The illusion of change works best if the readers don't know how the story is going to end, or where the characters are going to end up. One of the things that worked about One More Day is that it muddied the water about whether Peter and MJ will end up together. That provides a lot of flexibility in the future, in both the regular Spider-Man comics, and other renditions of the story.

For example, the first issue of the post-Ultimatum Ultimate Spider-Man had Peter Parker fooling around with Gwen Stacy. This did upset some readers who liked a book where Peter and MJ were a couple, especially after the events of One More Day. But it represented an advantage of getting rid of the spider-marriage in the 616 universe: the ending of the story (or this facet of it) was no longer certain. It wasn't entirely clear whether Peter and MJ would rekindle their relationship in the Ultimate comics.

This means you don't know how the new Spider-man movies are going to end. If in an upcoming film, an actress playing the Black Cat has incredible chemistry with whoever's playing Peter Parker, the Director will be better able to take advantage of that, now that no one will be able to argue that the "real" (and by this I mean, the 616 Spider-Man whose adventures have been published since Amazing Fantasy #15) is happily married in the latest Amazing Spider-Man issue, so it wouldn't be clear that the Movie Peter Parker will get back together with Movie MJ eventually.

In earlier parts of the essay, I mentioned a few further arguments for retconning One More Day, or restoring Spider-Man's marriage and a few other aspects of the pre-OMD status quo. Aside from the various Part 9 stuff, I thought Mephisto's role worked for the story, it was characteristic of the Parkers to choose Aunt May's life over their marriage, the depiction of time travel was satisfactory, the backlash to "It's magic, we don't have to explain it" was exaggerated, Quesada's version of OMD was superior to what JMS wanted to do, and that it was quite unlikely that any writers are scared away from the series by questions about the backstory, or fear of a backlash.

There's also some stuff that doesn't merit a complete page, although in the process of writing this piece, I decided that some of the points that I thought would be part of this hodge-podge merited separate entries. Fortunately, that isn't the case with a question asked at CBR: How would you explain One More Day to a child?

I didn't think it was all that difficult, relative to other superhero stories. Peter Parker was once married to Mary Jane. Someone shot his Aunt May, and the only one who could save her was Mephisto. He's a weird alien with magic powers. But Mephisto's not a nice alien. He wanted something in return: Spider-Man's marriage. He was going to remake the world so that Peter Parker and Mary Jane were never married. This is obviously fiction, but in life, there are situations when you don't have a good option, and you have to choose between two things which are less than ideal. In this story, Peter and Mary Jane decided that Aunt May's life was more important than their marriage. So they agreed to the deal. Now Mephisto remade the world so that Peter and Mary Jane were never married. Most of the stories set in that period happened almost exactly the same way, except their relationship was different. It's sort of how these stories (point to Lee/ Ditko) still happened, even if the material's all set in the 1960s, when the computers we use, video games and cell phones had not been invented.

If There Was No OMD


It's been a long time since One More Day, so we have no idea what the Spider-Man comics would be like now if Quesada had decided to go in a different direction. As noted earlier, JMS's last two years of Amazing Spider-Man were consistently tied to major EVENTs, which represented a sales strategy that couldn't be sustained in the long-term. Sales on the title were slowly, but steadily declining before “The Other.”

Without this major change to the status quo, something else would have had to be done to keep readers interested in the series Post-JMS. Otherwise, sales might have reached the levels of the pre-Flashpoint Superman titles. Though without One More Day, Spider-Man would not have unmasked in Civil War, nor would Marvel have opted for the Back in Black era. There would not have been as significant a sales drop percentage-wise if the numbers weren't so high to begin with.

From a narrative standpoint, the pre-reboot writers would have had more time to deal with the consequences of "The Other," although that might not have been a good thing considering the poor quality of the storyline. JMS might have been able to conclude his run largely free of any editorial interference if his last arc wasn't used to get the characters from Point A to Point B. There also wouldn't be any controversy generating interest in the work of his successors.

I'm not sure if the creative teams would have been radically different than the ones we got in One More Day. Dan Slott would write Spider-Man under any circumstances. The same was probably true of Guggenheim and Wells. Waid would probably not have come to the title, but there were other writers available.

You might think that there would have been more focus without BND on getting A-list writers to follow JMS, but that gets complicated. Bendis, Marvel's biggest writer, had no interest in Amazing Spider-Man. Millar developed a preference for creator-owned comics. Brubaker actually favors Spidey as a bachelor. Warren Ellis doesn't particularly like the character. That leaves Jeph Loeb, so it's possible that he would have been in charge of the post-JMS direction of the Spider-Man comics. It would have come at a literal cost for Marvel, as A-list writers are much more expensive.

The (almost) weekly schedule is more essential when the title's about a bachelor, as his status quo is more prone to change, and that's easier to coordinate with one title where most of the major stuff happens. Though the increased output of Amazing Spider-Man was something that Marvel had been considering for a long time, so it could have happened without One More Day. Marvel probably would not have wanted a back to basics approach for the book if there hadn't been as deviations from the norm. Maybe they would have developed out a new direction.

There's often a cycle of back to basics periods followed by departures from the norm. You could see it in the Spider-Man comics when Brand New Day was followed by the Big Time. Perhaps without One More Day, JMS's run of Amazing Spider-Man would have been followed by a 101 issue mega-arc with Spider-Man unmasked. This was something he had set up in Amazing Spider-Man #500, and the Back in Black sales showed there was a demand for that. But where do you go from there?

That genie would have to go back in the bottle, a task which was hard enough after an year. Eventually it would have to be time for the series to go back to basics. If the marriage remained part of the title, that would have been one element of the status quo that wouldn't be touched, so it's a storytelling avenue closed for any subsequent directions.

It's easy to try to compare something tangible, such as the stories that were actually published, to an ideal, such as stories that could have been published. I think Brand New Day was a solid stretch of Spider-Man comics, so it's entirely possible that an alternative would not have been as successful, either artistically or financially.

If Brand New Day Had Failed

Around the Brand New Day period, there seemed to be more discussion about Amazing Spider-Man sales than any other title, largely because some fans tried to prove that Joe Quesada made a bad decision, and other fans disagreed. These arguments have quieted down after the Big Time, though there was a recent facebook exchange between Stephen Wacker and J. Michael Straczynski back in December about sales figures after his departure.

Sales figures provide a way to avoid arguing about subjective criteria such as artistic merit, as you claim that you're objectively correct. It also doesn't require any familiarity with the content of the book, which is convenient for pissed off former fans arguing about decisions made years ago.

It's further complicated by the fact that we're looking at three different eras of the Spider-Man titles. There was the Pre-One More Day period when JMS was writing Amazing Spider-Man, and other writers were handling the two satellite books. There was the Brand New Day era in which Amazing Spider-Man was published three times a month, with a rotating team of writers. And there's the Big Time era in which the book is twice-monthly, with one main writer, and Avenging Spider-Man has been launched as a satellite book.

Numbers VS Rankings

One of the major questions when dealing with sales figures is trying to determine if you should compare the estimates, or the sales rankings. The estimates suggest how many copies the book sold, which is important in trying to figure out how much money Marvel made. But just looking at the figures for Amazing Spider-Man isn't intellectually honest, when trying to figure out how a book would have sold if the series had gone in a different direction.

The sales discussions are usually about the management of the Spider-Man books, rather than Marvel or the industry as a whole. As a result, it seems misleading to focus on how the book is selling without looking at the numbers in the context of the rest of the comics industry. There was a decline in overall comic book sales, but some detractors of the current directions try to suggest that Amazing Spider-Man is an outlier, while not explaining why the book would have escaped industry trends were it not for a story they didn't like.

Things do get complicated, as there are many shades to the arguments. There is the reasonable claim that some Amazing Spider-Man fans may have left multiple titles when they left the book, although it's an incredible stretch to suggest that this is the primary reason the industry has suffered.

Rankings can be vulnerable to new factors as well. A cheap shot would be that the book hasn't always been in the top 25 for the last few months, although that's largely because of the boost DC got from the New 52 plan. As a result, there were more titles selling at levels that would previously have guaranteed a top 25 rank. That's good for comics overall, but not an indication of poor administration of Amazing Spider-Man.

Issue-by-Issue VS Month-by-Month

The other major question when arguing about sales figures is over how Marvel should interpret the numbers. Should they compare issues of Amazing Spider-Man before One More Day to issues of ASM afterward, when it came out more often? Or should they compare total sales of the three Spider-Man books each month before and after One More Day? The logic with that approach is that it's all about how much money Marvel is making. There are more nuanced positions available, including various reasons for thinking that total sales matter, but that total sales should have been higher during the BND era, due to the increased time and effort for the writers and editors. That said, it does ultimately come down to your judgement on these two approaches.

The detractors tend to use the most self-serving arguments possible, trying whatever worked better at a particular moment. While readers ordered more copies of Amazing Spider-Man when it was a monthly with an A-list writer, they're ordering significantly more copies of Amazing Spider-Man than they were of Sensational Spider-Man or Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

If you think per issue sales of Amazing Spider-Man should be the same no matter how often the book is published, would Amazing Spider-Man be selling the same amount per issue if it were an actual weekly? If so, this would obviously represent lost revenue for the House of Ideas. Hell, shouldn't Marvel try to produce two issues of Amazing Spider-Man a week? They'd just be making more money. Or is there a cutoff point somewhere?

It shouldn't be that hard for Marvel to pull off, though. All they'd have to do is cancel a few lower selling books (X-Factor, Thunderbolts, New Mutants, Journey into Mystery) and move the creative teams to a twice-weekly Amazing Spider-Man. If it doesn't matter how often Spider-Man comes out, this represents a no-brainer method for Marvel to make more money.

As weeklies are supposed to sell as many copies per issues as monthlies with A-list writers, how much money is Marvel losing by not making their top monthlies (The Avengers, Wolverine and the X-Men) into weeklies? They could probably do it. And that shows the absurdity of assuming that sales will be the same, no matter how often the book is published. Just as less people will buy 2-3 issues a month of Amazing Spider-Man than one issue a month, I think significantly less people will buy an average of nine issues a month of Amazing Spider-Man than two or three issues a month.

As Dan Slott noted during the Brand New Day wea.

Comparing 3X a month ASM to 1X a month ASM is applicable? How much money of their comic-buying budget did consumers spend purchasing all 1X a month ASM in a year VERSUS how much of their comic-buying budget did they spend to following all of 3X a month ASM? It's odd that you'd consider buying 3 monthly Spider-Man books Pre-2007 to 3 monthly Spider-Man books Post-2007 "apples to oranges"... But you WOULD consider it completely applicable that someone deciding whether to purchase 12 apples a year is the same as someone deciding wether to purchase 36 apples a year.

Dan Slott explained why he was happy with the Brand New Day sales figures, although he also documented the increased difficulties on editors and the creative teams.

Starting in January '08, the two satellite books (Sensational and FNSM) were replaced by two more issues of Amazing Spider-Man. So... Same number of pages, staples, and budget as the previous ASM + 2 other Spider-Books. No biggie, right? (HA!)

It seems easy on paper, but in reality there's a lot more to do, tons of coordination, many late nights for everyone-- SUPER late nights-- ESPECIALLY for the editor, assistant editor, and the-hardest-working-letterer-in-comics, Joe C!
The schedule is a nightmare. It's one thing if an issue of FNSM, Sensational, or even 1X a month Amazing misses shipping by a week or two. Slaps on the wrist all around. But for 3X a month Amazing? It's the end of the world. People will come after you with live rounds. I'd like to say I'm kidding... but I'm not. Seriously, I've been doing this for about 18 years, and this is the hardest I've ever worked on a book in my entire life-- and I know that EVERYONE'S been putting in those same hours-- if not more! 

That in mind ('cause I feel like everyone on the editorial & creative team's earned it, on just hard work alone), I think it's fair to look at the comparison of the 3 MONTHLY Spider-Man books that Marvel has been putting out since January 2008, and the 3 MONTHLY Spider-Man books that Marvel put out previously-- going allll the way back to when Spidey first started appearing in three regular monthly titles. 

We've put out 74 issues of monthly Spider-Man comics. Out of those, 73 have placed in the Top 25. For 2+ years, out of the sum-and-total of ALL Marvel's regular monthly Spider-Titles, only 1 issue dropped out of the Top 25. That's means 98.5% did! Ranking-wise, have the 3 monthly Spider-Man books that Marvel produces EVER had that good of a streak?

The comparisons to Amazing Spider-Man before One More Day typically neglect the book's advantages at the time. The title had been involved in high-profile events for 21 consecutive issues (four issues of "The Other" crossover, followed by ten issues of Civil War, followed by the five issue "Back in Black" followed by One More Day) and often outsold the two satellite books combined. These tie-ins are really misleading as a baseline for what levels Amazing Spider-Man should be selling, as there's no reason to assume that the book would have remained at that position post-JMS if One More Day had ended differently. A preferable benchmark would be JMS's pre-"The Other" issues, when sales were declining, although that's still comparing the current book (or the BND era book) to a monthly title with one of the the most popular writers in comics. And there's a finite supply of A-list writers in the industry.

It was also significantly easier to selectively follow Spider-Man's adventures before Brand New Day. Sales data indicates that's just what the majority of readers did, a trend that became most obvious when JMS had a mostly self-contained run on the flagship title. I'm not aware of any issue of Sacasa's Sensational Spider-Man having any impact on JMS's Amazing Spider-Man. FNSM tied up a loose end in "The Other" and established that a demonic entity was interested in Spider-Man, but it wasn't referenced in Amazing. During Brand New Day, you could choose to only buy issues of ASM by a certain writer/ artist, but there's no indication that a substantive number of readers were doing that. It is something that's easier to do right now, with Amazing and Avenging, although it's still more expensive to follow Slott than it was to read JMS's material.

The discussions have simmered down. Most of these comments compared pre-One More Day figures to Brand New Day era estimates. Even the sales chart JMS posted on facebook was an year and a half out of date. A major reason for that is that sales from Amazing Spider-Man #648 and up have been pretty good. And Avenging Spider-Man was Marvel's best-selling debut since Future Foundation.

Detractors were often paranoid about the sales figures, and there were a few threads at CBR about whether Marvel was cooking the books, a question often asked whenever variant covers were used. If you take the estimates seriously, and compare the estimated sales of books with variant covers to books without, it seems that the boost of one variant cover is less than 4,000 copies. Though it's unlikely that there's an attempt to manipulate the sales charts. If Marvel cared about the ICv2 numbers, they wouldn't offer the subscription deal with a 60% plus discount, as those numbers aren't represented in the Diamond estimates.

The sales analysis is often about trying to prove that Marvel, and especially Joe Quesada, made the wrong decision. So it's worth considering his motivations, and whether his logic holds up to scrutiny.

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One argument against One More Day was that it was a bad idea, just because it was guaranteed to be controversial. Before that point, Spider-Man's marriage had gone from a sudden change to a seemingly permanent part of the status quo, so any change was going to be rocky. There were going to be people emotionally invested in the previous developments for the characters, who were going to be upset, and were going to do what they could to let others know that.

The anti-controversy argument is counterproductive for anyone who wants the marriage to be restored because it focuses on whether a bad decision was made in the past, when the more significant question is about what would be a good decision in the future. At this point, any decision Alonso, Wacker or Slott could make in the future regarding the marriage would be debated. Although the idea that controversy is inherently bad is questionable, considering the other things that happened that could have affected reader interest prior to One More Day (a focus on new villains, new creative teams, departure of JMS and a thrice-monthly schedule.) It's possible that without the attention and new direction of OMD/ BND, sales would have been lower. 


While readers might not have had an obvious reason to drop the title without OMD, there may be a greater danger when there's no obvious reason to buy the title either. It would just be one of those books on the stand that's probably on okay read, but just doesn't interest you enough to buy. Say what you will about controversy, it brings eyeballs to titles.

During the Brand New Day era, I think the brain trust and web-heads did a good job waiting for most of the vocal critics to calm down for a bit. Readers had an year and a half to get used to the absence of the marriage before Peter Parker's one night stand with Michelle Gonzalez, and Mary Jane's return to the supporting cast. It was three years after One More Day that Peter Parker began his first serious relationship with Carlie Cooper. The writers are playing the long game, and tensions do die down with the passage of time.

Some suggested that the marriage shouldn’t have been changed, because many readers just weren't familiar with a period in which the Parkers weren't husband and wife. That wasn't a particularly persuasive argument, as in addition to untold tales, oft-reprinted classics and the various retellings of Spider-Man's story in the Ultimate Comics and in other media, there was the clone saga, the interval  in which Mary Jane was believed dead and the period in which they were legally separated in those twenty years. The latter two were the most obvious ways writers could shake up the status quo, and it can't be used again, which restricts future writers. And it doesn't work when it's been more than four years after One More Day.


The writers will have to continue ignoring some of the most vocal fans, and that's fine. Otherwise, we'd have had a story where Spider-Man found his long-lost baby, and the Aunt May who turned out to be alive was revealed as a Skrull, regardless of whether these would have been good ideas in the long term. If writers decide those are stories that they really want to tell, that would be one thing. But it shouldn't be mandated because some of the fans are calling for it. The people at Marvel shouldn't worry about appeasing the guys calling for their castrations.



Fans in general aren't concerned about the same things which writers and Marvel Editor‑in‑Chiefs worry about. How many of these readers are bothered by whether or not the book will be enjoyable decades down the line? It’s the job of the writers to know when it’s okay to defy the fans, and write stories that some of them will not enjoy no matter how well its told, such as Ultimate Marvel, the resurrection of Bucky, the return of Hal Jordan as the Green Lantern and the addition of Spider‑Man and Wolverine to the Avengers.

Hell, there was a time when Mary Jane was suddenly (and very memorably) introduced to the Spider‑Man books. If there were message boards then, I'm sure fans would have been reacting to the solicitations of Amazing Spider‑Man #43 (which would be available before Amazing Spider‑Man #42 comes out) complaining about how Peter should be with Betty Brant forever. One of the worst things the writers could do with a bachelor Spider‑Man is give him generic romantic interests, and assume that the readers will care about them because they're important to the story. Fortunately, there is the alternative of making romantic interests unique and compelling, even if anything in that department will initially be disputed and some readers will be disappointed in the outcome. There will always be someone who is upset, regardless of what decision the company makes.

The only real indication of whether something is successful is sales. If sales had plummeted (and we'll talk about sales very soon) with the new format, it would have been easy for Marvel to undo the retcon with a stetcon. They can either have a new story in which magic is used to undo the marriage. Or they could have Peter and Mary Jane start dating one another, and see if the fans are happy with that, eventually moving on to an engagement and a marriage. But it would be irresponsible for Marvel to make decisions based solely (or in a large part) on how the message boards will react.


There are ways for writers to avoid controversy. They could preserve as much of the status quo as possible, and quietly focus more on characters who readers aren't as invested in. So the likes of Carlie Cooper, Max Modell and Michelle Gonzalez can make difficult and sometimes poor decisions, while familiar figures will not be put in that position. One problem with that approach is that the new guys will be more interesting than the classics, because their stories will be more compelling. It's what happens when you take the safe approach in fiction. There's also the risk of losing customers to titles where the protagonists do stuff that's worth arguing about.


Controversy suggests that there are people who are passionate on both sides of an issue. And it often pays off. Stan Lee was right to feature drug use in Amazing Spider-Man, Gerry Conway was right to kill off Gwen Stacy and Bendis was probably right to kill off the Ultimate Peter Parker and replace him with Miles Morales, despite the inevitable resentment from some of the consumers.


Contentious outcomes are equated with gimmicks, which aren't automatically bad, but it does suggest a lack of substance and long-term thinking. You can disagree with the decisions involving One More Day, but I don't think that getting rid of the marriage was a gimmick. It's something that Quesada thought about for years, and has discussed in depth numerous times. There's a difference between saying that you didn't find the reasons given adequate and suggesting that no reason was ever given. The latter is absurd, considering how many interviews Quesada and others have made about a change to a fictional character's marital status.


Something can be controversial even if there isn't a parity between the two sides making an argument. What if Marvel chose the wrong side? What if the fans want change?

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There are two arguments against the current direction of the Spider-Man books which tie into the character's rich history and the reader's participation. One complaint is that because of One More Day, the stories in which Peter and Mary Jane were married no longer matter, so it was all a waste of time and money for readers of those books. Another is that because of a retcon, the backstory may be too confusing. I've written on the latter point in earlier posts, suggesting that retcons don't require undo mental gymnastics from the reader, that it's unlikely that writers could be scared away by the backstory, and that complaints about how One More Day affected classic stories were largely exaggerated.

Newer readers can certainly be scared by continuity if it's handled poorly. It's problematic if you need to know decades of backstory to understand what the hell is going on. When someone blasts continuity, they're either talking about that, or glaring contradictions/ errors.

While the undoing of the marriage is the most obvious result of One More Day, there were a few other regressions, in the course of 30 pages. Spider-Man's identity was a secret again. The mechanical webshooters were back. And Harry Osborn was no longer dead. And no longer married, either.

But Amazing Spider-Man readers, new and old, should currently have been able to understand the framework. The status quo and the basic rules had been clear from the start. There were some questions about how we got to that point, but that's never essential, as we were given the information necessary to appreciate an issue on its merits. Arguing that it was required to know in the first issue of Brand New Day how Peter reacted to Harry's return from the dead is sort of like arguing that the Lee/ Ditko run can't be considered be great, because they never explored the circumstances under which Peter Parker came into the custody of his elderly Aunt and Uncle. As a result, one could claim that the readers could not fully appreciate the relationships between those characters, to say nothing of Peter and Liz Allen, or Peter and Flash Thompson.

The fact that there were some questions about how the continuity worked indicates that earlier stories still mattered, and contradicts the suggestion that One More Day completely undid twenty years of continuity. Some detractors view their inference that the stories they enjoyed “never happened” as a personal insult, one which would mean that they’ve wasted their time on the Spider-Man franchise.

First, if you enjoyed the stories, you didn’t waste your time on them, regardless of whether or not they’re in-continuity. If you just read sub-par comic books to follow the progress of your favorite character, you probably did waste your time and money, and I'd rather not have these tastes dictate the financial decisions of comic book companies.

Even if the stories in which Peter and MJ were married were never referenced, it still happened, as One More Day provided an in-continuity explanation, meaning the stories could be referenced by future writers. As a result, the material was more relevant than the adventures of the Golden Age DC heroes when it was established that they lived in the comic books of the Silver Age heroes; this predated the more famous Earth‑1/ Earth‑2 retcon. That was acceptable at a time when the most common solution to any continuity problem was what a few individuals have advocated: just changing the status quo without warning or explanation. DC's success after Crisis of Infinite Earths and Flashpoint suggested that new and existing readers can be drawn to post-retcon material.

But the stories in which Peter and MJ were married were still referenced. It didn't all happen exactly the way it was shown on the page, but it was close enough. Spider-Man still crawled out of the grave thinking of Mary Jane. Mary Jane still talked Harry into rescuing the drugged Spider-Man. Harry was still pronounced dead. Venom still scared Mary Jane into talking Peter into getting rid of the Black Costume. The vast majority of the stories still occurred pretty much the way they were originally written, just with the leads being together, but not married.

Some object to the idea that even a word was changed in order to reconcile previous issues with the current status quo, so that what happened to the characters no longer happened exactly the way it was depcited on the page. The idea that everything happens in the character's backstory the way it was shown on the page is kinda ludicrous, when you consider all the anachronisms in comics published decades ago, which -as far as the characters are concerned- happened much more recently.

Technically, it still happened that way to the pre-OMD Peter Parker. As has been noted, One More Day did not do anything to affect anything on your bookshelf. The Peter Parker in the current Amazing Spider-Man just experienced everything slightly differently.

I have noticed that some fans support retcons which reveal that everything happened the way it was done on the page, and that there was just new information readers weren't privy to. The favor I've seen of the  Parallel Lives retcon would be one example. But it's often weird to try to reconcile earlier material with a new context that often changes the motivations of characters in ways the earlier writers hadn't considered.

There is a simple solution to avoid the "the last twenty years didn't matter" criticism: have either Peter or MJ  remember the world as it was. In that case, the comics of the last twenty years would still have an unambiguous relevant impact upon the new stories, and this could also open up new material. Whoever remembers the world as it was is in an awkward position if the other is happy in a new relationship.

Marvel does have some reasons for not going with that approach. It would likely increase expectations of a permanent reconciliation between Peter and MJ, as it's easier for the two to get back together if they remember exactly what went wrong. And it would make things confusing for new readers, if a character references memories that no one else is aware of.

I don't think that the retcon changed the backstory in a signficiant way. Peter and MJ still loved each other when they got married and were likely to stay together until death do them part. Anything that preserves this isn’t an insult to the readers. It's the same way Norman's return changed nothing about his motivations or his character. He still killed Gwen, and in that final battle he was undone by his own arrogance. His survival really doesn't matter, except we later got some good stories out of it. If the marriage were undone with the reveal that MJ were revealed as a Skrull, or commited infidelity then that could have been seen as an insult, as it violates the cores of the characters as seen in some good comic books.

My attitude is that if the mandate had come down to me, and I was told that we want to make Peter Parker single again, I would not have been in favor of waving a wand and saying it never happened. I don't understand the concept of "It never happened" because that means that all the life lessons and those things you've learned during it don't mean anything. My attitude would have been "Okay, fine, either we have them get divorced, or we kill off Mary Jane. That's it."And the argument would be "Well, then, forever after, Peter Parker will always be a divorcee. Or he's always going to be a widower." And that's true. But that reckons without the concept of fan turnover. There are lots of stuff that you and I know about, things that happened 4 or 5 or 6 years ago, that there are plenty of Spider-Man fans who are new, and who have no freaking idea. You and I talk about "The Death of Jean Dewolfe" and there's going to be fans out there who only know about Jean Dewolfe and the Sin-Eater because they're buying a minimate.So time as they say, heals all wounds. And four or five years ago you're going to have an entire raft of Spider-Man fans who are unaware of the fact that he was ever married to someone named Mary Jane. Twenty years from now, you'll have no one who is going to remember it.

The anti-repetition argument hasn't been made very often recently, as the Big Time era has featured some significant and obvious changes to the status quo, which have been relevant to the stories. The previous four issues have been heavily dependent on Peter's job at Horizon Labs, while the earlier Vulture two-parter focused on Peter's association with Carlie Cooper post-Spider Island and the opening Avenging Spider-Man arc required Spider-Man to be on a team with the Red Hulk, and J Jonah Jameson to be Mayor of New York City. All these developments could be removed from the book (Carlie moves to Florida, Peter's fired from Horizon Labs, Spider-Man leaves the Avengers, Jonah loses a special election, etc.) and Peter Parker could find himself in a remarkably similar situation to where he was in the 1980s, but even in that case,  there's no reason writers have to feature new versions of old stories. They could still take the series in a different direction from there. It's also worth noting that the best-selling Spider-Man comic book of the last decade was a response to a contemporary news story: the election of a noted Spider-Man fan into the White House.


Even if the Spider-Man comics right now were just duplicating earlier material, this wouldn't be a particularly effective point in favor of retconning One More Day. At this point, the recommended solution to the alleged problem would be a variation of the problem. Marvel would still be restoring the title to an earlier status quo, and if you think such a return is the equivalent of repeating earlier stories, the new Amazing Spider-Man will be a book of repeats. You don't see many people suggesting that the way to avoid repetition is to take the series in a radically different direction post-OMD, when technically that would be the way to avoid the problem.


There were some who wanted the unmasked era to last longer. So, a return to the immediately pre-OMD circumstances would offer something that could not have been done at most earlier points. But this isn't something that all OMD detractors are united on, and I'm not sure those particular conditions could have lasted much longer. It would have been a radically different title, when Peter Parker's a fugitive and everyone knows his secret identity. That would be a far cry from what made the series successful in the first place. The 50th Anniversary of Spider-Man is coming up, and a big reason we're still interested in the character is that the template has worked so well. For many, the suggestion that a story could have been published decades ago is a compliment.


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