as you should when love ones die.
But then an editor wanted her back in the comics again, it didn’t matter how people felt or if they even care anymore, he was in charge and wanted her be brought back. And the writers made and another issue that says that she was never dead to begin with and the one who died was some actor set up by Norman Osborn. So yeah that was dumb.
@@brandonlyon730 It's so unfortunate: JM Dematteis killed off Kraven in an excellent dramatic fashion ... and he was brought back. JM Deatteis killed Harry in an excellent dramatic fashion ... and (until a recent retcon) he was brought back. JM Dematteis killed off Aunt May in an excellent, emotional fashion. And she was brought back. They seem determined to undo all his greatest stories!
At the time I thought they would go through a year or so with them being separated then rejoin them, like the Death of Superman story arc. But when I saw this wasn't the case and with trying to keep up with the multiple Spider-Man titles, I gave up on Spider-Man and canceled all my Spider-Man subscriptions. This also happened with the X-Men, I couldn't keep up with the multiple titles and cancelled them also.
For a character that was ground breaking in the 60s for bringing more realistic aspects of life into comics, to resort to demon intervention to end a marriage instead of like usually happens in real life, it's a big slap on its face.
I think going through a regular separation/divorce process would bring much more dramatic elements for the storylines. It doesn't mean they don't love each other anymore. A lot of couples get divorced and then get back together again. Even re-marry! There's this movie with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, don't remember the name or much of the plot, but what stuck to mind was that in the movie they would constantly break up and get back together again. I found that dynamic quite interesting.
I love Peter and MJ together, so I was not a fan of this story line. But, the era after this was pretty decent and easy for new readers to start reading SM comics, so that was a plus. Also, I really like the "Renew Your Vows," comics with MJ and Peter still married.
I don’t agree that they should have done it, but, if we’re going to split them up, surely they could have come up with a better reason, for why they had to sell their marriage to Mephisto; instead of it being to save the life of a 2000 year old walking corpse...sorry Aunt May.
I mean, I don’t understand why it was a deal Peter even considered taking; well, apart from him having a severe case of “plot-itus”.
If she had found out what he was contemplating, I think even Aunt May would have said: “Jeez, looks like I’ve raised the dumbest human being that ever walked the earth! You’re gonna give up decades of potential love, and happiness, to save my wrinkly, decrepit, old hide?! What the fuck is wrong with you!? Did one of those supervillain’s you fight hit you too hard, and give you brain damage?!”
...or something along those lines; that would have been my reaction, if I was Aunt May.
I mean, to give up your marriage- to the women you supposedly love, in order to save the life of your very, VERY elderly aunt; it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
But then, neither does the fact that NONE of the smartest, most powerful people on the planet, could save an old woman, who was shot with a regular, vanilla bullet...riiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
Yeah, ‘One More Day’ seems like a complete shit-show, with very little internal logic; obviously superhero stories often expect you to accept weird, bogus science, and other strange goings on in their world.
But if a story starts making you question the motivations behind a character’s in-world actions, it really takes you out of the narrative; as there’s no real rational reasoning, for Peter to accept such a deal, it just makes you question the motivations of the people behind the piece- whether they wanted to tell a story, or were more interested with breaking them up, and didn’t really care how they did it.
It seems they didn’t particularly care how it was accomplished, so long as it ended with Peter back the way he was before the marriage.
Which seems like a pretty big FU to the fans, in my opinion; I mean, not only did they break up Peter and MJ’s marriage, but they did it in a shitty story, that made absolutely no sense, and was full of such gaping logical holes, you could drive a train through them haha.
Yep, it’s easy to see why this Spidey arc his despised so much; it appears to deserve every bit of hate, and vitriol, it has received haha.
Years before OMD, at DC, the demon Neron took the love between Wally West and Linda Park in exchange for something (I think it involved saving some lives). Neron ended up insisting on giving it back like an issue later, because having so much pure love in him was really hurting his ability to be a demon. So that all worked better because it was about the purity of their love and how it prevails above all, and by the end of the arc everything was back to normal.
What really annoyed me was that when peter revealed his identity (and all the marketing around it) marvel said "promise, we will not undo it, we swearrrrr" (or something like this). But when mephisto made the deal with pete and MJ it was heartbreaking. And i loved the idea that MJ told mephisto "i want to remember everything", and imagined that MJ was evolving in a world being the only one to remember their love
This is the arc that I left paying for comics over.
Me too.
This pretty much single handedly turned me off of comics altogether. I decided to start reading comics (starting with Spider-Man and Archie Sonic) a few years after "One More Day" I was about 12 or 13 at the time and as I was browsing through trying to get a feel for comics and figure out where to start I came accross this story and it just destroyed all hope I had in comics.
Years later I'm finally picking them up again. Starting with the originaly Spidey comics, Archie Sonic again, and currently, Green Arrow Longbow Hunters (and a big reason for GA is because I like the dynamic between GA and Black Canary. I like Super Hero couples in general lol.). My hope is that I'll be able to just read through the good and develop my own head-cannon leaving out the bad. That's kinda what I've always done with movies and tv anyway, so might as well try it with comics again. There's such a rich lore and stories that I feel I'm missing out on and didn't want to let "One More Day" keep hanging over my head and keeping me from enjoying the really good stuff. After all, other media adaptations have only gone so far.
So here's hoping I can make it work this time. Re-entering into the world of comics is very interesting and daunting but something I'm wanting to do for sure. Hope it lasts this time.
These 4 issues is what made me quit buying comics altogether.
There are so many couples that get teased and never get fully realized because cowardice of either the writer, editor etc...
So when you have one that works Peter/Mary, it stands out and I guess just because it stands out it's not relatable to everything else around it.
So it needs to change, and it needs to change quickly. Which leads to poor thought out ideas and cheap ploys implemented to achieve the desired goal.
It's a bitterness that has faded over time with comics but talking about it now-a-days is top level cringe for me. So if this barely makes any sense, I get it.
And well, have a nice day!
OMD ruined Spider-Man. I’m just happy to see the current run start to reckon with it and show that shit is NOT right in Spider-Man’s work because if Mephisto’s interference. Hopefully we can see the whole thing retconned away and Peter and MJ going on with their marriage as if nothing happened
Much Love for the fleshed out explanation of the removal of their marriage. It was forced like multiple other things Marvel does. How can their only be one married superhero couple in the Marvel universe? Are ALL the writers members of the "He-man woman haters club?" How does being happily married move Peter away from his who he was. Spiderman is like 60! If he can't be married, fight crime and save the world, what hope does that leave for us BLERD's NERD's and Geeks?
Please keep up the GREAT work Sasha!
I find it hilarious that they made such a big deal about Spidey needing to be relatable in order to be successful, then very soon after this Dan Slott started his popular run where Spidey works for a giant tech company making wacky sci-fi inventions.
It's worth noting that One More Day wasn't JMS' last story at Marvel, just his last Spider-Man story. As he did an excellent run on Thor right after. Before leaving to work at DC due to Marvel Editorial fucking him over again, because Siege was a story that just HAD to be written apparently.
I feel like that's where my contempt for Bendis really started because the event sucked.
This hurts my superfamily heart plz halp :((((((((((( also the hair I STAAAN
Everything about Civil War was awful and it should be forgotten forever.. of course it kinda has been memory holed while pretending it still happened, but not reallly.
Regardless of his work on Spider-man, J. Michael Strazynsky will always be my hero for the work he did on The Real Ghostbusters cartoon show
11:14 Also, a divorce ages a character even more than a marriage
yeah i agree about the if you think a work that is by the vast majority considered bad or a work that is by the vast amount considered good that doesn't mean you have to view the work similarly to how others view it which alot of people can feel weird and embrassed that they don't dislike or are into remotely as close as others
In the aftermath of Civil War writers just had everyone beat up Tony.
It’s a great read! I caught up on that one and others in the Crossover Classics trade paperback.
Also, the One-Above-All makes an appearance. Happens very seldom so it is notable.
This story was a bad idea from the get go.
There were other ways they could have re-masked Peter, simple ways. They had already done a story where the Iron Spider suit had chameleon features. It would have taken zero effort to say that cloaking power was why Peter seemed to be Spider-man, and the public would soon forget all about it because of course they would.
The marriage... it was great, it had provided MJ with so much character development, and all of that was washed away with this event. But if it had to end, you didn't need a deal with the devil... Mundane reasons like witness protection/goes into hiding for her safety/ or any variation of that would have made more sense.
OMD was bad, and the follow up OMIT was no better.
Marvel has been dumping on their flagship character since the 90s and I am not having it.
Oh noooo. Nobody could heal aunt May. It's not like there are probably a couple dozen mutants with that ability, or some weird technobullshit device that could help, or some weirder magical thingamajig that could save her. Nooo, aunt May faced the most horrid of experiences in a comic book. A non instant death gunshot. How devastating.
I've never before heard that JMS wasn't a fan of the marriage. Everything I've ever heard or read places the blame squarely on Quesada'. I actually liked OMD as a story as I was expecting that the reason that nobody in all of Marveldom (At that point both Doctor Doom and Loki had said they owed Spider-man a debt) could save May was due to infernal shenanigans. Because Mephisto cheats. Then I got to the end of the story and Pete and MJ actually accept the deal!!! I was not expecting something that out of character and I quit reading Spider-Man for years until I got my hands on the Ultimate Spider-Man TPBs. I'm still not happy with that ending. I cheered so loud when I found Renew Your Vows that I'm embarrassed to go back to that shop.
My personal theory is that the daughter(who I will refer to as Mayday Parker) was someone who Mephisto was genuinely afraid of, perhaps she was destined to kill him at some point. And so this is why he did this.
"I want you to go down there and do all the things" - That's what she said!
7:30 I think there was a movie about that. It was called Indecent Proposal
"Aunt May! Noooooo! You're only 95! I'm going to give up 60 years of marriage and happiness so you can live another two years!"
If I was writing a spider-man story at marvel right after civil war happened, I would have taken a much different approach. Instead of trying to retcon everything back to the status-quo, I would try and continue the story logically, try and figure out, "What is his every day life like now that the world knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man?" I probably also wouldn't immediately go for the whole "Aunt May got shot!" thing. I don't really believe that people would really want to go after Spider-Man's loved ones unless they wanted to draw him out and kill him, cuz Spidey's villains have a grudge against him specifically, not the people he cares about. (Unless in the story they were trying to snipe him, but shot May on accident, which I guess I get, but it's still a little... eeeeh.) If May absolutely must get shot, then I think either I would leave the consequence of her dying without any caveats, or I would have someone from the marvel universe actually be able to help her, and the rest of the story would be Peter, MJ, and May overcoming the trauma of the moment, becoming closer than ever, and maybe even a plotline where Peter tries to figure out who sniped her and bring them to justice (justice in this case being finding them and taking them to the police). Possibly he would try and have some of his super hero friends guard May or something after all this, or would devote himself to protecting her on his own. (Keep in mind this is all very "off the top of my head" stuff, so a lot of what I said might be very jumbled up and would need some further fleshing out, but it's the best that I could come up with in this short amount of time. Also I'm not super knowledgeable about comic book Spidey. I'm just starting to get into Marvel comics, in fact; so a lot of what I said might not mesh well with his character or the world that he lives in. If some of what I said doesn't work with the continuity... sorryyyyyy, I tried my best. XD)
Man, I thought Clone Saga was the worst but then again people like Ben Reilly. I guess the good that came of OMD was Renew Your Vows, we got to see Peter and MJ being awesome parents.
This is the story that ended me buying any more Spidey Comics. Before this I bought all the books but after this... Not one more penny to Marvel. Peter and MJ's marriage was one of the most sacred marriages in Marvel right up there with Reed and Sue. Also the way this was done was soooo bad! Had they just broke up for MJ's safety and she run off and get like a fake ID, That would have made it tolerable but cosmic deal with the devil retcon.... OMG so bad.
I remember reading on that run on Marvel Unlimited a few years back and being very not happy when it got to the demon divorce
I could see a new Marvel writer coming in wanting to show a new or existing character more powerful than Mephisto by essentially undoing the marriage steal in front of him. Curious how the fallout would be. Or maybe they even farther by not only bringing back the marriage of MJ with their daughter, but also bringing back Gwen and their son from the House of M story. Like what would Gwen, MJ, and Peter do?
Ugh, what a mess. Civil War was awful, just Mark Millar making characters do whatever his plot needed them to do with no regard for 50 years of their previous characterizations. For me, Reed and Tony were both significantly damaged by it, and in fact I mostly stopped reading Marvel afterwards. And in a universe where time travel exists, a deal with the devil was a really silly way to dissolve the Peter / MJ marriage. I wasn't a huge fan of the marriage either (I ride for Gwen, her blandness be damned) but this storyline was just completely misconceived. It could have been salvaged at the very last moment though, and led to some real growth for Peter: Peter should have said no to Mephisto's deal, and owned up to the fact that it was his fault his Aunt got shot, because he stupidly revealed his secret identity to the world without thinking about the consequences. Then they could have let Aunt May die and Peter could have learned a hard lesson, and grew a little. Personally I want Marvel to do a Crisis-style reset so I can read the books again without the accumulated weight of all the shitty events of the past twenty years ruining things for me. (How many Spider-people are there now? How many times have characters been killed and brought back?) My idea: Peter gets thrown back in time to the day the Goblin killed Gwen, and he saves her. And that changes everything for everyone. Simple. (I like Gwen.)
People object to OMD because it doesn't make sense for young people to give up their futures for an old biddy who's got, what, a year or two at best? But I don't buy that objection AT ALL. Superheroing is all about people acting altruistically, and not performing a cost/benefit analysis before saving lives; Peter and MJ giving up their marriage would be very much in keeping with that.
In-story, the big objection I have is, deals with the devil are ALWAYS a bad idea. You should never trust that the devil is going to hold up his end of the bargain, or that he isn't getting something out of it you can't anticipate. Maybe he's playing a long game, where if Peter and MJ have a child, that child will eventually disrupt Mephisto's plans. Or maybe Aunt May dying means Peter and MJ will move into her house, which means Peter will be in the right place to save someone's life who will eventually disrupt Mephisto's plans. Or something. This is real butterfly-stomping territory.
I grew up in the 90’s. I love Mj and Pete
Never forget "One More Day" was originally pitched for Superman to soft reboot him in a pitch known as "Superman: 2000!" All the beats were there but The Devil is swapped for Mxylpdlx saving a dying Lois Lane for Superman's marriage.
I liked your explanation. I've read so many dumbass Spiderman comic books that there is no way I can pick a "worst story line" in a storyline full of worst storylines.
Dr. Strange was a surgeon, he would know how to fix a shot to what looks like into the lower lung, on top of that he has magical abilities, one is time travel. On top of that Spidey know's Wolverine and Deadpool whose blood has been a deus ex machina many, many times. Oh and he also knows a guy who created a means to regrow limbs (Lizard). If they simply wanted to reverse the unmasking, they have several options, heck they were going to end a run anyway just say Peter and his family got plastic surgery, explain the new art style that way too.
@@jhornacek Aunt May died of old age in ASM #400. That was a beautiful story that should never have been changed.
@@jhornacek I said the story from AMS#400 should never have been changed. I am sadly aware that it was
I see from a quick review that I wasn’t the only one to ditch serious comic collecting after this storyline (in truth, it was this storyline on top of the bloated Civil War and being weary of multi-issue and title “events” that were always for money, and story and character were irrelevant. The same old corporate story, they were, at best, more concerned with getting new readers rather than the longtime reader.
Quesada’s implication that a happy marriage was boring and the overt suggestion that getting a divorce was worse than implausibly making the marriage not exist via the “devil” was done because a married Peter wasn’t relatable is utter nonsense. Given the number of divorces and even higher number of separations, it is a highly relatable event.
That Peter thinks his relationship with his “life partner” should be erased to give Aunt May, a woman who has always been days from death (and has “died” before) is rather sickening. Moreover, I think Aunt May would have slapped him for it.
Further, that Quesada thinks a reality warping mind wipe is significantly different than a hard reboot of the series is also silly as the difference is only in degree. The comics and the relationship built over 50 years of issues were still effectively nullified.
The extra Mexican Gwen Stacy issues have more right to be considered canon than the OMD garbage.
But, yeah, I don’t really care. *turns into a pillar of salt*
Thanks Sasha....You do good work.
Fun fact you did do one of the many proper web shooting gestures
It was basically an excuse to have a soft reboot. Now no one remembers who Spider-man's secret identity is anymore( except Hulk for some reason.), and Civil War never happened now.
i stopped reading Spiderman until this day because of the one more day/brand new day story arcs. now i dont read any comics from marvel (only old ones) at all`
The current run on ASM actually started with an extended flashback to Sensational Annual #1, and brings Peter and MJ back together by the end of the first issue, and really seems to be gearing up to confront OMD in full.
Omg, I love this so much. Fantastic content aside (it's what I expect from you), I've noticed that in CC, you have waaay more fun with your script and discussions than on Shipper's Guide. It's great seeing you titter about in this channel.
God one more day *has horriable flashbacks* Never have i hated a storyline more than it. Peter/MJ is one of my favorite comic couples and have marvel destroy their history really turned me off spider-man comics for years afterwards.
I really enjoy your causal talk of comics, and can't wait to watch the next one
Every single one that Spidey asked to help knows tech/magic/power that can heal. For them saying they can't help is just one huge pile of &*@#&
This was a good review of One More Day, but I wish I heard more from Sasha's opinion on the dissolved marriage of Peter & Mary Jane.
I worked at a comic shop when all of this went down. And in the Amazing Spider-man issues following this we were able to get quite a few new readers to it, because what followed was such a great starting point. But will agree that the story itself was flawed. Also, Morbius said they were getting one more day... then they immediately had to give up up... what one more day was that? The title is a lie! (assuming there must have been a re-write) the story was a mess but I think given what happened after it may have been a nessecary evil. Although I agree it is weird they didn't think a marriage that had been going on so long could "work".
What was it like working at a comic shop?
@@CasuallyComics It was a lot of fun. The one I worked at always had us busy so it wasn't all standing and talking about comics. But as a lifelong lover of comics it was great to give back to the community. We were also paired with a book store so we got a lot of new people introduced to comics which was a lot of fun. I would still be working there but sadly I had to quit one of my 2 jobs to keep my sanity and my other job was full time, over twice the hourly pay and with benefits... so I had little choice but to quit working there. But it was easily the best job I had. A lot of work but doing something I love made it fun.