Retcon [ret'kon] v. The deliberate changing of previously established facts in a work of serial fiction (retroactive continuity).
The much-hyped “One More Day” story arc in Amazing Spider-man has ended pretty much the way most people figured it would. Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are no longer married. Now, divorce is a disappointing and messy thing, but comics have always delved into all areas of life, exploring things that can be uncomfortable to talk about in the real world.
However, Peter and MJ didn’t get divorced. No, as far as I’m concerned, what actually happened is far more disturbing. It’s as if they were never married to begin with.
Apparently suffering from a burgeoning lack of creativity, Marvel decided that they were tired of trying to make a married Spider-man interesting. I guess top-level sales weren’t doing it for them? (example: Jan ’07, April ’07, Aug ’07, etc.).
Furthermore, rather than come up with a creative way to return Spider-man to his apparently halcyon roots as a young, geeky single guy, they went with the lowest common denominator and clicked the cosmic “undo” button, un-marrying Peter and MJ in an instant and going back on twenty-one years of continuity.
Here’s the summary from USA Today:
In Amazing Spider-Man #545 last week, Peter and Mary Jane make a tearful deal with the devil-like character Mephisto: In exchange for saving Aunt May’s life, Mephisto erases all traces of the Peter-Mary Jane marriage from memory. In the issue out this week, subtitled Brand New Day, Peter Parker returns to his roots — young, nerdy and single. Aunt May is alive and well and Mary Jane is again just part of the cast. The marriage never happened.
Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada gives lots of reasons in the USA Today article for why this was done, but especially following a year where Marvel killed Captain America and made several other extremely controversial moves, I think the following quote from the article sums it up best:
“Nobody wants to read about a married Spider-Man,” says Craig Shutt, a columnist for Comics Buyers Guide. “But in the short run, it’s a terrible idea. It disrespects the readers by saying everything they read is wrong.”
So, J. Michael Straczyinski, I usually enjoy your writing, but the decisions you’ve made over the course of your tenure writing Spider-man books (whether or not they were forced upon you by Quesada, as some rumors are starting to say) have been notably bad. I mean, did we really need another reboot of Spider-man continuity? Didn’t Marvel just do that a few years ago with the Ultimate titles?
Fortunately for me and countless other spider-fans, the nature of comic books is pretty mercurial, so no doubt at some point Marvel will change things yet again, leaving us all scratching our heads and hoping anew for something truly creative. Meanwhile, I’ll stick to my X-men and Avengers for fun, and genuinely groundbreaking titles like Fables and Y: The Last Man for excellent storytelling.
For more perspective: Wizard Magazine
I am in agreement on this being a bad decision on Marvel’s part. While it’s really cool to revisit Spidey’s college days, I think they could have come up with much more creative ways to do it than the “deal-with-the-devil-undo-button”. I say they should have let Aunt May die (she’s already died once before, plus…she’s OLD! She’d have probably died of age soon anyway!).
Instead of this nonsense, I think they should have delved more into the totemic aspect of Spider-Man that J.M.S. so expertly introduced into the Spider-Man mythos (without changing any of Spider-Man’s history as we know it – just opening our eyes to a wider picture and overarching reason for him gaining the spider-powers) so we could find out what that’s all about.
Anyway, everyone knows that Peter and Mary Jane’s love is so “pure” and great that they’ll end up married again anyway, so what’s the point?
They killed Captain America? I need to read more comic books, have you tried Marvel’s online comic deal?
I’ve looked at it, but I still buy my comics in the stores, so I’m not really interested in an online subscription. It’s a pretty cool deal, though!
Back when Crossgen comics was around, they had something like that, and it had some neat features. Especially for a company like that where all the books where somehow connected, it was a nice alternative to feeling like you had to buy every issue of every book.
So it’s not for me at this point, but it’s a good idea.