Thread Drift: JMS' original plans for One More Day

[boots]

I'd rather Dan just use my idea. Which I totally release all my rights to if that actually resolves the OMD issue once and for all.

can anyone explain why jms seems to get the benefit of the doubt amongst marriage supporters when he was the writer of omd and when his original idea would have resent spidey's history even further back than the marriage?

i know he's said supportive things re the marriage and come out swinging against marvel since so there might be a feeling of camaraderie, but it seems odd to me that a guy who wanted to erase the marriage + extra is pretty much the poster guy for the marriage.

or have i got some of the details wrong?

[UnknownEntity]

can anyone explain why jms seems to get the benefit of the doubt amongst marriage supporters when he was the writer of omd and when his original idea would have resent spidey's history even further back than the marriage?

i know he's said supportive things re the marriage and come out swinging against marvel since so there might be a feeling of camaraderie, but it seems odd to me that a guy who wanted to erase the marriage + extra is pretty much the poster guy for the marriage.

or have i got some of the details wrong?

JMS did not want to erase the marriage and he wasn't the architect of One More Day. That was Joe Quesada who ended up writing most of the final product while JMS distanced himself from the project and even asked not to have his name credited in the final issues. JMS' run made the marriage the most enjoyable and well done because the idea was embraced instead of just looking for ways to get rid of it. Supposedly what Marvel wanted to do was retcon a past event from Spider Man's history. The two options were ASM Annual 21 (the marriage) and Harry Osborn's drug addiction IIRC which would've supposedly left Gwen Stacy alive. For a company that prides themselves in moving forward they sure look back a lot.

But why couldn't they retcon something truly BAD like the convoluted mess of the Clone Saga and instead went for something good and positive like the marriage. The choice was not business, it was personal preference and damn the fans who invested in this. Since then its hard to get invested long term in Spider Man because nothing is gonna have staying power and Peter will eventually go back to square one when he ventures out far enough. Nothing will take hold. The demographic of comic book readers keeps getting fewer as time goes on compared to what it was before.

[boots]

JMS did not want to erase the marriage and he wasn't the architect of One More Day. That was Joe Quesada who ended up writing most of the final product while JMS distanced himself from the project and even asked not to have his name credited in the final issues. JMS' run made the marriage the most enjoyable and well done because the idea was embraced instead of just looking for ways to get rid of it. Supposedly what Marvel wanted to do was retcon a past event from Spider Man's history. The two options were ASM Annual 21 (the marriage) and Harry Osborn's drug addiction IIRC which would've supposedly left Gwen Stacy alive. For a company that prides themselves in moving forward they sure look back a lot.

so this quote about jms...

"In his story, Mephisto was going to change continuity from as far back as issues #96-98 from 1971. In Joe’s story, Peter drops the dime on Harry, and that helps get him into rehab right away. Consequently, MJ stays with Harry, and Gwen never dies and never has her affair with Norman, etc., etc. And in the end, Peter and MJ are never married. ”

...isn't true?

and if so then this must be a straight out lie:

"Quesada also explained that he wasn’t comfortable with Straczynski’s method of retconning the marriage out of existence, saying: “Also, the science that Joe was going to apply to the retcon of the marriage would have made over 30 years of Spider-Man books worthless, because they never would have had happened. We would have also had a "Crisis" in the Marvel Universe because it would have reset way too many things outside of the Spider-Man titles. We just couldn't go there and in the end we weren't expecting that kind of story.

“I also think fans are misreading what Joe meant by disagreeing with the story. When we came up with the idea and methodology behind "One More Day," Joe was a part of the group that came up with the story. When we were done and felt we had it nailed, Joe told me that he was going to cycle off of Amazing Spider-Man and that he wanted to move on to other stuff. I told Joe that it was his call: He could close out his Amazing Spider-Man run however he wanted, or he could end it with the story we all created for "One More Day." He said he really wanted to write "One More Day." So Joe never said anything that indicated he disagreed with Peter and MJ's marriage being dissolved. If he had disagreed with the idea, he certainly would have told us and he certainly would not have asked to write the story. So like I said, I think people were reading into his on-line comments as opposed what I believe he was saying.”

The choice was not business, it was personal preference and damn the fans who invested in this.

of course, we all know it was because quesada hates happiness and gets a rash whenever a fan smiles.



or, maybe...just maybe...it's this quote from jms himself

"The only thing I *can* tell you, with absolute certainty, is that what Joe does with Spidey and all the rest of the Marvel characters, he does out of a genuine love of the character. He's not looking to sabotage anything, he's not looking to **** off the fans, he genuinely believes in the rightness of his views not out of a sense of "I'm the boss" but because he loves these characters and the Marvel universe."

[UnknownEntity]

[QUOTE=boots;2730527]

Welp you pretty much nailed me with that evidence.

Just the same, a third option could've very well been chosen, NOT altering Spider Man continuity or doing One More Day as they did it. Or if they wanted to alter Spider Man history, the elephant in the room would've been the awful overextended Clone Saga, but no, let's destroy the one thing that had the most staying power for over two decades of stories.

It certainly is love for the characters when they make them commit Faustian pacts with the devil, performing demonic divorces and aborting their future daughter. In one fell swoop Spider Man committed satanism and filicide, and all to keep precious Aunt May who should've disintegrated into dust by now. Or they could've undone Aunt May's resurrection as well. So many better options.

[boots]

Just the same, a third option could've very well been chosen, NOT altering Spider Man continuity or doing One More Day as they did it. Or if they wanted to alter Spider Man history, the elephant in the room would've been the awful overextended Clone Saga. It certainly is love for the characters when they make them commit Faustian pacts with the devil, performing demonic divorces and aborting their future daughter from ever being born. In one fell swoop Spider Man committed satanism and filicide, and all to keep precious Aunt May and be a mama's boy.

i don't feel like it was "we must retcon something, anything...marriage or clone saga? maybe spider-mobile?". it was always going to be the marriage, the question was how.

they made a choice that they felt was best and they executed it in a way that can only be described as a dog's breakfast. you and many others obviously disagree with the reasoning, i'm fairly ambivalent though i understand the logic that lead them to it. as for dan slott, we can't really say, though it does seem obvious he at least has a soft spot for the marriage due to his fighting for RYV.

[UnknownEntity]

i don't feel like it was "we must retcon something, anything...marriage or clone saga? maybe spider-mobile?". it was always going to be the marriage, the question was how.

they made a choice that they felt was best and they executed it in a way that can only be described as a dog's breakfast. you and many others obviously disagree with the reasoning, i'm fairly ambivalent though i understand the logic that lead them to it. as for dan slott, we can't really say, though it does seem obvious he at least has a soft spot for the marriage due to his fighting for RYV.

WHY? Why undo the marriage? What was so wrong about it that they went through all means to undo it being met with backlash every time they did? They already had their single Spider Man running around in the concurrent Ultimate comics.

They don't have to answer my question but then I will never stop asking it.

They made a choice but their execution was atrocious. You say I and many others disagree but do YOU agree with One More Day and the Pact with the Devil, Spider Man the most morally sound superhero making a deal with the devil. How is that not atrocious!

[boots]

They made a choice but their execution was atrocious. You say I and many others disagree but do YOU agree with One More Day and the Pact with the Devil, Spider Man the most morally sound superhero making a deal with the devil. How is that not atrocious!

i said i was ambivalent- it's literally right there in my previous post. i also said the execution was a dog's breakfast. i've said elsewhere in this thread that mephisto doesn't bother me. not any more than say mxyplyzyk.

[UnknownEntity]

i said i was ambivalent- it's literally right there in my previous post. i also said the execution was a dog's breakfast. i've said elsewhere in this thread that mephisto doesn't bother me. not any more than say mxyplyzyk.

Except Mxyzptlk isn't modeled after a theological demon called Mephistopheles or made to be Marvel's version of Satan, the concentration of absolute evil.

[boots]

Except Mxyzptlk isn't modeled after a theological demon called Mephistopheles or made to be Marvel's version of Satan, the concentration of absolute evil.

well, they are both trickster archetypes and probably created from similar influences, but whether or not ol' mephisto is meant to be marvel's "absolute evil"...he doesn't bother or impress me more than mxyzptlk. i really don't know what else to say.

edit: except that we all know the real evil is that warm feeling you get when you take over someone's fresh seat on a bus

[Miles To Go]

can anyone explain why jms seems to get the benefit of the doubt amongst marriage supporters when he was the writer of omd and when his original idea would have resent spidey's history even further back than the marriage?

JMS had to take marching orders even then. He was only trying to do something creative with a bad deal he was handed. He wanted to write Peter and MJ together as long as he could. Wasn't he supposed to stay on the book after OMD but quit because he could'nt use the marriage? (And, worse, probably would be forced to undermine his prior work by having Peter and MJ seperated AGAIN to really sell the consequences of the story?)

[boots]

JMS had to take marching orders even then. He was only trying to do something creative with a bad deal he was handed. He wanted to write Peter and MJ together as long as he could. Wasn't he supposed to stay on the book after OMD but quit because he could'nt use the marriage? (And, worse, probably would be forced to undermine his prior work by having Peter and MJ seperated AGAIN to really sell the consequences of the story?)

well, from what i've now read of jms' + quesadas quotes (some of those quotes are 8 posts above yours), they were both involved in the genesis of OMD. jms wanted to take it even further than quesada did. his main point of contention was the magic hand-wave explanation for all the story loop holes which he sees as a sin against sci fi writing 101. he also wanted to retcon the gwen stacey kids.

quesada: “I also think fans are misreading what Joe meant by disagreeing with the story. When we came up with the idea and methodology behind "One More Day," Joe was a part of the group that came up with the story. When we were done and felt we had it nailed, Joe told me that he was going to cycle off of Amazing Spider-Man and that he wanted to move on to other stuff. I told Joe that it was his call: He could close out his Amazing Spider-Man run however he wanted, or he could end it with the story we all created for "One More Day." He said he really wanted to write "One More Day." So Joe never said anything that indicated he disagreed with Peter and MJ's marriage being dissolved. If he had disagreed with the idea, he certainly would have told us and he certainly would not have asked to write the story. So like I said, I think people were reading into his on-line comments as opposed what I believe he was saying.”

jms replied by saying that was a fair recounting of events.

if he did say elsewhere that he quit because he was unable to use the marriage then it's very odd that he was a part of the storytelling team who came up with the concept, asked to be the writer on OMD and that he was willing to go even further than quesada.

[Alan2099]

Wasn't he supposed to stay on the book after OMD but quit because he could'nt use the marriage?

Now you're just completely making things up.

[boots]

Now you're just completely making things up.

to be fair, the internet has a way of making rumours and falsities "truth"

[Miles To Go]

Now you're just completely making things up.

Hence why I asked

Even so, him willing to leave ASM after the marriage ended kind of proves my point. Thing was his baby and he nurtured it for those seven years, I know if my work was going to be undermined, I wouldn't want to stick around and self-sabotage. I'd prefer to try something without much editorial red-tape and compromise.

Boots-thankyou.

[boots]

Hence why I asked

Boots-thankyou.

no problem mate, i was wondering the exact same stuff earlier today