With the last issue of the first arc of Amazing Spider-Man: Brand New Day having just come out, I figured it would be a good time to weigh in one last time on the issue of Spider-Man's marriage before I bid adieu to the character for a little while. While unfortunately, Erik Larsen may have beaten me to the punch in his One Fan's Opinion Column on comicbookresources.com, I have a slightly different perspective on the matter which, as a fanboy, I'd like to make known.
Historically, One More Day marks the third time in the last fourteen years or so that Marvel editorial have tried to 'un-marry' Spider-Man. The first, and up until One More Day most contentious attempt took place during the infamous Clone Saga, where it was essentially declared that the Peter Parker whose adventures everyone had been following for twenty one years or so was a clone, a fake, a copy of the real Peter Parker, who in Marvel time had been gone five years. The set-up for this idea took a full two years, but the backlash was so bad that this publicly regarded impostor, renamed "Ben Reilly" to distinguish him, absurdly enough, from Peter "clone" Parker, was so widely rejected by readership that rather than let him fade quietly into the background with the possibility of reintroducing him at a later date, editorial killed the poor guy within a year of his having donned the Spider-Man outfit. The poor Spider-clone was killed twice.
The second time took place during the similarly reviled tenure of Howard Mackie and John Byrne, under the editorial watch of chief Bob Harras. Their solution was more and less drastic at the same time: Mary Jane Parker was apparently blown up in a plane by some guy who was stalking her. Of course, her "death" was loaded with ambiguity and in the end it felt rather half-assed even before it was revealed to have been a fake-out; having learned from the debacle of the Clone Saga, which took years to set up but less than a year to unravel, Marvel decided a "safer" route which would enable them to resurrect MJ at the drop of the hat if fan reaction was unfavorable.
Oddly enough, credit goes to the current regime at Marvel for having the balls to throw their full weight behind this initiative, Clone-Saga style, fully aware that reader could react as violently to this story as they did to Ben Reilly, as many of them in fact have.
While as I've often said, I have a problem with the whole Faustian Pact thing (Joe Quesada's defense of the methodology notwithstanding), I see the logic of un-marrying Spider-Man, which I've already discussed.
In fact, I'll go one step further than Joey Q and address all of the people who've said "but anyone who wants a swinging (pardon the pun) single Spider-Man can always read Ultimate Spider-Man or Spider-Man Adventures."
Well, the Q would never, ever put down one of the books his company puts out, but bound by no such compunctions, I can say that the way things are, both those books are currently second-class citizens in Marvel's publishing scheme.
Spider-Man Adventures isn't even designed for the mainstream, direct market; it's a kid's book designed to sell in bookstores, and everything in it is essentially a re-hash of old Lee/Ditko or Lee/Romita stories.
As for Ultimate Spider-Man, well, as far as I can tell it's served its initial purpose, which was to revitalize interest in Spidey by making him "relevant" to younger audiences. There was a time when this title was regularly outselling the flagship one, but those days are long gone and USM hasn't even been selling in the top ten for years now.
The idea, in short was to increase readership on the core Spider-Man book, to the extent that all other Spidey books, Sensational and Friendly Neighborhood, were axed to make way for the thrice-monthly, rotating creators publishing scheme.
Having finished that scheme's first storyarc, I think Marvel may be on the right track here.
It was a marketing coup on Marvel's part to have Civil War alumnus Steve McNiven draw the launching arc. His art looks livelier in Amazing Spider-Man #548 than it ever has, and quite frankly not even the previously partially-true accusations of his people looking 'plasticky' can stick here. I think the switch from regular colorist Morry Hollowell to reliever Dave Stewart may have something to do with it. The art is absolutely brilliant, and bristles with much more kinetic energy than I've ever seen in McNiven's pencils. There is no way any of the artists following McNiven on this title, at least four of whom have already been named, can match this standard of quality in my eyes, so it's still adieu for me.
I must say, before I go, that writer Dan Slott sets a tone for this new direction that seems a lot easier to swallow than the idea of Peter Parker being counterfeit or the idea of Mary Jane lying in a million pieces at the bottom of the sea. A new villain (albeit one with the somewhat prosaic name of "Mr. Negative") has been introduced and established, with powers and an origin yet to be fully revealed, a nice little monkeywrench has been thrown in the works for the Daily Bugle, and Peter Parker is back to the down-on-his-luck loser he was created to be...a concept that got diluted several times over, especially when he moved into the New Avengers' tower.
Last time I thanked Marvel for making the decision for me to leave easier and less tainted with bitterness over One More Day. Now I'd like to thank Dan Slott and Steve McNiven for making me believe that, however bad OMD may have been, Brand New Day is actually a pretty good idea.
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