Sunday, December 30, 2007

One More Reset

Hello everyone,

This is Percy, the other half of Comics&Classics and I am here to provide some commentary on what was one of the most anticipated comic story arcs in recent memory, Spider-man :One More Day.
First I want to say MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!!!! If you haven't read One More Day and plan to or don't want to know anything about the story then stop right here.

Still with me? Good, let's move forward.

For those of you that have not been keeping up on this storyline I will give you a quick synopsis. Aunt may is in the hospital having been shot by a sniper's bullet intended for Peter Parker. The assassin was sent by the imprisoned Kingpin who along with everyone else in the Marvel Universe knows Spider-man's secret identity. This was all due to the events of the Super Hero Registration Act and Civil War where Peter publicly unmasked. If you haven't read Civil War, you have missed a great story and need to get the trade right now.

Aunt May lies dying in a hospital and everything that Peter has done which includes talked to all the greatest minds and greatest sorcerers in the Marvel Universe and the answer is the same : There's nothing that can be done. It's her time.

Well, that's not good enough for our hero who as we know has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Enter Mephisto, the version of the Devil in the Marvel Universe. He offers a tantalizing deal. Trade your marriage for Aunt May. So Aunt May lives and all memory of you and Mary Jane's marriage is wiped from reality. They have 24hrs to decide, hence the title "One More Day".

I'm not going to comment on the art work or the coloring or any of the technical aspects of the book. There are other people all over the net who are doing that. I want to talk about the fact that it seems that the writers and editors painted themselves into a corner and needed a deus ex machina to fix their mistake. Peter Parker should not have his identity known by the world. Again, Peter Parker should not have his identity known to the world. There are certain elements that are essential to any Spider-man story: Responsibility, Balance of life as Peter Parker and Spidey, and the secret identity. The secret identity is important because it's like our little in-joke, it connects us to the character. This nerdy, geeky, loser puts on a costume and does incredible things. He's the everyman who seems average but upon closer scrutiny is extraordinary. He hides what makes him special in plain sight and for that we love him. It was a mistake to reveal his identity to the world, everybody knew it. This ending robs of us of a more satisfying conclusion. We knew they were going to hit the reset button, the ending is predictable and frankly a cheap trick. Perhaps Aunt May should have died, maybe it was her time.

So they retoconned him, took the easy way out, pulled Pam Ewing finding Bobby Ewing in the shower alive and finding that the entire season was a dream. Dare I say, they have jumped the shark?

One last thing, how will this play out with the rest of the Marvel Universe, there is still a Super Hero registration Act and other heroes are abiding by it. Norman Osborne is back, is he still the Green Goblin? These and more questions will be answered in "Brand New Day", on sale at our and other fine comic shops next month.