"The Enigma Force is not a tool to be manipulated by mortals. The Enigma Force comes to those it deems worthy. What temerity, what arrogance, makes you think you are worthy? Have you not all made mistakes? Unforgiveable ones?" - Captain Universe
"Call me an Avenging Angel, Baron, come to safeguard Earth...call me CAPTAIN UNIVERSE!" - Ray Coffin
"You're my heart, Mary Jane Watson...you're my jackpot." - Peter Parker
I’m legit boggled by this statement.“I completely get that certain fans are fixated on the events of One More Day, as we knew some of them would be. But especially after seeing DC blink after having undone the Superman & Lois marriage and restored it, I certainly wouldn’t change things now or going forward.” - Tom Brevoort, May 2023
But one thing it does tell me is they seem unaware restoring the Super-family was widely regarded as a positive move, and helped the book…
… and that NOTHING is going to get better with these same guys in charge digging their feet in the ground.
It sucks, but statements like these are why I dropped the book.
I also promised DC I’d pick up theirs again once Flash and Superman got their marriages back, and I’ve been true to my word.
"I completely get that certain fans are fixated on the events of One More Day, as we knew some of them would be. But especially after seeing DC blink after having undone the Superman & Lois marriage and restored it, I certainly wouldn’t change things now or going forward.” - Tom Brevoort, May 2023"
Heh, I caught that one, too!
I think--and this is my read of his statement, ofc--is that the issue is DC doing and undoing the Supes\Lois marriage, twice, in fact, makes DC the company look indecisive and weak-willed. Marvel, under Brevoort, has stayed true to the spirit of OMD. And, kudos to them, they clearly factored in the ire it would net. Agree or disagree, the intent is crystal clear.
One thing we rarely discuss, is would it be fair to fans of BND\Slott\Spencer\Wells to file away their fave stories as Satan-tampering? That's 15 years of publishing and counting, soon to rival the marriage in length. If Marvel went there, it would naturally make these fans feel similarly shafted, all to appease the fans of yesteryear. Then, Marvel would have finally pissed everyone off.
Last edited by CaptainUniverse; 06-20-2023 at 02:58 PM.
"The Enigma Force is not a tool to be manipulated by mortals. The Enigma Force comes to those it deems worthy. What temerity, what arrogance, makes you think you are worthy? Have you not all made mistakes? Unforgiveable ones?" - Captain Universe
"Call me an Avenging Angel, Baron, come to safeguard Earth...call me CAPTAIN UNIVERSE!" - Ray Coffin
"You're my heart, Mary Jane Watson...you're my jackpot." - Peter Parker
With the exception of perhaps the current dumpster fire I'm generally against undoing everything from OMD onwards for this reason. They should try and address it but I generally don't like universal erasure. That said, the number of fans hasn't gone up. I'm not sure how many people would be that upset. Like I oppose it but if they put out a new issue 501 again tomorrow and said "nothing after 500 onwards counted" I wouldn't care either, and I'm not sure many people actually would beyond the audacity of such a move.
This is also undeniably true.
DC fixing the Supes marriage is them adjusting to the demands of the market as a whole.
DC had the traditional Supergirl dead for 18 years before reintroducing her.
As somebody who grew up with reading the 2012 to 2017 ASM, I am perfectly fine with that getting gone from the main continuity. A
I doubt Marvel will ever completely retcon post-OMD. Future stories will talk about it the way Morrison talks about Silver Age Batman: This awkward era where Spider-Man was acting weird due to outside influences. In Batman's case it was drugs from Joker and Scarecrow, in Spider-Man's case it will be Mephisto.
The only exceptions are OMD, OMIT (assuming anyone even remembers it), and Wells' run. Wells' run especially is getting retconned the second Wells is out. Those three caused too much damage to be kept. But BND/Slott will be kept in the same way huge parts of the Clone Saga are still canon.
I'm not a fan of the entire post-OMD era being retconned because it's dickish to anyone who likes it, but honestly, I suspect Marvel could gst away with it. Especially since Wells. Wells has retroactively hurt the post-OMD continuity even more. I didn't even think that was possible.
If you're a new fan who bothers to read any back issues or reads the characters' biographies, the full story plays out as: Peter and Mary Jane married and then reality was altered by Mephisto in OMD, OMIT, and via suggestion in Spencer's run. So the logical "conclusion" to that story is that Peter is able to win his marriage back and restore reality in the end. That scenario works with established canon, not against it. And there are ways to address Mephisto's deal and bring the marriage back that don't necessarily resort to making the last 15 years non-canon or altering the events as they occurred.
I doubt there's a huge tangent of young readers that would be so actively opposed to Peter and MJ marrying again. That's really the only scenario that might result in people complaining and feeling shafted. Just look at RYV: sold very well when it was teased that the marriage might be re-instated in 616 and only dropped off the map as an au. And that was after nearly a decade without the marriage or a Peter/MJ relationship. And if you're a more recent fan, then something like Spider-verse is probably going to inform your perception of Peter Parker's character arc.
Last edited by Spider-Tiger; 06-20-2023 at 04:02 PM.
I get what you’re saying there, but there’s a few reasons why I would regard that kind of POV as both contradictory and irrelevant for Marvel:
The way they executed OMD, OMIT and other directly-related strokes was inherently indecisive and weak-willed, at least from a story-telling perspective. Using an outright Faustian Bargain that only utilizes a lame, inherently unbelievable excuse for the changes it created to remove only one thing of major value, and only a small handful of stuff that either was irrelevant (the web shooters) or quickly discarded out of apathy anyways (Harry). I’m going to bring this up later, but because Quesada didn’t want a hard reboot at all, he wound up instilling a change that had a very limited impact on the following stories outside of Peter’s home life… which he and previous editors had already run soap opera-style shenanigans on and had undone fairly easily as well. He also allowed JMS to deliver a story that hinted at and incorporated its own undoing right into it, which also leaves the story in an indecisive place.
To this day we all know that it’s really only editorial stubbornness keeping MJ and Peter separate, not setting consequences. Being terrified of using divorce or death (again) further shows it’s a weak story.
And on the other point… no one cares if an entertainment company changes it’s mind if it does so with commitment. This isn’t sports, or software development, or anything that involves a “performance graded” substance, this is art and entertainment, and the last person the audience really cares about is editorial; artists can sometimes get accused of failing at storytelling, even if “auteur theory” is overblown and stupid, but no one cares about the editors unless they screw up (and, yeah, OMD still *is* a failure on an execution level even if someone agrees with editorial’s opinions of its purpose.)
And both of those sort of combine to how I’d address this next part, since I think you’re a little bit worried and overestimating how much impact OMD has over the rest of the stories:
The fact of the matter is that none of the big “hits” of the post-OMD era depend on OMD anywhere near the way that, to use Brevoort’s own example, the New 52 Superman’s “hits” depended on it being the New 52. Post-OMD’s biggest weaknesses even to new readers have been the unremarkable, largely forgotten civilian love interests for Peter - who are really the only elements dependent on OMD. Silk has her fans as an expansion character who’s teased romance with Peter went nowhere, and Anna Marconi is Otto’s love interest; no one’s lining up for Carlie Cooper even among Brand New Day fans, and Michelle Gonzales was mostly seen as a clear example of how not to write women. I think hardcore Felicia Hardy “shippers” are the largest contingent of people who would “fear” a return of the marriage, but even she’s a victim of OMD’s purpose of rejecting any long term, serious romance.
The “hits” of the post-OMS era are Superior Spider-Man (not Peter, but Otto), Miles (…also not Peter), a handful of good villain stories (again, not Peter), and a bunch of other stuff that really doesn’t involve much major change to Peter’s life - by design, because, again, OMD is in fact an indecisive and weak-willed story.
…Now, I will agree that there’s a way where Marvel could make an unnecessarily chaotic and desolating resolution to OMD’s plot, similar to how DC unnecessarily killed off New 52 Superman to bring back Super-Dad, instead of just quickly integrating them into each other. But that’s unneccessary, because again, OMD is pretty weak-willed and indecisive.
(It does also say something that Brevoort thinks that the marriage coming back was the big deal rather than rebooting the character for the fourth or fifth time in twenty years. Just a liiiiiitle bit myopic there, dude.)
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If Marvel retconned everything after OMD or said that Peter was affected by Mephisto so it all does not matter I would 100% stop reading Spider-Man, even if it brought the marriage back.
“Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down.”
- Grant Morrison on Superman
I can't help but see that when the Super marriage was restored, they also introduced Jon Kent, Lois and Clark's son who has gone on to become a popular character in his own right.
Which makes me think that bringing back Mayday would also be something that could shake up the status quo. With Mayday's appearance in Spider-Verse I think a lot of fans would support bringing her back.
And I don't think new fans would be put off by the return of the marriage. Anyone really into the character will know about OMD, and Peter and MJ as a married couple has gotten a lot of exposure in the Spider-Verse movies.
I don't think the marriage being restored has to retcon everything just like OMD didn't retcon everything that happened during the marriage years. Some things will change but it will mostly be their personal life.
A compromise could be made where Peter and MJ get their memories back of the marriage but no one else does, and they could remarry, or not. That's at least a partial victory. I'll always hold out for reversing the whole thing and bringing Mayday back, but I'd take a compromise if it's all I could get.
Overall the series does need to move forward, but OMD will always feel like an unfinished story to me, and a major dangling plot thread hanging over Spidery until it's resolved.