To all those complaining about the shitty “Mephisto makes Peter give up his marriage to save Aunt May with devil-magic” storyline currently going on in Amazing Spider-Man – look, this one is so easy to fix it’s almost redundant to mention it, and by “fix” I don’t mean just retconning it away, but instead making it work on a larger scale.
Ready? Because it’s really easy.
The sniper’s bullet would have missed Aunt May if Mephisto hadn’t altered its course just so.
There. That is all you need. The problem with this story thus far is twofold:
1.) Splitting up Peter and MJ is dumb;
2.) Having Mephisto make this deal is dumber.
Now, #1 is easily dealt with because in a couple of years they’ll reunite, just watch. But #2? That’s why you need the twist I just mentioned. Because, instead of just opportunistically marching into the plot and saying “moo hoo ha ha, I am evil and will force you to make a cruel O. Henry sort of decision, Peter Parker,” Mephisto is now driving the action.
As a matter of fact, maybe Mephisto’s plan wouldn’t just be to get Peter to make the deal. I mean, come on, the endgame can’t just be “make Peter suffer,” because the Green Goblin does that all the time and you’d think Mephisto would be playing for higher stakes, right? He is, after all, the Debbil.
Indeed – if it were me writing, I’d say that Mephisto wants Peter to sacrifice his marriage so that Peter suffers – and then finds out about what Mephisto did. Easy enough to have Dr. Strange notice it at some point. And come on, we’ve all seen Spidey lose his shit when somebody targets his loved ones before, right? (Come to think, isn’t that what he just did?) And Peter is, unfortunately in this case, brave and prone to rash decisions at these moments.
Say, like, maybe he enters Hell – literally – to make things right. (Because he reads it somewhere in a magic book that of course Mephisto didn’t make sure he’d find.)
And maybe that’s what Mephisto wanted all along – because he can’t get Spidey’s soul while Spidey’s on Earth, it’s pure and untouchable, but if Spidey goes into Mephisto’s realm, he’s fair game. (Why yes, I did read Triumph and Torment, why do you ask?) Getting a shot at a pure soul like that suddenly justifies all the work Mephisto put into this – not just Spidey’s soul itself, but all the knockoff effects (imagine the despair in the hearts of all the Marvel heroes if Spidey has to rot in hell for all eternity; maybe one or two would even mount an ill-advised rescue attempt! Or even more, if Mephisto decided to, shall we say, subtly encourage things).
Just imagine a run of issues where Spidey goes through the nine levels of Hell. It could be horrific, to be sure, but done properly it could also become literal translation of the metaphysical anguish that encapsulates Spider-Man’s life: the ultimate iteration, if you will, of suffer-worse-worst-triumph-momentary burst of sheer happiness-repeat that is more or less the entire history of Spidey comics.
And there’s so much more you could do with it. Mary Jane-slash-Jackpot charging into Hell after him halfway through when she finds out the truth of what happens. Somebody finally calling in that boon Loki owes Spider-Man from about five years ago. And yes, I can already tell you how it ends: with Peter and MJ, bruised and beaten, staring up as Mephisto swells to a thousand feet high or more to confront the equally giant attacker who, at the last moment, has come to save people he loves, and who can take Mephisto on, even in Hell –
– but I’m not giving that away yet. Who knows, maybe I’ll get to write it.
(I believe the appropriate answer to that is “shyyyeeeah.”)
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43 users responded in this post
Goliath?
How do you not have a job at Marvel?
Can’t we, like, vote for a new EIC?
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that making fun of Mark Millar repeatedly probably has something to do with why I am not working at Marvel.
(This is not to say that Millar himself took offense. From all accounts, he actually thought the parodies were a laugh.)
Spider-Man + (Orpheus & Eurydice) = Please Marvel, hire this man.
personally, I was more annoyed at the sudden incompetence of everyone in the marvel universe when faced with Aunt May’s plot bullet wound.
I mean, Doom saved Kitty Pryde’s life from a freakish atomic destabilization(complicated by her phasing powers) just to prove that he could where Reed Richards couldn’t. at the very least he could have offered one of his super science procedures and then we could have had an interesting dilemma, like whether aunt may would want to be a cyborg, or an alien-hybrid, or anything essentially not human, but still alive.
I guess Doom could be the force against Mephisto, he already fucking hates him, but sadly in canon, Doom loses to Mephisto, at least without Dr. Strange backing him up.
Uncle Ben!
Sig said:
Uncle Ben!
Ben Reilly!
I smell another petition coming up to make you the writer of something, MGK…because that is the most creative response to OMD I’ve seen so far. Amazing, completely amazing!
I truly believe that you could write this, but what would the title be? “Another Day”?
Also, my guess for the ‘Giant Figure’ would be Ben Reilly.
Damn. Why the hell AREN’T you writing for… any of the companies? We’ve already seen how well the Legion would be if you took over (not a fan myself, but I might have to start reading if you wrote it), now we see your take on the S-man. Someone out there should be listening to this…
And as for my take, Ben Reily and Uncca Ben fuse together to form Voltron, and… naah. It’d probably be Uncle Ben for one reason or another, with Ben Reily showing up to guide them out of hell at the end.
Loki’s out of commission after that Ragnarok deal that came along the heels of Avengers Disassembled. Thor hasn’t brought him back yet (though he probably will).
Personally, I would’ve thought people’d be happy with this Mephisto thing. It’s a straight forward, clear cut good guy vs. bad guy thing that doesn’t call for some hero to take the part of villain (in spite of how much of a dick he’s been in the past).
Loki’s out of commission after that Ragnarok deal that came along the heels of Avengers Disassembled. Thor hasn’t brought him back yet (though he probably will).
My figuring is that by the time this story is ready to go – say, after two or three years of Spider-Man trying to deal with the new status quo and failing miserably – JMS will have finished at least half of his “Thor returns all the gods” story he’s writing.
Well, maybe a third.
I’m going to be really snarky and say the reason MGK is not writing for one of the Big Two is that he is too creative. Creative people make things happen and Marvel and DC are all about things snapping back to normal in time for the next big movie.
The Cap who doesn’t bother with a gun?
Talk about pure of heart, right?
Either that or the Silver Surfer.
“My figuring is that by the time this story is ready to go – say, after two or three years of Spider-Man trying to deal with the new status quo and failing miserably – JMS will have finished at least half of his “Thor returns all the gods” story he’s writing.
Well, maybe a third.”
Makes sense to me. It could be kind of interesting to see Thor and Spider-Man team up, since Loki’d probably be too scared to mess with Mephisto beyond providing a McGuffin that’d come back to bite Spidey in the buttocks.
Marvel is just as pitiful as it gets when it comes to letting whiny fanbois run the empire. They see people whine about changes in the storyline over and over and they think its the opinion of the majority. Either that or they let terrible writers botch up the characters on their own as part of another stunt without giving any forethought to the history or the future development of the character.
Erik Larsen says its because writers want to see how far they can push things before they have to return to status quo. I say its just plain bad writing and worse editorial abilities.
If you’re going to take the comic down a new path to gain a new audience, you can not be afraid to let the old audience go. Its really that simple. This whole garbage about using magic to erase everyone’s knowledge of Spider-Man’s true identity and then to annul his marriage is just a pathetic waste of ink and time. If a group of whiners were pissing and moaning about how Spidey shouldn’t be married to Mary Jane (MJ hell, there are still those that whine about Gwen Stacy dying), then they should have been told its too damn bad. If they don’t like where the bus is taking them, then its time for them to get off.
I once wrote (in my head) a year-long epic Spidey story whose main climax was Peter vs. Mephisto. This was shortly after the Clone Saga, when Norman Osborn was revived, and was man fanboy attempt to fix that particular mistake.
In my story, it turned out that all that stuff about Norman spending all that time in Europe was b.s., that he really had been dead. Mephisto has brought Norman back as a servant to try to (what else?) get Peter’s soul.
[This was directly inspired by a scene in JM DeMatteis’ latter Spec. Spidey run where Jack O’Lantern tells Norman to “Go to hell.” “Oh,” replied Norman, “I’ve already been.” I am a continuity KING.]
I don’t remember all the details, but I would’ve had MJ offer her soul to Mephisto to save Peter from something-or-another. MJ, throughout the story, was feeling more and more insecure in her relationship with Peter, especially with regard to how she compared to the memory of Gwen Stacy. (Every Spider-Man writer has to write a Gwen Stacy story. It’s like a law.) Of course, this was all a manipulation of Norman’s.
Anyway, when Peter found out what happened, he literally fought his way through Hell. At the end of his mental, physical, and spiritual endurance, he finally reaches the center, where he has to face off against Norman Osborn for the soul of Mary Jane. Long-story-slightly-shorter, he wins, so MJ goes free. As punishment, Mephisto recalls Norman’s soul for good, and that particular blight on the Spider-Man legacy is removed.
BUT (there’s always a but), Peter must still win himself passage out of Hell. He battles Mephisto for his own freedom, and LOSES. MJ leaves, but without Peter. After a couple/few issues of her readjusting to life and the reaction of the world to Spider-Man missing, she decides to seek help from the hero community. She comes clean to the FF and Avengers about Peter’s identity, and everyone agrees that Spidey is too noble a soul and too important to the world to be left in Hell.
So (and this would have been an anniversary issue) the combined forces of Marvel’s super-heroes stormed the gates of Hell in an epic blowout. Fierce action, to be sure, but the end is resolved when Mary Jane’s and Peter’s love for each other is so strong that it overcomes Mephisto’s power, and everyone goes home. (Because every writer is allow ONE story where the power of love makes everything okay.) Anyway, Peter is now more fully integrated into the hero community, and the marriage is stronger than ever.
I know this is self-indulgent, me posting this here, but I hadn’t thought about that story for years. It was something that I was saving up, you know, “in case I ever get to write Spider-Man,” but the story points expired eventually. (Probably when they brought Aunt May back. I think the fact that she was dead played a big role.) MGK’s outline about jogged my memory. Ah, well, good times…
I read your description of how One More Day could be spun into something bigger and that got my brain chugging. I start building up how such an event could work to resolve the current threads of the Marvel U, in place of all this skrull nonsense. (And just when Annihilation suggested skrulls could be awesome and sympathetic now… pooh, pooh…) Now I’m posting a whole mess of brainstorming just ‘cause. Suck it.
So we begin with all the One More Day nonsense. Mephisto does his magic thing, Aunt May is back to life, Mary Jane never met Peter Parker, nobody ever hit the jackpot. We have a little bit of running around with Spider-Man and Jackpot, some flirting, Peter gets some hope up that maybe MJ isn’t out of his life forever. But when they finally reveal their identities to each other and get to know each other sans mask, Peter discovers the MJ is just not the same person he knew; a life without Peter Parker has left her with a radically different personality. Peter starts to get obsessed about it, starts to get some of the creepy/stalker vibe going. A bit of the Superboy Prime denial of reality, but with less dead Teen Titans.
About this time, he’s approach by a secret society. Let’s call them The Order of the Albatross. They suggest that there may be a way to cherry-pick the deal with Mephisto, take the good and leave the bad. To do this, Peter would have to break into Hell and rewrite the contract. After much soul searching, Peter decides that his MJ is worth the risk and takes The Albatross up on the offer. They provide him with a ritual that will spend his spirit to Hell and send him on his merry way.
This is all, of course, clever manipulations.
Although Pete’s soul is in Hell, his mind and body are still quite operable. Mephisto steps in, filling Peter with a portion of his own soul, creating an earthly avatar and greatly enhancing the spider powers. For the sake of reference, let’s call our newfound stand-in for the anti-christ The Wolf Spider. Because I like the way it sounds.
From her, we have a few story threads running in parallel before the big earth-shattering event, mostly in the Spidey books. The first is, of course, Peter walking through Hell, Dante-style. He meets up with former allies and enemies, and it all helps set his life’s triumphs and failures in context. Also, we get some action from all the bastards in Hell gunning for his poor sanity and Peter just contending with the nature of Hell itself. D-listers start to come out of the woodwork Annihilation style. The dead characters of Marvel comics start to either rally around Peter as a potential force of change in Hell or line up to get brownie points by stopping the “traitors”.
The Wolf Spider is making a grand name for himself on Earth, reveling in sin, stirring up discontent towards SHIELD and the SHRA, and preaching the superhumans’ natural right to rule. Besides tearing the odd Initiative enforcement team limb from limb, he doesn’t hero so much anymore, becoming the poster child for sociopathic metahumans. He dances with the odd superteam: Operation Thunderbolt, the Runaways, the 50 States Initiative, members of the Avengers, The New Warriors. Nextwave, simply because it would be cool. He also starts making deals in Mephisto’s name, using this to gather an army under himself. HINT: A lot of X-Men characters get back in the saddle.
Meanwhile, the regular crime fighting aspect of the book pretty much falls on Jackpot’s shoulders. She starts to notice, after reflecting on some of Peter’s comments, that there are some gaping holes in her past and she doesn’t know what fills them. Perhaps let it climax in her confronting someone she assumed was a family member who doesn’t even remember meeting her. Her grip on reality starts to slip away. She sinks further and further into depression until she’s contacted by The Great Weaver, who wishes to reclaim Peter from Mephisto’s clutches. Jackpot is granted spider powers and starts fighting against the Wolf Spider’s chaos.
Besides the normal hero community trying to respond to Peter’s change, Nick Fury comes out of the woodwork. He gathers up Dr. Strange and they combine their resources to investigate Peter’s recent history. There’s a bit of globe-hopping, assassin-dodging adventure, ending in a couple of major reveals. The first and obvious one is that The Order of the Albatross is basically a Mephisto cult in disguise. The second surprise, however, is that the cult has been following the activities of the Illuminati and has been feeding bits and pieces to intelligence agencies around the world. Prominent in this information is the possessors and locations of the Infinity Gems.
The Daily Bugle staff, remember that their entire existence revolves not around Sally Floyd but Peter Parker, start to piece together the secret history of Spiderman. One of the nuggets they dig up in that Loki owes Peter a favor. When the Wolf Spider’s attacks step up from rabble rousing to a full-blown massacre at Grand Central Station, Jonah heads out to Oklahoma and walks the steps up to the new Asgard. In true JJJ fashion, he confronts Thor and insists that Loki’s oath weighs on all of Asgard. Although Thor is reluctant to involve himself in the world again, Jonah convinces him that the boon could be fulfilled by stopping Peter’s rampage, “saving him from himself”. Norse warriors in tow, Thor flies out to New York to confront the Wolf Spider.
Making a few comments about things going “better than expected”, the Wolf Spider peacefully submits and asks to speak his mind. When finally get to see his whole motivation as he outlines a future in which superhuman hegemonies rule the planet, painting metahumans as god’s chosen people. Thor is ready to brush him off and get to the hammering, when the Wolf Spider shows him a vision of a new Asgard; reigning over the American midwest in all of its grandest traditions. Despite the violence he needs to break the shackles of the SHRA, he says, this is what he truly wants. Thor, afraid he might act with the rashness of his youth, allows the Wolf Spider to explain his plans further. SHIELD sees all of this, ‘cause they’re shield, and Tony Stark freaks out, still fearing about Thor’s intentions ever since their fight in New Orleans. The Mighty Avengers are sent out with knee jerk speed to try and grab the Wolf Spider, as well as tell the Asgardians to get out of New York and back to cattle country. Someone, probably Sentry or Ares or one of the Warrior Three, jumps the gun and a full fight breaks out. The Wolf Spider puts the mind-whammy on the Sentry, and the big gold cheese tries to go all out on Thor. The unmovable hammer of thunder meets the unstoppable power of a thousand exploded suns.
The resulting energy discharge, besides showering New York with bits of building, knocks out power all across North America. The Wolf Spider disappears as everyone catches planes and deflects rubble. Paul Jenkins writes a few a justified issues of Frontlines.
In the ensuing Chaos, resurrected villains and reawakened monsters pop up left and right. The Wolf Spider has been a very busy boy and it’s not as though Mephisto was without his allies in the first place. All across the continent, heroes struggle to save lives and hold the infrastructure together. Desperate, the U.S. government confronts Tony Stark about the Infinity Gems and insists the Illuminati members loyal to America use them to pacify the situation. Stark flatly refuses and very tense lines are drawn in the sand. The government finally snaps and tries to place Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and Charles Xavier under arrest. The Wolf Spider uses the government assault force as a smokescreen for his own assault on Xavier. As the battle rages one between troops and the X-men still loyal to Xavier, the Wolf Spider makes off with the Mind Gem. Four Freedoms plaza is destroyed and the pro-Stark members of SHIELD mutiny, taking the main helicarrier hostage.
The Mind Gem lets the Wolf Spider spread Mephisto’s psychic poison. Cities boil with an apocalyptic anger that the Wolf Spider whips up to significantly enlarge his forces. He invites other villains and heroes to join him. Surprisingly, a few of the black hats, such as Doom, side with the Illuminati, while a few heroes, like Ares and Cable, decide that the Wolf Spider’s vision might be, in the end, better for the world. Battles rage across the world as assaults are launched on the remaining Illuminati members and their gems are captured. Fortunately, the Wolf Spider doesn’t manage to claim the full Infinity Gauntlet. The Spider-powered MJ makes off with the Power gem and Dr. Strange escapes into the Dark Dimension with the Spirit gem in tow, forging an uneasy treaty with Dormammu in the face of a greater threat.
Once Strange is safe, he uses the Spirit gem to pierce the veil of Hell and contact Peter’s soul. He finds that Peter’s soul has been reduced to mad fragments. His trip through Hell had finally brought to the apparatus of Mephisto’s contracts, a massive inverse astrolab that coordinated the movement of Mephisto’s powers as a great expanse of stars. Unable to comprehend such a mechanism, Peter suffered a further breakdown, finally brought to a head when Mephisto showed him what the Wolf Spider had done using his body. Strange uses the Spirit gem to put Peter in communion with the souls of Heaven (cue touching Uncle Ben moment here). Strengthened by the experience, Peter regains his sanity and calls upon the army of the damned that had gathered to him to help him climb out of Hell, in return for a shot at Mephisto.
We’re about at the climax now.
Satisfied for the time being with the gems he has, the Wolf Spider proceeds down to the Nexus of All Realities (yes, Man-Thing gets set on fire, again). He uses the gems power to fully merge himself with Mephisto and begins to pull the whole world into Hell. The ground splits open across the globe and demons pour out to drag humanity down in a style reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch. Massive, massive fight as the remaining superheroes assault the Wolf Spider, who has built the obligatory evil palace up around him. Peter and his damned brigade can see all of his happening as they literally fight their way up Mephisto’s true body (which is in fact the fleshy Yggradsil of Hell) towards his heart.
Merely breaching the fortress takes the effort of nearly all the heroes available and in the end, the fight comes down to the Wolf Spider and Spider-MJ, riding high on the Power gem. Even then, everybody knows that they’re only hope is to delay Mephisto before he can complete his grim work, in hopes that Peter can retake his body and in doing so, severe Mephisto’s connection to the mortal plane. But MJ can only last so long and the Wolf Spider KO’s her. Taking the Power gem from her, he supercharges his forces and overwhelms the heroes of the Earth.
Just as it seems Mephisto will win, Dr. Strange tosses the Spirit gem down to Earth. Power mad, the Wolf Spider rushes to claim it and complete the Infinity Gauntlet. This distracts Mephisto for the vital split second that allows Peter to force him out. Mephisto’s link to Earth is shattered and he topples back into Hell, covered in an army of the damned that tears him apart piece by piece. The plane shatters as its master is slammed through it. Demons are scattered to the astral winds and the power of Hell on Earth is broken, negating all contracts.
And Peter Parker wakes up, holding the Infinity Gauntlet, MJ returned to him, Aunt May well and truly dead. He briefly considers using the Gauntlet and is shamed beyond all belief at the thought. Before the dust can even settle, he creates a tesseract zone out of the Gauntlet itself, trapping the gems in an infinitely small space. Slowly, surely, the world gets its bearing back and in the end, Peter and MJ can’t be found.
In the next few weeks, the world pieces itself back together with some major changes. Tony Stark takes the falls for keeping the gems secret and flees the country, now basing himself out of international waters. The Fantastic Four rebuild their lives, because their PR department is evidently bulletproof. The 50 States Initiative, now completely separate from SHIELD and Stark’s plans, is rebuilt into a coast-spanning version of Avengers. The team, however, answers to the Pentagon now and has a adopted much more military protocol. Hank Pym and Black Widow are technically the team leaders, but the whole operation is now supervised by General ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross. In the same vein, the government forms a new X-Factor program to manage the remaining mutant population separate of whether they’re fighting crime; several members of the X-men are invited to the team, the most surprising being Cyclops, who becomes team leader. Meanwhile, the Xavier Institute goes back to its roots of research and education; Hank McCoy takes over its management. Dr. Strange disappears into a shadow just at the end of the fight with the Wolf Spider and is unheard from for a while.
Nick Fury is last seen walking down an Arizona highway. With him is Sally Floyd. They are both very drunk. Nick asks Sally if she wants to live forever.
Then, as the curtains fall and we are invited to a short epilogue, we learn that after the battle, Peter and MJ were spirited away by Doctor Doom and allowed to stay in Latveria as they recover from the ordeal. When asked why, Doom replies that perhaps he and Peter can understand each other now.
In theory, I have a conversation in my head between Peter and Doom about what exact “great responsibility” comes with the great power, but it’s coming to me in bits and pieces and it’s late now.
Spider-man as always been the soul of the Marvel Universe to me, it’s moral center and the character most teenage boys seem to identify with when they first pick up comics. If Marvel wants to write an epic story that sets right all the convoluted bs they have been messing up the past few years, what better metaphor for the saving of their companies soul than for all the heroes (and villains) fighting over the soul of Peter Parker.
It no longer matters, as far as I’m concerned. The Marvel Universe is as one dead to me, and the DC universe as well. I read Essentials, Showcases, and Marvel Adventures, because they are still untainted by the editorial incompetence of both companies, and I openly pity anyone who still has a shred of love in their soul for the mainstream continuity of either publisher.
When I listen to a comics fan nowadays, I feel like I’m listening to a battered wife. “Did he start up another crossover again?” “He says it’ll be different this time. He promised he won’t retcon anymore.” “Did he kill another bunch of characters?” “It was my fault. I didn’t support them enough in their mini-series.” “What happened to your wallet?” “I…I bumped into a yard sale.”
I would have hoped Spidey would have picked up a lesson or two from hanging out with Ghost Rider…
The moral of every story about a deal with the devil is “Don’t.” A smart guy like Peter should know that. I would buy the whole run of OMD if it ends with Peter just saying no and praise JMS for his ability to throw out red herrings by the boatload.
Whew! And I thought *I* was being self-indulgent. It occurs to me that the reason three separate people can, at the drop of a hat, spin massive, epic stories from the simple concept of ‘Spider-Man vs. Mephisto’ is that pitting such a noble and self-sacrificing character as Peter Parker against the Devil is so natural that I’m surprised it hasn’t been done in the character’s 45-year history.
I’m not counting the current story, because One More Day is shaping up to be more of a means to an end, rather than a story for its own sake.
Although I, too, am hoping JMS doesn’t take the obvious route. Surely his well-honed professional writer’s instincts will prevent the easy way out…
…Right?
Briefly: it’s been repeatedly asked over at comixfan.com why nobody has thought to contact Elixir of the X-Men, particularly when Spidey was magically visiting every single person he could think to ask for help in a short period of time. Elixir’s mutant power is the ability to heal just about any injury or disease, and for some crazy reason I think that it might come in handy here. Quesada and/or JMS must know something we don’t. :p
Oh yeah, in case there’s anybody here who isn’t aware, Quesada really really really hated it when Peter and MJ got married.
See, that’s the thing that gives me some hope. Quesada has been very vocal about not wanting Peter married, but he’s also a fairly shameless hype-ster. He is not above making those kind of public claims (for years, even) simply to intentionally drive the fans crazy, and then playing ‘gotcha’ at the last minute.
See also: “We’re going to kill off Speedball.” Now, whether you like what they did with Speedball or not (and I’d venture to guess that most people here didn’t), those kinds of statements were simply to revive interest in the character. After all, why would Quesada telegraph the REAL ending of a major story, months or years in advance?
They didn’t literally kill Speedball, but I kind of wish they had.
Instead it was like “let’s put this character through every hell imaginable short of anal rape–but let’s make the readers worry that the rape is going to happen too by putting him in prison without any power with guys who hate him and are bigger than him–and then, finally, let’s have him voluntarily strapped into an iron maiden-like costume because he wants to torture himself for the rest of his days.” Some readers thought the concept was so ridiculous that it was laughable, and they laughed at it. Some readers were horrified to see that done to a character who, while perhaps annoying, didn’t deserve it.
I was one of the latter, and instead of saying “Oh good, they didn’t kill Speedball” I was saying “MotherFUCK, what have they done to this character?!”
Here’s what I’m saying: even if Joe Quesada has no plans to break up Peter and MJ, the situation might be similar to the Speedball one where we’re spared that but we get something as bad as that, or worse.
I guess we’ll know in a month.
John Seavey quote:
When I listen to a comics fan nowadays, I feel like I’m listening to a battered wife. “Did he start up another crossover again?” “He says it’ll be different this time. He promised he won’t retcon anymore.” “Did he kill another bunch of characters?” “It was my fault. I didn’t support them enough in their mini-series.” “What happened to your wallet?” “I…I bumped into a yard sale.”
Wow. I’ve been using that metaphor for a couple of years now, but your rendition is definitely funnier. 🙂
You know, that’s a good plot outline.
staring up as Mephisto swells to a thousand feet high or more to confront the equally giant attacker who, at the last moment, has come to save people he loves, and who can take Mephisto on, even in Hell –
Ben Parker?
Dirk Anger?
Complete agreement with John Seavey.
These days I just keep re-reading Dark Horse’s woefully underrated 4-issue Oktane series over and over again, in the hopes something nearly as intelligent will appear for a long term series.
[…] mean, everybody seems to be talking about the “One More Day” storyline, and what appears to be Spider-Man’s very […]
“Justin Corwin Says:
November 30th, 2007 la 1:51 pm
personally, I was more annoyed at the sudden incompetence of everyone in the marvel universe when faced with Aunt May’s plot bullet wound.
I mean, Doom saved Kitty Pryde’s life from a freakish atomic destabilization(complicated by her phasing powers) just to prove that he could where Reed Richards couldn’t. at the very least he could have offered one of his super science procedures and then we could have had an interesting dilemma, like whether aunt may would want to be a cyborg, or an alien-hybrid, or anything essentially not human, but still alive.
I guess Doom could be the force against Mephisto, he already fucking hates him, but sadly in canon, Doom loses to Mephisto, at least without Dr. Strange backing him up.”
I think with Doom it was more like “NO! Doom has no time for your shit, Spider-Man!” then the moment Pete left “Wait, did Richards say whether or not he could– DAMN IT. Well. Time to go torture Nitro, I guess…”
“staring up as Mephisto swells to a thousand feet high or more to confront the equally giant attacker who, at the last moment, has come to save people he loves, and who can take Mephisto on, even in Hell -”
CAP’N A!
I’d go with Robbie Robinson instead of Jonah, because confronting Thor to help Peter is more in character for Robbie, and out of character for Jonah.
That said, ““staring up as Mephisto swells to a thousand feet high or more to confront the equally giant attacker who, at the last moment, has come to save people he loves, and who can take Mephisto on, even in Hell -”
Captain America. Who else? Maybe he (or Uncle Ben, or Ben Reilly) is the Vergil to Peter’s (or MJ’s) Dante. which would beg the question of why they went to Hell, but that’d be a different story.
“I guess Doom could be the force against Mephisto, he already fucking hates him, but sadly in canon, Doom loses to Mephisto, at least without Dr. Strange backing him up.”
Which would be all it’d take to motivate Doom to do this: “Doom has no interest in helping you, dolt.” “Oh well, I should’ve known you’d be scared. The last time you went against him, you would’ve lost if Doc Strange hadn’t helped you.” “Doom needs no one’s help!”
What if Peter’s already on his way to hell for having allowed a young, healthy, living human being (MJ) to sacrifice her future and happiness (let alone a sanctified marriage) to save someone who was already dying (contravening the will of the universe, or whoever’s running the show)? There’s a shortcut to your Nine Labors of Peter Parker, instead of working out a way for him to get there.
It would be a helluvan epic, instead of the same ol’/same ol’ reset with back-to-the-Green-Goblin/single-Peter scenario currently in play.
That is, the whole Peter Parker in Hell story you created would be better than what looms at present, not the small tweak I just suggested.
One word:
Mysterio.
And guiding them from the pit is a small child named May.
Spider-Man has been the soul of the marvel universe, Cap the heart.
Quesada sold one and broke the other.
Pete can have new exciting relationships! (No he can’t, since we know he’s cheating on his wife every time.)
With great power still comes great responsibility! (Deals with the debbil, Uncle Ben would LOVE that one.)
Aunt May is alive! (Rather than let the character move on with dignity to be with her own lost love and allow Peter a new depth of character in dealing with the loss… *KA-ZAM!* all better.)
Harry is Back! (SO it took this storyline to bring him back, sheesh the Green Goblin could had brought him back with a clone… A CLONE! the most hated plot device in a Spidey book ever and it would had been easier.)
Secret Identities! (So the point of Civil War was? Cap gets a reboot, right?)
Non-Organic webshooters! (Nice to see them back, but Pete could still had used them today. Hell, make a hybrid webshooter. His organic channels augmented and used for travel, and the artificial used for battle. Specialty cartridges for certain occasions. Insulated webbing cart when facing Electro, etc. HOUSE OF IDEAS!)
I’m spent…
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I have read two interpretations that try and pull a little dignity back from all this. The explanation given for Mephisto’s offer was beautiful in its elegance.
He demands that MJ and Pete never got married. The analogy used was that of a chess match, and he was using this deal as an opportunity to shuffle his opponent’s pieces all over the board. No one can say how much Spider-Man’s marriage affected his choices and decisions. Maybe it didn’t affect much. But it’s a butterfly effect, and who can say who was on the other side of the world at the time?
The other explanation was how they were going to get out of this. It’s less sensible, but more fun.
Deadpool knows. And when things start going wrong (which, if explanation one goes through, they should, albeit maybe not for some time), it might just be Spider-Man and Deadpool vs. the nine levels of Hell. Taking all bets.