CATFIGHT AT THE P.P. CORRAL

 In my review of ONE MORE DAY, I said:

I also heard that this retcon came about because editor Joe Quesada-- who also furnished the art for DAY-- didn't like the status quo of Peter Parker being married to Mary Jane. Unlike many of DAY's critics, I didn't have strong feelings about the marriage. I found it mildly pleasing that Parker should enjoy a measure of domestic contentment, not least because the post-Silver Age Parker wasn't, in my opinion, ever likely to generate scads of romance-subplots.

What I should have said was "scads of GOOD romance-subplots." Even though I ceased keeping track of SPIDER-MAN continuity by the end of the nineties, I was aware that there had been various attempts to give Peter Parker girlfriends aside from Mary Jane Watson. I've forgotten most of them, except for the Black Cat, who was a lot of fun but not any real competition for Mary Jane, any more than any of the others.

This thought, however, did send me down a new rabbit-hole. Why did it work, the schtick of Peter having two beautiful glamour-queens courtesy of John Romita? Obviously, editor/writer Stan Lee wanted to promote the idea of "Peter the Swinger," and I was far from the only one who liked it, since SPIDER-MAN's preteen/adolescent audience embraced the change. 

To be sure, it wasn't totally out of left field. Parker started out with just one prospective girlfriend, secretary Betty Brant, but within a year or so Lee and Ditko gave Betty competition in high-school vixen Liz Allen. Throughout the Ditko years Parker dressed and talked like a square, but since he was good-looking, the idea of two pretty-but-not-glamorous girls competing for him was not far-fetched. 

However, in ASM #25 the creators decided to further tease the romance-loving readers by giving them an on-camera sample of a third source of competition. Up to that point Mary Jane Watson had only been referenced by name a few times, as the niece of Aunt May's friend. Mary Jane finally appears, but cagey Ditko doesn't allow readers to see her face. Lee's dialogue, however, established that when Betty and Liz lay eyes on her, they think she's movie-star gorgeous-- which was clearly meant to be a joke on Parker, since he had been avoiding any introduction to MJ, on the supposition that she was a dog.

The Mary Jane situation was dropped for the next year, during which time the decision was made to write out Liz and to officially kill Parker's relationship with Betty. However, both Lee and Ditko weren't intending at that point to leave their hero pining away, for at college Parker had his first encounters with Gwen Stacy. As abrasive as those encounters were, there could be little doubt that Lee and Ditko meant to promote Gwen as the new love-interest. Presumably Ditko didn't forget Mary Jane entirely, but when he quit the book in 1966, any plans he might have formed became null and void. Lee was thus responsible for resurrecting Mary Jane, partly in the knowledge that John Romita would be perfect to depict the red-haired gamine.

Surprisingly, given Lee's history with romance-humor strips like MILLIE THE MODEL, it took a long time for Gwen and MJ to become rivals, particularly in comparison to the rapid declaration of the Betty-Liz hostilities. Since Gwen's introduction, Parker hadn't dated Gwen or even asked her out, but he clearly fancied her. As for Gwen, in her less demanding moments she defended Parker against the attacks of Flash Thompson, whom she did apparently date (though one presumes he was always kept at arm's-length). Gwen seems indifferent when Parker starts dating MJ, but in issue #48 it finally becomes evident that the two girls are fully aware of one another's hot-titude, and that a subtle feminine gauntlet has been thrown.

                       

 With ASM #53 the duel begins in earnest. Gwen, despite not having pursued Parker before this, wangles an invite to accompany Parker to a science exhibit on the excuse that she's a "sci major." This may be the first and last time she or anyone else makes such a statement until the character shows up in the 2012 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN movie. Flash Thompson gets drafted during the time-period and it seems that Gwen makes him no promises about not sitting under any apple-trees with other suitors.

Once Flash is out of the way, the duel morphs into an ongoing set of skirmishes, in which it's obvious that Gwen and MJ are both warm for the same form, and they compete with assorted putdowns and catty remarks. At the same time, it's interesting that even though there was a superficial attempt to make Parker seem less square, Lee did not keep the two competitors in an endless Betty-and-Veronica dance. Even during MJ's earliest appearances, Lee took pains to show Gwen as the "good girl," while MJ was "the good times girl." That said, in the SPIDER-MAN universe neither lady would have slept with anyone out of wedlock, so both were essentially "good girls" in practice. But Gwen's affections were the "hard get," and so she got the editorial nod of preference.

In due time, though, once the feud was over and Gwen won the field, it became readily apparent that if Parker had a permanent girlfriend, that boxed in the hero romantically. And so when Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway proposed killing off Gwen Stacy, Lee-- who was no longer writing the feature anyway-- enthusiastically agreed, according to Thomas's assertions. Presumably all of them knew that this would necessitate moving Mary Jane back into romantic prominence. And though I'm no fan of the Gerry Conway SPIDER-MAN overall, I must admit he did a decent job of elevating the "good times girl" into respectable sweetheart material.

Shuttling back at last to my main point, why did the Gwen-MJ competition work in its day? Certainly Parker was more charismatic than average shlub Archie Andrews, who also managed to become the quarry for two females who looked like professional models. But I find it interesting that while Lee could have tossed Gwen and MJ into competition right away, as he and Ditko had done earlier with Betty and Liz, Lee played out the rivalry for close to a year's worth of stories until it finally took shape. Was Lee just drawing things out because he'd allowed Ditko to plot the feature for the last few years of their collaboration? Lee may have wanted to take more time with the soap-operatics, particularly if it was the case that his main collaborator Romita needed more script-guidance than Ditko had. But for me at least, the rivalry of Gwen and MJ succeeds because the two females decide of their own accord to compete over Parker. They certainly did not do so in response to his propensity to be any sort of "ladies' man." As presented by Lee and Romita, at least part of their motivation is to see whose glamorous light shines more brightly.

        

A GOTHIC ANCESTOR

 I'm still working, perhaps just for my own amusement, on my book re: the superhero idiom, and decided to elide this example of what I'm currently calling "the supermundane."

_________

Since Sumerian literature remains fairly obscure, I can better contrast the two supermundane modes with examples taken from the better-known culture of archaic Greece. For most persons, Greek mythology is a major source of the Greater Supermundane, thanks to the Greeks’ adaptation of even their most obscure myths into drama and poetry. The exploits of figures like Heracles, Jason and Odysseus hardly need to be outlined here. But a few stories anticipate later developments in the Lesser Supermundane. In Gothic fiction, one major trope is that of deceivers who use devices to fake ghosts or demon-hounds, and this trope is loosely prefigured by the tale of King Salmoneus. The monarch conceives that he is the earthly avatar of Zeus, and he tries to emulate the Thunder-God by flourishing torches for “lightning” and using noisemakers to simulate “thunder.” The story doesn’t mention whether Salmoneus fools any of his subjects. In any case, the real Zeus disapproves of the imposture and wipes out both the king and his city.

THE INFINITY CRUSADE (2000)

 

Technically, in my system the two-volume TPB INFINITY CRUSADE-- made up of a same-titled 6-issue series plus an assortment of crossover-books-- qualifies as a null-myth, a work in which the potential for mythic discourse has totally gone down the tubes. But CRUSADE isn't really worth a detailed discussion. It's just another of a crossover-type that I'm now calling the "clustermuck," designed to bring together twenty or more franchise-characters for the delectation comics-fans who like such assemblages.

Despite the name, there are some good clustermucks in terms of mythic discourse. The 1986 CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, despite some narrative problems, is the best of the bunch. And when Jim Starlin first began to "keep on clustermucking," he executed a decent outing in INFINITY GAUNTLET, which as most fans know was one of the main sources for the two-part conclusion of the MCU AVENGERS film-series of the 2010s. However, the very next clustermuck Starlin executed right after GAUNTLET was so mediocre, I don't even remember what it was called. Thus my working term "clustermuck" doesn't automatically signify that the work MUST be bad. But the more moving parts the author has to operate, the greater the chance that the story-action will devolve into a "muck" of cameos and posturing moments.

CRUSADE is mostly just that. A quickie description: Warlock once separated two of his soul-selves off from him. He fought one of them, The Magus, back in the 1970s. For some reason, the other one, a female entity called The Goddess, held off taking any action until year 2000. She has a complicated plan to remold the cosmos to her liking, and she enlists a few dozen heroes into her service. She's only able to mesmerize heroes who have some religious sensibility, which Starlin never defines. His humor is terrible and the action, supplied by an assortment of other artists, is ordinary except for a few battles, like one involving Thor and Drax the Destroyer.

The only thing that interested me about CRUSADE is that even though Starlin's dealing with several dozen heroes, most of them are subordinate ensemble characters. In GAUNTLET Thanos is the only superordinate character. Here Starlin puts all of his narrative emphasis upon the ensemble of Thanos and his old enemy Warlock, and everyone else is secondary to their machinations to defeat the menace of The Goddess. Some of their dialogue is okay-- certainly better in terms of characterization than all of the other Marvel manikins-- but the upshot is that CRUSADE might even be worse-written than one of my oldest unfavorites, SECRET WARS.

MYTHCOMICS: SWAMP THING 1989 (2026)

 

So, the only vote is in, and all four stories of SWAMP THING '89 make the "mythcomics cut," unlike all previous 23 issues of Rick Veitch's run on the regular SWAMP THING comic.

This was not necessarily a foregone conclusion. I suspected, after reading just a few pages of the first of the four installments, "The Morning of the Magician," was fully concrescent, and so I easily could have written only about that story and dismissed the others as "near-myths." But in point of fact, Veitch does succeed in pulling all four installments into a larger theme of spiritual rebirth and resurrection that is as close as a work of popular culture can get to the Christian doctrine of salvation (or, for that matter, to any religious doctrine). Not that there aren't "literary works," from PILGRIM'S PROGRESS to THE SATANIC VERSES, that are as poorly conceived as any bad comic book. But I digress.

There are still flaws. Veitch never really furnishes readers with a decent answer to his gimmick of having the monster-hero propelled through time-eras by a chunk, or chunks, of amber, and I would have thought that before his run was suspended, the author should have had that particular plot-device worked out. To be sure, the gimmick isn't used in "Morning," though.

In any case, at the end of the 1989 issue known as SWAMP THING #87, Swampy is banished from Arthurian times by an amber talisman. However, this time he's pursued through the corridors of time by one of Arthur's paladins, The Shining Knight, who becomes one of the more consequential guests in Veitch's version of SWAMP THING TEAM-UP. At any rate, while ST is once more tripping the light temporal, in ancient Judaea things are coming to a head. A trio of necromancers-- loosely compared to the Three Wise Men-- summon the hell-demon Belial, to rid them of the "magician" Jesus. Belial sends his "only begotten son"-- and yes, the demonic parody is intentional-- to possess the Roman centurion Marcus Tiberius. (Marcus was one of three DC characters to have his own feature in the first incarnation of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, initially launched as a title featuring historical adventures.) Note that here Veitch has Marcus cohabit with prostitute Mary Magdalene, thus following the popular confusion between the Biblical woman of Magdala and one or more prostitute figures.

Swamp Thing manifests in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus's disciples have fallen asleep and Jesus sits alone with the vessel that will later be called The Holy Grail. Veitch doesn't explain why Jesus -- not explicitly said to be divine here-- brought the vessel along, given that the Last Supper had ended. The cup's presence gives ST the chance to offer the Messiah a soothing drink, though Jesus is too distracted by his mystic communion to quaff the drink. Then the possessed Marcus arrives with Roman soldiers. Swamp Thing appears to battle Etrigan, but Jesus sends Swampy back to the time-stream and exorcises Marcus. Jesus then endures all the rigors of the Passion and perishes. A greybeard, implicitly the non-Biblical character Joseph of Arimathea, is shown holding the Grail, and from somewhere he also obtains a shard of amber, which he places within the Grail, all the better to maintain continuity with the Camelot issue. ST continues his backward journey, meditating on Jesus' perfect sacrifice.

"Time Upon a Once" alternates between ST getting trapped in an earlier era by the super-villain Chronos, only to receive succor from The Shining Knight, and John Constantine's attempts to suss out the muck-monster's fate, with help from such figures as Jim Corrigan and "The Hairies" (from Kirby's "Fourth World" cosmos). Also, pregnant Abby is due to give birth, so naturally she does so in a stable in the swamplands. ST is once more sent into time by an amber talisman, and this time he seems to disappear into "The Big Bang," where even the Knight cannot follow him.  

However, Swampy encounters another Kirby Kreation, signaling that the Kirbyverse is closer to being the metaphysical heart of the monster's world than any religion's concepts. The "moving finger" of The Source counsels Swamp Thing to attempt reincarnation through "the shared collective spirit that binds reality." This entails ST's "sacrifice" of his conscious memories, and so he next appears as a sprout upon a primeval tree, "Yrgsll" (patently an ancestor of "Yggdrasil). After many centuries as an unthinking plant, St encounters primitive humans, including that DC cave-boy Anthro. The exposure to humans reminds ST of his 20th-century incarnation, just in time for him to come to life and repel hostiles who attack the primitives. Readers get a very shaky rationale for the "amber gimmick" here, in that as a sapling, Swampy weeps "tears of amber sap" when wounded. But why exposure to amber talismans caused ST to jaunt through time? Not so much.

Meanwhile, Swampy's arch-nemesis Arcane has got paroled from Hell on the promise of his expunging John Cosntantine, but he proceeds to the stable, hoping to wreak havoc upon his niece and her child. However for some reason Constantine joins the fight, wielding an amber talisman-- and for some dubious reason, ST in the primeval past is able to reincarnate into the amber, because at that time the swamp-hero placed some of his essence in the amber chunk. Further, Swampy doesn't need to battle Arcane this time, for thanks to his exposure to the Prince of Peace, no hate abides in the elemental's heart, and Arcane cannot harm him or anyone else. Back to Hell goes the villain, while ST, Abby and their newborn child get to depart to a sort of figurative "heaven" where no one will trouble them. This wasn't the first or last time a creator sought to impose a sense of closure at the end of his comics-run-- even knowing that the character's adventures would go on under other hands-- but Veitch's closure is not without a certain rough appeal. And at least he saved the best parts of his tenure for the last.  

NEAR-MYTHS: "WILD THINGS," "TIME UPON A ONCE" (SWAMP THING #65-87 (1987-89)

 

My proximate reason for re-reading Rick Veitch's 23-issue run on the artist's run on the regular SWAMP THING was to remind myself of the setup for the conclusion of Veitch's storylines. As Veitch himself observed, that conclusion became the medium's most famous "unfinished story," since DC refused to publish Veitch's conclusion, resulting in his refusal to work with DC Comics again. DC for its part simply enlisted another raconteur to finish the Veitch storyline and went on publishing SWAMP THING comics. But now, after 30-plus years, DC decided to publish the Veitch conclusion, with the storyline unaltered though of course new art had to be produced and paid for. It's my intention to review this storyline in the next few days in a separate essay.

DC's moratorium on the conclusion did not prevent the company from packaging the Veitch SWAMP THING run-- as well as some ancillary materials I did not examine for this essay-- in three hardbound volumes, respectively titled "Wild Things," "Synchronicity," and "Time Upon a Once." Whatever the reasons for these divisions, I'd say the 23 issues break down into two distinct plotlines, and the titles "Wild Things" and "Time Upon a Once" are as good as any to denote those two stories.

Of the two, "Time" is easier to discuss, and the more pleasurable, so I'll deal with that one first-- even though it's the part that was left without a proper conclusion until recently. According to this interview, Veitch anticipated that DC's 1988 summer crossover event, INVASION, would oblige him to orient the SWAMP THING feature upon the "invading alien hordes" storyline. Instead, Veitch devoted two issues to setting up the contrivance that before the aliens could invade, they had to get rid of Swamp Thing due to his plant-based powers. So the aliens send the spirit of the muck-monster careening down the corridors of time-- which also gave the author the chance to revisit an assortment of DC characters set in other time-periods. As Veitch said:

“I figured if I got Swamp Thing off the planet and out of our time zone, then Swamp Thing comics could just be about that and they wouldn’t have to be a part of whatever that crossover was. The other aspect of the time-travel sequence was there were a few DC characters at the time who hadn’t been staked out by various creative people who wanted to retcon them. The richest vein of available characters were all in the past. The cowboys and the cavemen and the gladiators and the knights and all of that kind of stuff. I was really attracted to that, that I’d have that in my little sandbox and be able to play with all of them.”

Here's how the crossovers broke down.

#82-- ST interacts with DC's most famous war-hero Sergeant Rock in the closing years of WWII, as well as with an earlier incarnation of ST's enduring enemy Anton Arcane. With minor appearances by the Unknown Soldier and (in modern times) Jason Woodrue in his regrettable NEW GUARDIANS phase.

#83-- ST flashes back to WWI, and to the Germany of Hans Von Hammer of ENEMY ACE fame. He also meets a younger Arcane, who's been diddling his sister and almost kills his mother. 

#84-- ST takes a back seat to his girlfriend Abby as she deals with her dying husband Matt Cable, and also manages to host crossovers with Adam Strange, Morpheus and John Constantine.

#85-- It's "Go West, Young Thing," as Swampy is enslaved by a Native American wizard, and becomes entwined with such luminaries as Jonah Hex, Bat Lash, Johnny Thunder and his wife Madame .44, Hawk Son of Tomahawk, Firehair, El Diablo, and that short-lived savage superhero, Super Chief. Also, The Demon makes a cameo.

#86-- My favorite of the bunch. as ST jaunts back to revolutionary times, and meets DC's long running frontier paladin, Tomahawk. There's also another encounter with The Demon, and with the once and future Batcave, complete with a giant bat--which gets more or less explained in the ensuing issue.

        

#87-- Swampy witnesses the Fall of Camelot, as well as interacting with Merlin, his demon Etrigan, the villainous Morgaine LeFey, and the Shining Knight. A couple of background figures look like Prince Valiant and Hal Foster's version of the knight Gawain. The issue ends with the Shining Knight in modern times, informing Abigail of his interaction with the time-dispersed swamp-spirit, and then swearing to locate Swampy again-- at which point the tale ends.  

So "Time Upon a Once" is a great read, with the story being told backwards as the monster-hero keeps getting flung further back. It's fun but there's no epistemological pattern uniting the continuity, just playing in the DC sandbox.

"Wild Things" is harder to suss out. Given that Alan Moore changed the parameters of the SWAMP THING feature by importing a wealth of metaphysical concepts, Veitch was a good choice to follow Moore, since Veitch was at least equally invested in mystical matters as his English colleague. Veitch pencils many fascinating visuals depicting ST's journeys into the higher realms. Yet though I appreciated the intent, I found a lot of Veitch's design-work static. Just as a brief personal comparison, six years before Veitch's ST run, I remember being mesmerized by Marshall Rogers' vivid rendition of the DOCTOR STRANGE cosmology.

The title "Wild Things" references the storyline's main conceit: that due to ST's absence from Earth during an extended Alan Moore arc, Earth's plant-consciousness "The Green" generates a new spirit destined to merge with a dying human and to become a new Swamp Thing. ST would like to give up being Earth's elemental protector and let the "new guy" take over, but for some reason all the candidates prove inadequate and just die without hosting the new swamp-spirit-- and this repetitiousness drains whatever mythic grandeur might have informed the proceedings. On top of that, ST and Abigail get the idea to let "the Sprout" inhabit the body of Abby's unborn child, at which point they stop talking about the matter of the new Thing having to die violently. My overall feeling is that Veitch let the story's complexities get away from him.

Lastly, while Moore was no shrinking violet about his Liberal beliefs during his ST run, Veitch was twice as heavy-handed. I even remember being turned off by Veitch's political asides even though I was dominantly Liberal in the 1980s). The nadir of this virtue signaling appeared when Veitch took the old character of Roy Raymond (a know-it-all 1950s TV detective) and turned him into a conservative douche who got trapped for several issues in a car being driven by a mindless New Swamp Thing clone. There are certainly some weak moments in the Alan Moore, but as a reader I felt that he had a better control of the overall narrative.  But I must admit, at his worst Veitch's follow-up was better than 90% of similar follow-ups. 

     

LEGENDS OF YESTERYEAR PT 3

I've altered my thoughts on this passage from LEGENDS 2:

Historical figures, when subjected to fictionalization, can go either the way of artifice or the way of verisimilitude. To repeat one of my earlier counter-examples to Billy the Kid, Adolf Hitler's historical record can never be diminished by fictionalization. Hundreds of years in the future, he might become a legend of evil, but at present his presence in literature is always dwarfed by his presence in history. A fiction-story can depict Hitler in dozens of completely artificial situations-- he creates the Red Skull, he gets burned to death by The Human Torch, his body (or, more frequently, just his brain) gets preserved so that he can be revived in some new, world-conquering form. But these artifice-tropes never supersede the historical record.

I've decided that "superseding the historical record" is not that important in most cases, since often legend-types don't supersede history so much as exaggerate it. The average citizen interested in Old West history usually knows that Jesse James and Billy the Kid in reality are very different from any fictional treatments. So when that consumer enjoys a fictional story of Jesse James meeting the Two-Gun Kid, there's an automatic disregard for historical facts.

If anything, a simple, uncomplicated demonization of a historical figure-- such as Hitler's contemporaries Mussolini and the Emperor Tojo-- is usually so one-dimensional that it fails to take on "legendary" status. Hitler, though, is nothing if not a demon who fits many fictional roles. I might not consider Hitler to be "legendary" when he merely appears in a cameo, as in the film INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE. But he would qualify as a legend when he's used to launch schemes against WWII superheroes, as in THE INVADERS cover I printed in LEGENDS pt 2, and certainly in stories where he's a contemporary villain who's escaped the confines of his historical record. Such is the Adolf who appears in a 1947 multi-part SKYMAN story that I choose to call "Hitler on the Moon."

    

MYTHCOMICS: ONE MORE DAY (2007)

 

I quit following any of the SPIDER-MAN books on the 21st century, only occasionally availing myself of the occasional public-library TPB. But I wasn't so isolated that I didn't hear the many complaints about ONE MORE DAY, a storyline which ran in three separate Spider-titles, in which Peter Parker made a deal with The Devil to save Aunt May's life, costing him his happy marriage to the love of his life, Mary Jane.

I also heard that this retcon came about because editor Joe Quesada-- who also furnished the art for DAY-- didn't like the status quo of Peter Parker being married to Mary Jane. Unlike many of DAY's critics, I didn't have strong feelings about the marriage. I found it mildly pleasing that Parker should enjoy a measure of domestic contentment, not least because the post-Silver Age Parker wasn't, in my opinion, ever likely to generate scads of romance-subplots. I doubt the retcon improved the overall quality of Spider-stories based on my spotty readings, and in any case it's rare that any retcons have been instrumental to generating higher story quality. Yet I found that DAY, by itself, found interesting ways of playing with the often-moribund mythology of Spider-Man, particularly in its usage of guilt.

               

The web-slinger's career begins with his guilt over his accidental complicity in his Uncle Ben's death. Now, because Parker revealed his true ID to the world (something to do with the elephantine "Civil War" plotline, I think), the Kingpin sends a gunman to kill Parker but fatally wounds Aunt May. While the old lady barely clings to life, Parker makes the rounds of Marvel's wonder-workers, looking for some means to stave off the Grim Reaper. He explicitly tells Doctor Strange that while he thinks he could accept his aunt's natural death, he can't accept the calamity being his fault. 

I had low expectations for the "deal with the devil" part of the story, given how cliche the trope has become over the years, and perhaps I was influenced by all the negative press DAY received. However, though I've not liked the few comics-stories I've read by J. Michael Sraczinski, his handling of the "Satanic bargain" was the most mythic aspect of DAY.    

Once Parker's at his lowest ebb, he meets a devil's envoy who seems the incarnation of innocence: a sassy little girl who knows all about his problems, critiques him for his narcissism, and runs away.

Spider-Man loses the girl but comes across a young man in glasses. He discourses on the human need for escapism in a world that doesn't allow for personal heroism. Moments later. an older man drives up in a expensive car and takes Spidey for a little ride. He too related a life-story, a life that sounds a bit like Tony Stark's. (Earlier in the sequence, Spider-Man tells Stark that to Parker Stark was "like a father.")  He ends his story--mostly that of petty revenge against the classmates who tormented him in high school-- by emphasizing how he lost the one woman he loved.

 Parker then meets a woman in an old-fashioned dress. They discuss dreams, which gives Parker the chance to reference one of pop culture's most famous retcons. She then informs Parker of a fact most readers will suspect: the two males he met are alternate-world scenarios for ways that Parker could have turned out: Parker as complete nerd and as ruthless businessman. 

All of these discussions are primers for the subject of reality's mutability, at which point the woman reveals that "she" is Mephisto. He quickly disabuses Parker of the idea that he's offering to save Aunt May in exchange for Parker's soul. He brings Mary Jane into the discussion, revealing that he wants both of them to surrender their marriage, just for the purpose of spreading more misery. Mary Jane furthers the deal, ensuring that Spider-Man's identity will once more become secret. And as the last few moments of the Pert-MJ romance count down, Mephisto sticks in the knife: the little girl Parker met was the daughter he and MJ would have had, had they not chosen to save Aunt May. 

Then reality changes. Aunt May was never shot, and Parker never had a romance with Mary Jane Watson, though she continues to exist in his world. The tale ends with Peter at a party, as the partygoers toast Harry Osborn's recovery from trauma as "A Brand New Day"-- which was used for the name of a 2008 Spider-arc. Said arc does not follow up on any of the Spider-myths from ONE MORE DAY, and though both titles were used for the two most recent SPIDER-MAN, neither film is strongly indebted to either comics-arc. Given that I didn't find BRAND NEW DAY to be more than average, I doubt ONE MORE DAY provided any great inspiration for better Spider-Man stories. But clearly, the feature remains popular even without a "Mrs. Spider-Man," so in that respect, all the protestations of MJ fans did nothing to reverse that trend.