Well, here it is. The infamous end to JMS’s 6-year stranglehold on Spider-Man. I read this back when it was being released in single issues, and remember just being confused by it, as I wasn’t totally caught up on Spider-Man at the time. But now I’m 100% caught up, and all that’s done is make this goofball story seem even sillier.
About halfway through the book, I thought about giving up. Knowing this was his final Spider-Man story must’ve put JMS in Existentialism Explosion Mode, because every word uttered by every character is just so full of “meaning” and “importance.” However, it’s so forced, and so far from how any human being short of Confucius has ever spoken, that it just comes across increasingly pretentious throughout the book.
OK, now I want to talk about how stupid the plot of this thing is, so I guess SPOILER ALERT blerp blerp blerp.
The entire concept of this story is ridiculous: with Aunt May shot by bullet meant for him, Peter exhausts every avenue to save her. When that doesn’t work, he makes a deal with the devil to save her life (well, Mephisto, who is essentially the devil). Now, Aunt May is like 200 years old at this point, and characters continually ask Peter if he thinks it might just be her time. His answer is “No, she can’t die like this. I want her to die of old age.” Um, dude. She’s older than the pyramids. Any way she dies at this point will be of “old age.”
But, obviously, if Peter was just like “Oh you’re right, I’m being stupid,” this whole thing would be over in a heartbeat (or lack of one). But instead, Peter and Mary Jane agree to allow the devil to erase their marriage from history, giving him that sweetest of victories, victory over love (I can think of sweeter victories).
Now, this story is called “One More Day” because once Peter and MJ agree to the devil’s terms, they are given one final day together to experience each other’s love before they’re pulled apart for eternity. Cool, that’s a concept I would actually be ok exploring. What do you do with only one final day with the love of your life?
You sit alone in a room for 2 pages of a comic book and don’t say a word to each other.
I’m serious. There are two pages where they are just sitting in a room, holding each other, and when Peter tries to talk, MJ tells him to be quiet. So they sit in silence for apparently 24 hours. Now, I can’t imagine what I would do in a scenario like this, but I would not want to just sit on the floor in silence. I would AT LEAST get up on the damn couch. But I guess that’s not incredibly melodramatic.
So then the devil shows back up and is like “Ready?” and they’re like “Sure” and that’s it. The deed is done and they are not married anymore. Every major event in Peter’s life of the past few years is also erased, almost as if JMS never wrote a word of Spider-Man. Which would’ve been the only cool thing about this if it were actually true.