http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/07/09/bra...spider-man-647/

Go figure. A book that ships three times a month for two years while prices per book increase and sales have slipped? WOW, who woulda thunk it?

I have to say that I'm not entirely surprised. It did seem like the marriage was very popular, despite what Joe Q. thought. Over in the newspaper strip, they did away with the marriage, and a ton of people wrote in asking, "why?" The protest was enough to get the marriage reinstated in the newspaper strip.

Also, the sheer number of Spiderman books is really convoluted to follow. I can't find a jumping on point for the life of me.

Yeh, I remember awhile ago someone on here (can't remember who) was asking for suggestions on which Marvel books to pick up and where would be a good jumping on point for whatever titles where being suggested. I really wanted to suggest Spider-Man but I couldn't think of a good place to start. I think I might have said as much in the thread.

If they were going to get rid of the whole brain trust idea and give the title to just one of the writers I wish had been Joe Kelly. Not that I have a problem with Slott or think he's bad or anything, I just think that out of all the writers that worked on Amazing Spider-Man since Brand New Day began Kelly was the best.

Oh man, Joe Kelly is SO under rated in the industry. It amazes me that he doesn't get more work. I've loved everything I've ever read from him, and he seems to have a good critical following too.

It was me, actually. I ended up taking many peoples advice and worked my way through Avengers Disassembled, House of M, Civil War and Secret Invasion (currently working through the Invasion aftermath).

In regards to a Spidey jumping on point, I just started with Civil War and have been reading straight through from there. Admittedly, in the beginning, it was difficult to jump into it and know all that was happening. However, I've managed alright, through the assistance of wikipedia. (Not sure how the world survived before we had this resource! LOL)

Since its taking awhile to get caught up to current issues, I just decided to jump in at the start of the Grim Hunt storyline. Much of it doesn't make sense to me, but I figure sooner or later it will all kick in.

I try to ignore Spidey and am sticking with the team books and lesser events at Marvel. It makes me sad, but I don't have any interest in reading about stuff that just isn't true! ;)

Joe Kelly, what a talent. I wish he'd had more time (and maybe some direction on where she'd be heading?) on Supergirl, and I think we're all agreed that Obsidian Age was awesomely awesome ;)

Here's some more info on the end of Brand New Day from SDCC as well as some interesting teaser images. Looks like the Hobgoblin is coming back and Spider-Man might be getting a new costume. Apparently Mac Gargan is going back to being Scorpion. I wonder what that will mean for Venom.

http://ie.comics.ign.com/articles/110/1108398p1.html

that new costume looks really cool, and it appears to be just one of many new costumes Spidey will wear in the near future!

Here's an interview with Slott about the upcoming changes to spidey
http://comics.ign.com/articles/110/1108839p1.html

I was actually thinking this might be a good jumping on point, and then I got to this part:

Nice to see that MJ will play a bigger role, but not nice to see that the terrible decision to end their marriage stay in place.

Awww, come on Will. Let bygones, be bygones! :lol:

I've been having an awful lot of fun reading online, and catching myself back up with Spidey, and I had forgotten how much fun he REALLY is. I don't have a lot invested in any of his many, many, MANY years of past history, so its pretty easy for me to just go along for the ride. I've found it very enjoyable so, I'm in for whatever they do...as long as they don't kill him off!!! :o

By the way...the green and black costume...wouldn't it be funny if they did a book where Spidey was on his way to audition for a role in the upcoming Green Lantern movie?? Maybe have him show up outside Geoff Johns office LOL :lol:

The thing is... who would make the deal that Pete and MJ made in the first place?

What kind of crap is that? He destroys his marriage... blinks it out of existence so he can save the life of an old woman who is likely at the end of her life anyhow?

That's just BS. It's just so stupid and unrealistic a decision I think it's insulting to Spidey's fans.

This is MJ... Pete has loved her for a large portion of her life. What he did doesn't honor that history, not to mention Aunt May, who would be absolutely mortified if she knew.

Let's not even mention that fact that Mephisto basically did this for free. Instead of his normal fee of a soul, he will do it on the off-chance that he can feed on Pete's inner, subconscious turmoil?

To me, Spideman is ruined. Just ruined.

Something you said just gave me a fun thought about the whole debacle.

What if Aunt May was really a zombie??

:D

If she were really a zombie, clearly Peter Parker would pull an Owen and feed innocent people to her. Because that man really just can't let his 70+ year old aunt go!

It's asinine. Makes Peter into a total P***y. A decision so crappy even Uncle Ben (along with May) would facepalm that. God knows I did and still do.

Quesada's agenda shouldn't be praised, it should be condemned! Same goes for the logic of a certain bald mustached fellow.

Yeh, I completey agree. OMD was without a doubt the worst Spider-Man story I have ever read. It basically just spit on so many years of continuity. Eventually I was able to get past it and I started to enjoy the stories being told. But now they're revisiting it all with One Moment In Time. Originally I was looking forward to this storyline but I hated the first issue. And now I realise that I was only looking forward to finding out the answers to what actually happened. I don't see how could ever expect to enjoy the story when it's all about how they tore apart the marriage which I was a big fan of. A fan of the marriage I mean, not that they tore it apart.

Count me among those of you that have lost total interest in Spidey outside his Avengers appearances. I was one HARDCORE Spider-Man in past years, but the way they undid all of his character buildup to that point, from marrying MJ (something I have always loved... Peter was horrible at dating and MJ was his reward for a life of romantic turmoil AND for all the other crap he's had to deal with in his life... his one bright spot) to revealing his secret identity during Civil War... it was all undone in one incredibly contrived plot point idea. I hate it and I don't read Spider-Man titles any more.

I LOVE the Marvel Universe and have been deeply into it (or should I say, deeply in love with it AGAIN) since Avengers Disassembled through to present day (after much time away during most of the crappy 90s, starting with but not limited to those awful Spider clones). I LOVE Daredevil, Moon Knight, all Avengers titles, Captain America, Nova, The Hulk (well, back in the Planet Hulk days anyway, not it's in the toilet), Secret Warriors, Iron Man, Thor, Iron Fist... the list goes ON. But I don't touch Spider-Man at all whereas once he was MY GUY... my go to guy for reading comics.

That's just amazing to me that he could ever slip down the ladder that far to the point where MOON KNIGHT is more interesting to me.

Fix Spider-Man, and I will not even need to read any DC comics any more. I'm losing my Green Lantern love lately since Blackest Night ended, the new Flash series is only okay, another Geoff Johns surprise because I figured I'd love it, and there's little going on in the Bat world to hold my interest, even though Dick Grayson is Batman.

Spider-Man is currently broken, IMHO, and needs to be fixed. He was not broken before the whole Mephisto thing, so there was no need to fix him. Instead, we got this.

It's sad, I tells ya.

JW

Well, we have this OMIT teaser image:

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/marvel-tea...641-100810.html

Could it just be false hope? Everyone knows swirling mist means a change in reality though.

So clearly there are a few people on here who like Spider-Man but haven't read any of his books since the One More Day fiasco so now that One Moment In Time is over I thought some people might want to know how the continuity has changed.

S
P
O
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Peter is have pre-wedding jitters and can't sleep the night before the wedding so he goes out web-slinging. He comes across some thug that he'd help bust earlier trying to kill the cop who arrested him. The thug falls off the roof and Spidey catches him but has run out of web fluid and falls all the way to street with the thug landing on top of him and knocking him out. By the time he comes to, he's missed the wedding. MJ is so upset and angry and fed up with Spider-Man coming between them that she asks him to give it up but he says he can't so she leaves. They make up again a few weeks later but MJ tells Peter she'll never be able to marry him because of Spider-Man.

Apparently everything else stays the same up until May getting shot after Civil War. The doctor wants to declare May dead but Peter refuses and gives her CPR and it works. The doctor actually says it must have been the power of love that brought her back to life though she still hasn't woken up. :rolleyes: Meanwhile Kingpin angry that Peter humiliated him in front of all the other inmates takes a hit out on every sinlge person Peter & MJ are related to or care about. Mj goes to check on her Aunt Anna and interrupts the Kingpin's thug trying to kill her. The thug leaves Anna to chase after MJ. Peter arrives in time to stop the thug but MJ is unconscious. He brings her to Dr Strange to heal whatever injuries she might have. Realising that his actions have put everyone he loves in constant danger he asks Strange to make everyone forget his identity. Strange confers with Reed Richards and Tony Stark on the astral plane and they come up with a way to do it. Strange creates a protective bubble to protect Peter from the change so that he will remember but at the last second he pulls the still unconscious MJ into the bubble with him so that she'll remember too. When MJ wakes up and finds out what he did she's upset because all this Spider-Man stuff and the constant danger has taken it's toll and her and she wishes she could have forgotten too. The hospital rings to say May is awake. MJ tells Peter to go and that she'll be fine but as soon as he's gone she packs her bags and leaves.

In the present, MJ tells Peter that she loves him but isn't strong enough to be with him and doesn't think she ever will be and he needs to move on and find someone who is strong enough. So now apparently it's all good, there's no more awkwardness and Peter feels better than he has in a long time.

That's actually longer than I planned to make it but I'm not good at short summaries and there's still a few details I left out.

It's the exact opposite for me. I didn't like married comic Spidey and didn't really find myself enjoying Spider-Man until BND. Honestly, if the marriage came back, I'd bail.

Wait now, so Peter goes back in time to that point? And then Aunt May is still shot due to Peter revealing his secret during Civil War. I got that. But then Kingpin is upset because of the way he was humiliated in jail by Peter when they fought? Is that what you're speaking of, when he was in the black suit? I guess Peter might still confront the Kingpin if May is still in a coma. Makes sense that he'd be pissed.

So May is STILL in a coma then?

And MJ leaves him WHILE she's in a coma? What a crappy thing to do! I just can't see MJ doing that. But Quesada still got what he wanted, Peter single again, even if MJ comes off like a total b*tch. I still maintain that they should be married. They were great together and it was a natural progression of Peter's life. I hope they get back together, but after this I'm not sure how Peter could take her back (I know I couldn't, if I am reading the situation correctly).

Seems to me Marvel still has a problem with Spidey's latest continuity. What does this do to the recent months of Spidey's life? It's the same as when they wrote his marriage out of continuity (only less of the timeline will be affected).

Also, apparently Dr. Strange is now the cure all for anyone who has a secret identity slip. Bad guy know your identity? No problem. Just visit Stephen Strange and he'll put you in a bubble and everyone else will forget your name. Still, it's better than the last attempt at a solution.

The bottom line is, Marvel never should have made Peter's identity public in the first place if they didn't have a strategy for dealing with the fallout. He unmasked on worldwide TV. The entire universe knew who he was. They should have thought about that if they had wanted him to go private with his secret ID again IMHO.

JW

Still wondering what MJ whispered to Mephisto...

No, this storyline is basically just showing what's changed; which, as it turns out, is very little.

She whispered that Peter would never accept the deal unless she told him to and that Mephisto would leave Peter alone forever afterwards. Mephisto agrees, stating that as far as he's concerned, "none of this ever happened".

What a mess! I'm sooooooo glad I don't follow Spider man anymore... :blink:

Well, I must say that although it's a "better" fix for Peter's ID crisis created by Civil War, it's still pretty sloppy and Marvel shouldn't have done it at all if they didn't have a plan for living with it or getting Spidey out of it (which they clearly didn't).

And Peter and MJ still aren't together.

I'm not sure if I'm more or less interested in Spider Man comics after reading this.

JW

They should never have done it to begin with, in my opinion. It was nothing but a stupid stunt to help sell Civil War. It was also the most out of character thing Peter Parker's ever done. Say what you want about the whole thing with Mephisto, but at least that situation didn't have years of things that make it clear Peter would never do it like the unmasking. Peter made fun of Captain America for having a public identity once (hell, I think that might even have been a Mark Millar story too). After everything Peter had been through because of his secret identity being known to some enemies, I don't think Marvel's ever done another thing that rang as false, or more, than that; this is even including some of the crap that happened in the Clone Saga, which is the long standing nadir of the Spider-Man franchise.

If I hadn't written Spider-Man off at the time - I pretty much ignored him until BND started - I'd have laughed Marvel out of the building.

I can't speak for anyone else but me here, but I'm honestly glad this is the case. For me, BND's been better than most anything from the marriage era. I know it's not something everyone will agree with me on, but by now I'm pretty convinced the marriage should never have happened, at least not in the 616.

Though, this all reminds me that I'm behind on my Spidey trade purchases; I'm kind of glad the Brand New Day thrice monthly schedule is ending, because it'll give me a chance to catch up a bit.

@ John
No, MJ didn't leave when May was still in a coma. They got a phone call from the hospital to say that she'd woken up and was gonna be ok. MJ told Peter to go on ahead and that she just needed a little more time to herself to deal with what had happened and while he was at the hospital she packed her bags and left.

@ dl316bh
I disagree, some of my favourite Spider-Man stories took place during the marriage "era". The early Venom stories, Kraven's Last Hunt and I really enjoyed most of JMS' run. As far as I'm concerned they're better than the vast majority of the BND stories. I can't think of any Spidey stories that I think would have been better if MJ wasn't Peter's wife. And none of the best stories from BND couldn't have been told with Peter still married to MJ.

I drink to that ! :cheers:

I still think it was a crappy thing to do.

JW

I can. Everything. From the romantic subplots to the main stories, they could not have been done that way with Mary Jane there. If only because writers no longer have to account for Mary Jane in every single story they write, because she's his wife. She's also not eating up page time that normally would have gone to his supporting characters, whom unsurprisingly dried up after the marriage. Also, they can actually get people to write Spider-Man now; most great writers not named JMS didn't want to write married Spider-Man, which alone is reason enough for it to have been jettisoned. Even JM DeMattias, who wrote the aforementioned Kravens Last Hunt, was looking forward to writing unmarried Spider-Man, though I don't believe he ever got to (the whole Clone saga disaster). I know some folks liked it, but it's hard to deny that the marriage genuinely hampered the character.

The flip side of this argument is, of the few genuinely good stories of the marriage era, how many of them needed his marriage to Mary Jane? Almost none of them. The Venom stories certainly didn't. Kravens Last Hunt could have worked fine with just her as his girlfriend instead of wife. As for JMS... well, when I think of his run, I think of The Other and spider-totems and I just go to a corner and sob.

Ok but using that logic, how many of the big stories from BND needed him to be single?

New Ways To Die, American Son, Grim Hunt, the Rhino stories, the Fantastic Four two-parter just before American Son. These were my favourite stories from BND and every single one of them could have been told with Peter still married to MJ and it wouldn't have taken away from the story at all. Obviously there's also a lot of BND stories that couldn't have been told with them still together because they focused on the fact that Peter was single but in my opinion those weren't as good or as important as the ones I listed above.