YMMV / Brand New Day

• Audience-Alienating Era: Brand New Day was cursed with the poisoned chalice of following on from One More Day. You had a team of multiple writers who had more or less prepared and worked on the story since before OMD. They were trying hard to pitch the series as a return to a more light-hearted era, despite following on from the most demoralizing Spider-Man story of all time.
  The continuity problems of how every issue in Spider-Man still happened without the marriage and how Harry somehow survived went unaddressed for a long time. The marriage issue was finally addressed with One Moment in Time, which even those who like the idea of a single Peter hated, and didn't address the actual continuity issues.
  The Gauntlet, a storyline that updated and reimagined Spider-Man's rogues gallery, has its admirers as well as detractors, with some finding Shed, a story that ends with the Lizard killing his own son, nasty and unpleasant.
  People did like Harry Osborn's resurrection, even if it undid a classic story ("Best of Enemies"), and were even more upset when Nick Spencer's run on ASM finally explained that post-OMD Harry was just a clone, before killing him off.
• Broken Base: Given the poisoned chalice with which it started (the all-time worst Spider-Man story i.e. One More Day), the writers of Brand New Day had a steep challenge to get away from its shadow. Some fans have grouped two factions — "Traditionalists” who believed it was a good return to a single, uncommitted Spider-Man and "Progressive Fans” who loathed it for being the Status Quo brought by One More Day. And then there's the "Good Storytelling Fans" who are willing to ignore the whole "married vs single" thing if the story is good. They are generally annoyed by the two other sides' endless arguments, preferring to take the work on its own and not as a part of the character's overall history.
• The Chris Carter Effect: Mysteries such as who was Jackpot, what happened to restore Peter's secret identity, why Harry was alive, and more were given an anti-climactic resolution, dragged out for several years, or worse, both. The explanation for Harry Osborn's return was that the goblin serum revived him, even though that's what killed him in the original story (the run by Nick Spencer a decade later would eventually reveal he was just another clone and killed him off). Jackpot was a brand new character that was implied to be a super-powered MJ, before she was revealed to be someone else entirely and was killed off. Mysteries such as how Peter's identity was made a secret again were resolved in a manner that most of the audience figured out already, leading many to question why it was kept a secret for three years. After a while, it became clear that the writers had no real major arc planned for the character and his mythos. They were just making it up as they went along.
• Creator's Pet: Carlie Cooper got this a lot while she was Peter's girlfriend. Complaints included how everyone in-universe seemed to insist that she was perfect for Peter before they even started dating, including MJ, and the fact that she was named after Joe Quesada's daughter made her a Self-Insert Fic.
• Designated Love Interest: The biggest complaint with Carlie Cooper. There where many who felt that everyone in-universe, including Mary Jane, tried to get her together with Peter and gushed about how perfect and wonderful for him she is, even though she hadn't really done much to live up to that hype. There was also some Squick of Carlie being named after Joe Quesada's daughter. This may be why Spider-Island put an end to the relationship, and the finale of Superior Spider Man removed her from the book for good.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Mr. Negative quickly became very popular; during Dark Reign he even got his own mini-series, dealing with him fighting The Hood. Norah and Jameson also have surprisingly large fanbases.
  • Even those that hate OMD and BND/OMIT admit that exploring the dangerous potential of some C-list villains is a great idea. Guys like Chameleon and Spot got to sign after years of underwhelming use.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Anti-OMD (and/or) BND peeps tend to lump everything post-OMD under the flag of Brand New Day, even though technically it was only the 1st load of arcs that were BND. That's about the nicest nickname the antis can call it. Most generally they call it Post-OMD, which even Marvel writers used, partly as an allusion to Post-Crisis to designate what they feel as an entirely different offshoot of Spider-Man and not in any way continuous to the history of the classic Spider-Man despite Marvel's corporate mandate claiming otherwise.
  • Marvel acknowledged this. Most of their staff were referring to all Spider-Man comics between issues #546 and #647 as Brand New Day. They even used it a marketing device, announcing a shift to a twice-a-month format and replacing multiple writers with one as "The end of Brand New Day". That, however, has not stopped fans continuing to label the stories as "BND", and this will likely continue until the day someone restores the "proper timeline".
  • Speaking of multiple writers, their team was called "Spidey Braintrust". Which was the original name but as Marc Guggenheim pointed out, after a while, they started calling themselves "Webheads" which was used by fans, critical and anti, but many use Brain-trust to typify what they feel as an essentially corporate approach to the stories.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Peter and Mary Jane. Outside of that, Spider-Man/Ms. Marvel was the only other pairing most were pulling for before Peter hooked up with Carlie.
• Growing the Beard: The Gauntlet to a lesser extent, and then Big Time especially was this for the status-quo.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Norman crossed it again by making Harry join his superhero team for the purpose of killing him, so he might be seen as a tragic hero, thereby making the general public more willing to let him do whatever he wants. Yes, he planned to kill his son for good PR.
  • Lampshaded with Lizard.
    Lizard: I feel strange. What's that feeling?
    Spider-Man: It's called shame. You killed a child. Get used to it.
• Nightmare Fuel: Spot, after finally realizing how powerful he is. There's a reason why the guy Spider-Man saved from him went crazy – Spot can go anywhere, there are no doors or locks or guards he cannot pass through. If he's after you, there is no safe place – he will come and get you whenever he wants. He might be watching you right now, without you even realizing it, he can come after your friends or family and there's nothing you can do about it.
• Refuge in Audacity: A scene in New Ways To Die. Harry finding his father in the office, wearing his Goblin outfit (without the mask) and holding a mug? Heh, relatively normal. Said mug reading "World's greatest dad"? You gotta have balls.
• The Scrappy: Lots of new characters -– Michele and Vin Gonzalez, Dexter Bennet and Carlie Cooper have sizable hatedoms, among others.
  • A lot of the villains introduced during Brand New Day, like Freak or Paper Doll, were rather hated by fans due to replacing many of Spidey's established foes as well as the new villains established during JMS's run. At the same time many of said villains lacked the traits that made the old bad guys likable or cool. The only exceptions to this are Mr. Negative and Overdrive, who have managed to establish themselves as lasting and worthy new additions to Spidey's Rogues Gallery. Menace also wasn't very well received by fans, but improved eventually.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Dan Slott, Joe Kelly and Mark Waid had different ideas over which girl — Carlie, Norah or Michele, respectively — should be Peter's girlfriend. Results were completely insane, especially when other writers started picking sides. Not to mention Brian Reed decided to throw his hat in and started pairing Spider-Man with Ms. Marvel.
• Spiritual Successor: Grim Hunt to Kraven's Last Hunt.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:
  • The Gauntlet gets this as a whole, but most notably the "Shed" storyline, where Curt Connors kills his son and permanently turns into the Lizard. The following arc, Grim Hunt, is full of several characters getting senselessly killed such as Mattie Franklin and Kaine, although the latter's death was eventually undone.
  • In general, most fans simply couldn't get into Brand New Day because One More Day was such a bleakfest with Peter openly being told that he's trading the love of his life for essentially an Ironic Hell, that the faux-cheerfulness with which the story started felt creepy as does the stated "lighter and softer" approach.
• Win Back the Crowd: Big Time, a "refocus" of the series which undid many of the changes brought about by BND successfully resulted in a massive and consistent sales jump for the Spider-Man comics.

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