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Spider-Man: One More Day: One more Die, Quesada
by Doom
guest starring Joe Quesada
Fuck!
"BUT FIRST, GIVE ME SOME BUTTERMILK AND MY SHAWWWWWL"
Although the storyline is not yet over, I feel it important for me to comment on the...thing. I wrote an article more than a year ago about my displeasure seeing Quesada's hatred of the Spider-Man marriage, and now it's gone from appearing in interviews and panel reports to actually showing up on the printed page of Amazing Spider-Man. Spider-Man: One More Day, or OMD for short, is a 4 issue crossover miniseries of sorts that is JMS' last work on the character and an excuse for Quesada to ramrod his dreams of a single Peter Parker down the readership's collective throat. Now, it's arguable as to whether or not the marriage is good for the longevity of the book and the character of Peter Parker. I personally think you'd be fucking retarded to hate it, but it's still an arguable point. Reasonable people can disagree on it. However, what's not arguable is the fact that the way Marvel is going about removing the marriage is completely and utterly retarded, as shown by the concept and the quality of One More Day. It's so bad and so transparent I don't even need to read the last issue for me to do my review of it (although you can be sure I'll review the last issue if/when it eventually comes out).
The concept is pretty well publicized by now: Aunt May is on the brink of death and for plot reasons absolutely nothing in the entirety of the Marvel Universe can keep her from dying, despite there being a plethora of healers in the MU (hell, there's like 3 on the X-Men alone). Spider-Man even goes to Dr. Strange for help, but it's all for naught. It seems Aunt May's gonna die. That's the first two issues of the total four issues. The next issue deals with Peter following around a little girl, meeting alternate versions of himself, and the little girl turning out to be Mephisto (GET IT, CHILDREN ARE UNEXPECTED TO BE EVIL SO YOU SHOULD EXPECT ANYTHING PRECOCIOUS TO BE SATAN). At this point the book goes down faster than [insert gratuitous sexual reference here]. Mephisto wants something in exchange for saving Aunt May's life. Peter Parker's soul, perhaps? His powers? His life? No, it's something out of left field and inane. Mephisto wants HIS MARRIAGE! Wow, I didn't know Mephisto was gay and/or Joe Quesada.
In Quesadaworld, little girls are scary.
Basically, there's no way to rebound from a fucking thing like that as a cliffhanger. How could you? There's only two options: they take the deal and something retarded happens or they don't take the deal and the series was a big waste of time. I'm assuming the latter isn't going to happen because it's been incredibly telegraphed what the outcome is, especially in light of spoilers that leaked months ago regarding the ending. So Peter or MJ takes the deal, and that in and of itself is grounds for breaking out the "too much blood on the knob" picture. But it gets even worse because the entire fucking plot unravels under close/any scrutiny. First, there's the question of what kind of fucking demon would say "I want your marriage"? Mephisto's a shitty Man of Evil if the best thing he can think of to take is someone's marriage, considering Peter won't remember it, thereby meaning he'll go back to his naive retard characterization Dan Slott loves so much. Why not take Peter's soul? Seriously, what the FUCK. Mephisto taking someone's marriage just pegs Mephisto as a secularist homosexual or something. Goddamnit.
Secondly, there's no fucking way Peter or MJ would take the deal. Peter still has a penis and I'm pretty sure all heterosexual males rank hot redhead completely devoted to you over sack of bones who's been on death watch in about 525 out of 546 issues. Peter is also not a dumbass and should realize DEALS WITH THE DEVIL ALWAYS TURN OUT IN FAVOR OF THE DEVIL. YOU KNOW WHY? CAUSE HE'S THE FUCKING DEVIL! I think Spider-Man knows of a guy named Johnny Blaze. Remember him, Pete? Ghost Rider? Yeah, his deal with the Devil was his soul in exchange for the Devil saving his dad's life (dad was dying of cancer at the time). His dad got better...and then died in a stunt gone awry. I really hope Ghost Rider shows up to kick Spider-Man's ass for even considering such a retarded deal. Or I wanna at least see Aunt May get hit by a bus a day after leaving the hospital. I know it won't happen, but it's realistic.
"You forced me to go fugitive and check my family into a shitty motel with no security that easily allowed a sniper to fire upon them from across the street...you ASSHOLE!"
There's also the question of why the fuck Quesada and JMS felt this was the best way to remove the marriage. If this was any other fucking medium, the characters would get a divorce or MJ would die. But Joe Q thinks either of those options would age the character. Man, who gives a shit? It's not as though he'd have to mention his divorce all the time, nor would him mentioning his death once and again alienate this apparent plethora of children who base their enjoyment of Spider-Man on his marital status. You can't go three issues without him bitching about Gwen and kids are somehow supposed to relate to him having a dead girlfriend murdered by a millionaire industrialist in a goblin fetish suit? I remember being a kid. I didn't give a shit about Peter's marital status. You know why? Because I don't have fucking brain aneurysms every ten minutes. If he was divorced or single, I would theoretically still read if the stories were good. Since it was the 90s, that wasn't an option for me, but you see what I'm getting at, right? I really don't believe kids think divorce ages a character. And if they do, then, hell, doesn't having a steady girlfriend age the character too? Don't many young boy readers bristle at the thought of girls? What the fuck, maybe Spider-Man should be afraid of cooties because it would satisfy Quesada's mythical kid readers. In fact, why not make Spider-Man gay! Then he won't ever have to worry about MJ being in danger!
Mephisto just has no place in the series whatsoever. You'd think the swan song to JMS', what, nearly 80 issue run would have something to do with any of the issues he raised, such as the future plotline seen in #500, or the mystical totem elements sprinkled throughout, or The Other, or, fuck, ANYTHING from his run AT ALL. But no! It's an out of left field "marriage must DIE" swan song for no apparent reason. I say no apparent reason since they fucking had an opportunity to keep Peter single yet instead had them reconcile from separation in Vol. 2 #50. What the hell, Quesada! You had your chance to quietly resolve it such that Peter was no longer married but didn't have some reality altering bullshit hanging over him and you didn't go for it! It's fucking stupid. There's been no foreshadowing to the marriage ending, no seeds planted to justify this other than Joe Quesada mouthing off in every interview in the last 2 years about how much he hates the fact that Spider-Man is married to an icky girl. I personally think I would've respected the ending of Sensational #41 more if Quesada gave up the ghost and rendered himself as the mystery villain instead of randomly falling back on Mephisto. I mean, Quesada has the motive for wanting Spidey's marriage!
Marriage or aunt...marriage or aunt...tight redhead pussy or dry dead bitch walking pussy? WOW, WHAT A TOUGH DECISION.
The thing is, the comics are well-written (until the 'I want your marriage' part), and that's a shame, as the writing talent of JMS is being fucking wasted on such an inane premise. For what is a huge screw you to his entire run on Amazing, he's putting a lot more effort into it than I expected. But even then, there's a lot of flaws within the writing, albeit most of which again stem from the core concept of the fucking Lord of Lies wanting Peter Parker's marriage. The storyline's pretty short to be dealing with the removal of the marriage, bringing to mind the infamous three issue storyline of Hal Boring going crazy, killing the Corps and becoming Parallax (pre-Yellow Bug of Fear version). The first two issues involve Peter confirming that, yes, Aunt May is beyond help, which is a massive plot contrivance. Come on, are you telling me a fucking gunshot wound to the gut can't be solved by Iron Man, or Mr. Fantastic, or Yellowjacket, or Dr. Strange? Honestly! The 'what if you never got bit' shit in the third issue is a rehash of many, many issues of What If?, in addition to being ultimately meaningless (yeah, I'm sure the fact that he's a fat video game tester in some alternate universe really adds to the story). Actually, the fact that it's scripted well pisses me off even more. JMS could be doing something better with his time.
Wanna hear something hilarious? Even JMS doesn't like the series. Yep. The fucking writer wanted to take his name off the last two issues but relented for the sake of his professional and personal relationships with Marvel and with Marvel staff. I think that says a lot about how much One More Day fucking sucks, as well as how Marvel's editorial is running in a DC fashion. Presumably JMS' problem with the last two issues related to the "I want your marriage" thing. From his run it's apparent he values the marriage. My question is why the fuck JMS agreed to write it in the first place. The title 'One More Day' in and of itself suggests the end of their union. Why didn't JMS just say "fuck off and go do it yourself"? Him being beholden to Marvel's editorial needs doesn't mean he has to write the story that erases all of his work. Quesada could've gotten any hatchet man to do the scripting, if he couldn't do it himself.
As you can see, JMS didn't take his name off the comic. I imagine the following exchange occurred at some point.
"Great script, Joe! But I have a couple changes. I'm sending it back now."
...
"This is completely rewritten from what I did."
"There's a lot of parts still intact. Like Spider-Man is in it, and your name's on the script."
"I'd prefer we stick to my draft."
"You wanna know what happened to the last guy who didn't accept my changes? He ended up in pieces on the turnpike!"
"Uh...okay. Please don't kill my family."
I must admit I lost some respect for JMS. He caved in and let Marvel play off his name when he didn't want to be associated with the storyline that seems entirely dictated to him from Quesada. Fuck, he should've suggested Marvel put Howard Mackie or Terry Kavanaugh on the writing side of the comic. They know how to ruin shit like clockwork.
One More Day is one of the few things Quesada's penciled in the past 5 years, and so far it's not horribly delayed. I'd say it's still on 'badly delayed', whereas it'll become 'horribly delayed' if it reaches NYX (only Quesada on script there, but still) or Daredevil: Father levels. I can't really say his art is worth the wait. It's not all that great. A lot of characters look very odd, especially his human characters (Peter looks as though he's got the wrong number of chromosomes). Romita or McNiven would've been better suited for the job. Quesada probably shot himself in the foot by personalizing OMD. If he had not done the art, a lot of people would've complained about his hand in the storyline but it wouldn't be as blatant as it is with him penciling. Kavanaugh got busted in The Shield by making his investigation of Mackey personal. Don't you remember?! Now Q'll forever be known as "The Guy Who Hated The Marriage So Much He Personally Had To Destroy It And Chronicle Its Demise Through Illustration".
Quesada, explain yourself!
Now wait just a minute! I am NOT destroying Spider-Man. I'm undestroying him because the Marvel of the 1980s destroyed him by marrying him off to a woman. Spider-Man is not about women. Well, Spider-Man isn't about one woman, at least. Spider-Man is about a guy named Peter Parker playing the field and fucking every broad he can come in contact with. That's what Peter Parker is all about. In fact, Stan Lee was originally going to call him Peter Bigcock before the Comics Code shot him down and made him change it to Parker (which is still a sly reference to the fact that Peter parks his penis in bitches' slits). Thus, I had to get rid of the marriage. It was holding Spider-Man down, just like my marriage is holding me down (Mephisto, if you're out there, I'll accept any deal if it means I'm not married to this bitch anymore). Brand New Day is going to be the Spider-Man Stan and Steve intended. Multiple orgies, missing out on threesomes because the Rhino robbed a bank, and so on and so forth. Spider-Man's gonna be responsible again by not agreeing to no fucking 'til death do us part' marriage vows! Just wait until you read Dan Slott's first issue, which is 22 pages of him downloading porn and jerking off. The cliffhanger is his webshooters have run out of Vaseline! That's fucking great and you know it. None of that responsible responsibility crap that fag JMS was peddling.
I'm beginning to think Quesada is Dan Didio in disguise, a sleeper agent sent from DC meant to destabilize Marvel. Since he's stabilized Marvel for so many years, DC thinks we won't notice when Quesada goes rogue and Slotts everything up with playing to the loser nostalgic fucks who hated Quesada's shit back when he was doing truly experimental things with Jemas, like New X-Men, Milligan's X-Force or Bendis' Daredevil. That's the only explanation that makes sense as otherwise Joe Quesada is just a flip floppin' douchebag who wants to repudiate everything that's been done under his reign in the dumbest ways possible. This actually out retards the deMorrisonizing of the X-Men a month after Morrison's last New X-Men came out, if you ever thought that was possible. Move over Xorn debacle, here comes the Spider-Man reboot. So not only is the guy completely failing to capitalize on Civil War (with Secret Invasion providing multiple outs), but he's taking back Spider-Man to the fucking 60s because he thinks kids relate easier to Spider-Man fighting guys named Overdrive, Mr. Negative and Menace. Oh, and great, Betty Brant is back! There's no real purpose for her, BUT SHE'S FROM THE DITKO RUN GUYS REMEMBER HER COME ON! Hm. Hold on. HOLY SHIT QUESADA IS TWO-FACE! THAT EXPLAINS IT! JEPH LOEB WAS RIGHT ALL THIS TIME HOLY FUCK
Of course, another aspect of the shittiness of One More Day is the status quo it's making way for: Brand New Day. Anyone who's read my Swing Shift review should understand what I'm referring to. If you're too lazy to click the link, then let me clue you in. Brand New Day, by the creative team of Slott, Guggenheim, Zeb Wells and Superstar Bob Gale, intends to boot Spider-Man from the new millennium to the 1980s, with enough throwaway supporting characters and new shitty villains to remind one of a 'classic' issue of Michelinie. Shitty new villains! Shitty new potential love interests! A retread of 'the cop who has a specific opinion re: Spider-Man'! Someone who's taking over the Bugle! All of it stems from One More Day allowing the status quo to reset to 20 years ago. I think I'd hate OMD somewhat less if I didn't know it was set up for what will be the shittiest series of Spider-Man books except for the Mackie/Byrne tag team of pain (or possibly the Clone Saga). There are tons of aspects to OMD that make me hate it. It's multi-facetedly retarded!
Quesada, you prankster!
I don't think I've ever felt as strongly about a comic as I do regarding One More Day. I just hate it so much. Black Goliath can attest to this. Hell, even Sophie can and she doesn't even understand what the fuck I'm talking about when I rant since she doesn't read comics. One More Day is so poorly executed I can't help but despise it. It's goddamn transparent in how it wants to set everything back to the 1970s era of Peter being a jobless fuck who lived with his aunt because he couldn't get/didn't want pussy. I'VE ALREADY READ THOSE COMICS, MARVEL. I don't need to read them again. Hell, I already read them again because the Clone Saga tried to rehash the good ol' days in the exact same way One More Day intends to accomplish. The only difference is Clone Saga received such incredible backlash it got repudiated and somehow became a horrid run of Mackie and Byrne. I suspect the same thing'll happen to Brand New Day. Everyone will hate it, sales will drop, Wacker will get his hand cut off in retribution, Marvel will hastily undo the debacle and lead us into about 30-40 issues of awful fucking comics by someone like DeFalco or Dan Slott or some other hack they dredge up in their desire for a quick fix. Then it'll take about 5 years in total for the character to recover. Then Quesada or the next EIC'll try to fuck up the book again by removing the marriage. The whole fucking cycle will continue until someone realizes the marriage isn't bad, it's the writers doing the marriage who suck. Course, since comic book companies rarely learn from their mistakes, expect to see Spider-Man run into the ground every decade or every other decade due to the cogent reasoning of "girls? EWWWW!".
It's a shitty time to be a Spider-Man fan.