Welcome to a Spider-Man event that may be the most hated of all time.
But I like it. A lot.
One More Day is the tale where Spider-Man makes a deal with the devil so that Aunt May can live. It picks up after an assassin hired by Kingpin tries to kill Peter Parker but misses and hits May, to which Peter responded by basically going berserk, beating the crap out of Kingpin (who was in prison–see the “Back in Black” story).
Across an issue each of all four of the major Spider-Man books, we see how what happens next changes Spider-Man’s life completely and also changes the publishing line. When this was over, Amazing Spider-Man was the only monthly Spider-Man book left standing, but it had an accelerated publishing schedule, often coming out multiple times per month.
First, in Amazing Spider-Man #544, Peter breaks into Avengers Tower, beats up Iron Man, and then tries to get him to pay for Aunt May’s hospital bills. Spidey’s argument is that this is all Tony’s fault, since Peter registering as a hero is what turned Kingpin on to his secret identity, and it’s a fair point. But since then, Spidey went off the reservation and is now a fugitive, so Tony says he can’t help him. (But he does back-channel some money using Jarvis as the conduit.)
Striking out there, Peter turns to others for help–scientists, medical experts, and magicians alike–like Doctors Doom and Strange, Curt Connors and Beast, even Dead Girl and Night Nurse.
He does so in an instant when Stephen Strange mystically enables him to send out astral pleas for help. But none of them can help.
He’s then lured into an alley by a little red-headed girl who looks a lot like Peter and Mary Jane’s daughter would have looked, had she lived. The little girl does a “ghost of Christmas past” type thing, showing him different realities if he hadn’t been Spider-Man, tempting him, and then revealing herself to be Mephisto.
He offers to make a deal, but Peter says he has to consult with Mary Jane–only to find out Mary Jane is being given the very same offer…
Mephisto will give them one more day, and then all memory of their lives together will disappear. And May will live.
I know people give this story a lot of crap. People hate it. But how can you read that deal and not get chills? This is powerful stuff. And in the world of comic books, where retcons happen without ANY explanation, at least there’s a rationale here for making Peter Parker single again. Come on. This is good stuff.
Speaking of powerful stuff, th3\e final issue of the arc breaks me open every time I read it.
It’s full of the kind of beautiful, sentimental love that few comic book authors are able to create–and JMS is the master of it. Peter and MJ talk about the deal, and untimely Mary Jane makes the deal with Mephisto because Peter doesn’t have the strength to do it. But before she does, she whispered a condition to the devil…
Historians have argued about this, but if you expand the word balloon on comixology’s version of this books, you’ll see that it looped the phrase “I will remember everything” over itself–meaning MJ gets to remember, but Peter does not.
The secret of what she said was maintained for three years until the “One Moment in Time” sequel, where the whispered words are retconned as…
The original is so much more powerful. Mary Jane wants to keep the memory of the love, which offers more pain for Mephisto, while Peter gets to be joyfully ignorant of what he gave up.
If you don’t like this, I don’t understand you. And that wasn’t the only surprise at the end of JMS’s final issue…
Harry Osborn is back alive, too. Peter wakes up living with Aunt May in their old house. Flash Thompson is his friend again. Mary Jane is just a bit background player…Although when she sees Peter at Harry’s surprise party, she looks sad…
…which indicates to me that JMS did in fact intend for the whisper to Mephisto to be that MJ would remember even when Peter forgot.
Christ that’s all heartbreaking. I’ve read this story at least half a dozen times and it still makes me well up. I’m rating it as an A+. I know people hate it because they wanted Peter and Mary Jane to stay married, but that’s judging a story for the stories that came after. On its own merits, this is one of the most powerful comic book stories of all time…
English (US) · 