I've always believed if they just did what ended up happening in One Moment In Time right from the beginning, it would've be so much better and nowhere near as troublesome. Ie: "Aunt May survives so the Kingpin goes after everyone else in his family, so Peter goes to see Doctor Strange who wipes out the identity from everybody except MJ, she's upset at this and they finally break up."
The only reason they didn't do it is because Quesada said he "didn't want to teach kids that divorce was okay"....even though there has been many divorces before and since, and I'm pretty sure "making a deal with the devil" both literally and figuratively is a far worse thing to do.
"So you've come to the end now alive but dead inside."
I don't think the timeline works on this - MJ and Pete reconciled in 50 and had the missed opportunity a few months earlier (so JMS had this planned for a number of months before 50) - it sounds like OMD/ending the marriage really went from Quesada hope to action item while planning the lead up to Civil War (let's guess over 2 years after 50).
I also think leaving her in limbo was not a particularly good option (which still might leave it as the least worst option) - Peter could never move on (not that he's done a great job of moving on since) and there'd never be a particularly good answer at conventions to "When is MJ coming back? What's up with them?"
That, and Joe likely wanted an "out" in case they were forced to bring back the marriage, hence all that stuff about their souls remembering part of the marriage and MJ's vow their love would overcome the hold Mephisto would have over their characters...though the company held their nerve the last decade or so as sales managed to recover well enough to justify the sacrificeThe only reason they didn't do it is because Quesada said he "didn't want to teach kids that divorce was okay"....even though there has been many divorces before and since, and I'm pretty sure "making a deal with the devil" both literally and figuratively is a far worse thing to do.
I don't know what Quesada's actual quote was. If it's that, it's awfully silly. I feel like he didn't put it in quite those words but anyhow...
It'd be better - and I have read quotes from him to this effect - to just say that having a divorced Peter Parker only compounds the problem of marriage making Peter too old. Having Peter permanently being identified as a divorced dude just doesn't work and immediately ages him in a way that even marriage didn't. The magical solution of wiping away the marriage is infinitely preferable to having him go through a divorce.
As for divorce being seen as worse than making a deal with the devil (or a devil stand-in), the difference would obviously be that one is a real life situation and the other is strictly fantasy.
You could teach kids all day that making a deal with the devil is ok and no actual deals with the devil will ever take place.
And, of course, you could look at the actual story of OMD and say that it's technically MJ, not Peter, that makes the deal and that the deal itself isn't seen as a good thing necessarily but a self-sacrificing gesture that comes with a terrible price so it's definitely not portraying the deal in a positive light but haven't we rehashed OMD enough?
That is absolutely not what happened. Peter guilt trips Mary Jane into making the deal. Instead of owning up to Peter's mistakes, Marvel's attitude has been to blame the woman, which is incredibly unhealthy and perpetrates absolutely terrible things about the relationships that exist between men and women.
"So you've come to the end now alive but dead inside."