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“It was Mephisto in this case, as he is prone to do, who comes to Peter at his weakest moment and uses this to his advantage. Why? Because he’s a villain. This is a very important distinction, Peter is used by the bad guy, taken advantage of”

Well, for me, you know a person´s true face in stressful moments. Peter was weak.

To me, Peter Parker is not a hero anymore.

Really? I tend to think you know a person’s stressed-out face in stressful moments.

Why doesn’t anybody ask Aunt May what she wants? Doesn’t she EVER want to see her husband again?

Eh, I thought it was more tap-dancing around key points, the only difference being that this time the questions were more overtly hostile. There were definitely some places I’d have killed to be able to ask a follow-up question.

That said, I thought he showed some real honesty in his last answer, saying in essence, “Look, if it turns out I’m wrong, I’ll suck it up and admit it. I just don’t think I’m going to be proved wrong.” It was the most authentic-seeming answer in the whole interview.

I just wish someone had asked why Quesada took it upon himself to draw this book when he was never a part of JMS’ run and also given his recent Daredevil:Father was all sorts of late. Or why he constantly insisted that it was on schedule.

But yeah Brian, that Mephisto/divorce answer was not that great in my opinion. Maybe if Quesada keeps mentioning it then he will will assume that we believe him.

Or like Klye said about Aunt May especially since in a recent Sensational that Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa wrote May told Peter in a vision that it was time for him to let go.

Dropped the title, don’t miss it.

The strangest answers invlove Harry, the idea that bringing Harry back in the way is they same as bringing Norman back. Normans return was unpopular but then it was settled down and his positon in the marvel universe was accepted, so the same will happen with Harry.

This ignore the story, first everyone knew the reason why Norman was brought back, where as no-one knows what the point of Harry is at this moment. More importantly it did not invalidate what had been done in the past. Joe said his return did not effect the Harry story or the other post goblin stories, this is because the world thought Norman dead, so the fact he was in “europe” made no differance to their actions.

From what we have seen no-one ever consider Harry dead, so as stated in the questions Normans actions since his returnare in part invalidated as are some major stories based around the dead harry like the robot parkers.

The whole marriage angle has been used to throw a bigger spanner in the works with a living Harry who may never have worn the green and purple, may or may not have a kid and may or may not have been married.

All that is needed is one scence.

Peter: it’s good to have you back harry
Harry: Thanks after the shock of my fathers death, I need some time.
Peter: Thats ok I undertand
Harry: Dad knew i would be missed so he replaced me with a genetically altered actor clone, It’s shame he was a bit mental, and died.

I haven’t actually read these stories, but I know who Spider-man USED to be, and I’ve read the blogs and threads so I basically understand the developments, and so I know how they could continue this story without further violating everything that the character used to stand for.

First, Aunt May develops a ghastly medical condition, one there is no cure for, but she cannot die. Maybe little radioactive spiders are burrowing up under and through her skin (why? hey, it’s magic, we don’t need to explain) and she keeps begging to die. A vision of Uncle Ben comes to her and he rejects her, saying “you can’t come with me, you’ve got the stink of the devil on you, May! You’re his now, he’s had his way with you.” And Aunt May sobs “no, no. I’ve tried always to be a good person, I would never have anything to do with the devil,” etc, while Peter sits next to her, oblivious. and she stays on this dying bed (as opposed to her death bed) indefinitely. Maybe they have to close the rest of the hospital wing because those little radioactive spiders keep rupturing out of her and escaping, biting other patients and staffs, the bites having very strange effects indeed.

Meanwhile, the new Mary Jane fast becomes the world’s hottest model and lands a movie and a recording contract. A few issues later and she’s receiving her Oscar, and announcing publicly that she’s retiring now to have babies with her new love, Johnny Storm. They kiss and cuddle on the screen while Peter sits in front of his TV, oblivious.

Peter’s oblivious because his mind is going. He hasn’t had a decent sleep for months and months, having terrible nightmares that wake him every night, ever since… ever since… what?
He changes the channel because MJ’s face disturbs him somehow, and for some reason he really really wants to punch that Human Torch. He changes the channel and sees the old movie “Faustus”, where Richard Burton has sold his soul and Satan comes to collect. He finds this disturbing somehow and clicks the TV off.
He stands alone and wrinkles his nose at an almost-imperceptible whiff of sulpher. He sniffs at his hand and realizes that the smell is coming from his skin.
He gets a call from the hospital saying that his aunt just tried to kill herself by jumping out of her five-story window, that every bone in her body is broken but that for some reason she has not died, she’s still alive, but in horrific agony that will never end, begging and begging for a merciful death. And she’s asking for Peter to come visit. And he can’t quite hear them because his phone is weird all of a sudden, like there’s this awful laughter crackling in the background. And he hangs up the phone and wants to take a shower because that damned sulpher smell is getting worse.

And the TV clicks itself back on just in time for the climactic final scene of Faustus, where the devil comes to claim his prize. Peter throws the phone, shattering the TV. It doesn’t make him feel better. he suddenly knows that no matter how bad things are now, they’re going to get worse.

Because he made a deal with the devil, kids, and that is always a bad thing to do. No matter what. Don’t let this happen to you, etc, etc.

Then I guess he dies, goes to hell, and all those hospital people who got bit by May’s spiders can compete to be the new Spider-man.

Biggest problem with One More Day from what I’ve read? The bad guy won. Not what I want to see in my superhero comics, thanks.

fourthworlder, that’s a story I really wouldn’t want to read. Sorry. Coming up with good ideas for superheroes can be tough.

I don’t I thought fourthworlder came up with a good story arc for the reprecussions of OMD XD

Wait, doesn’t Pete always want to punch Johny Storm in the face anyway?

regardless of how amazingly lame and lazy the “one more day” story was, the real damage was the insult marvel shoved at thier loyal spiderman fans. Fans unfortuneatly bought and stomached horrible spidey stories for years. The “other” storyline, gwen’s kid’s with norman, organic webbing, more and more revamps on peters powers, sorry peter david, but ben parker from the future!? But marvel stood behind those god awful stories, and us fans bought em. However the biggest insult marvel did was tell us none of it ever happened. What a damn waste of time and money. The most lazy and non creative writers, in my opinion, are the ones who have to mess with great stories from the past. What marvel essentially did with “one more day”, was kill the faith and guarentee in thier product. Why should we buy even one more comic if it will be labeled non existent two months later. Between marvels lazy and irresponible decisions and dc’s nack for having twenty supermen running around, I think it might be time to hang up my comic addiction. We all bought the clone saga…and now this? Enough’s enough.

To me, Peter Parker is not a hero anymore.

You do understand the idea of fictional characters, right?

For those who would like to read a version of this interview without Quesada’s B.S., I’ve translated all of his NuMarvel-speak here.

The funny thing is… as much I hated OMD (and I hated it more than I’ve ever hated any comic I’ve ever read), and as much as I liked the married Spider-Man… I would have given BND a shot.

Only to read it all I’ve got to pay nine bucks a month nowinstead of 3. I didn’t read the other Spidey books, so you’re asking me to triple my cost to give a try on a story that I don’t particularly like the direction for?

Economics alone makes me not want to take a “chance” that I might actually like BND.

It seems like 90% of that interview could be summarized as
Question: Your story makes no sense.
Answer: Keep reading. It might eventually make sense.

There is certainly something to be said for that, thok.

A lot of the questions (and a lot of questions I see period for creators) really ARE that antagonistic.

Like the “question” will be “Your story makes no sense,” where what could his answer possibly be? It’s not even a question. It’s just complaining.

Brian,

What the hell are readers supposed to say, though, when a story doesn’t make sense?

The fact that none of us can agree on what this “new status quo” actually means for the character is a bad thing, because if nothing else, we’re entitled to know what the hell we’re being asked to pay our money for.

“Fan entitlement” pales in comparison to the sheer ego of “creator entitlement.”

“You owe it to us to keep reading, even if you don’t like the stories now!“

If they don’t have a question, then they shouldn’t ask a question.

A ton of these questions just look like excuses to complain. That’s what blogs and internet forums are for!

To be fair, both the questions and the answers were for the most part poor (my comment was more about Quesada’s nonanswers.) But that was to be expected given the fallout of this series. The sheer number of people who asked the same questions is more illuminating then the actual questions or answers.

The divorce vs deal with a devil was the best question, IMHO, and I would have liked to see a better answer to it then what was given, which was essentially “Spiderman’s made a bunch of unheroic decisions before. How do you explain those to your children?” which ignored that all of those stories were short term stories that showed Peter overcoming mistakes and becoming a better person from those mistakes (a trope that appears to be missing from OMD.)

Another topic I would have like to seen discussed was some sort of discussion about the decision to make BND begin in media res, as opposed to putting in some extra stories that looked at Spiderman events of the last 20 or so years and exploring how they differ because of the change. That would have been more interesting that “random Tale of Jackpot” or “Aunt May speaks jive at the soup kitchen.”

Yeah, the answers weren’t much better than the questions, true.

Still interesting to read! Except for the devil/divorce one.

The best question was the one asked by the 19 year old who was new to comics.

I didn’t read the entire Q&A, but the answer to the question about the use of magic was, um, informative. Quesada doesn’t’ see any difference between the magic used by Wanda, Mephisto, and Dr. Strange?! As JMS famously said in his Newsarama piece, the use of magic in a story has to make sense within the context of the story. That means placing limits on the range of magic’s effects, understandable consequences, etc., not “I want this to happen, and magic is the only way to make it happen, and if we use magic, we won’t have to provide explanations. . .”

Mephisto, Wanda, and Dr. Strange are so obviously different characters, along with their varied uses of magic, that– One would expect someone in Quesada’s position to, if not be a writer of fantasy fiction, understand how good fantasy stories are written. His attitudes toward magic, retcons, and the problems with OMD relative to other infamous storylines suggest that he considers superhero fiction to be, generally, junk.

SRS

Brand New Day was just sloppy. Quesada and crew needed to set Spider-Man back to basics. Nothing wrong with wanting to do that. Characters with such longevity need that from time to time.

Instead of actually thinking about how to do it, they just decided to bulldoze there way through.

Consider this …. If they had Mary Jane take the bullet and Mephisto showed up. Peter wouldn’t hesitate in a second to give up his marriage to save her life. Not this crappy selfish decision with Aunt May. Also if they were not so against continuity these days they could of satisfied fans with why Mephisto was involved in the first place? He owed Spider-Man “One More Day” for Spider-Man’s role in the Secret Wars II bet made between Beyonder and Mephisto. Check out Amazing # 274.

Kyle said:

“Why doesn’t anybody ask Aunt May what she wants? Doesn’t she EVER want to see her husband again?”

=====

No, because he was an alcoholic who frequently beat her when he was drunk, especially if she asked why he had spent hours with the neighbor lady instead of coming home to her. In fact, in this new alternate universe, May hired that guy to shoot him so she could get the insurance money.

His attitudes toward magic, retcons, and the problems with OMD relative to other infamous storylines suggest that he considers superhero fiction to be, generally, junk.

Well, that’s not exactly wrong. I mean, if you use junk as in “junk food”, then that’s exactly what the majority of superhero comics are, including almost all of Marvel’s output. Simple, sensationalist stories that hit certain easy, but proven thematic notes, without requiring a high level of intellectual commitment to be read and enjoyed.

Please don’t tell me we’ve gotten to the point where people think that superhero fiction is NOT light entertainment!