This story's only five parts long, actually.
I see. Well, I think most of INCREDIBLE HERC's stories have been about 4-5 parts, haven't they?
Spider-Man got Crisised, but he didn't get one of the neat Superman or Wonder Woman Crisis reboots. He got Batman's "we're going on like nothing happened, and will change the past when we see fit" reboot. Frankly, Marvel would be fools not to cash in by giving Spider-Man an equivalent to DC's "Year One" books, where they retell old school Spidey stories to let us know how they turned out in the new canon.
Yeah, I agree. Basically in the memories of everyone, Peter & MJ were just "living together" for a period of time, not actually married. At most they were "engaged" for a while. Of course, trying to make a lot of stories work in that frame-rate doesn't happen. The marriage itself was stressful and was canon for a lot of stories. The fact that it has been over a year real time with some 3-4 writers on ASM and they STILL have no clue how to explain everything is a clear sign to me they are making it up as they go along, with one eye towards the sales numbers, wondering if they should bother.
Of course, you can also see it another, blunt way; the stories are what they are, and Mephisto has literally mesmerized an entire planet, maybe even a chunk of a universe, to make sure a love that happened never did. Given the choice of his elderly mother or his wife, Peter was still too immature to choose, so MJ chose for him, chose to make the self sacrifice for Peter that Peter was struggling to make for her. And then, boom. All the allies Peter made now suspect him because of his secret ID. The person waiting up for him for countless battles now is dating someone else and trying to forget it herself. And Peter's a happy mesmerized fool, out in college living with his aunt having 70's style bachelor stories. It's a big tragedy of inhuman levels. It's like trying to enjoy Morph in EXILES knowing full well that is simply Proteus wearing Morph's corpse and being tricked into acting like Morph, and all of Morph's friends just act like everything is normal. It doesn't come off as human or genuine. It comes off as a comic book level farce, and that is why I can't swallow it.
Granted, if they wanted the Parkers split, the more human approach would have been an outright divorce. But, that way the entire shebang couldn't be undone via an adventure with Loki & Dr. Strange if in SPIDER-MAN 4 Sam Raimi decides to marry the two, and Joe Q has to pull a 180. Because you know darn well that would happen. Hell, when Joe Q became EIC in 2000, Mackie had effectively split the couple up. MJ had been kidnapped and traumatized and could no longer deal with Peter's Spider-life. A split then was inevitable. But then 2001 came, hype for the movie came and Joe Q (and Bill Jemas) knew that keeping the two together in the comics would help bridge things, so new writer JMS got tapped to rekindle the marriage. Then, well, after a successful sequel or at least an idea that no marriage would occur in SPIDER-MAN 3, well, then Joe Q claims it was all about principle, all about doing what past EIC's wanted to do. And to a degree he was write; the Clone Saga was an attempt to write off the Parkers in exchange for Reilly as a younger single Spidey. But my only point is that if it really was all about principle, then Joe Q would have played the hand he was dealt in 2000-2001 and allowed them to split as Mackie intended. Instead, he reunited them for a movie. In the end it was all about the benjamins, and if a marriage became about that, too, then it would be remade.
In a way, what happened with NEW X-MEN/YOUNG X-MEN is a microcosm for what has happened to Spider-Man, or in a way even M-Day. My point is that Marvel in both instances looked at a situation that did need some minor tweaks or fixes, and instead completely overreacted and overdid things.
After the end of the Morrison run, there were millions of mutants and they had all but become mundane. Now, while I and others thought that such things finally allowed the mutants to become a genuine metaphor for race relations in the 21st century rather than before the end of the Civil Rights movement in the 60's, I also could understand wanting to try to make mutants more "rare". But instead of a minor tweak (perhaps a minor massacre or two), we got M-DAY which literally reduced the amount of mutants to fewer people than show up at a typical Comic Con. They used a nuke to kill a fly. And in a way NEW X-MEN was the same. Before Kyle & Yost got aboard the whole ACADEMY X thing, the book had a ton of characters and more teen soap than action. It needed a mild kick in the keester to improve. Instead, Kyle & Yost went on a 1-2 year long SLAUGHTER FEST killing off supporting characters left and right like a cheap FRIDAY THE 13TH movie and then feeling that good writing is, basically, depicting people as miserable after terrible things have happened to them. Instead of a patch up of drywall, they demolished the house. Then, after all they, they ended NEW X-MEN and pretty much left every good and worthwhile character out in YOUNG X-MEN in exchange for lessor characters, and then spent the first arc doing nothing but killing time before MESSIAH COMPLEX. Predictably, sales fell, and the book is canceled.
Maybe we need less "group-think" in Marvel editorial and more connections to reality.
In terms of Spider-Man, what Marvel has done is similar to what DC has done with their Crisis moments recently; sacrificed what fans in their 20's are familiar with for what fans in their 30's-40's are familiar with. For a company that claims youth is the future, undoing the dynamic in Spidey's life that pretty much every fan who is about 25-27 years old, or younger, remembers and feels is perfectly normal. And that breeds resentment, and at a younger age, it is easier to walk away. It is a risky gamble.
