What Spider-Man Comics have you been reading lately!? Version 3.0

[Spidey_62]

Yeah you would think if they had that much time they would take effort to make a good job out of it. In actual practice one of the reasons for why OMD was such a s--tshow was that there were many improvisations and left turns happening after that which took turns in different directions and all of that sabotaged that story. The broad idea of the plan for OMD was hatched in 2004. The first story that JMS wrote with full knowledge of the reboot was Sins' Past and he wrote that extreme of a story with the idea of it being an experiment that if it fell flat would be retconned out anyway in short order. Or so he was led to believe, and he has said multiple times he wanted OMD to retcon it. Then other stuff got in the way. Obviously the "unmasking" wasn't planned at the start and was an improvisation.

JMS in interviews said that he had many objections to how OMD turned out. Originally he wanted Aunt May to get shot and then immediately lead into OMD feeling that the short time window would help explain the desperation that would justify Peter doing what he did. Instead for some reason (I think partly to give a longer window to BND's writing team to get the first issues out on time), editorial asked him to delay it and pad it out so you had an entire bunch of stories for months which took place across multiple Spider-Man titles while Aunt May was in the hospital on her deathbed. On one hand this was good because we got Back in Black (a story that is basically JMS expressing his frustration and finding some catharsis at the stupid mess he said yes to) and also Matt Fraction's "To Have and to Hold" which Fraction said was a pre-emptive protest against OMD which he knew was coming and which he disagreed with. But on the other hand, JMS was absolutely right in that it killed any tension to May's death because audiences no longer felt emotionally invested in if she was hospitalized in a dying state while at the same time Peter and MJ have romantic idlylls atop ESB and Peter goes smorgasbord on the Kingpin, and gets into a boxing ring with Jonah. JMS also wanted Peter to be the one to say yes to Mephisto and objected to Quesada's idea of MJ being the one to do it. There was also the other objections that he wanted to explain the changes at the end, and even then he wanted to use it to retcon out Sins' Past and so on. Quesada also let JMS believe for a long time that he could actually alter stuff so Gwen could live, and this was an idea that Quesada was open to for a while but he didn't manage that message well. And that's why JMS took his name off the final issues which were entirely written by Joe Q.

But fundamentally I think the truth is that Marvel simply didn't care for OMD. Quesada approached that story nihilistically as a means to an end, obviously not caring that it turn out good or not so much as what he can get out of it. And I think that attitude, the nihilism and insincerity of it all, that was so manifest in the content of the final story that it pretty much damage and ruined morale for the fandom and poisoned the well for BND that came afterwards and that's why the controversy of it never died. OMD is the last truly important story in 616 Spider-Man. Everything that comes after whether in Slott's run or even in Spencer's run isn't lasting or permanent in terms of status-quo. But OMD is. It's a story far more important than anything that came after and it's also the single worst story in the last two decades or so. Marvel Universe villains are always considered villains for believing "the ends justify the means" but this was a case where Marvel Editorial openly and blatantly practised that and got away with it.

Hear hear to all of this.

I think it's worth noting that around 2007 with World War Hulk/Back in Black Paul Jenkins has talked on podcasts about how he realized around then his time with Marvel probably wouldn't last much longer as he was starting to notice a change behind the scenes. He wrote the Civil War Frontline book which apparently sold well above what they expected it to and it was well-regarded critically so he was wanting to do something similar for the World War Hulk Frontline book- since it's about the common folk's perspective he wanted to make it a hurricane Katrina metaphor through the Hulk's destruction. Marvel wouldn't let him and he thought it was weird because it was really the first time they ever flat out told him he couldn't do something. He thinks it was likely because behind other doors the Marvel/Disney talks were going underway and they didn't want to have the Hulk representing something like that.

But anyway that sorta speaks to doing One More Day around the same time where they probably felt safe just getting it over with and having a Spidey again that probably would better reflect what he's gonna be in media across the board. Marvel they spent the early 2000s rebuilding their reputation in comics (and in other media) and they brought in guys like Jenkins to do just that- revitalize the books. Jenkins said Bill Jemas (I believe it was Bill Jemas) said the marketing people's job wasn't to tell the writers what kind of books to make anymore, now it was "the writer's are gonna write what they want and make the best books they can, and you're gonna stand behind what they're doing and market that product." That also meant less events at the time and just letting creators create. Bringing it to bare bones, that line of thinking is what sort of birthed things like the Ultimate line, X-Statix, more Marvel Knights stuff, the MAX line, Morrison on X-Men, bringing indie creators/people that have never worked at Marvel before on for an anthology like Tangled Web, the Igor Kordey drawn Cable run, JMS on Spidey, to Bruce Jones doing his pared down Hulk, to Jenkins doing his introspective Spidey stories being the first sign that the Spidey books could come back from the brink months before USM's launch.

He said it was funny and a bit sad that only when companies are on the brink of bankruptcy do they put all the stock in the creative side and then when they're finally on safer ground they don't really need the creators that way anymore, even despite if by all accounts the old way was working just fine. I personally believe that's why One More Day finally happened around 2007, because the Spidey line had been built back up for that previous 7 years. The sad thing is the way it was done arguably fractured it all over again. I don't dislike the BND era as there are good stories in it but I think like you said, everything after is tainted to a degree because that was so extreme of a step backward.

I don't know if this is controversial but I think the early 2000s NuMarvel era is one of the best eras creatively for a lot of books. I think retrospectively that internal drive to just get themselves out of the hole was a big factor.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

He thinks it was likely because behind other doors the Marvel/Disney talks were going underway and they didn't want to have the Hulk representing something like that.

The Disney buyout happened in 2009 not in 2007. The Disney buyout happened in the wake of Iron Man's box-office success and the implication of a movie franchise leading to the MCU. That's what put them on Bob Iger's raider. Iron Man came out in 2007. In any case, in this situation, I think Marvel's decision to nix a Hurricane Katrina-esque of the aftermath of Hulk's rampage because of what happened when they let Morrison have Magneto go postal on New York. That was a villain who they were no longer comfortable being shown as "a mass murderer of New Yorkers" (to quote the writer who came after Morrison and oversaw the retcon). Whereas Hulk is a hero and good-guy and it's been long-standing editorial policy, and article of faith, that no one dies in the rampages of 616 Hulk.

But anyway that sorta speaks to doing One More Day around the same time where they probably felt safe just getting it over with and having a Spidey again that probably would better reflect what he's gonna be in media across the board.

Joe Quesada said in interviews that he had "three genies he wanted to put back in the bottle". One was that he wanted to reduce the number of mutants (House of M), the other was that he wanted Marvel to be as unpredictable as he believed it was in the '60s (Civil War) and the third was to end the marriage of Spider-Man and MJ (OMD). If you put that on a timeline, you can see that House of M came first, and then Civil War.

My feeling has always been that when Quesada started at Marvel at 2000 he didn't really have pull at the outset. The reason being that his predecessor Bob Harras was very hands-on. So as the guy who came right after a guy who ended a very short tenure, he had to be quiet and bide his time. Stuff like Ultimate Marvel and the MAX Line for instance was all Bill Jemas' ideas, and not Quesada's, and he was quite reluctant and skeptical about Ultimate Spider-Man at the start (even if he later used it to justify OMD and BND, rather hypocritically). So Bill Jemas was the guy who had more pull and say at the start. I always had this sense that OMD was something that Quesada was more invested in then Marvel corporate because they were all reeling from the failure of the 6 years or so in the mid-to-late '90s they wasted in futile in attempts to end the marriage and bring Spider-Man back to his "roots". Then the Spider-Man movies came out and the Peter-MJ romance and love story was central to that. In fact Mary Jane's big role in those movies is why we have Spider-Man loves Mary Jane to begin with...(Marvel bosses realized that those movies made her essentially Marvel's "first lady" in that period and there needed to be titles to showcase that) And Quesada had to prove himself a success so he had to do events that gave Marvel Corporate what they wanted (HoM, Civil War) so he'd have more freedom to do what he wanted. Remember that 2004 was also the year that David Maisel hatched the plot for what became the MCU and that meant editorial had a mandate to put more focus on Iron Man and the Avengers. In 2005-2007, Maisel oversaw the Lionsgate made-for-TV animated productions as proof-of-concept for the MCU.

I don't know if this is controversial but I think the early 2000s NuMarvel era is one of the best eras creatively for a lot of books. I think retrospectively that internal drive to just get themselves out of the hole was a big factor.

That period is a favorite and highly beloved era for many fans for the reasons you say. I also think that was the last truly great era for 616 Spider-Man -- JMS on ASM, Jenkins on Spectacular, Marvel Knights:Spider-Man, Sensational Spider-Man with the Fraction Annual, stuff like The Pulse with its first 6 issues showing Norman going to jail, Tom Beland's "Web of Romance" one-shot, also Spider-Man Blue.

[PCN24454]

It's funny. I came to this forum to stop talking about the epidemic, but it's full of people doing nothing but talk about OMD.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Yeah you would think if they had that much time they would take effort to make a good job out of it. In actual practice one of the reasons for why OMD was such a s--tshow was that there were many improvisations and left turns happening after that which took turns in different directions and all of that sabotaged that story. The broad idea of the plan for OMD was hatched in 2004. The first story that JMS wrote with full knowledge of the reboot was Sins' Past and he wrote that extreme of a story with the idea of it being an experiment that if it fell flat would be retconned out anyway in short order. Or so he was led to believe, and he has said multiple times he wanted OMD to retcon it. Then other stuff got in the way. Obviously the "unmasking" wasn't planned at the start and was an improvisation.

JMS in interviews said that he had many objections to how OMD turned out. Originally he wanted Aunt May to get shot and then immediately lead into OMD feeling that the short time window would help explain the desperation that would justify Peter doing what he did. Instead for some reason (I think partly to give a longer window to BND's writing team to get the first issues out on time), editorial asked him to delay it and pad it out so you had an entire bunch of stories for months which took place across multiple Spider-Man titles while Aunt May was in the hospital on her deathbed. On one hand this was good because we got Back in Black (a story that is basically JMS expressing his frustration and finding some catharsis at the stupid mess he said yes to) and also Matt Fraction's "To Have and to Hold" which Fraction said was a pre-emptive protest against OMD which he knew was coming and which he disagreed with. But on the other hand, JMS was absolutely right in that it killed any tension to May's death because audiences no longer felt emotionally invested in if she was hospitalized in a dying state while at the same time Peter and MJ have romantic idlylls atop ESB and Peter goes smorgasbord on the Kingpin, and gets into a boxing ring with Jonah. JMS also wanted Peter to be the one to say yes to Mephisto and objected to Quesada's idea of MJ being the one to do it. There was also the other objections that he wanted to explain the changes at the end, and even then he wanted to use it to retcon out Sins' Past and so on. Quesada also let JMS believe for a long time that he could actually alter stuff so Gwen could live, and this was an idea that Quesada was open to for a while but he didn't manage that message well. And that's why JMS took his name off the final issues which were entirely written by Joe Q.

But fundamentally I think the truth is that Marvel simply didn't care for OMD. Quesada approached that story nihilistically as a means to an end, obviously not caring that it turn out good or not so much as what he can get out of it. And I think that attitude, the nihilism and insincerity of it all, that was so manifest in the content of the final story that it pretty much damage and ruined morale for the fandom and poisoned the well for BND that came afterwards and that's why the controversy of it never died. OMD is the last truly important story in 616 Spider-Man. Everything that comes after whether in Slott's run or even in Spencer's run isn't lasting or permanent in terms of status-quo. But OMD is. It's a story far more important than anything that came after and it's also the single worst story in the last two decades or so. Marvel Universe villains are always considered villains for believing "the ends justify the means" but this was a case where Marvel Editorial openly and blatantly practised that and got away with it.

Didn't know any of this about Back In Black or Matt Fraction's issue. Interesting.

Now that I think about it, any OMD retcon will also have to retcon any event that retroactively happened due to OMD. Sins Past and the additional powers were easy to ignore, but the unmasking will trickier. Unless Marvel will just role with Quesada's deus ex machina explanation that "Doctor Strange cast a spell".

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Didn't know any of this about Back In Black or Matt Fraction's issue. Interesting.

Yeah, it's ironic that the only outright great stories made possible by OMD were the ones written before it hit the stands, and both of them driven by outright contempt and dislike for what was about to ensue.

Now that I think about it, any OMD retcon will also have to retcon any event that retroactively happened due to OMD. Sins Past and the additional powers were easy to ignore, but the unmasking will trickier. Unless Marvel will just role with Quesada's deus ex machina explanation that "Doctor Strange cast a spell".

Removing OMD is simple. Just have Peter and MJ, as they are now, get married, and when they do, they suddenly remember everything from the original timeline. That way every story between OMD and the end of it, gets to be in continuity and the original stories with the marriage can be invoked as married stories. As time passes the small niggling issues would smooth out.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Removing OMD is simple. Just have Peter and MJ, as they are now, get married, and when they do, they suddenly remember everything from the original timeline. That way every story between OMD and the end of it, gets to be in continuity and the original stories with the marriage can be invoked as married stories. As time passes the small niggling issues would smooth out.

Alternatively, in a worst case scenario, two people being in love and living together without being married is common enough now that you can get Peter and MJ back to a married-esque status quo without violating Editors' silly mandate. OMD now arguably reads like a Boomer's interpretation of marriage from an era when it was the end-all-be-all of love. I know that was my impression reading it for the first time last year while knowing that Peter and MJ are now back together in the comics. I mean, in hindsight you could argue Peter and MJ played Mephisto by taking advantage of a legal loophole and that Mephisto was dumb to put so much emphasis on a human-made legal contract. In that sense there is a bit of truth in saying that OMD doesn't look as bad on Peter and MJ as it did in 2007, but not for the reasons Quesada would think.

[Scott Taylor]

Yah pretty much just having MJ and Peter remember (and hopefully do something about it) would be the minimum way to handle things. You'd still have the problem of the red pigeon and the Brick (TM) preventing the wedding though.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

OMD now arguably reads like a Boomer's interpretation of marriage from an era when it was the end-all-be-all of love. I know that was my impression reading it for the first time last year while knowing that Peter and MJ are now back together in the comics.

For a lot of people, marriage still does mean something substantially different than a live-in relationship. Especially the case of this marriage, and likewise to these characters. More importantly, it wouldn't work as a substitute post-OMD anyway.It mattered that Spider-Man got married and it still matters even now.

I mean, in hindsight you could argue Peter and MJ played Mephisto by taking advantage of a legal loophole and that Mephisto was dumb to put so much emphasis on a human-made legal contract.

I don't know, Mephisto is a terrible character in normal times, whose most significant action was to make Doctor Doom look good. Even with what was established, him going after the marriage made no sense leave alone his special time bubble powers that weren't established before until that story.

Yah pretty much just having MJ and Peter remember (and hopefully do something about it) would be the minimum way to handle things. You'd still have the problem of the red pigeon and the Brick (TM) preventing the wedding though.

Which is why them remembering the deal and the original timeline is important...because then people can ignore OMIT for good.

[Spidey_62]

Omit OMIT!

(sorry Paolo Rivera, you did beautiful art for that whole thing but the story was... urk)

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Omit OMIT!

(sorry Paolo Rivera, you did beautiful art for that whole thing but the story was... urk)

Actual footage of Quesada narrating OMIT to writers:

[TheCape]

Just read the first two Trades of the Ben Reilly Epic Collection. It has been fun in the main tittles, Jurgens, DeFalco, Mackie and Degazzo are doing solid work but the Scarlet Spider titles that worked as a transition are meh at best and the minis with both Punisher and Venom are awfull, do yourself a favor and don't read then.

[TheCape]

I also decided to read the classic "The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man" truly a great story and a heartbreaking ending (i actually tear up a bit at the end).

[Kaitou D. Kid]

For a lot of people, marriage still does mean something substantially different than a live-in relationship. Especially the case of this marriage, and likewise to these characters. More importantly, it wouldn't work as a substitute post-OMD anyway.It mattered that Spider-Man got married and it still matters even now.

I don't know, Mephisto is a terrible character in normal times, whose most significant action was to make Doctor Doom look good. Even with what was established, him going after the marriage made no sense leave alone his special time bubble powers that weren't established before until that story.

I don't think you can get away with never bringing it up again, but I think you can get away with telling conventional Peter/MJ stories without OMD getting in the way now more than ever since its release. Nick Spencer is even doing this to a certain extent. I mean, it's not a perfect long-term solution, but it's enough to pull them out of the will-they-won't-they phase of the Slott era and back into relationship territory. That is half the battle, IMO.

[Pav]

Just read the first two Trades of the Ben Reilly Epic Collection. It has been fun in the main tittles, Jurgens, DeFalco, Mackie and Degazzo are doing solid work but the Scarlet Spider titles that worked as a transition are meh at best and the minis with both Punisher and Venom are awfull, do yourself a favor and don't read then.

They're definitely meh stories, but I absolutely loved them as a kid. Seeing "Scarlet Spider" as the title blew my mind, and I think the covers / artwork were pretty excellent.

Plus, the Scarlet+GG team-up against Joystick remains my favorite to this day.

-Pav, who admits Scarlet+Ricochet may tie for first now...

[Matt Parker]

I finally caught up on Nick Spencer's Spider-Man run last night. I had been buying the comics regularly but they had been collecting dust on my shelf. I finally read everything I missed (save for 2 issues I have yet to pick up due to me changing comics shops while moving across the country). Overall, I am really enjoying his run. I think he sometimes leans to far into the comedy and is guilty of letting Peter get lost in the shuffle, but he gets the character and is just better at capturing his voice that Dan Slott was (no offense to Mr. Slott, who wrote a run that I found very enjoyable).