General Tekno
01-09-2008, 05:03 AM
"One Fan's Opinion" is probably a very representative opinion of comic fans too, judging by internet reaction to the recent Spiderman storyline "One More Day".
Anyway, as it says, I didn't write this strip. Instead, I asked my friend Pikabot, who reads Spidey and such and thus knows it better than I do, to do a guest strip to better express a good opinion on this story (I agree with him, but I couldn't think of how to do a comic on this.)
So, I'm not going to bore you, and instead let the writer himself speak:
As 2007 drew to a close, Joe Quesada seemed determined to end it on a note of complete and utter failure. He'd long expressed a desire to do away with Spider-Man's wedding to Mary Jane, as he felt it made Spidey seem 'too old', and apparently unrelatable to the little kiddies.
Unfortunately, if he made him a divorcee or widower, that'd make him seem even older, so Joe was in a bind, until he came up with One More Day, a four-part storyline that erased Spidey's marriage from the history books.
Now, as much as I might wish otherwise, as Marvel Comics' editor-in-chief, Quesada does have the final word on Spider-Man. If he wants to break up a perfectly happy fictional marriage in order to turn Spider-Man back into the swinging bachelor that Quesada so dearly wishes he could be (protip, Joe, you work in Comic Books, it's not happening), that is regrettably his prerogative.
That does not, however, stop One More Day from being one of the worst stories to come out of Spider-Man in a long time, and as it's following the catastrophically bad The Other storyline, that's saying a lot. It's also one of the worst editorial decisions of all time, and I'm including everything DC's done with Wonder Woman since Infinite Crisis.
The story does not make any internal sense. In it, Aunt May is dying from a gunshot wound. Peter's buddy-buddy with Doctor Strange, there is absolutely no reason why the freaking Sorceror Supreme could not repair the damage from a bullet wound. Even if Stephen Strange couldn't do something, he's also friends with Tony Stark and Reed Richards, two of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet. And even if they could not help, all three could put Peter Parker in contact with Professor Charles Xavier, and through him the junior X-Man named Exilir, who could not only heal that up in a flash, but probably give her a couple more years on her natural lifespan while he's at it. And that's just off the top of my head: there's dozens of other ways for an old woman to survive a gunshot wound when her nephew is Spider-Man.
This wouldn't be so bad if the story just pretended he didn't have access to these resources, but no. Instead they have to rub it in our face by having Spider-Man travel the world, seeking aid from not only Tony Stark, Reed Richards and Stephen Strange, but also Doctor Doom, the High Evolutionary, and Doctor Octopus (although that last seems rather random: as he pointed out in Secret Wars, he's a Doctor of Nuclear Physics, not an M.D.). All he got for his trouble was a rather lame "it's her time" excuse, which is very weak: at least three of the above have access to time travel, of all things, there's no reason that none of them couldn't solve the problem.
But, hey, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there really is nothing they can do! Do our problems now go away? No.
Peter Parker is then approached by Mephisto, who is basically the Marvel version of Satan himself. He offers Peter and MJ a deal: he can save May Parker's life, reverse Spider-Man's unmasking, and make everything all hunky-dory, and all it'll cost him is his marriage, which Mephisto inexplicably wants. After far too much soul searching, Peter agrees, and suddenly it's 1975 again.
Well, not literally, but pretty much. Harry Osborn is inexplicably alive again, Aunt may is making wheat cakes, and Peter Parker has a blonde on his arm (who is apparently NOT Gwen Stacy - thank god). Spider-Man continuity going back for longer than I've been alive was just thrown out the window, and for what? There was already not one but two continuities for the Single Swinger Spidey: Ultimate Spider-Man, and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man. There's no reason to throw out twenty years worth of stories so you can create a trilogy.
Of course, according to Quesada, those stories still happened, it's just that nobody remembers them. Or they happened, only Spider-Man and Mary Jane were never married. But that doesn't change where we are now: Spider-Man and his supporting cast just got rewound.
Other issues arise when you remember that Amazing Spider-Man is not the only comic that Spidey features in: He's a cast member of New Avengers as well. How does this affect his standing there? Do they know that he's Peter Parker? Do they not? Nobody seems to know! It's possibly the least thought-out retcon in comics history. it's a mess, nobody seems to know what's what, and we're getting ridiculous answers such as "Although some people seem to recall that Spidey unmasked himself during Civil War, no one quite remembers whose face was under the mask." Does this make sense to anybody? Tell me I'm not losing my mind here. There was obviously no thought put into this decision: it was Joe Q's mandate, and it was purely objective driven. As a final insult, when the writer of this series, J. Michael Straczynski (who is an excellent writer, and whose record should not be impacted by this at all), asked Quesada how any of this made sense, he responded with the biggest cop-out I've seen in my life: "It's magic. We don't have to explain it."
The whole thing is an enormous cluster of fail. I'm not purchasing any more Spider-Man comics until Joe Quesada is out of office, and I encourage others to do the same.
Again, I advise you to check out Pikabot's fanfiction at his site: http://pikabot.livejournal.com.
Anyway, as it says, I didn't write this strip. Instead, I asked my friend Pikabot, who reads Spidey and such and thus knows it better than I do, to do a guest strip to better express a good opinion on this story (I agree with him, but I couldn't think of how to do a comic on this.)
So, I'm not going to bore you, and instead let the writer himself speak:
As 2007 drew to a close, Joe Quesada seemed determined to end it on a note of complete and utter failure. He'd long expressed a desire to do away with Spider-Man's wedding to Mary Jane, as he felt it made Spidey seem 'too old', and apparently unrelatable to the little kiddies.
Unfortunately, if he made him a divorcee or widower, that'd make him seem even older, so Joe was in a bind, until he came up with One More Day, a four-part storyline that erased Spidey's marriage from the history books.
Now, as much as I might wish otherwise, as Marvel Comics' editor-in-chief, Quesada does have the final word on Spider-Man. If he wants to break up a perfectly happy fictional marriage in order to turn Spider-Man back into the swinging bachelor that Quesada so dearly wishes he could be (protip, Joe, you work in Comic Books, it's not happening), that is regrettably his prerogative.
That does not, however, stop One More Day from being one of the worst stories to come out of Spider-Man in a long time, and as it's following the catastrophically bad The Other storyline, that's saying a lot. It's also one of the worst editorial decisions of all time, and I'm including everything DC's done with Wonder Woman since Infinite Crisis.
The story does not make any internal sense. In it, Aunt May is dying from a gunshot wound. Peter's buddy-buddy with Doctor Strange, there is absolutely no reason why the freaking Sorceror Supreme could not repair the damage from a bullet wound. Even if Stephen Strange couldn't do something, he's also friends with Tony Stark and Reed Richards, two of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet. And even if they could not help, all three could put Peter Parker in contact with Professor Charles Xavier, and through him the junior X-Man named Exilir, who could not only heal that up in a flash, but probably give her a couple more years on her natural lifespan while he's at it. And that's just off the top of my head: there's dozens of other ways for an old woman to survive a gunshot wound when her nephew is Spider-Man.
This wouldn't be so bad if the story just pretended he didn't have access to these resources, but no. Instead they have to rub it in our face by having Spider-Man travel the world, seeking aid from not only Tony Stark, Reed Richards and Stephen Strange, but also Doctor Doom, the High Evolutionary, and Doctor Octopus (although that last seems rather random: as he pointed out in Secret Wars, he's a Doctor of Nuclear Physics, not an M.D.). All he got for his trouble was a rather lame "it's her time" excuse, which is very weak: at least three of the above have access to time travel, of all things, there's no reason that none of them couldn't solve the problem.
But, hey, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there really is nothing they can do! Do our problems now go away? No.
Peter Parker is then approached by Mephisto, who is basically the Marvel version of Satan himself. He offers Peter and MJ a deal: he can save May Parker's life, reverse Spider-Man's unmasking, and make everything all hunky-dory, and all it'll cost him is his marriage, which Mephisto inexplicably wants. After far too much soul searching, Peter agrees, and suddenly it's 1975 again.
Well, not literally, but pretty much. Harry Osborn is inexplicably alive again, Aunt may is making wheat cakes, and Peter Parker has a blonde on his arm (who is apparently NOT Gwen Stacy - thank god). Spider-Man continuity going back for longer than I've been alive was just thrown out the window, and for what? There was already not one but two continuities for the Single Swinger Spidey: Ultimate Spider-Man, and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man. There's no reason to throw out twenty years worth of stories so you can create a trilogy.
Of course, according to Quesada, those stories still happened, it's just that nobody remembers them. Or they happened, only Spider-Man and Mary Jane were never married. But that doesn't change where we are now: Spider-Man and his supporting cast just got rewound.
Other issues arise when you remember that Amazing Spider-Man is not the only comic that Spidey features in: He's a cast member of New Avengers as well. How does this affect his standing there? Do they know that he's Peter Parker? Do they not? Nobody seems to know! It's possibly the least thought-out retcon in comics history. it's a mess, nobody seems to know what's what, and we're getting ridiculous answers such as "Although some people seem to recall that Spidey unmasked himself during Civil War, no one quite remembers whose face was under the mask." Does this make sense to anybody? Tell me I'm not losing my mind here. There was obviously no thought put into this decision: it was Joe Q's mandate, and it was purely objective driven. As a final insult, when the writer of this series, J. Michael Straczynski (who is an excellent writer, and whose record should not be impacted by this at all), asked Quesada how any of this made sense, he responded with the biggest cop-out I've seen in my life: "It's magic. We don't have to explain it."
The whole thing is an enormous cluster of fail. I'm not purchasing any more Spider-Man comics until Joe Quesada is out of office, and I encourage others to do the same.
Again, I advise you to check out Pikabot's fanfiction at his site: http://pikabot.livejournal.com.