Quote Originally Posted by RD155 View Post
I haven’t read marvel 1000 but I find it weird that JMS would say that was his biggest regret. Not doubting you or anything and I agree that the story was bad but the dude literally wanted his name off of OMD before it was even released. Literally had a gun to his head to write that story. What an awful situation for a writer to be in.....

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single person say they enjoyed or even remotely liked on any level OMD.
JMS is willing to own that Sins' Past was his idea, and that he is responsible for that. So that's on him. Having said that, I think Marvel Editorial, and Quesada in particular should have blocked that.

OMD wasn't his idea or story. Apparently Quesada came to him with the story, including Mephisto and everything. He agreed to do the story out of friendship to Quesada even if he disagreed with everything.

I was re-reading JMS' run the past week from beginning to end (i.e. Coming Home to Back in Black) and the remarkable thing is that until Sins' Past there wasn't a single bad issue in that run. 38 issues of solid consistent work from Coming Home to The Book of Ezekiel, which is the entirety of his collaboration with JRJR. But Sins' Past was a bad story that stretched for 6 issues and it did tarnish his run. There are excellent stuff later with the New Avengers tie-in fight with Hydra being an underrated gem, and probably the best showing of Spider-Man with the Avengers and of course the legendary Civil War tie-in with Captain America giving his "you move" speech but it was pretty uneven until Back in Black his late-game masterpiece.

You know it's funny, JMS said later that initially he wanted Aunt May getting shot to lead directly to OMD and not do the coma thing since the drama of the moment would be curtailed if you stretched it out and be counter to the desperation you need to cultivate to take Peter there...but Quesada wanted a delay and that led to Back in Black. And I think Back in Black is basically JMS venting in frustrating at the totally unsatisfactory manner he has to end his run. It also brings in a lot of themes on how JMS saw Peter and his evolution as a character to a head.