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  1. #31
    Extraordinary Member Lukmendes's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by NC_Yankee View Post
    How did he want to write OMD?
    From what I heard, he wanted to do some **** that would make Peter and Harry be better friends, think around the drug trilogy, which would lead to Norman not becoming Green Goblin again in ASM#121, which would mean Gwen would be still be alive.

    If true that's a cosmic retcon DC style, something the OMD we got ended up being, but JMS' version would change even more.

  2. #32
    Loony Scott Taylor's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by NC_Yankee View Post
    How did he want to write OMD?
    He said he specifically wanted to use OMD to retcon things like the Other and Sins Past. The method, according to Quesada, had to do with doing a whole bunch of other things like having Gwen be still alive. Retconning a bunch of Spider-history. And Quesada vetoed that idea, according to him, at the ninth hour when he was handed the script by JMS.

    JMS said things, Quesada said things. Who knows how it would have played out really? It was clearly an idea that never played out in the comics. What we got in the actual OMD story was a mix of some of JMS ideas and some by Quesada.

    To me its pretty clear that OMD was the plan from the start of the JMS run, and that alot of the really whackadoodle stuff he was allowed to do was because "who cares its all going away at the end of the run anyhow."
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  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Taylor View Post
    He said he specifically wanted to use OMD to retcon things like the Other and Sins Past. The method, according to Quesada, had to do with doing a whole bunch of other things like having Gwen be still alive. Retconning a bunch of Spider-history. And Quesada vetoed that idea, according to him, at the ninth hour when he was handed the script by JMS.

    JMS said things, Quesada said things. Who knows how it would have played out really? It was clearly an idea that never played out in the comics. What we got in the actual OMD story was a mix of some of JMS ideas and some by Quesada.

    To me its pretty clear that OMD was the plan from the start of the JMS run, and that alot of the really whackadoodle stuff he was allowed to do was because "who cares its all going away at the end of the run anyhow."
    Thank you for the information. I did not know this.

  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lukmendes View Post
    From what I heard, he wanted to do some **** that would make Peter and Harry be better friends, think around the drug trilogy, which would lead to Norman not becoming Green Goblin again in ASM#121, which would mean Gwen would be still be alive.

    If true that's a cosmic retcon DC style, something the OMD we got ended up being, but JMS' version would change even more.
    The very idea of a OMD ending ( instead of the Ditko onward storyline) is beyond bad. I do not think bringing back Gwen would have been as bad as what we got. Why? 1: The deal with Mephisto and selling your soul. 2: Man-Child Pete and the rest of Slott's run. That said the idea of Gwen back would have been a failure ( see Clone Saga as exhibit A. Do I prefer MJ? You better believe it. But what did we get with an OMD outcome? The Other, Sins Past and BND three of the most despised stories in Spider-Man history. All of this goes back to one thing and one thing only: An unwillingness of Marvel to allow Pete to grow up ( fear of this was what caused the Clone Saga as well). Well we now have a successful teenage Spider-Man (Miles), and proof ( RYV and the newspaper strip) that people will accept a grown up Pete. I hope in the next year that OMD is gone and never returns.

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Taylor View Post
    He said he specifically wanted to use OMD to retcon things like the Other and Sins Past. The method, according to Quesada, had to do with doing a whole bunch of other things like having Gwen be still alive. Retconning a bunch of Spider-history. And Quesada vetoed that idea, according to him, at the ninth hour when he was handed the script by JMS.
    That’s not exactly the case.

    http://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.co...c=18701.0;wap2

    JMS explains here. JMS wanted a new timeline that created a change where the long term result was that Peter and MJ never married and the side effects of that was that both Harry and Gwen would live. As per JMS in that link he was working on a rigorous timeline by which every story still happened with all these changes in place but he was only a part of the way in it before Quesada vetoed it. My understanding is that Quesada miscommunicated and poorly co-ordinated the back and forth between JMS and the BND team. He let JMS believe he could do the story as he wanted while letting the BND people think they could start new without worrying about continuity stuff. This led JMS to ask his name off only to compromise with Quesada doing a co-writer credit and as such taking all the (deserved) blame.

    As for whether that would have been better? What JMS was doing was reviving the Lee Romita era as a permanent status quo. That period has an undeniable charisma to it that the Bronze Age (which is what BND was reviving) doesn’t have. I do think that a Mephisto deal which unambiguously brings Gwen and Harry back rather than simply Aunt May back would have been bittersweet. It would also create something new like say Peter and MJ having a relationship without Gwen’s shadow between them. Gwen having character development and so on. It would have opened up the books more than before. I would have preferred no OMD just as I prefer no Brexit but in that context, JMS’ retcon a unambiguously leaving the EU with a good deal rather than what happened in n fact.

    I mean OMD is Spider-Man’s biggest defeat more than Gwen’s death. If you are introducing a new low point for the character a fair trade would be the previous one in exchange.


    What we got in the actual OMD story was a mix of some of JMS ideas and some by Quesada.
    It’s all Quesada. JMS said he never agreed with ending the marriage and the premise but he wrote it as a favour to Quesada who he was friends with and still went in thinking he could get the best story out of it.

    Personally, I was perfectly happy keeping them married; I didn’t think Mephisto should be used in that fashion, and I didn’t like the idea of erasing everyone’s memory. Whenever you bring magic into a story you have to be really rigorous about the rest of it. And a lot of logical questions to my mind were not being addressed. Having said that, it’s a complicated universe and it is Joe’s purview.
    — J. Michael Straczynski

    And in any case the idea behind OMD was stolen from the rejected Superman 2000 proposal that got Waid, Millar, Morrison all chucked out of DC and sent them scurrying to Marvel. It’s probably not a coincidence that Waid, per Morrison the most fixated on ending Superman’s marriage, worked on BND.

    https://sites.google.com/site/deepsp...-2000-proposal

    To me its pretty clear that OMD was the plan from the start of the JMS run, and that alot of the really whackadoodle stuff he was allowed to do was because "who cares its all going away at the end of the run anyhow."
    Nope. OMD wasn’t decided until a writer’s retreat about 2004 or 2005. At the onset JMS approaches ASM with the full freedom to do it as he wished.

    JMS said that he was told Sins’ Past could be retconned at the end of his run and he mentioned that a couple of times. So I think Sins’ Past the first story written with the knowledge of the train wreck at the end. That also led to Spider-Man at Avengers Tower and Mark Millar said that having Peter reveal his identity in Civil War was suggested by Breevort because OMD was greenlit already. Likewise Matt Fraction wrote To Have and to Hold as a preemptive protest against OMD . So it was decided later rather than earlier.

    JMS also said that as in that link above that the original idea was May gets shot and then immediately it leads to Mephisto but they wanted to stretch out a few more issues and pad it out. JMS felt that stretching it out made the dramatic desperation for Peter to make the deal harder to accept for readers. On the other hand, a side-effect of that is BACK IN BLACK which is JMS’ true ending of his run. JMS’ other regret about OMD is that MJ is the one making the real. Originally it would be Peter. He felt if looked bad if Leter guilt tripped her into doing it passive-aggressively.

    So on the whole Part 2 of JMS’ run is flawed because he wrote it knowing that OMD was gonna happen. So yeah, JMS’ run was definitely sabotaged by Marvel. JMS made a bad situation worse with Sins’ Past and better with Back in Black.

  6. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Conway's original Clone Saga is a great story that was criminally misunderstood and misappropriated in the '90s by Terry Kavanagh and others.
    ... I gotta admit, I agree with you on that. The first Clone Saga is a great 70s romp. Conway never intended for there to be any ambiguity or follow ups to his story because, in his mind, there was no way Marvel would ever replace Peter with a Clone. Every attempt to go back to that well has resulted in diminishing returns. Although, I did like the redo mini-series Defalco did a decade ago telling the second Clone Saga the way it was intended.

  7. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Taylor View Post
    He said he specifically wanted to use OMD to retcon things like the Other and Sins Past. The method, according to Quesada, had to do with doing a whole bunch of other things like having Gwen be still alive. Retconning a bunch of Spider-history. And Quesada vetoed that idea, according to him, at the ninth hour when he was handed the script by JMS.

    JMS said things, Quesada said things. Who knows how it would have played out really? It was clearly an idea that never played out in the comics. What we got in the actual OMD story was a mix of some of JMS ideas and some by Quesada.

    To me its pretty clear that OMD was the plan from the start of the JMS run, and that alot of the really whackadoodle stuff he was allowed to do was because "who cares its all going away at the end of the run anyhow."
    How? Quesada had been looking to put the genie of the marriage "back in the bottle". OMD was a story that was going to happen regardless. Which is why they allowed Peter to unmask during Civil War. JMS saw an opportunity with OMD to go back and "fix" some of his own storylines that hadn't gone down well with the fans. If JMS had done it his way, we would have had a vastly different landscape (If anything I reckon JMS would have used Loki instead of Mephisto).

    However, Joey Q just wanted the marriage (plus the identity reveal) undone and everything else to remain more or less the same and thats what we got. But so much has been said by both parties over the years to really know for sure. At the end of the day, no matter what JMS may or may not have wanted, the ultimate decision was always with Quesada.

  8. #38
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    While I love mysticism and the occult, I feel as though he didn’t execute it well.

    Not having the same rogues every single month was a breath of fresh air, and I’m disappointed that more writers don’t at least try to do new things.

    I dislike how he characterized May and MJ because it felt like he reduced them to sounding boards than actual characters. Having May find out Peter’s secret by accident is a cheap tactic that I hate when writers do.

  9. #39
    Mighty Member cable guy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hugo Strange View Post
    Great and terrible moments, JMS' run was like a roller coaster ride.
    I thought the Great far outweighed the terrible.

    It was a awesome ride for me.

  10. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by mikedesil View Post
    I thought the Great far outweighed the terrible.

    It was a awesome ride for me.
    Just the opposite for me, hated the totem aspect, Sins Past, the new powers, just didn't work for me

  11. #41

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    Quote Originally Posted by RD155 View Post
    Agreed. Thought he had a really good run. The magic/mysticism theme to his run never resonated with me though. I give him credit for attempting something different but it just never fit Spider-Man. I absolutely hated the entire concept that it was somehow fate and Peter was the chosen one in sense. One of the more appealing aspects to the character was that it could have been anyone that the Spider bit. There was nothing special of fateful about his origin.z

    JMS on the bright side had some fantastic stories though during the run. His first Morlun arc is a flat out classic to me. His characterization for Peter was great and he also wrote one of the better marriages. He also did the impossible task of making Aunt May actually interesting.

    All in all I liked his run especially when you compare it to what came after with Slott. However It can’t be ignored that he did write Sins past, the other and OMD. Just 3 absolutely atrocious storylines and one could make a strong argument that those 3 are the worst Spider-Man stories ever.


    The Other and OMD aren't all his thing, one has input from various writers and the other was more of Joe Quesada's ideas.

    Quote Originally Posted by Spidey_62 View Post
    I like to think the run is just those first 38 issues. The first story is one of the best Spidey stories ever to me. It feels like the run with JRJR is pretty pure, it feels like what JMS wanted to tell pretty much unabated. I don't much care for thinking about the 2nd half of the run. I mean it starts off from there almost at the very bottom of the barrel with Sins Past, then it's really a mix of ok to terrible controversy after controversy with The Other, and One More Day. Wasn't a big fan of the Back in Black or Civil War stuff. I was losing interest at the time with all of that because Peter died and his life became crappier and crappier within the span of a year or two and it wasn't fun to read, it was just dark with not much else middle ground.
    Back in Black is awesome. Speaking if which; while I appreciate the other two runs concurrent with this one, it's amusing to look at them with a more chipper Spider-Man compared to his rage of nearly killing everyone he punches in Amazing line.
    Last edited by Speed Force League Unlimited; 11-23-2019 at 04:22 AM.
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  12. #42
    Better than YOU! Alan2099's Avatar
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    At the end of the day, no matter what JMS may or may not have wanted, the ultimate decision was always with Quesada.
    The idea may have been Quesada's but the execution was JMS.

    I've seen a lot of writers take horrible ideas over the years and make them interesting. If it wasn't good it's because JMS didn't write it good.

  13. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alan2099 View Post
    The idea may have been Quesada's but the execution was JMS.
    In the case of OMD only about the first two issues were written by JMS but the final issues were written by Quesada as is apparent with comparison to OMIT.

    I've seen a lot of writers take horrible ideas over the years and make them interesting.
    And there are a lot of great writers and others who can’t cut it and aren’t lesser for it.

    Writers shouldn’t be judged by their ability to make a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Because it’s pretty rare and always on specific cases where that happens. And there’s always an upper limit on terms of what can be done.

    JMS was repeatedly overruled. He wanted Aunt May getting shot to immediately lead into OMD for proper drastic dramatic immediacy. Having May get admitted into a coma for several real time months while Peter goes on an awesome revenge spree definitely lowered the stakes for the reader in terms of emotions. Especially when you factor all the tie- ins written at the time.

    Then after being led to believe that he could do OMD as he wanted he was overruled. He also had issues with MJ and not Peter making the deal.

    So on multiple cases JMS was overruled. Three strikes in fact. So I think it’s more than fair to blame Quesada for that especially since JMS was doing him a solid by agreeing to a story whose fundamental idea he was against. JMS agreed to do it as a friendly favour to Quesada and a professional courtesy even if he wanted and preferred the marriage staying.

  14. #44
    Mighty Member Chubistian's Avatar
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    I came into this run long after it was concluded and knowing beforehand of its rights and wrongs. I really like the whole John Romita Jr era with the sole exception of the 9/11 issue (I'm not taking into account the issues scripted by Fiona Avery). Afterwards, I think there're some mediocre storylines like Sins Past and Skin Deep. OMD and The Other are pretty bad, but everything else I do like a lot. I don't like the totemic concept of the spider powers per se, but I think Straczynski made it work and comicbooks like Spider-Verse make me appreciate the oportunities this origin gives. Besides, it doesn't truly affect the scientific origin Ditko and Lee did in Amazing Fantasy #15
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  15. #45
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    JMS Spider-Man is what I think of when I think 'Adult Peter Parker'. He is mature but childlike. He is flawed but competent. He is also one of Marvel's best role models for men. I love how sensitive and good with kids he is without coming off "uncool" or emasculated.

    I think people misinterpret the totem thing. JMS' point is that there is something mythical about Spider-Man as a concept. That's why different cultures have all had stories of characters similar to Spider-Man. Whether or not that is literally true never mattered.
    Last edited by Kaitou D. Kid; 05-18-2020 at 08:46 AM.

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