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I don’t know that it would be a good selling point. I don’t think most people are like “Cool, retcon!”

“Although some people seem to recall that Spidey unmasked himself during Civil War, no one quite remembers whose face was under the mask.”

wow.

“Although some people seem to recall that Spidey unmasked himself during the Civil War, no one quite remembers whose face it was under the mask.”

Okay, retarded! THAT’S not going to throw up any red flags for people.

And I guess Mephisto’s magic changed the fact that the Avengers already knew Pete was Spidey before Civil War. Handy!

“Although some people seem to recall that Spidey unmasked himself during Civil War, no one quite remembers whose face was under the mask.”

Not that I read Civil War or anything, but weren’t there, you know, cameras at the unmasking? Did their memories get fuzzy too?

Maybe all the tv coverage was retroactively pre-empted by the whole Spears family saga (Britney & Jamie-Lynn, not any comic book spears family).

For the longest time, Spiderman was my favourite superhero. This just reminds me why I don’t even read his books -or indeed, ANY Marvel titles- anymore.

Prominence within the picture coupled with the “Pete’s Girls” subhead made me think that they had brought Gwen back, too. Because hey–why not?

As to who was under Spidey’s mask in Civil War, may I humbly suggest President John F. Kennedy?
(http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/399)

Someone’s already done up a mock Daily Bugle cover with Jameson’s reaction to all memory of Spider-Man’s secret identity being erased. It’s funny.

You know, this is all stupid and such… but I’ve gotta admire their balls in releasing something like this that’s just so brazen. I mean, damn.

With all the false starts and constant re-jiggering the Spider-Man titles have been through the editiorial retreats to discuss the direction of the character must be a head-splitting experience. At this point Marvel should just publish a transcript of those meetings since I’m sure they are more harrowing and intense than anything Spidey has been through in years.

I like the new direction that they are headed towards and think that it could result in better stories then what has come out recently, but I hate how it was done. Every alternative would have been better. Why not just have the divorce, with over half of all marriages ending in divorce its stupid to think that this would cause some sort of front page backlash against the character. Or why not just kill off Mary Jane, again its just stupid to assume that a widower Peter makes him old, he already lost one love of his life and that made him a better character not old. Or just have some villan like Dr. Doom have a cure for May that they offer to Mary Jane only if she promises to leave Peter forever. So many options that are much better then the horrible road they have gone down.

If they want to make SpiderMan timeless and get back to the roots thats fine then get rid of the marriage angle, but why did they have to mess around with the identity reveal. That was still a new storyline with a lot of potential and stories to come out of it all of which has been killed. Also it cheapens Civil War, people hate big events that we are promised will change everything and then right when its over, boom some stupid retcon and things are right back to the way they were before. And finally the whole gee people don’t remember thing which is so stupid, what about guys like Mysterio or Kingpin who actually took action when they heard about the identity, do they not remember whole months of their lives now or do they remember trying to kill someone but just not who or where and now don’t care ARGHH.

Actually subject matter aside, that’s a pretty weak piece for JRJr.

While the Spide-Man figure in the forground is nice and the layout works that’s some pretty sloppy faces for the other figures on the piece.

Looks very rushed.

I liked how Spider-man and Daredevil interacted. I hope they still get together on occasion. Eh.

The unmasking of Spider-Man was the most interesting thing to happen in Marvel comics in a long time, IMO.

It’s undone now. Great. Wheatcakes are back though. Pages about wheatcakes are totally the way to get my money. I want a wheatcakes spin off book.

I can’t help but be a bit insulted by this piece…”The past is past, so don’t look back, look forward!” Hey, Marvel, I’d love to look forward, but you’re the guys who just reset Spidey’s clock to 1976!

The upper-right drawing reminded me a lot of Tim Sale’s work.

And the explanation for the unmasking reminded me of the JLU episode where Luthor, in Flash’s body, takes off his mask, looks in the mirror, and comments “I have no idea who this is.”

Am I giving anything away in saying that JrJr (and inker) is doing a run on Amazing?

Well, it’s semi-public knowledge now if it wasn’t already.

I liked the friendship that Peter had with DD/Matt Murdock, and they had some great candid moments where they just referred to each other as “Matt” and “Peter” while talking on some Manhattan rooftop. I’m sad to see those stories gone, or at the very least changed to a more informal interaction. I think that’s crap.

Also, it seems to me like JRJR was trying to ape his Dad’s style for that artwork, and as much as I hate to say it, the styles don’t seem to work well together. Young Pete and Harry there both look like their in their 30’s/40’s.

Mary Jane AND Gwen being there I think will be confusing to one of Joe Q.’s “new readers” because it looks at first glance like Gwen is alive again (or still in the picture if you were a movie fan and didn’t know she was dead in the first place.)

It makes a certain amount of sense to me, to be honest: Mephisto cast a spell that did two things. One, it erased everyone’s memory of Spider-Man’s secret identity. Two, it erased all physical evidence thereof as well. It doesn’t invalidate any story where someone learned Peter Parker’s secret identity, any more than it invalidates the location of my car keys when I forget where I put them. I once knew that information, I have now forgotten. (Black magic is not generally involved, though.) And if it is a magic spell, it makes more sense for it to be blanket than selective: It should hit Daredevil and Mary Jane, because why would it skip over some people but not others? If I cast a magic spell that makes everyone forget where their keys are, it shouldn’t matter how long you’ve had your car.

Likewise, the spell presumably implanted false memories into everyone’s minds (and false evidence) about what was up with Peter and MJ’s relationship. They got married, but there’s no evidence and they don’t remember it happening. Much simpler than assuming that Mephisto changed the past in such a way that didn’t affect anything beyond a few specific events.

(Also, presumably, he resurrected Harry Osborn “today”, then backfilled everyone’s memories with, “Oh, he was in Europe.” Hmm…maybe that’s what happened to Norman, during the Clone Saga, too? Someone made a deal with Mephisto, it resurrected Norman, and he was just, “Oh, yes, I was in ‘Europe’! And I’ll be sending the baby to ‘Europe’ just as soon as it’s born.”)

And again, he zapped Peter with a spell that “healed” his organic webshooters away, then backfilled memories to make it seem like they were never there.

Of course, none of that makes this story make any more sense than it did before, because why the heck is Mephisto doing all these things? “I’ll heal your aunt…but you’ll forget you were ever married! And, um, I’m also thinking about making everyone forget your secret identity. And I’m going to resurrect your old friend/enemy. Oh, and the webshooters. Got big plans for those…”

And of course again, the bigger problem is that we’re never going to get explanations for any of these questions, because this isn’t really a story, it’s just an excuse to dump dirt on these other stories and forget about them forever. So nobody will ever wonder why they used to know who Spider-Man was, but don’t now, because nobody in Marvel’s editorial department wants to bring any of this up ever again. (Unless sales figures on BND drop precipitously. Then it’ll come up.)

I’m not really much of a Spidey fan, so some will ask me why I should care, but this whole thing just seems so wrong. Anyone wanting to put genies back in their respective bottles should take a look at that Scarlet Spiders spotlight issue of Avengers: Initiative just recently, in which Pete’s unmasking was covered by the three Scarlets appearing before TV cameras to explain that he used to be one of them, and went rogue - and publicly “handed back his suit”. I thought that worked pretty well.

I’m looking forward to the super-sized “What if…One More Day Never Happened?”

[…] I saw this splash page that recaps the status quo of Spider-Man in the post-One More Day Marvel Universe and it got me thinking. […]

John Seavey, I agree with your assement on the forgetting somewhat and it would work fine if it was just for the public at large. But it makes no sense anywhere else. What does May remember, does she remember Jarvis, does she remember living at Avengers Mansion, its not as simple as ohh yeah those things happened she just forgot, she doesn’t question why she doesn’t remember years of her life. If I place my keys somewhere for a split second and forget thats fine, but if I spend years traveling to place my keys at the top of Mt. Everest I don’t think I’m just going to forget all of that.

K…no one remembers anything. Spider-Man unmasked…but all those cameras got retconned. They must not have been there. Harry is still alive because…? Why is this, exactly? Was it not enough to have one Osborn return from the dead under ludicrous circumstances? Maybe Harry was banging Gwen, too! Wouldn’t that be fun?! Anyone tell Norman yet, or is he about to be eaten by Venom/defenestrated by Swordsman? Wait, wait, wait…I have the best question of all. Why am I still bothering with “in-continuity” Marvel? And yes, a twenty-something that’s married seems younger than a twenty-something that lives with their mother(figure). Married at twenty-something means too young to most people, while mom’s basement at twenty something means too old to most people. Twenty-something is (generally) when you have a crappy apartment you can barely afford, and smoke a lot of pot trying to forget about your student loans for the education you’re really not using at all while you work at Wal-Mart but what can you do after all you have to pay the bills and…whoops. Got too personal again ;). Seriously though…Marvel’s bread and butter can’t be the kiddies, it’s gotta be the ones with the disposable income….you know the twenty-and-thirty-somethings living in mom’s basement. Couldn’t they have just CREATED a character like that, though? Would that be too much to ask?

Okay, so I just now read the Ultimated 2 vol.2 trade.

I know it took me a while, but it’s done.

I just want to double-check something.

Divorce for Spidey? Not an option. No good for the kids.

Got it.

Ultimate Hulk ripping Abomination’s arms off and then punching his head off after Quicksilver vibrates someone to putty, then Captain America stabs someone in the chest with a broken lazer staff, and then Hawkeye shoots an arrow into Black Widow’s face. Do it. Just no divorce. That’d mess up the kids.

Cue Rev. Lovejoy’s wife screaming “Won’t somebody think of the children”

I also love the irony in the statement, “The past is the past.”

Also, if no one remembers who Spider-Man is under his mask, even people who knew years before the unmasking (like Daredevil) then what about Felicia Hardy, the Black Cat? Did they still have a romantic relationship? Did Peter never take his mask off while they made love? Or, did she forget, and just doesn’t realize it?

What about Venom? Did the black costume forget who was wearing it?

I’m starting to think that it would have been easier for everyone involved if Quesada had simply started a semi-weekly (36 issues per year) title called Spider-85.

Theno

It just hit me that above spread is essentially Marvel Adventuers Spiderman. Don’t think about it, don’t tie it to anything else just enjoy the fluff generic story written for a five year old.

I like how in the Marvel Universe, being dead is synonymous with going to Europe.

John Trumbull said:
“I like how in the Marvel Universe, being dead is synonymous with going to Europe.”

So, THAT’S where Jean Grey, Captain Mar-Vell, and Elektra keep going!

I like it, since I can just read my Essential Spider-man collections to read exactly the same stories!

Spider-Man for dummies!!!

About the memory thing, I think I see where this is all going.

Peter will start hanging out in the coffee bean, complaining about how the coffee tastes like the dog took a leak in it. Then, Eliza Bloodstone comes to find him and recruits him into a secret organization with unlimited funds to undertake the mystery archeology of the Marvel Universe. Along with computer hacker Cipher at the behest of a secret 4th man, Peter starts to get into adventures with the Secret chiefs of the 616. Eventually, Nick Fury comes to find him and mess with the memory blocks and Peter remembers and…wait this is Planetary. Huh. How did that end again?

I have to say, that is some terrible work by Romita. Harry Osbourne looks like a mannequin.

It does seem like one or two people on Marvel Earth would think it was suspicious that Spider-Man revealed his identity on TV and now nobody remembers who he is. I wonder, if someone went back and watched a tape of the press conference, would he have a blurred face and a distorted voice?

Oh well, whatever. Rip that band-aid off, I guess.

I’ve got to admit, as stupid as the retcon and OMD may be, I like that Marvel released this item that just flat out says what the new status quo is. It’s been almost two years since “New Earth” was revealed in Infinite Crisis, but we’re still not really sure what has changed, if anything. Or if they have revealed it, it was in Countdown or some other crappy comic a lot of people wouldn’t read. Basically I’m saying, no matter what you might think of the situation, at least Marvel is trying to make it easy to know the new status quo.

This is why I don’t like crisis stories. It’s just such a painful experience watching writers trying to contort characters and plot, just to get everyone in position for the story they *really* want to tell. The worst part is that it’s completely unnecessary. If you want things to be like this instead of that, just skip ahead to it. Let it all take place off-screen and hey, we’re there.

Marvel’s done this before, after all. Did they ever explain how Dr. Octopus had suddenly become involved in Spider-Man’s origin? Maybe they did and I missed it. It doesn’t really affect the rest of the stories.

Does this invalidate 20+ years of stories? Of course not. You read them. You can still read them. It’s not like they don’t bloody exist anymore. If they didn’t happen to this version of Spider-Man, well, that’s okay. They didn’t happen to Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, Movie Spider-Man, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, etc.

So screw One More Day, Countdown, Disassembled, Zero Hour, Onslaught, and a lot more stories I’d rather not get OCD about listing. They’re generally turds, so stop trying to polish them up and sell them.

Then again, people complained Emerald Twilight was too short.

Someone’s already done up a mock Daily Bugle cover with Jameson’s reaction to all memory of Spider-Man’s secret identity being erased

Does somebody have a link to this?

kreetrapper, you took the words right out of my mouth. I want to see this! Somebody link me! Link me good!

I’m afraid that Marvel failed in a most fundamental way with BND.

It stopped short of doing a true reboot, when it actually wanted to. It does create all sorts of problems, much as DC had after Crisis when it rebooted some books but not others or Marvel itself tried to “soft-reboot” during and after the Clone Saga.

The basic idea of having Peter deal (again) with a life of money bills, Aunt May health issues, struggling bachelor issues (including his love life) and the odd Harry Osborn situation is a sound one, despite being definitely a rethread of tales told.

Unfortunately, all of those plot possibilities will now take a back seat to the far flashier inconsistencies and weirdnesses introduced in order to make BND possible.

For starters, the secret ID thing. It’s awfully contradictory. Recent storylines involved Spider-Man revealing his ID to the New Avengers as part of his role in founding that team, and later to the public at large. More ancient plots (from the 1980s) had him developing an unique bond with Daredevil by trusting each other with their respective IDs. Now we’re supposed to believe that somehow none of that happened, which leaves us no choice but to wonder (for years, literally) about what else changed and how. I sorta hope Spider-Man is no longer a New Avenger, but truth is, even if he isn’t then there are still too many unanswerable questions in the air about his group role and dynamics. And the general public knowing that it once saw Spider-Man’s face but strangely can’t recall (or find pictures) of it anymore is killer, because that lends a supernatural occurrence a central role into Spider-Man status quo.

That and the weird (despite intentional vagueness) past story with Mary Jane in this new BND continuity make Peter way harder for readers to identify with than he ever was before. Too high a price to pay for just making him a bachelor again.

Big mistake, Marvel.

So they didn’t break the continuity then, other than the fact that any events previous to BND can’t be used as a resource for stories post BND.

Isn’t that what breaking the continuity means though…

e.g. NO ONE knows who spiderman is.

- Norman doesn’t? fine we’ll chalk it down to ‘magic’ and just forget the past gwen thrown off the bridge thing eh… wait it did happen! but he just doesn#t remember anymore! I get it, except… it can’t be used anymore in storylines as history references, because Norman did it to hurt Peter Parker, not specifically spiderman. So the dynamic there changes does it not?

pff. Insulting to any reader with a brain thats been following spiderman for the last 20 years, 20 years of changes summarised in 2 pages…. either shows how empty, contentless and pointless following/collecting spiderman stories are or they just don’t want to admit what they really did, cancelled and replace pre-bnd spiderman, disguising it
as ‘character’/'preserving continuity’ progression.

Spiderman is dead, long live spiderman… I think I’ll just stick to collecting Ultimate spiderman… not much difference between the 2 anymore other than 10 years of age possibly, well at least I still get/feel/empathise with the shock/excitement in that of people finding out he’s just a kid, i.e. his identity and stuff, why bother reading about it twice/thrice…. again… get to watch character progression in that at least… well until they decide to get Mephisto to revert him back to school after a few years of character progression and make people forget who he is as well. Yay!

Might come back to the mainstream universe for the messiah complex stuff, x-men stuff but thats about it.

Avengers, and the initiative comic books I find really dull and morally preachy, as if marvel are still trying to get across the idea that all the recent changes were necessary and made sense whether we know it or not, trying to make readers ‘think’ about it whether registration is right or wrong. That angle is getting quite old and really tiresome…

Hey, this isn’t CLONE SAGA bad. Oh, no.

This is HEROES REBORN bad. Except HEROES REBORN made more sense.

This is UNBEARABLY bad, it´s beyond retarded and insulting.

What gets me is that INEVITABLY there’s going to be some character introduced in these books that puports to be all-knowing or super-smart or something and hints that HE KNOWS WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, PETER! which will blow the whole notion out of the water and, as someone said above, will simply serve to high-light the mystical/super-natural element that now serves as the core of the spider-man mythology.