Anyone who’s been reading Spider-Man comics for a while will remember the infamous arc One More Day, which saw Peter Parker literally make a deal with the Devil, sacrificing his marriage to Mary-Jane Watson to save Aunt May’s life. It was terrible, but rejoice! Marvel’s announced a do-over.
The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows has been known about for a while as a teaser image for the company’s Secret Wars event, but now there’s a few more details on it. Set in a region of the Battleworld — the smooshed-up version of several Marvel Universes that the Secret Wars event will take place on — called The Regency, the Dan Slott-written miniseries imagines a world where Peter Parker wasn’t given an awful retcon story for no particular reason whatsoever didn’t make a deal with the Devil: He’s still Spider-Man, still married to MJ, and has a young daughter with her. But, as being Spider-Man means that poor Pete can never be happy, Renew Your Vows is also being labelled rather ominously as “The last Spider-Man story.” Here’s Dan Slott talking to EW about the decision to annul One More Day:
“There are legions of Spider-Man fans that arepassionate about changes that have happened to Spider-Man continuity,” says Renew Your Vows writer (and current Spidey scribe) Dan Slott. “They are upset that the baby went missing, that the marriage went away. Spider-Man has been around for fifty years, and the marriage was around for twenty-five. So now we’re seven or eight years into a world without a married Spider-Man. It’s a big itch that people want scratched.”
Saying that fans were upset is putting it mildly to say the least, but it’s nice to see that Marvel has finally recognized that Spider-Man can still be an interesting character when he’s tied down. If anything, it makes him more interesting. As Slott further points out in that interview, part of Spider-Man’s character is about dealing with responsibility, both as hero and as a normal person. Marriage and parenthood are as much a part of that as webbing bad guys in the face.
Let’s hope it lasts, and Marvel aren’t just teasing us a What If alternate Spider-Man who is just part of the multiversal shenanigans taking place on Battleworld, and someone who’ll be gone for good after Secret Wars. I don’t care what comic book handwaving needs to happen, let’s make this be the mainline Spider-Man going forward, please!
[via Comic Book]
