One More Day/Brand New Day

I think just about the whole internet has expressed their views on Marvel's recent [bad] move known as Spider-man: One More Day. My turn to throw two cents at Joe Q's face well also bringing up their follow up, Brand New Day.

SPOILERS AHEAD (but you honestly should know them by now)

Let me start by saying that Sensational Spider-Man (vol. 2) #41 was one of my spider-man comics of 2007. Straczynski pulled a good move with that story in not only showing the beauty and significance of the Peter Parker-Mary Jane relationship, but in getting our hopes up. How did he get our hopes up? Well we should all know that the concept to One More Day was that Peter Parker and Mary Jane were offered a deal with the devil (Mephisto), wherein Aunt May (who was recently put into brink of death state, thanks to a poorly aimed bullet) would be allowed to live and return to her healthy old life if they chose to end their marriage with no memory of it. Sensational Spider-man #41 made me think for just a moment that they wouldn't go through with the deal.
Now let me take an aside and give you my view on the marriage. It's well known that Joe Q and many others opposed Peters holy union with Mary for sometime and that they feared it aged the character too much. That being said, I see people married in their early twenties every day (in fairness, I live right by a military base). So my opinion is the marriage was great because it fit, these characters seemed made for eachother (and Mary Jane quite litterally was made for Peter, in a very eve sorta way). Sure, you can't write other female interests for Peter with him married or he'd look like a dog. Well...no, I take that back, look what Kevin Smith did in Spider-man/Black Cat. In fact, that only plays to Peters character better when you have temptation you can't take (I can honestly say its hard not being single, so many beautiful women out there!). Thusly I believe that the only problem with the marriage is coming up with ideas to keep the stories involving MJ and Pete interesting. Well, any writer worth his salt should be able to do that or should tackle a different subject. Just because you're hitting the writers block on this relationship, doesn't mean you should ruin it for fan and future creators. If anyone needs proof that the relationship could be done right, or even broken up in a far better way, then just check out what Erik Larsen had to say over at CBR.
Despite the outcry of thousands of fans, Marvel went along with disolving the marriage and confusingly putting some 2+ decades of comics continuity in to question. You'd think they'd have learned a lesson from the whole clone saga. It was a bad call, a poor to end to the story line, a sad ending point for Straczynski Spider-man run, and just plain contradictory to the last several big Spider-Man Events.
To elaborate on the last bit, lets just look at the last 3 events that recently had changed Spider-Man:
-Organic Webshooters*
Gone
-Reincarnation/Crazy Wrist Spikes**
Gone
-Publically Known Identity***
Gone

*Spider-Man: Disassembled
**Spider-man: The Other
***Civil War

It was truly truly a bad call to erase so much with such a horrible deus ex machina. However, should they undo it? NO!
Sure, I wish it never happened, I honestly think it was just stupidity to do this, but you can't undo it. It's done, it be truly foolish to try and fix it now and would just show stupidity on Marvels behalf. It's one of those points where you have to be stubborn and not admit to the problem. This leads us into a Brand New Day, quite literally as the story holds that name.

Brand New Day starts with Amazing Spider-man being released 3 times a month at the expense of all other main universe Spider-man titles. This already irks me a bit considering I only picked up Ultimate Spidey and Amazing Spidey, to avoid picking up several books on the same character every month (I already do this with Batman, Superman, and Wolverine!). Heres the trick they used, they have revolving 3 issue storylines where each month a new creative team tells their tale. To the creators its just like normal, 3 issues over a few months, nothing new. However to the fans the whole story comes out in one month. Thats cool on one end, that we get a complete story every month, but my wallet hates me for it. Furthermore, were just not given the time to say "I don't like this storyline, I'm not picking up next month's issue". It's not as easily done as it is when there is several titles coming out with one part of the story every month. Still, I've bought into it.

Now on to the important part, how is Brand New Day? Annoyingly, I must answer that it truly is good. It's plain and simple spider-man stories that anyone can hop onto and enjoy. Marvel was right, their plan worked...It pisses me off to no end!...but they were right. On the retail end I can honestly hand a new reader an issue of Amazing Spider-Man each month and they can hop on without the stress of continuity pounding on their backs. Haven't read spider-man in 20 years? never truly read it? doesn't matter, all you need is the basic concept (which you can get in the first 30 minutes of the movie or a 5 minute explanation) and you're set to read spider-man. I hate that this is the follow up to One More Day, that Marvel thinks it was a good choice because the sales will see high figures, but I truly do enjoy the current stories being written in Amazing Spider-man. If only they could have thrown Dan Slott and the others on this title before Straczynski big reveal, maybe we'd have good stories with MJ and Peter still wed...