i guess since spidey is a new yorker. but at the same time this is the ny post it is barely above a tabloid. oh well one will have to see.
Why is Aunt May still even alive?
Why did Spiderman have to deal with Peter Fonda for Aunt May’s life?
The story was crappy…
JQ OMD Interview part 3. He talks about changes he made to Straczynski’s Sins Past story and why he feels that Spidey should be single.
JMS sent Newsarama an E-Mail that went like this. (Make sure you read the past 3 JQ OMD interviews for a bit more clarity. There’s a link for his last interview in my post above this one. If you want you can skip to the Newsarama link below as it goes over most of the vital points).
**JMS: Having seen Joe’s third interview on OMD, I think he raised a lot of fair issues. I think most of it represents accurately our conversations. It does, however, omit some of the main concerns I had with the resolution…concerns not mentioned therein, most probably as an oversight. As you know from my prior email, I was content not to respond to the prior interviews because I don’t need to have the last word. (Newsarama Note: this last was in reference to Straczynski?s earlier e-mail mentioned earlier in which he declined a ?One More Day? post mortem conversation.)
But there are some vital omissions in the interview, including the primary reason I finally threw up my hands on the book, which had mainly to do with how the resolution was handled.
To explain, here’s the conversation I had with Marvel, in sum:
“So what does Mephisto do?” I ask.
“He makes everybody forget Peter’s Spider-Man.”
“Uh, huh. So Aunt May’s still in the hospital --”
“No, he saves Aunt May.”
“But if all he does is save her life and make everybody forget he’s Spidey, she still has a scar on her midsection.”
“No, he makes that go away too.”
"Okay…:
“Then he wakes up in her house.”
“The house that was burned down?”
“Right.”
“But how --”
“Mephisto undoes that as well.”
“Okay. And the guys who shot at Peter and May and were killed, they’re alive too? Mephisto can bring guys back from the dead?”
“It’s all part of the spell.”
“And Doc Strange can’t tell?”
“No,”
“And the newspaper articles? News footage?”
“Joe, it’s been forgotten.”
“I’m just asking is that stuff there or not there?”
“Not there. And Peter’s web shooters are back.”
“Is this the same spell or a different spell?”
“Same spell.”
“How does making people forget he’s Spidey bring back his web shooters?”
“It’s magic, okay?”
“I see. And Harry’s back.”
“Right.”
“And Mephisto does this too.”
“Yep.”
“So is Harry back from the dead, or has he been alive? If they ask him, hey Harry, what did you do last summer, will he remember? And the year before? And the year before? If he says they all went on a picnic two years ago, will they remember it?”
“It’s --”
“Because if he now has a life he remembers, if he’s not back from the dead, then you’ve changed the continuity you said you didn’t want to change. Those are your only options: he was brought back from the dead, and there’s a grave, and people remember him dying --”
“Mephisto changes THEIR memories too.”
"-- or he’s effectively been alive as far as our characters know, so he’s been alive all along, so either way as far as our characters are concerned, continuity’s been violated going back to 1971.
How do you explain that?"
“It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it.”
And that’s the part I had a real problem with, maybe the single biggest problem. There’s this notion that magic fixes everything. It doesn’t. “It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it.” Well, actually, yes, you do. Magic has to have rules. And this is clearly not just a case of one spell making everybody forget he’s Spidey…suddenly you’re bringing back the dead, undoing wounds, erasing records, reinstating web shooters, on and on and on.
What I wanted to do was to make one small change to history, a tiny thing, whose ripples we could control to only touch what editorial wanted to touch, making changes we could explain logically. I worked for weeks to come up with a timeline that would leave every other bit of continuity in place. It was rigorous, and as logical as I could make it. In the end of OMD as published, Harry is alive and he’s always been alive as far as the characters know…so how is that different than he was alive the whole time?
It made no sense to me.
Still doesn’t. It’s sloppy. It violates every rule of writing fiction of the fantastic that I and every other SF/Fantasy writer knows you can’t violate. It’s fantasy 101.
It troubled me that it’s MJ and not Peter who is the one to actively make the decision.
I’d originally written the first issue of OMD to take place directly after May gets shot, and in fact turned in the first script directly after she gets nailed. Editorial decided to build in a block of issues for One More Day…meaning May would be in that bed for almost a year which I thought was just too long to make work.
And yes, I wanted to retcon the Gwen twins out of continuity, which was something I always assumed I could do at the end of my run. I wasn’t allowed to do this, and yes, it pissed me off. I felt I was left holding the bag for something I wanted to get rid of, and taking the rap for a writing lapse that I had never committed. Why this aspect was not brought up in the other interview, you’d have to ask Joe.
Mainly, the book was rewritten in the editorial offices to a degree that the words weren’t mine any longer, to a certain degree in three, and massively in four. If the work represents me, I leave the name there and take the rap; if it doesn’t, then that’s a different situation. There’s just not much of my work there, especially once you get to the last dong of midnight…everything after that was written by editorial.
Whether my work is good or it sucks, it’s mine. What came out of the end of OMD wasn’t, hence my desire to omit the writing credit. Joe graciously offered to share it on the last issue. I think that helped. Credit where credit is due.
What I don’t want is for this to turn into a public pissing match. Joe did what he did because he thought it was the right thing to do, and as EIC that’s his call, not mine. I respect and admire him. I hope this will be the end of the matter.
I just felt that there were some important bits not addressed, that needed to be.**
Source -
Edit: DAMNIT SANO.
Posted at the same time.
Anywho, it’s more blame dodging and finger pointing.
JMS brought magic into the Spider-man universe so for him to complain about it being used to fix his mess was pretty funny to me. Contrived story may make more logical sense than “a wizard did it”, but it still sucks regardless. IMO.
Gwen and Norman’s kids…if he didn’t want it in, why write the story? It’s asinine.
I take the “summed up phone call” with a large grain of salt too.
Bottom line: they’re both making themselves look like bunglers and children.
Jesus christ. As if mainstream comics’ hard-on for continuity fixes weren’t infantile enough already…
According to both JMS and JQ, Stracysnki originally intended for them to be Spidey and Gwen’s kids, not Normie and Gwen’s.
Not that I’m disagreeing with you because who knows what’s going on… :looney:
Right, but the discrepancy is JMS claims it was changed at the last minute to Norman because the Editorial said “nuh uh”, and he had no say in it.
But JQ says he suggested Norman as a possible alternative and JMS had the opportunity to scrap the story, and went ahead with it anyways. :looney:
It really is one of those things that needs to be left behind the closed doors, and this really looks unprofessional and childish.
If it was a smaller writer pulling this, he’d be out of job for sure.
me and rockbogart discussed this and this could be a very cool dvd series…
RETCON GONE WRONG!!!
J.M.S., we runnin’ this rap shit.
Mark Millar, we runnin’ this rap shit.
Bendis, we runnin’ this rap shit.
Dan Way, we runnin’ this rap shit.
Loeb & Pak, we runnin’ this rap shit.
Bru & Frac, we runnin’ this rap shit.
The takeover, the break’s over nigga
God E-i-C, me, Jay-Quesada
So, Peter and MJ have been a couple for all of these years, but never married. That’s not so bad. That I can deal with. That doesn’t fuck with continuity too much. The other two changes still don’t settle with me. Especially since, according to Quesada, the unmasking HAPPENED, it’s just that everyone forgot. I hate shit like that. He compares it to Sentry, which is cool, but that was the entire concept behind Sentry’s conception. This is very different.
He still hasn’t explained whether or not May still knows Peter’s identity. The end of OMD didn’t really address it at all. I hope she does.
Harry should be dead. Period. Although it’s hilarious that they just brought him back in 616 only to kill him in the Ultimate U the same week. LOL
if mephisto had the ability to save aunt may and harry osborne shit couldnt peter use that same thing to bring back uncle ben or would that be too difficult for mephisto :lol:
Joe Q is clearly stuck in the past, believing cave men never should have met women. I’m 26, single and have never thought it was difficult to relate to Peter when he was married. Never. We’ve got options for solo Spidey, plenty. I find it ironic Joe Q stated in the interview that it wouldn’t be good for a parent to explain to their child that Spider-Man divorced his wife. OK, but explaining that he made a deal with SATAN is? 
Having said all that, I just read issue 4 of OMD. Again, despite the fact that I didn’t like the outcome and I’m highly against Joe Q’s views on a single Peter, I really enjoyed the story. Was very nice to see MJ being selfish and questioning if they should let May die. She had every right to feel that way.
On non OMD related stuff, I just picked up the Spider-Man Fairy Tales trade. :wgrin:
the whole read is comedy. jms is basically like…joe q is a crazy fat mexican dinner. retcon gone wrong is too awesome…joes gonna get shanked by an angry nerd.
And they called it Hypertime.
i laughed more on quesada saying magic doesn’t need to be explained.
lol dr.strange didnt need any stinking rules to become sorcerer supreme…OH WAIT HE DID!
You’re telling me. The more I read, the more ridiculous it sounded.
Joe Q just wanted to split MJ and Peter up so he went ahead and threw all the rules out the window when it came to doing what he wanted to do. He thinks Peter being married hurts 616 Spidey. Millions of people disagree with him but Joe is the EIC so he must know what’s best.
Again, divorce? Horrible! Awful! Makes the children cry!! Making a deal with SATAN? That’s perfectly fine. Because we all know there are no ramifications whatsoever when you make a deal with the devil. :rolleyes:
dont worry joe q will say this is permanent and go back on his word in a year…after some angry emo nerd shanked his ass and put the vid on myspace. or sum kid commits suicide lol.
Err…Millions? I think you mean “thousands”.
It’s a fictional story, man.
Do you honestly think any “kid” that reads this story is going to take “making a deal with an evil villain who is or isn’t the devil” to heart?
That argument is completely stupid.