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I hadn't heard about Slott saying that, but my original guess about Avengers: The Initiative #7 was that it was the beginning of an aborted attempt to give Spidey back his secret identity in a slightly more plausible, an attempt which got killed when they decided on the whole "deal with the devil" thing.

I was close... sort of.

But... I thought everybody involved in the production of 'One More Day' had been lined up against a wall and shot.

Must have been a dream.

What's that left hand? You have NO IDEA what the right hand is doing? That's ok, you still have your uses. Now go and get the lotion, we need to calm down some geek outrage...

If I recall correctly, Mephisto was just supposed to make people forget that Parker was Spider-Man. He didn’t alter reality, didn’t erase videotape and print references to the unmasking, and so on. Without some alteration of the media coverage of the unmasking, his secret identity would still be kaput. Slott’s material would address that issue, presumably, although Parker’s role in the New Avengers would still be a problem. The idea that he would be the only hero in the group keeping his identity secret from his teammates wouldn’t be tenable.

SRS

Spidey was affected by the gamma radition from the suitcase and is now the red hulk!

Could be the excuse Pete uses as to where he got the web shooter that was recently lifted from his person. Didn't Quesada mention some sort of significance to the one character pointing out the shooter on the final page of One More Day?

Keep in mind, the BND team has been working on Brand New Day for over a year (to make sure we hit our thrice-monthly schedule). So this is NOT a case of left-hand-not-knowing-what-the-right-hand-was-doing. This was a case of me being the writer for A:TI who was also an upcoming writer for ASM.

This story was specifically created to be a Pre-OMD puzzle piece that I could use later. A NECESSARY puzzle piece for me-- to accomplish one or two things for ASM and another thing for A:TI.

If I spell things out, I could spoil some upcoming things. So I CAN'T do that.

But all the pieces you need are there. And like I've said on my message board, all you need now is some creativity-- and I KNOW you guys have TONS of that to spare!

So take a swing already.

BTW, I've seen ONE person online figure an important part of it out. So it IS possible.

The OMD story is an unmitigated disaster. That Marvel is going to have to spend the next year telling us exactly how great it is is proof that they know they screwed up. But they aren't about to admit it publicly.

It's sorta like the Vatican sweeping the Priest/sex scandal under the rug for so long, and the tobacco companies claiming for decades that smoking didn't cause cancer, even when their own studies showed it does.

Slott. Make sure your right hand stays out of the way of the left. It's got important work to do.

This story was specifically created to be a Pre-OMD puzzle piece that I could use later. A NECESSARY puzzle piece for me– to accomplish one or two things for ASM and another thing for A:TI.

Nice to know you aren't letting continuity or the 'shared universe' get in the way of telling a story.

I like your work a lot, and you might have had a 15 year old me excited by this sort of stuff, but I've seen it all before, and it just sounds silly.
What's the point of rebooting if you have to spend ages explaining how it all works?

I could absolutely be wrong on this, but just like the secret identity issue was (arguably) something of a macguffin to get rid of the marriage, I suspect it also might have been something of a macguffin in the A:TI issue in question. The part that stood out to me when I first read it wasn't the clever solution to the identity stuff but the fact that Peter called Aunt May the one person he loved most in the world. He made no reference to MJ at all at any point in the story (that I remember).
Maybe A:TI was told as it happened before Mephisto messed with everyone's memories and Peter was simply speaking the truth and telling us who he'd choose in OMD. Or, maybe A:TI was told as everyone remembers it happening after OMD. I'm not really sure; maybe someone else can put the puzzle together better than me.
But I do think Slott is too good of a writer to have written those lines as a "mistake", and so they struck me as being the puzzle piece he says he put in the issue. Make any sense?

All of the solicitations for A:TI 7 hyped the fact that it would be a "very important pre-OMD appearance." Meaning, this is supposed to be BEFORE he made the deal with Joe Quesada's Mary Sue and erased his marriage.

Now, from what I'm gathering, it's instead Dan's "wink wink, nudge nudge, bob's your uncle" way of doing a premiere post-OMD appearance instead. Which makes the issue even less interesting.

If a writer takes his time and answers politely to a question what's the point being rude towards him?
BTW, DAn Slott is one of those few writers left at Marvel who actually knows and respects continuity.

A good writer assumes that things will happen in the background as they do in the normal world. People watch TV, read newspapers, etc. Sometimes heroes might even have chats off-panel. Some people take the approach that only what’s shown happening on the pages happens; it’s the old “go into suspended animation between issues,” or soap opera, approach, which doesn’t make much sense, but-- Remember Busiek’s AVENGERS, when people would have conversations interrupted by calls to action, and the conversations would never be resumed off-panel, in the background? Or when Byrne had Wanda supposedly forget her children existed, on the silly assumption that if *he* or other unnamed writers never had her encounter reminders of them, the memory loss would be permanent? People are apparently having the same sort of problem with the Slott material. Info on Parker’s identity as Spider-Man would exist all over the place, in the form of media material and computer records, unless the info was publicly belied.

SRS

Wasn't the point of A:I 7 that it was publicly belied? People don't remember who it was and now the SS reveal means it could have been anyone anyway. Identity back in the box.

There's a part of me that hopes that Peter will deal with the Spider-mugger in BND by letting SHIELD drag him off to the Negative Zone as "the one, true Spider-Man" to get Stark off his back for a bit.

I wouldn't apply the term "knows and respects continuity" to anyone involved with plotting OMD on any level.

But that's just me...

I apply the term "knows and respects continuity" because all his previous works I read (Spider-man/Human Torch mini, She-hulk, Avengers Initiative, Thing) indicate that.
So I'm willing to give the benefit of doubt in the case of BND.

I have no idea where Dan's going with this, but I look forward to finding out. I bet it'll be fun!

By the way, it's flat-out wrong to accuse Mr. Slott of not caring about continuity. This is another case of him planning for later, like he did with the Reckoning War stuff. And just look how well that whole thing played out so far, with the whole late twist in She-Hulk set up years earlier. I think he knows what he's doing.

Yeah, Dan Slott not caring about continuity?

How could anyone really think that?

The length of time OMD/BND has been in development doesn't make me any less confident in the story or less forgiving of its problems any more than The Phantom Menace being allegedly written years in advance made me ignore that I'd just watched a space opera about tariffs and trade embargoes.

Dan Slott cares about continuity in the same way Mark Waid cares about continuity.

Whether that's good or bad is up to you.

Haven't read the comics, don't really intend to, but if Pete really says something about Aunt May being 'the one person he loves' or whatever, couldn't that mean that in the true spirit of faustian pacts, Mephisto is gonna pull the switcheroo and take May instead? Like BND is the real 'one more day' kinda thing.

Or alternatively, Slott's entire career will link up, and the whole story will be revealed to be an extremely intricate plan by Pinky & The Brain.

-R