Did anyone enjoy Spider-Man in spite of One More Day?

[Orbus]

I disagree. Clone Saga 1 did exactly that and almost bankrupted Marvel in the process. Why did that happen? Because Marvel played head games with their readers, and angered them.

The 90s Clone Saga was commercially successful even if it was divisive with the fans. Even then the initial parts of the Clone saga were widely popular hence Marvel extended the story way past what the creative team ever intended and focus on the various mysteries which were seen as popular.

I hope when you're talking about Marvel going bankrupt you're not talking literally. Marvel's filing for bankruptcy in the 90s had nothing to do with selling comics. Like I said the various Spidey comics were selling well at the time and even if they were the Spider-Man line collapsing wouldn't have caused Marvel much financial woes. According to some the company would have been kept afloat by X-Men related sales alone.

They are also very aware of how unpopular OMD/BMD is, and ( at least when Slott wrote the book) did not care what the audience felt. Now can a story be simply bad, and not ruin a character?

The reason Slott was chosen as main writer was that his stories during the rotating OMD era were well recieved by fans. Admittedly part of that in my view was because he actually referenced the OMD changes and people suspected he would reverse OMD.

Slott's own run was hugely popular stories like Spider-Island and Superior Spider-Man. During his run on the book it was consistently Marvel's top seller which does not support the idea that fans hated his stories or that fans hate his stories or felt that the character had been ruined by OMD.

There definitely is a toxicity within the fandom due to OMD with anyone who doesn't subscribe to the mindset that the character is forever ruined or that Slott was some hate figure is dismissed even if evidence would strongly suggest most people don't feel that way. Personally I don't see a huge difference in characterisation and tone with Spencer's run, it seems very Slott-esque to me save for him being in a relationship with MJ.

Then again the silver lining for Marvel is that after all this if they want fans to laud praises to anything Spider-Man related regardless of quality then getting him with MJ is the magic bullet.

[Miles To Go]

The reason Slott was chosen as main writer was that his stories during the rotating OMD era were well recieved by fans. Admittedly part of that in my view was because he actually referenced the OMD changes and people suspected he would reverse OMD.

According to fans who met him at conventions, Slott admitted he was petitioning hard for a OMD reversal at the time, with editorial shooting him down every time. His efforts ultimately resulted in the compromise that was Renew Your Vows.

Slott's own run was hugely popular stories like Spider-Island and Superior Spider-Man.

And sales dipped after those stories were over. Even Slott's apologists admit that's when he peaked and never recovered

[CrimsonEchidna]

Kinda surprising that, in a medium where controversial changes are forgotten shortly thereafter, this one will not go away nor has it shown any signs of dying down.

Doesn't help that OMD brought about a tonal shift if the character's portrayal in both the comics and the adaptations.

The reason why JMS' Spider-Man was constantly held up in so high regard was because of how "mature" the character was portrayed. Not just in how Peter Parker carried himself but the way he interacted with other Marvel Superheroes. When he interacted with other heroes it felt more like a level-playing field rather than people looking down on him.

Post-OMD it felt like Peter was perpetually the butt of the joke.And it's not helped by the fact that since it, all adaptations basically doubled down on the idea that Peter has to always be a Teenager. I think by comparison this is why you had so many people on this board viewing the PS4 Spider-Man, and Pete in Into the Spider-Verse to be such a breath of fresh air.

[WebSlingWonder]

Doesn't help that OMD brought about a tonal shift if the character's portrayal in both the comics and the adaptations.

The reason why JMS' Spider-Man was constantly held up in so high regard was because of how "mature" the character was portrayed. Not just in how Peter Parker carried himself but the way he interacted with other Marvel Superheroes. When he interacted with other heroes it felt more like a level-playing field rather than people looking down on him.

Post-OMD it felt like Peter was perpetually the butt of the joke.And it's not helped by the fact that since it, all adaptations basically doubled down on the idea that Peter has to always be a Teenager. I think by comparison this is why you had so many people on this board viewing the PS4 Spider-Man, and Pete in Into the Spider-Verse to be such a breath of fresh air.

Oh you're speaking my language, man. JMS Spider-Man was the type of hero I could look up to and see mature from all the crap he (and MJ and May) dealt with in their lives. I can't say the same for post-OMD Spidey

[Mister Mets]

OMD is not just one story. It's an editorially driven mandate imposed by Quesada on to continuity that actively annuls 20 years of real-time stories, and its big gamble and claim to fame is that the ten years of BND and Slott is qualitatively better than the 20 years before it. I mean every editor and writer kept going in the wake "this feels like Spider-Man" which implicitly is saying that Spider-Man in the last 20 years wasn't real. To which I say f--k you. That kind of stunt is inherently going to polarize and divide your audience. And it's the kind of thing that will leave a stain of bitterness for a long time. And rightly so. The only way you can get away with it, is if it's a great story. I mean basically OMD-BND had to be one of the greatest Spider-Man stories of all time to even remotely pull off what it was trying to claim.

Historically whenever you had a great status-quo change in Spider-Man, you had an all-time masterpiece right out of the gate. Peter graduated high school and went to college in ASM #28, then we got the Master Planner story by Ditko in ASM #31-33. Peter and MJ got married, you had Kraven's Last Hunt. OMD and BND which is a status-quo reversal more than a status-quo change but either case it needed an all-time masterpiece that everyone could agree on. It did not produce a single story remotely as good as either the MP Saga or KLH, as such it lacks actual legitimacy as being necessary. Kraven's Last Hunt, as JMD pointed out, needed the marriage for its emotional texture, and it legitimized the Spider-Marriage the same way the Master Planner did the college era. Anyone who says that the Spider-Marriage isn't real Spider-Man which is what Quesada and others were claiming, has to say that KLH isn't real Spider-Man, that JMS' entire run isn't real Spider-Man, that the original Venom arc isn't real Spider-Man, that MacFarlane wasn't real Spider-Man, that Matt Fraction's "To Have and to Hold" isn't real Spider-Man. You can try and argue that these stories would have worked without the marriage, and say that till you're blue in the face, but the fact is these stories, several of them among the best selling Spider-Man comics of all time with sales figures far beyond the BND era, happened with the marriage and so properly belongs to them. If you want to claim it can happen without it, you have to prove your stories can produce quality, and they haven't done that.

That's why OMD can't be forgiven.

Interesting argument. I wouldn't say every status quo change has a masterpiece out of the gate. Think about Peter graduating college, dropping out of grad school, or learning that he's not a clone after all.

It's also not something that could be decided in advance. Editors can do things that increase the chances of an all-time great time story, but it's absurd to think anyone can predict it ahead of time. Otherwise, they would just be doing that.

The arguments can also be a bit more textured than "JMS' Spider-Man isn't the real Spider-Man" because there is also the push to keep the saga going for decades while remaining recognizably Spider-Man.

That cuts both ways. What about the Spider-Man creators who liked the marriage and would prefer to write the married Spider-Man and preferably the actual living Spider-Man continuity that Lee-Ditko-Romita-Conway-Wein-Wolfman-Stern-Defalco-Michelinie-JMS worked on as opposed to the fake manufactured one by Quesada and the BND writing team? What about potential Spider-Man creators who would want to write a married Spider-Man like say Ta-Nehisi Coates, Gail Simone, Matt Fraction among others? What about J. M. DeMatteis who loved a married Spider-Man and preferred it, as did many others like Tom Defalco.

And Nick Lowe by the way also seems to like a married Spider-Man. He cut his teeth working on RYV's second volume before becoming overall Spider-Man editor.

Is there any indication that more creators want to write a married Spider-Man?

“muddled” makes it sound like a confusing mess; really there are several working approaches. they vary from medium to medium or even company to company and on the writer’s own place of authority

illusion-of-change is only one

I said muddied rather than muddled, but a comparison about a novel versus the Spider-Man comic book series is going to be about products with different priorities.

The fake stories about Dickens' process were still about material that was meant to be finite, and aren't necessarily applicable to what's best for a series that's meant to keep going.

Dickens didn't have to worry about handing over Pip to William Makepeace Thackeray, or telling more stories with Scrooge.

There's spinoffs in the works apparently. Plus there's the actual source material still to be finished, which the show deviated from seasons ago. Once those books are written, there'll be a whole new TV series. It'll be Full Metal Alchemist all over again.
But I digress.

There is some speculation that Game of Thrones is leaving some mysteries unresolved, and some characters on the playing field because it's better for the spinoffs.

[Celgress]

What I think is the main problem of OMD, and why many find the event so disheartening, is that it erased years of character development and not just for Peter & MJ, Aunt May and Felicia were also affected. As a creator (and yes I am crafting original works I hope to get published someday not just fanfics) it is often tempting to simply reset a character to an earlier "classic" state but doing so cheats your audience who has been with that character through their struggles who have watched them grow and change. When everything a character accomplishes can be erased at the drop of a hat nothing they do matters to the audience, but then why should it?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Interesting argument. I wouldn't say every status quo change has a masterpiece out of the gate. Think about Peter graduating college, dropping out of grad school, or learning that he's not a clone after all.

Graduating high school means Peter's an adult and not a teenager. Whereas graduating college and going to grad school where Peter more or less has been since the Bronze Age does not signify anything. Dropping in and out of grad school is part of the 'illusion of change', i.e. an easily reversible situation. The big debate and issue has always been Peter graduating high school and not college for that very reason (as John Byrne and others pointed out), it marked a much bigger personal change than anything in the Spider-Titles until the marriage. And as for "not a clone"...that was part of the clone saga, a story intended in a highly baroque way to do "young single Peter"...so it doesn't count.

It's also not something that could be decided in advance. Editors can do things that increase the chances of an all-time great time story, but it's absurd to think anyone can predict it ahead of time.

In the case of OMD they were two years ahead of time ready to get it out of the gate. They had time to come up with a good story. All they managed to do was crib ideas from the Superman 2000 proposal. If you are making a controversial decision that you know might be polarizing but hopefully people will think you're right later on, your best and safest bet is a good story. JMS at the very least seemed interested in doing the best he could to make that work even if he disagreed with that editorial decision, and ultimately I think it was a mistake on his part to agree to write it. But at the very least, Quesada needed to get someone to write it and write it well and if he had to cajole and ask JMS to write it as a favor to a friend, that suggests that he was finding it hard to get takers for that.

In either case even if Quesada wanted to do the story he wanted and wanted the results and effect he wanted, i.e. a story that undoes the marriage, quickly forgotten over, and never referred to again, he did it incompetently even in that sense. The minute you use Mephisto that's not gonna happen. Use a random mutant with Scarlet Witch powers, some mutant kid in the same hospital that May is in, and who's also dying. That way you can get over it at once and the issue of undoing it never comes up. It's how the MJ kidnapped by stalker during her "Death" was gotten over. Not some major rogue or anyone...random mutant. That allowed JMS to quickly downplay the entire kidnapping and stalking thing.

The arguments can also be a bit more textured than "JMS' Spider-Man isn't the real Spider-Man" because there is also the push to keep the saga going for decades while remaining recognizably Spider-Man.

There's a way to make that argument without slagging the Spider-Man that the majority of contemporary readers were familiar with. On an emotional level, that's probably the main reason you have this lasting bitterness about it. It came off as Marvel trying to choose or create its ideal fans rather than deal with the ones it does have.

Is there any indication that more creators want to write a married Spider-Man?

I don't exactly have the means to poll industry professionals you know. I have given you a few names of people who have gone public. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Gail Simone. Considering their profile, it must be decent enough since they would of course have friends and peers who might agree with them (or might not) who knows. Considering that Marvel's promotion uses Mephisto-baiting in Spider-Man and other Marvel titles, it's obviously something nobody has forgotten and gotten over.

[WebSlingWonder]

I will say that it's interesting that Marvel keeps bringing it up, albeit frustrating. I think that's the worst part of it all: just that editorial acknowledges the problem, but refuses to do anything about it. So in that sense, I can see fandom's frustration about it. Doesn't excuse the overall toxicity, but one can't wonder if they didn't bring it on themselves.

Someone else said it well too: that in light of the "reboot", Spider-Man has been kept perpetually "young", which flies in the face of his character development on the whole. I remember reading ASM when I was younger and wondering how there was such a difference between how JMS portrayed Peter and how the BND Brain Trust and eventually Slott portrayed him. It was like night and day. It's a weird feeling, because I started reading comics right when the transition happened. I mainly read Ultimate Spider-Man, so I wasn't fully into ASM at the time, but I really enjoyed USM while only moderately enjoyed ASM. I used to read the classics, which former my overall opinion of the character (probably for the better), so I didn't have as many stories in my head as most. But I knew the character from research and reading, and I realized that the one that I read about was not the same as the one Marvel was publishing.

In short, I don't know what possessed Marvel, Quesada, and everyone involved to make OMD or portray Peter like they have going forward, but it's so disheartening to read sometimes. So I feel for you guys who strongly disagree (but again, it doesn't excuse hate).

And for those who wanted the marriage gone, why? Is it that bad that Peter and MJ cannot be married let alone together?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Doesn't excuse the overall toxicity, but one can't wonder if they didn't bring it on themselves.

Toxicity is often a two way street. C'mon, is it realistic to expect any fandom to be told that 20 years of continuity doesn't really exist, and this grand change comes in easily the worst Spider-Man story ever? Nobody will ever accept or forgive or get over that. Expecting the debate or complaints to go away and stop is simply not realistic, not reasonable, and not really fair either.

Is it possible to enjoy Spider-Man after OMD? Yes definitely. By that same token, it should be possible to enjoy Spider-Man with people still complaining about OMD and the complaints never stopping. Because that's going to stay at least for the foreseeable future.

[comicscollector]

I enjoyed the One More Day story.Especially art wise.
As somebody that have actually been reading comic books for many years the changes done in comic books is not something that makes me stop reading comic books,actually it´s stories going in different directions that keep me reading them.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The 90s Clone Saga was commercially successful even if it was divisive with the fans. Even then the initial parts of the Clone saga were widely popular hence Marvel extended the story way past what the creative team ever intended and focus on the various mysteries which were seen as popular.

The minute the Clone Saga told its actual story and tried to make Peter the clone and replace him with Ben...the people ran away in droves. The initial hook of the story, and the idea of Peter having a brother figure like Ben Reilly and so on was popular but people liked Ben as a sidekick and potentially a legacy, but not what he was intended for, i.e. the actual Peter Parker. Had the Clone Saga succeeded, it would amount to telling readers that the Peter Parker of the Kid Who Collected Spider-Man, the one who romanced Felicia, the one who married MJ, the one who fought the Secret Wars etcetera was all a clone. So the sales of the clone saga being good is more due to the initial hook and marketing than the actual meat and bones of the story.

The reason Slott was chosen as main writer was that his stories during the rotating OMD era were well recieved by fans. Admittedly part of that in my view was because he actually referenced the OMD changes and people suspected he would reverse OMD.

Yeah I remember that. Slott was actually not a controversial figure in the Spider-Man fandom until Superior Spider-Man. I didn't read Spider-Island when it came out but I remember the buzz online about the story potentially undoing OMD and so on.

Then again the silver lining for Marvel is that after all this if they want fans to laud praises to anything Spider-Man related regardless of quality then getting him with MJ is the magic bullet.

In other words, Mephisto-baiting and so on is all that Marvel has to salvage them out of that mess.

[Miles To Go]

Yeah I remember that. Slott was actually not a controversial figure in the Spider-Man fandom until Superior Spider-Man. I didn't read Spider-Island when it came out but I remember the buzz online about the story potentially undoing OMD and so on.

Actually, Slott still had his critics before Superior came about. His Peter Parker Papperazzi story in the BND phase was his first miss for the way it depicted Peter and it was the first appearance of MJ since OMD, where she was not depicted favourably. The first of many low points for the character over the next ten years.

[WebSlingWonder]

Toxicity is often a two way street. C'mon, is it realistic to expect any fandom to be told that 20 years of continuity doesn't really exist, and this grand change comes in easily the worst Spider-Man story ever? Nobody will ever accept or forgive or get over that. Expecting the debate or complaints to go away and stop is simply not realistic, not reasonable, and not really fair either.

Is it possible to enjoy Spider-Man after OMD? Yes definitely. By that same token, it should be possible to enjoy Spider-Man with people still complaining about OMD and the complaints never stopping. Because that's going to stay at least for the foreseeable future.

Did you even read my post, man, or did you just react? I was saying "I feel for those who disagree with OMD" and gave my reasons why.

[Alan2099]

Toxicity is often a two way street.

Well, yes. When one group keeps complaining for years and years, it is understandable the the rest of the people would start to dislike them.

C'mon, is it realistic to expect any fandom to be told that 20 years of continuity doesn't really exist,

Nobody said that about Spider-man and DC fans have to put up with it all the time.

and this grand change comes in easily the worst Spider-Man story ever?

I don't know what you're talking about here. This change didn't take place during the Spider-totem story or maximum Clonage.

Nobody will ever accept or forgive or get over that.

Many people have.

Expecting the debate or complaints to go away and stop is simply not realistic, not reasonable, and not really fair either.

Yeah, I guess expecting the people who don't read a book, haven't for years, and hate everything about it to eventually decide to stop talking about it and move on is a bit much to ask. I mean, what's left for them if they can't wallow in their own bitterness and their self deluded sense that their opinion is the only one that could possibly matter?

Actually, Slott still had his critics before Superior came about.

A lot of Slott's critics came from the simple fact that he was the first one to write Spider-man after OMD. People went over every single issue with a fine tooth comb trying to justify their reasons for hating it and making up all sorts of conspiracy theories and reading thing that weren't there rather than just admitting that the book wasn't to their tastes.

[WebSlingWonder]

Well, yes. When one group keeps complaining for years and years, it is understandable the the rest of the people would start to dislike them.


Nobody said that about Spider-man and DC fans have to put up with it all the time.


I don't know what you're talking about here. This change didn't take place during the Spider-totem story or maximum Clonage.


Many people have.


Yeah, I guess expecting the people who don't read a book, haven't for years, and hate everything about it to eventually decide to stop talking about it and move on is a bit much to ask. I mean, what's left for them if they can't wallow in their own bitterness and their self deluded sense that their opinion is the only one that could possibly matter?


A lot of Slott's critics came from the simple fact that he was the first one to write Spider-man after OMD. People went over every single issue with a fine tooth comb trying to justify their reasons for hating it and making up all sorts of conspiracy theories and reading thing that weren't there rather than just admitting that the book wasn't to their tastes.

And you hit the nail on the head: toxicity is a two way street, and we're all burning in that acid. Hating on the book/story/writer for a story they didn't even write is incredibly unfair (I have my own issues with Slott, but not because of OMD). It gets tiring to hear about "OMD is bad", "OMD sucks", "I'm never reading Spider-Man again" day after day. If the writers and editors won't reverse the story, that's on them: the fans' behaviors towards the creators and to the character, that's on ya'll. It's a two-way street.