1/28/2008 - Spider-Man : One More Day Review

If you have an ongoing comicbook series that has run for over 40 years, eventually you are going to run out of stories to tell or the storylines will tend to repeat themselves or they will just become mediocre. You may ask how that can be with only one issue coming out a month and a whole army of writers over a period of years. Well, in the case of Spider-Man comic, its popularity led to various spin-off series such as Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, etcetera, etcetera. In the course of one month, there can be as many as 4 Spider-Man issues coming out each with a different writer, but each having to maintain continuity with each other!

Over the years Peter Parker has been through it all and matured through real-life trials and crises. He's made it through high school, college, fallen in love with different women, and eventually married Mary Jane Watson. There have been many "ground-breaking" changes and revelations involving Spider-Man, such as the "true nature" of his powers, the possibility that he was just a clone, and his unmasking before the world. Each of these plot twists were met with great resistance from the readers, with much criticism that the changes to Peter were out of character. I can't blame the writers to much, because as I've stated above, it's hard to be original when writing stories that fit within a 40 year history.

I do have to side with the detractors of the current storyline, though. Most comic book fans know about Marvel's editor-in-chief Joe Quesada's distaste for the marriage between Peter and Mary Jane. He claims it limits the kind of stories that can be told about Spider-Man. So with one fell swoop, he dissolves the marriage. But how does he do it? Do they get divorced? Does Mary Jane die? No. Instead, the marriage is erased from existence because Peter makes a deal with the devil. Okay, so Peter does it to save Aunt May from death, but still... a superhero making a deal with the devil? What kind of example does that make for kids? When does a deal with the devil ever go well? Didn't they watch the Ghost Rider movie?

This development has made a lot of fans angry. And you wouldn't like it when comic book readers are angry. :) The Angry Video Game Nerd has made a living out of geeky rants about bad video games, but we all know it's just an act. If you want to see a real angry nerd, there is no better example than this review of the Spider-Man: One More Day storyline.