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105 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
What can we do to mess up this character? I know! We'll reboot!, April 3, 2008
Despite what Marvel editors may say, the one thing that truly made Spider-Man great in the past 20 years was the fact that the good guy really did get the hot girl. Having one of the few successful superhero marriages in Marvel history (with the exception of Reed and Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four), Peter and Mary Jane's story was one of loyalty and true love. Even after Marvel allowed Peter to reveal his identity, the stories became even more gripping as he fought to protect his family from vengeful villains who now knew who to come after. With SHIELD bearing down on MJ to force her husband to turn himself back in again after joining Cap's "rebels", she showed incredible courage and faced down a restaurant full of agents with the assurance that Peter would rescue her (and he did). Marvel truly had taken themselves in a bold new direction and it was exciting to see where it would go next.
Then Aunt May gets shot. Let's be honest here, who isn't ready for the old bird to finally die? She was a vital part of Pete's life when he was a teenager, but her continued presence this late in life makes him come off as a Momma's Boy in the worst way. So finally we see light at the end of the tunnel as the old bag finally looks like she's going down...
How could they fix it? The world knew who Spider-Man really was! When Marvel announced the Skrull invasion of Earth, it looked like the perfect way to fix everything. Just explain that a Skrull had masqueraded as Spider-Man and exposed the wrong person. Have Peter and somebody dressed like Spidey come out of a Skrull POW camp and the world is all right again. We all felt relieved. But of course, that's not what the editors wanted to do. Oh no, they had a their own master plan.
I'd love to have seen the meeting. Someone gets the bright idea of "Hey, let's reboot the whole character and pretend the last 20 years never happened!" Someone else says, "Hey, sure! I mean, it's just Spider-Man...we can rewrite his history and not affect any of the other characters in the Marvel universe." "Brilliant!" "Give that man a raise!" and with those few moments, comic book fans all around the world are stabbed in the back. "Thanks for buying our books for the last 20 years, but none of that mattered! You think we screwed up with the Clone Saga? Hahaha, let me show you what a TRUE mess we can make of things!"
And so, with "One More Day" we are treated to Marvel trying to make sense of their reboot of the character. We are supposed to believe that Peter Parker willingly gives up his life, marriage, and love with the full knowledge he'll never get Mary Jane back to save his 200 year old Aunt who couldn't die if a nuclear bomb went off in her purse. Honestly, for some reason she's Marvel's favorite character and she'll be the last one standing when every other hero is dead. And the fact that he's so willing to throw Mary Jane under the bus just paints him as this horrible, selfish idiot who didn't deserve her loyalty through the whole "Civil War" thing.
I've been reading comics for over 25 years, and can truly say this was the worst thing I've ever seen Marvel or DC do to their fans. It was unnecessary, and completely stupid to think they could do this reboot of "nobody will know who you are anymore" and it not screw up 20 years of continuity in every other comic book they've written (What about New Avengers? Wouldn't their discovery of the Skrulls have been erased since they didn't know who Spider-Man was and he'd never lived in Stark Towers, so he couldn't have been with the team to save them during their earlier storylines and it would have ended differently. How about the Civil War? Without Pete's help, why would Stark's original plan have gotten off the ground? It was his unmasking that was the pivotal point in everything, and his reason for joining Cap's team later.)
A stupid, lazy way to end an otherwise successful 20 year run on the comic. Skip this and spend your money on some older Spidey story. This comic has officially jumped the shark.
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65 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
My Letter to Marvel, May 14, 2008
Dear Marvel,
You may get a lot of "I've been reading Spider-Man since ..." This one is a little different. I've started reading the comic book when I was literally a geeky teen in high school and really related to the picked on, nerdy character. He had his problems, his worries and trying to make ends due. But that was the reason why he was so lovable. Since it was 1990 that I seriously started reading comic books, Spidey was already married and though I knew and related to character from the days gone by from the 70s and 80s, it was the fact that he was married that kept me reading. He made me realize that even the geeks can get the girl. Sort of made me push harder at work and studies to be where I am today. Spidey saw me growing up through med school, residency and finally becoming a full fledged board certified dermatologist.
When I did get married, literally to a bombshell, she was my Mary Jane. I made my wife read all the stories, old and new where Peter's and MJ's love shined. I bought her the hard to come by Wedding issue, even the death of Gwen Stacy just to spark a debate of who's the best girl for Peter. She did laugh at me saying this was just a comic book, she knew how serious I was as to how married life is. They were our beacon to keep fighting no matter where life takes you. Each month when Amazing came out, it was another chapter in married life. Ultimate Spidey made me smile seeing Peter going from one teen mess to another, but it was the adult Peter that all of us related to. The readers had the best of both worlds. The stories became complex and more encompassing but we, the readers, stuck through. The Clone saga came out and I loved it (though not many did not). I felt it was another part of the Spidey mythos. JMS came onboard and he developed new character, new powers and sales still rocketed. We felt that Spider-man was rightfully evolving. He was unmasked, much to our surprise, but we were still intrigued. This all was happening until the story "One More day".
That one story completely erased my faith in the character and that with a blink of an eye things can just drastically change in comics. It was as if we, the readers, received a slap in the face for the 15 years of character development and growth. It was like going to square one in such a selfish, cowardly way that has truly shaken my belief. It was like erasing the work of many greats like Howard Mackie, JM DeMatteis, David Michelinie, Danny Fingeroth, Terry Kavanaugh and JMS to name a few. Spidey has no more new powers, he was masked again, but what hurt the most is that he was not married anymore. It was like what I read through all these sleepless nights in between my study breaks was irrelevant.
I read the last chapter of "One More Day" in a hotel room away from my family attending a dermatology conference. I knew what was going to happen and I kept it deep down in the stack, in hopes that the story might not happen if I don't read it. After reading the last page, I called my wife with a heavy heart and told her "Peter and MJ are not together anymore and have never been married". She thought I was crazy for calling her just to talk about that, especially since it's "just a comic book", but I felt so compelled to tell her that I loved her and miss her. To this day, I'm still in shock and the thought of Spidey not married, just gnaws at me.
Not everyone knows what die hard fans go through and how we relate to certain characters and certain storylines. We're not kids anymore. A lot of us are married, have kids and relate to the character different than in the past where comics were read mostly by kids. If Marvel wanted MJ out of the picture, there were already titles out there that had Spidey not married to the character. Marvel Age, Ultimate. New kids, if Marvel decides to believe that kids actually read comics in between their video games, can read those titles, but we old 30 something year olds grew up with this nerd, who grew up to become a man, falling in love and marrying this beautiful woman. Because inside each one of us is a Spider-Man...
I don't know how I will read Amazing again. The feeling of apprehension that whatever I read can easily be blown away in the dust leaves me insecure and scared to attach myself to the character the way I did before. I apologize for the long letter, but I really had to put my thoughts into this.
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43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A slap in the face to the characters and fans, April 1, 2008
During his tenure as Marvel Editor in Chief, Joe Quesada has led the company from the bottom back to the top of the comic book world with some great talent recruiting over the past few years, but One More Day is a pure slap in the face to every Spider-Man fan and reader, and the characters that populate this storyarc as well. Granted, Spidey has (as a previous reviewer already pointed out) been written into a corner as of late, with revealing his identity to the public and being an outcast in a post-Civil War world. What happens in One More Day (and yes, there are spoilers ahead) finds a deal struck with the devil Mephisto that erases everyone's memory of Peter Parker being Spider-Man, as well as erasing the marriage of Peter and Mary Jane. Why, oh why would something like this happen? Because Quesada wanted it to, for the desire of having Spidey return to his roots. Or something. Whatever the reason, One More Day is absolutely terrible. Regular series writer J. Michael Straczynski even requested his name be taken off the final issue of the arc (Quesada was clearly in control as Straczynski has since departed the title he has worked on for the past seven years), which finds a major part of the Spider-Man mythos just erased like it was nothing at all. Straczynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man started out well enough, but had more than its share of hiccups (Sins Past anyone?), and while he isn't entirely to blame about this debacle, this is one arc that will be a black eye on the otherwise solid scribe's list of works. Quesada provides the artwork as well, which is about what you would expect from him depending on if you are a fan of his work or not. Do yourself a favor by avoiding One More Day at all costs, and pray that hopefully someday, the powers that be will come to their senses and fix this mess that has transpired, and hopefully then, we can forget that One More Day ever happened in the first place.
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