Spidey, OMD, and Me

One More Day and Brand New Day. It's all everyone is talking about right now. Wether you liked it or not, you can't ignore it. On most comic news sites, about every fifth article is Spider-Man related, talking to writers, fans, retailers, or what have you. Even ABC World News did a piece on it. Well, with all the talk, I decided to throw my two cents in as well.
Now most of the reactions break down into the following:

- Hated it, and won't be reading anymore Spider-Man
- Hated it, but willing to give the new direction and creators a chance
- Loved it, best thing Marvel has done with the character
- Don't read Spidey anyway, so what do I care?
- What does it matter, they'll just undo it in 1) 6 months 2) a year or 3) 5 years

I must say, personally, I'm leaning towards the last one, with a qualifier of two years. Which if they stay on schedule for three books a month, will have seen seventy-two issues published.

But really, what's the deal here? Myself, I have only read the Straczynski run of Amazing. I started when he did, and planned to leave when he did. So I kind of fall outside the earlier reactions. Yes, I didn't like the end of One More Day, but I wouldn't have kept reading Spider-Man regardless of what happened in OMD. And this isn't even the first time that great JMS project has had the ending ruined. Babylon 5 Seasons 4 & 5? Crusade? Rising Stars? Alright, maybe not Rising Stars so much, but Top Cow certainly had their fun with that one.

And what of the Peter/MJ marriage in the first place? Granted, most comic readers my age (30) don't remember anything but the two of them being married. But the marriage in the first place was an editorial decision foisted on the writers of the day. Stan Lee was marrying the two in his newspaper strip, so Editorial felt they should be married in the comics as well, even though they were not even dating at the time. And if you go even farther back, look how Peters first proposal to MJ works out. Aunt May is in the hospital (again) and had just been moved to intensive care (again), when MJ meets Peter in the waiting room. Pete asks her for some good news, and if she's thought about his proposal at all. To which she responds "Y'know good ol' MJ is too free a spirit to tie herself down to any one swinger -- even to a brown-eyed hunk like you. There's a world of groovy guys out there and this doll's gotta be fee to find 'em." Damn, that's just cold. No wonder people didn't like her.

And that's not the end of it. Ever since they did get married, many of the writers did not like MJ, and so would write her as a snarky or selfish character. Several times she begged Pete to give up being Spider-Man, which he even did for a while. They even killed her off once, only to bring her back later (she was being held hostage by a stalker). The two stayed splitsville until JMS came on the scene. His decision to write her as a strong, self assured, independent woman really drove the character to new heights. He wrote her so well, and so consistently, that even when Pete and family moved into Avengers Tower, she held her own against characters like Wolverine. He didn't do too bad a job with Aunt May either. An aside, I think them making Aunt May forget that Pete is Spider-Man is the worst decision of the whole thing. Oh, and does Norman Osborn remember who Spidey is? Cause if he doesn't, does that mean the Clone Saga didn't happen? Was MJ ever pregnant? What happens to The Amazing Spider-Girl now? Is that still the future, or just an alternate Earth now? Will we ever see Spidey piloting Leopardon now?

So, whose fault is the whole OMD mess? Well it must be JMS's. For making characters we believe in and like. And bunch of old farts who want the comics they read as kids back, no matter what the people who came after them think. Oh well, it's like we say here in St Louis about the wheather, "Don't like? Give it five minutes, it'll change."

-Dan