Thread Drift: Aunt May and One More Day

[boots]

I will, however, scream if a writer decides to say she was at Woodstock.

it'd explain a lot. so, what's that secret ingredient in your wheat cakes, aunt may?

[Sardorim]

Aunt May would sooner die in peace than let a demonic entity violate the rights of so many and erase her granddaughter from existence as well as ruining Peter and MJ's happiness.

[Yvonmukluk]

Well, I believe this rather decisively answers the question once and for all. The last conversation between Peter & Aunt May (via seance), from Sensational Spider-Man #39:





Ultimately, I think, as much as Peter would rage against the fact he could do nothing, at the guilt he felt for allowing things to happen...he would have accepted it, especially in light of this conversation. It's literally what Aunt May wanted of him.

But sadly, of course, editorial mandates made him outright do the exact opposite of her wishes to make himself feel better & avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of his actions.

[Phantom Roxas]

But because that scene can be so easily used to devalue the arguments in favor of One More Day, that scene itself needs to be devalued somehow, like… um… I don't know. Okay, maybe the evidence must only be from Amazing? You can use evidence to support the idea that Aunt May would have accepted her death, but you're only allowed to use evidence from a specific source.

[Vortex85]

Well, I believe this rather decisively answers the question once and for all. The last conversation between Peter & Aunt May (via seance), from Sensational Spider-Man #39:

Man, this author knew what was up. Between this and issue 40, he gets my respect 100%! I read all this at the time but didn't connect the dots because I had no idea OMD was coming. But looking back, he was making all my points for me that I have been talking about 8 years later before it even happend.

[Mister Mets]

Aunt May would sooner die in peace than let a demonic entity violate the rights of so many and erase her granddaughter from existence as well as ruining Peter and MJ's happiness.

The granddaughter didn't exist yet, and dying of complications from a bullet wound while the authorities are hunting her adopted son is not really a peaceful way to go.

[Punisher007]

"Spider-Man willingly makes a deal with a demon." I'm sorry, but you know that this entire premise is "problematic" to say the least just from that brief synopsis. Really the two scenes that shouldn't have been in the story, if Joey Q and co wanted to make it even REMOTELY good, were:

-May specifically telling Peter that she WANTED to die and be with Uncle Ben again (she's like 90 years old and has god knows how many health problems, so she's not in the best of shape anyway). It just drives home how completely selfish Peter is during this entire "story."

-The scene where all of the MU's super-geniuses cannot fix a simple gunshot wound. Bullcrap Quesada, bullcrap.

Also, using Mephisto was a mistake since A. this doesn't even remotely fit his M.O. (he's never done this before or sense), and B. he's never been this powerful before or since. That wasn't Mephisto, that was a walking deus ex machine that Joey Q called "Mephisto."

[Punisher007]

Every time I see a disgruntled fan throw that into one of their online arguments, I want to forward it along to their parents and grandparents. :-)

Well given the agonizing deaths that my grandmother and uncle had (and prolonged in my grandmother's case), after YEARS of debilitating health problems, you probably wouldn't have had much luck convincing them that Peter did the right thing.

[Mister Mets]

Well given the agonizing deaths that my grandmother and uncle had (and prolonged in my grandmother's case), after YEARS of debilitating health problems, you probably wouldn't have had much luck convincing them that Peter did the right thing.

That doesn't seem applicable to Aunt May in Brand New Day or later.

[Sardorim]

The granddaughter didn't exist yet, and dying of complications from a bullet wound while the authorities are hunting her adopted son is not really a peaceful way to go.

A bullet that apparently only a demon could heal.

I stand by MJ being oregnant, the signs supported it and Memphis to even taunts them over casting aside their daughter and ignoring Aunt May's wishes.

Peter has been through worse and came out fine.

[dragonmp93]

That doesn't seem applicable to Aunt May in Brand New Day or later.

Well, i have a cousin that screamed out of pain for 10 hours after a thief shot him in the head, and you wont believe all we have to do to keep him from killing himself while waiting for surgery; anyways, after the 12-hours-surgery, he survived but since then he has severe problems of coordination in the four limbs, especially in the right hand.

[Scott Taylor]

Man, this author knew what was up. Between this and issue 40, he gets my respect 100%! I read all this at the time but didn't connect the dots because I had no idea OMD was coming. But looking back, he was making all my points for me that I have been talking about 8 years later before it even happend.

It is really strange, though, that they had scenes like this in the Spider-Man comics building up to OMD. Comics should build on each other, to the extent they can, and support the future direction. Marvel really did a lousy job prepping fans for OMD and selling them on the new direction.

[Mister Mets]

A bullet that apparently only a demon could heal.

I stand by MJ being oregnant, the signs supported it and Memphis to even taunts them over casting aside their daughter and ignoring Aunt May's wishes.

Peter has been through worse and came out fine.

The bullet was removed, and the bleeding was stemmed. So medical professionals were able to solve that specific problem. Comas are harder to fix. My impression of OMIT was that Aunt May would have pulled through without Mephisto's involvement. He just took credit for something that would have happened anyway as long as Peter had been by May's side.

As for MJ being pregnant, that seems really unlikely.

From the issue, there was no reference to the future child having already been conceived, something Mephisto would have enjoyed gloating about. Nor was there any indication that Mary Jane was aware of any pregnancy. She could easily have just been sick due to the stress of a difficult decision. An upset stomach has also become visual shorthand for that. She may also have just been sobbing, which people often do in difficult situations.

There just isn’t sufficient reason to conclude that the writers and artist are trying to convey that she was pregnant. It seems pretty clear that this wasn’t a result that the reader was intended to come to, considering how it was never clearly stated. If it was meant to be a plot point, it would have been easy enough to construct a few lines of dialogue making that explicit. Currently, for this fan theory to pan out, the reader would have to connect several dots to understand something that seems to be rather important to the story.

That said, it’s technically possible that MJ was expecting Spider-Man’s baby. And it doesn’t even matter what Marvel’s planning at the moment. The next Editor-in-Chief and writer could always reveal that MJ was pregnant, even if that wasn’t the intent of Quesada or JMS. Likewise, if Quesada and JMS intended to suggest that, chose to keep it vague, and decided to never to mention it in subsequent interviews, those plans could very easily change if the next creative teams decide that it’s a topic that isn’t worth addressing.

I understand the confusion. Comics is a medium which is heavily reliant on visual shorthand, and a young woman possibly throwing up is visual shorthand for morning sickness. This is also a story that ends with the revelation about the child Mary Jane could have had.

But I think it's a storytelling choice where they didn't realize the implications of a scene. A similar thing happened with the wedding annual, which some interpreted as MJ having a hell of a bachelorette party with Bruce Wayne.



The bathroom conversation occurred with different dialogue in the final issue of One Moment in Time. This version of Peter and MJ were explicitly not married. They were just on the verge of a break-up. There’s just as much evidence that she’s suffering from “obvious morning sickness” in this scene, as there was for One More Day. I wouldn’t be surprised to see fan theories in the future about what happened to Mary Jane during the gap between her appearances here and her later return to the books.

[Yvonmukluk]

It is really strange, though, that they had scenes like this in the Spider-Man comics building up to OMD. Comics should build on each other, to the extent they can, and support the future direction. Marvel really did a lousy job prepping fans for OMD and selling them on the new direction.

I think it's indicative of the grassroots support for the marriage (or hatred of OMD) that the creatives went out and undermined Quesada's magnum opus in advance. It was a low-level writer revolt.

[Phantom Roxas]

The granddaughter didn't exist yet, and dying of complications from a bullet wound while the authorities are hunting her adopted son is not really a peaceful way to go.

The granddaughter did exist. It's just that the ambiguity of her fate makes it convenient for people to choose to believe that she died so one doesn't have to believe that the story crosses every moral boundary. Just plenty of them.