WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD CONCERNING THIS WEEK’S CAPTAIN AMERICA #16.
It appears the tables have turned on Marvel’s top devil, Mephisto, and his contracts may have been overturned. There is already chatter that this could mean a rollback of one of the most controversial moments in the life of the Amazing Spider-Man, where the decades long (in publishing terms) marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson was erased to save the life of Aunt May. That was 2007’s One More Day. Since the spectre of OMD has reared itself once again and it is spooky season, why not have a quick little roundtable?
Did you read the original One More Day?
Sean Dillon: Not only have I read One More Day, but I read it and the entirety of the JMS era last month.
Christopher Chiu-Tabet: Nope. I wasn’t really reading Spider-Man comics then, and the idea of Spidey and MJ selling their marriage to Mephisto to save Aunt May’s life was so daft I could never bring myself to.
Tim Rooney: Sure did. It was a bad story on the merits even not accounting for personal taste. Just an exercise in executing a publishing mandate.
What were your thoughts on Spidey pre-OMD and the P&MJ marriage?
Sean: I liked it when J.M. DeMatteis was writing it. However, a lot of the Spider-Man comics released between that era and One More Day that make up the vast majority of Peter/MJ marriage comics are plagued with an epidemic that to this day is hurting Spider-Man comics (and, arguably, comics as a whole). That being a lack of ability with regards to writing active female characters in a supporting role.
As such, Peter/MJ haven’t been able to develop as a married couple beyond “Peter gets to go home and sleep with his wife” and “MJ worries that Peter might… die!” There’s no real role for the full scope of marriage. The closest being JMS having them experience a trial separation, but by the time he has them come back together, they’re back in the same old mold without any real shift and expansion.
There’s not much for MJ to do when married to Peter, as highlighted by the fact that the vast majority of conversations regarding One More Day focus on what it does to Peter Parker as a character rather than what it means for Mary Jane Watson. Indeed, a lot of conversations regarding One More Day have highlighted a desire to set Peter Parker up for the future that is MC2. Which is quite possibly one of the most mediocre lines of comics ever made. A line that exists without any imagination for the future save that Peter’s middle class, his daughter does things, and everyone calls him sir in a way that feels rather conservative.
Tim: When J. Michael Straczynski was on, the book was great. I thought he did a great job grounding Peter as a regular person. But it’s always been a book that has to serve too many masters and that inevitably leads to creative crises and risk averse stories. But there were gems to be found in the freewheeling aughts for sure. I was always a fan of Spider-Man being married and trying to make that relationship work. That said, I came of age in the 90s when my major point of reference for Peter Parker was the comics status quo and the animated series where Pete looked like a 35 year old, so I always had this picture of him as a fully grown adult. The marriage lent itself to that and the bold, self-assured MJ is a great foil for the neurotic Peter Parker. They just make sense.
What did you think about the idea behind it?
Sean: I’m rather delighted by the idea of Spider-Man being married, in part because I find Mary Jane to be a rather delightful character.
Chris: Horrid. You’d rather have these characters make a deal with the devil instead of letting them age? It’s quite possibly the most embarrassing Marvel story of all time. It was perfectly possible for them to have stayed married in the past 19 years without having kids: I know plenty of couples Peter and MJ’s age who haven’t, simply because they can’t afford to have them.
Tim: It was transparent editorial and publishing interference and just the first in an endless string of mandates that have made Amazing Spider-Man stagnant to this day. There are some good individual stories but it’s obvious to me that One More Day was designed to place the title in a constant state of basic brand management. You had the editor-in-chief step in and take over. JMS publicly disavowed it.
Did OMD improve the book?
Sean: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! No.
Chris: Hard to say, I picked up Amazing Spider-Man a few years later during “Big Time,” and who Peter is in a relationship with is a negligible part of the era. I treat every writer’s run as a soft reboot anyway.
Tim: I don’t think OMD had any impact on quality. There were good stories in the Brand New Day Era and after that. There have been many more bad ones. But none of that I think had anything to do with his relationship status as much as I would prefer the marriage to have stayed in place. I think the overall approach to the title that One More Day represents has been a net negative in the long run. More than any other superhero character, Spider-Man’s comics seem unwilling and incapable of even maintaining an illusion of change.
It has been…checks notes…almost 20 years since that controversial 2007 storyline. Have your thoughts changed about it?
Sean: Not really. Honestly, people kinda overrate the comic, thinking the problem is that Spider-Man made a deal with the devil, when that’s the most brilliant part of it. An extremely moral man who is pushed into a corner to the point where he has no choice but to make a deal is a fascinating story. The problem is that the actual comic spends three issues spinning its wheels before being about that.
Tim: No, but I am a well adjusted person so I’m not mad about it anymore. I still maintain it was a slap in the face to a generation of younger readers who grew up with that status quo in order to appeal to an aging nostalgia readership who fondly remembered teenage Peter Parker. But now there’s a new generation who grew up on young Tom Holland Spidey who also have that picture of the character. So I guess my generation is the anomaly. Oh well.
What are your thoughts on the present Spider-Man title(s)?
Sean: There’s a present Spider-Man title?
Chris: I don’t have time to read comics anymore, sadly. I’m glad Paul is gone though, I was sick of hearing about him.
Tim: My frustration with the state of the ongoing Amazing Spider-Man and its lack of editorial vision or concept of what Spider-Man stands for has been well documented here on the Beat in my Marvel Rundown contributions. It’s a mess.
What do you think about the speculation One More Day could be undone? How much does it matter?
Sean: It’s telling that this happened in the pages of Captain America and not Spider-Man.
Chris: I don’t think it’s happening, I think people reading Doom’s dialogue and thinking it applies to Peter and MJ’s deal are engaging in wish fulfillment: Peter has no idea what’s happening in that comic. I think we’re years away from the marriage being restored, it’d have to take something like it unfolding in the MCU and Miles being introduced there for Marvel to finally be comfortable with Peter being the “middle-aged” Spider-Man.
Tim: I don’t think deleting One More Day accomplishes anything at this point. The secret identity reset was a separate magic spell (many people forget this) so it wouldn’t impact Peter’s vigilante status at all. And MJ and Peter have already gotten together again and been broken up again and Mary Jane knows his identity. It doesn’t do anything except reset fictional legal paperwork. They’ve spent the last five years in the comics breaking them up and shouting at readers that these two don’t belong together. I don’t see a satisfying magic switch flip resulting in a good story. Beyond that, I don’t think they would do a major Spider-Man status quo change in an Avengers or Captain America book.
Since it is possible that all deals with Mephisto are “null and void”, what other outstanding ones do you recall and wish to see wiped away…or kept (or new deals made to wipe away)?
Tim: I think you could make a very cool Ghost Rider story out of this. But I think Marvel forgot about Ghost Rider.
Sean: So there’s this German doctor by the name of Faust…
And there you have it. Keep following The Beat’s Marvel Rundown, leave your own thoughts in the comments below, and contemplate your own deals with the devil (you may be owed compensation).
Happy Halloween.
