ONCE BYRNED
A while ago, John Byrne talked about an idea he'd had with Howard Mackie to "reset" Spider-Man continuity. First they would have put Peter Parker through the worst of it, until he considers ending it all. At that point, he'd find himself on the bridge where Gwen Stacy died, offering his soul if the clock could have been turned back to simpler times. At which point the Shaper Of Worlds does just that, remaking Spider-Man's world to when he was back in High School, but with the current book's supporting cast, taking place in the modern day. Eventually confronting the Shaper, he discovers nothing can be changed, and his memories of the old world slowly fade away. The team decided though that this kind of event would be too "cosmic" for Spider-Man, who has a "street level" tone.
Well, while Byrne may be out of favour at Marvel (or vice versa), his ideas may still see the light of day. Coincidence of course, these things usually are - google "ideaspace" for further discussion. That is all for now.
This is pretty much my worst nightmare. Well, not really, because that would involve some combination of sharks, wax figures, Parmalat, and Critters. This is my worst nightmare when it comes to potential outcomes of the upcoming Spider-Man arc "One More Day" (which I always want to call "One Day More" because of the song from Les Miserables). And it seems like an ever increasing likelihood that it's going to happen, when you take into consideration the fact that a similar un-writing of Spider-Man history appeared in Lying in the Gutters several months back (I can't be bothered to search for it now, but it was a scenario that involved a new character introduced in the Ms. Marvel Annual), my own observations in my review for New Avengers: Illuminati #3, and even the appearance of the new character Jackpot in Dan Slott, the guy who is probably going to be taking over Amazing Spider-Man Free Comic Book Day story "Swing Shift."
I guess I just don't understand why Spider-Man being married is such a big deal. Personally, I happen to like the marriage and always have. Since I have been reading since I was nine-years-old and Peter and Mary Jane have been married that whole time, the argument that kids can't relate to a married Peter Parker always seems a bit weird to me. If anything, I think most nine-year-olds probably assume they will be married by the time they are Peter's age. I know I did. Whereas now, at roughly the same age as Peter, the whole idea of marriage is increasingly foreign to me, yet I still like the fact that Peter Parker is married. I like who he's married to too, despite the fact that she's a super model. (I'm not even going to get into the constant remarks like "How bad could his life be? He's married to a super model" made by certain writers and editors. It gets me far too annoyed.)
Even more than my personal feelings about Peter Parker's marriage, which I could go into far more depth about, I do not really see how ending the marriage could be so all important that Marvel would damage the integrity of the character and company just to make it go away. Isn't the fact that Marvel didn't do stuff like this supposed to be one of the things that set them apart from the Distinguished Competition, not to mention a key part of the more reality based storytelling they have always prided themselves on? If this happens, I guess it will show that it's just a slippery slope from Wanda uttering "No more mutants!" to completely throwing out 40+ years of continuity and character development.
It also doesn't make much sense to me because there already is a version of Spider-Man who will never grow up. He won't even ever leave high school. Wouldn't this kind of thing render Ultimate Spider-Man completely pointless? (One could argue that Marvel is making the whole Ultimate line pointless with the recent developments in the main Marvel Universe, but since it still has a Captain America and as much of an ass as Ultimate Tony Stark is, he is not crossed the line into supervillain territory, I don't hold with that opinion.) There's also Spider-Man Adventures, which is targeted at younger readers. It's odd to me that, with a number of alternatives, Marvel wouldn't want to appease all fans, by at least keeping the current continuity intact, even if they still wanted to end the marriage through divorce or, loathe as I am to even mention it, death. This is what gives me hope that Marvel won't take this road though, because they do seem to want to appeal to all the different Spider-Man fan preferences. Still, the fact that this rumor gets floated repeatedly, combined with the fact that there are so many pieces in place for them to do something like this is troubling simply because it indicates that Marvel editorial has given it serious thought, which in my not so humble opinion it does not warrant. This is Spider-Man, people. This sort of thing does not suite him. Unfortunately, I might argue that mystical totems don't really suite him either.
Even as a fan of the marriage, I could have been OK with the divorce scenario. Done well, it could have opened up both Peter and MJ for some interesting personal stories while still keeping MJ in the picture as 1) a close friend that knows Peter's secret (now a moot point, I know) and he can confide in, and 2) a love interest, since divorce in no way precludes a potential reunion and Mary Jane has pretty much become Marvel's Lois Lane thanks to the movies. It's been pretty obvious for a while now though that divorce isn't an option for these two. Their post-separation relationship has been stronger than ever, and the Sensational Spider-Man Annual clearly illustrated that neither one of them are giving up on their marriage. That still, of course, leaves the option of Mary Jane's death, which despite the sinking feeling I got when I finished reading the Sensational Spider-Man Annual, I still don't believe is going to happen. The movies have made her too well known. Anyway, Mary Jane's been dead before, and it didn't really work out well for the Spider-Man titles.
Personally, I don't have much interest in reading about a perpetually young Peter Parker that never moves forward. Maybe it's because I myself am an adult now, but I have always liked the fact that Peter Parker was the one character that has really grown and matured through the years, experiencing various stages of life and the dilemmas that they hold. I think it adds to his status as the "everyman" character. Furthermore, I think it is much truer to the character that Stan Lee created, a character who aged in real time for his first five years of existence before the publisher made Stan Lee slow it down. Here's a quote from Write Now #14 (January 2007):
STAN: Yeah, I thought it would be great to have him age in real time. I never really knew that it couldn't be done. You may recall, after high school I put him in college and then after he'd been there for a few years I made him a grad student. Later we had him get married--or maybe it was earlier. I can't quite remember. I'd have eventually had MJ get pregnant also. However, Martin Goodman, the publisher, didn't want him to age in real time so that put a stop to it.
(Sidenote: I don't think Peter graduated college until Len Wein's run from 1975 to 1978.) I actually believe that it was a good thing to not have Spidey age in real time, since it allowed to more fully examine the story potential, but eventually, the story gets played out and it's time to move the character forward. I love coming of age tales, especially when it comes to superheroes, and Spider-Man was probably the best. However, the whole point of a coming of age tale is that the character eventually comes of age. If one tries to hold the character in place for too long, he or she stops seeming like a kid who is making normal mistakes and growing and learning from them, and more like an idiot. To me, that's a great deal more unrelatable than a protagonist who is from a different age group as myself, as it tends to make the character downright unlikeable.
I would prefer to see the character move forward. He's just unmasked, which I am not all that keen on, since another thing I see as essential to the character that Stan Lee created is the duality of Peter Parker and Spider-Man, but it would have been nice to see that fully explored before changing everything yet again, or resetting it, as the case might turn out to be. As I said, I could have been OK with a divorce had the story remained true to the characters of Peter and Mary Jane, and I am still a bit bitter about what happened to baby May back when they actually did broach the subject of them having a child before jettisoning it never to be mentioned again like everything else that happened during the second Clone Saga.
Anyway, it's hard to take any argument about marriage making Peter too old and unrelatable seriously when it comes from the people who made him a teacher, the ultimate symbol of being an old and unrelatable authority figure for any child and probably more than a few adults. For now though, I am just going to have to chalk these rumors and suspicions up on my list of things that are making me not look forward to "One More Day" along with Joe Quesada's ugly ass art. Why take ideas from Byrne and Mackie anyway? Their run sucked and didn't sell well.
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