Spider-Man General Discussion

OMD is a story where the hero fails, loses his wife, and the Devil himself triumphs over him sneering in victory, and all of this because of an overzealous editor.

It's a cavalcade of failure.

OMD is such a strangely recursive story. It’s sole purpose was to retcon the marriage, but a consequence of that is that the deal itself also never happened.

Edited by megaeliz on Aug 13th 2019 at 6:30:44 AM

According to Quesada, it's supposed to be a bittersweet story where an innocent life is saved, but at a terrible cost.

Alrighty then.

Also according to Quesada, its a story where two children are sacrificed to save an old lady through quasi-Satanic magic.

That must have been the "terrible cost"

Edited by Bocaj on Aug 13th 2019 at 6:36:07 AM

The thing is, even without the thing that made everyone mad, it’s still an awful and nonsensical story. Every other hero in the Marvel Universe gets handed the Idiot Ball, everyone’s acting out of character, and a ton of nonsensical and ultimately pointless crap happens.

Edited by megaeliz on Aug 13th 2019 at 6:44:07 AM

I read an interesting review that took the first 3 parts as being the Grand Finale for Spider-Man as a concept until the swerve at the end. An entry on the WMG page speculated on that as well.

Thats a hallmark of bad stories. Its not usually just one thing, although one thing may stand out from the mess.

Edit:

HA HA WOW

Edited by Bocaj on Aug 13th 2019 at 6:57:05 AM

Timeline there is off. JMS’ run on Thor began after OMD and continued until Siege.

I put more accurate stuff at the trivia page of OMD in case anyone is interested.

I was more reacting to the writer's retreat anecdote, which in fairness is an 'apparently' but is incredibly shitty if true.

JMS was hardly innocent, though - he not only supported the retcon, he wanted an even bigger one!

The question is whether a bigger retcon is worse when the default is already going to be huge.

From what I understand, the last few issues of OMD is mostly on Quesada.

On Amazing Spider-Talk, Ginnochio and Gvozden's podcast...Marc Guggenheim said that when he and the rest of the team signed on, they did it because it was a chance to work on Spider-Man and they would have written if he was married or unmarried, period.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fTRzFOG02c&t=9483s) You might have to go back and forth to find Guggenheim. Anyway, Guggenheim said that when they signed on all they were told is that there was a retcon coming that would remove the marriage and it was only late in the day that Quesada himself told them how it would be. And Guggenheim's response he says is "Wow" but said in a tone that suggests that he's signed on for a s—tshow which the fans would never let him live down.

Not everyone's remotely honest about the stuff behind OMD, because I think people signed NDA agreements and so on. Likewise, it might affect work relations and so on. Obviously Quesada and others stole the idea from Waid/Morrison/Millar's Superman 2000 proposal which is basically identical in numerous details with Mxyzsptlk being the Mephisto guy there. JMS it seems wrote the story very late in his run and didn't build up to it at all. I mean if he had this conclusion in place he should have set things up right. But he basically just wrote the run story by story until doing this. From what it looks like, Quesada basically tried to tell each writer what they wanted to hear, he told JMS he could do OMD his way, and he told the writers they could do things their way and so on. It wasn't until JMS made a fuss about removing his name, and Quesada stepping up to take co-writer credit that people got that this was something forced editorially.

I will say that Quesada to his credit doesn't seem to have thin skin. Since obviously JMS worked on his Thor run after that.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Aug 13th 2019 at 4:41:31 AM

While I disagree with the Superman 2000 writers (the marriage is so important that even DC brought it back), their description of what to do and how to do it is so much better than OMD:

And the way they undo the marriage is vastly more interesting than how OMD did it and includes a lot more build up.

By the way, both Mark Waid and Grant Morrison would later incorporate ideas from that into their own books — Waid's Superman: Birthright (which Waid has said is his favorite story he ever wrote) and Morrison's All-Star Superman and Action Comics during the New 52.

Edited by alliterator on Aug 13th 2019 at 4:56:16 AM

Mark Millar also borrowed stuff from that proposal. That bit about Luthor in that proposal about him doing chess while learning Urdu and doing something else ended up in Red Son (much like most of Millar's stuff, for the life of me, this is considered a good story even if I think it sucks).

JMS in a recent AMA promoting his autobiography said this: "It's a matter of historical record that Marvel wanted to unmarry Peter (but without the political weight of a divorce) and the book was commissioned by Editorial to achieve that. I had come onto the book to reunite the two, and I loved writing them as a married couple, would've been happy to continue doing that forever." Based on some other stuff, it seems to me that OMD was planned around 2004 or 2005, at the same time as CIVIL WAR. Mark Millar said that he had Peter reveal his identity knowing that it would be undone and Quesada gave the okay for it.

Matt Fraction also said that "To Have and To Hold" was written by him as a pre-emptive protest story against OMD.

The divorce would have killed any idea of a new civilian love interest for Peter, and as it is, pretty much any other love interest would have been compared to MJ. It's kind of a no win.

Not like the post OMD relationships are much to write home about

Not a single person comparable to Debra Whitman

Gonna be honest, I started reading Spencer's Spider-Man at all despite my misgivings because I heard Peter was back with MJ.

Edited by Bocaj on Aug 13th 2019 at 8:12:28 AM

Well that JMS statement is certainly interesting; contradicts what I've always heard about his opinions on the story, posted above.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Aug 13th 2019 at 7:10:46 AM

This interview also mentions the Civil War/OMD stuff.

"Well, to be completely clear, the idea for OMD was actually created by a room full of people. From the very first day I was in the EIC chair, I made no secret of the fact that I felt that a married Peter Parker wasn't the best thing for an ongoing Spider-Man universe. The problem was that we never had a decent methodology to get ourselves out of it. I always said that if we ever found a way to do it, I would pursue the avenues to get us there.

Close to two years ago at one of our creative summits, the seeds of that idea began to blossom. Those ideas were then taken and a two week long e-mail chain began where we started to throw around ideas until we got the story kind of where we wanted it to be. . . .

In the end, knowing what that story was going to be is what allowed us to go ahead with the unmasking of Spider-Man in Civil War — we had our way out ahead of time, it was a great place to be."

Edited by lalalei2001 on Aug 13th 2019 at 5:13:05 AM

JMS always said he was never on board with the retcon and he did it, if at all, as a personal favor to Quesada: "Personally, I was perfectly happy keeping them married; I didn’t think Mephisto should be used in that fashion, and I didn’t like the idea of erasing everyone’s memory. Whenever you bring magic into a story you have to be really rigorous about the rest of it. And a lot of logical questions to my mind were not being addressed. Having said that, it’s a complicated universe and it is Joe’s purview."

I followed JMS' Spider-Man and I knew before OMD what Quesada's opinions were, it was on wikipedia pages for Mary Jane and so on. He made it that public, and I didn't like it then, I like it less now. It felt like a publisher trying to undersell his own product. Modern EIC don't act like that to my knowledge. Imagine if Cebulski talked smack about Ewing or Hickman's work. I don't think Quesada's attitude during JMS' run was proper for an editor-in-chief. When your main writer is writing Spider-Man and selling the marriage and doing well...you have an editor who won't shut up about how that's a bad idea and concept. It creates this sense of cross-purposes. Likewise, just a bit after Grant Morrison and Whedon did wonders with the X-Men, Quesada oversees House of M and defends it saying that there were too many mutants and he didn't agree with Mutant Town and so on, i.e. the works of writers on the runs during your tenure as EIC.

I personally do agree with JMS in that for One More Day to be effective on any level there needed to be a tradeoff greater than Aunt May living. I think if JMS went ahead and brought Gwen back and basically revived the Lee-Romita era as a lasting status-quo then that might have diluted the anger. I mean trading one big failure for another feels reasonable. And the Lee-Romita era is way more charismatic than the status quo from ASM #192-289 which is essentially what BND amounts to in terms of being a s—ty remake.

Something I’m not quite clear about:

Did OMD create an alternate timeline, or just alter everyone’s memories? Or was that never actually clarified?

Because, in my mind, one would be significantly easier to fix than the other.

Edited by megaeliz on Aug 13th 2019 at 8:48:30 AM

Looking back, it is odd that they didn't try and take the opportunity to revive Gwen. They brought back Harry after all.

Then again the aforementioned Sins Past might have permanently tainted any thoughts of that.

The Night Gwen Stacy Died is too much of a sacred cow in many’s eyes

Anyway, it remains baffling to me why so many spider writers through the ages have hated the marriage so much

The Clone Saga was apparently a rather boneheaded attempt at a compromise - the original concept would've had Ben take over as the "him and single" new Spider-Man for good, while Pete and MJ ride off into the sunset.

According to Quesada, the reference was Sliding Doors, where a small event creates a diverging point in terms of plot but a lot of the same stuff happened. 'OMD and OMIT altered the 616 timeline itself. They made it so the marriage never happened in 616 continuity, but every story happened without them being married. Basically the marriage happened in every issue before OMD, but Post-OMD will refer to those same stories in the same comics without referring to them being married, apparently Peter and MJ were just "living together", even if you know that doesn't make any real sense.

A lot of stories and character beats and moments don't make sense without the marriage. Take Felicia Hardy/Black Cat. Her major characterization changed when Venom attacked her in Michelinie's run and casually informed her that Peter got married by referring to his wife. That was how Felicia learned that Peter moved on. That also led to Felicia changing and maturing, becoming friends albeit vitriolic with Mary Jane, dating Flash Thompson and so on. That's one example of how a long-time supporting character got shafted with a retcon and how the marriage defined the entire cast and not just Peter and MJ.