Wall Banger/Comic Books/One More Day

""NYAAAAAAARGH! DO IT!""

We know that sometimes things go wrong, right? We have pages like this for franchises, books, videogames and whatnot. But... a single storyline?

I - uh, I mean, h-how bad could it ever be to deserve a whole page for its own Wall Bangers?

Trust us, it does. Saying it doesn't would be like going to the article for The Killing Joke expecting candies or kittens and then getting its enormous amount of horror.

Some of the lines in this article were formerly in the OMD article, before being cut to a simple "goes without saying". This should kinda give you an idea: it's actually bad enough you'll have destroyed your house before the arc is finished.

Given Joe Quesada wrote both One More Day and One Moment in Time (which, after a year-and-a-something, explained the stupid retcon in a fittingly stupid way), this is the shared Wall Banger page where we talk about the stupidity of both storylines.

If you're Literal Minded towards a Wall Banger, then you'd better wear a crash helmet: as Peter Parker himself said, "This isn't a pretty story".

The points of both horrible fanfics Gone Horribly Wrong these canonical storylines that are bound to send heads against walls are pretty much as follows:

 * Joe Quesada used this storyline because for Peter and MJ to get a divorce and an abortion would be immoral. How, then, is it better to sell the marriage and fetus to the devil?
 * It's magic, he doesn't have to explain it.
 * Other revelations from One Moment in Time also endanger the structural integrity of your house. Way back when Peter and MJ were supposed to get married, what did Mephisto actually do to prevent it? Spider-Man, causing him to miss his wedding. I would say It Makes Sense in Context but that would be a lie - it only sucks more.
 * The mere fact that OMIT was so late and the artist was so lazy they reused art from OMD deserves mention.
 * MJ compares her life with Peter to the abuse she got from her father -- the emotionally abusive, alcoholic father that pushed her into becoming a Stepford Smiler for years -- and gives this as a reason she'd never have kids with him. Yeah...
 * The resurrection of Aunt May is accomplished with a Cosmic Retcon which changes decades of Marvel continuity, including returning Spidey's Secret Identity, even though Quesada himself explicitly said this would not be undone by a "magic retcon."
 * To be fair, it was eventually clarified that the only thing that was retconned was the marriage; other stuff like restoring the Secret Identity happened during a Time Skip afterward. Even then, the marriage was just changed into living together, altering previous relationship subplots very little. "One More Day" has a lot of problems, but invalidating canon en masse doesn't seem to be one of them.
 * In one part of this event, Spider-Man enlists Dr. Strange's help to save Aunt May. Strange (Note:Doctor Strange is his real name, not an adopted title. He's a surgeon as well as Sorcerer Supreme.) casts a spell that allows Spidey to be in multiple places at once to find someone capable of treating her. Apparently, no one in Marvel Earth is qualified to treat a gunshot wound. Not even Elixir of the New X-Men. Elixir, who regenerated Prodigy's heart after it was quite literally ripped out of his chest by the demon Belasco, could not treat a gunshot wound.
 * The rest of the story is par the course for comic books. MJ and Peter breaking up might be tolerated, but this was too much. Dr. Strange literally has God on speed dial...several gods, in fact. Reed Richards builds time machines! Elixir's power is best summed up as "Heals shit." They somehow can't deal with a common everyday gunshot wound. Not a headshot, not a special bullet, not some magical Uru round or Wakandan anti-metal shell or something. Just a bullet from a gun...that somehow stymies a superhuman genius, a literal God on Earth, and a man who can rewrite a person's DNA with a backwards glance. That wrecks the story as much as the deal with the Devil because it just doesn't work on a basic, narrative level.
 * Worst of all in this is that it would have been pathetically easy to justify Aunt May's death gracefully. She's a frail old woman, the injuries are severe, and the additional strain to her system that healing her would entail would kill her anyway. Why hasn't this been a problem in any other case? Because none of the other cases involved a frail old person being healed of otherwise fatal injuries. Aunt May happens to be an outlier.
 * Combine the above with the actual statement about Aunt May being at peace with dying to offset supernatural healing or storming heaven on her behalf.
 * The way time travel works in the MU (this week), is that Spidey going back and changing time would spin off an alternate reality, instead of altering his own. Reed still should've been able to find some way.
 * "Find a way?" Reed Richards, when Ben Grimm was killed, literally built a dimensional transporter that could access heaven, picketed the pearly gates, and complained loudly to all the angels until Jack Kirby let him into the inner sanctum and agreed to bring Ben back to life. He would have reacted to Peter's question of "can you fix her?" with uncontrollable lol'ing, that's how idiotic it was. And it wipes out any argument he might've made about not interfering with the natural order of things (which is a philosophy Reed never bought anyway).
 * And just to put a point on this, we later found out how Peter got his Secret Identity back, and it's because Strange, Richards, and Tony Stark pulled Laser-Guided Amnesia out of their rears.
 * So instead of a Magic Retcon, it was a Techno Magic Retcon?
 * A lesser example than most for Quesada, but his decision for how Reed Richards and Tony Stark gave everyone laser guided amnesia to keep Spider-man's identity secret qualifies. Those two just finished fighting a war in part to make sure that meta-humans couldn't do that sort of thing to regular humans and now they're the ones erasing memories?
 * A global scale techno-magic retcon by the same freaking people who couldn't treat the aforementioned gunshot wound.
 * You think this is bad enough? Peter met GOD (or angel) and he told him to have faith that she will get better. While he could like... you know.
 * This comic has been bashed by so many people not only for the stupidity, but also for gaping plot holes in the devil's powers. See Linkara for several reasons including that the devil is a Manipulative Bastard.
 * In a September 2010 interview, JQ revealed that due to MJ's use of Exact Words, Mephisto had accidentally retconned the deal itself out of existence. Think about that again (even though those Exact Words could easily be corrupted in any number of way by a sufficiently creative individual, let alone an immortal embodiment of pure evil).
 * Two covers, of all things, had the balls to twist the knife with the wounds these storylines opened in the hearts of fans, namely this Marvel Apes cover that parodies the One More Day logo above and this Marvel Zombies cover that parodies Spider-Man's wedding by replacing the superheroes with their zombified counterparts (with obvious results). In both cases... Quesada! THIS IS NOT FUNNY! AT ALL!
 * That Marvel Zombies cover was actually from about a year before One More Day, and Marvel Zombies' covers are well known for parodying iconic Marvel covers. Not really related to this.
 * To cap this all off, the entire plot openly ignores the main Aesop of the Spider-Man franchise: with great power comes great responsibility. Because Peter revealed his identity to the world and his loved ones were hurt, a scenario he had been standing behind for decades as to why he wouldn't reveal his identity, he made a deal with the devil because he couldn't take responsibility for his actions.
 * Then there's the fact that Aunt May had "died" several times before, was probably in her eighties, and had lived a fulfilling life, while Mary Jane and Spidey had been married for, what, only a few years (comic book time) and there had been a lot of punctuation on how great they were together. Congratulations Pete, you let the love of your life go in a Deal with the Devil to save a woman close to death anyway.
 * In a vision, her spirit even tells Peter to let her go and that she wants to see Uncle Ben again. But no, Peter refuses because of his own personal guilt. Yes, the With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility Peter Parker does this. Nice job Petey: not only did you ruin your own life and the lives of your wife and future child, you also prevented your old aunt from happily joining her deceased husband. FAIL.
 * Peter manages to revive Aunt May with a combination of CPR and The Power of Love... even though she was shot and someone with superstrength pumping on Aunt May would risk either crushing her or reopening the wound pumping all the blood out of her, and his attempts to revive her by contacting everyone in the world who could possibly help didn't count in the original timeline.
 * Worse, the CPR, if we are to overlook the fact that, as demonstrated above, would do more harm than good, only kept her from dying in the short-term, it did nothing to heal the massive trauma she suffered from the gunshot wound. You know, the one none of the greatest scientists and magicians of the Marvel Universe can heal. How did she go from "death-just-temporarily-staved-off" in OMIT to "perfectly healthy" in Brand New Day?
 * One Moment in Time's solution to how May survived ironically turned the entirety of this saga into one giant Shoot the Shaggy Dog. Mephisto's deal accomplished nothing. At the end of the day, despite the Cosmic Retcon, history still repeated itself. Peter still took part in the Civil War, he still unmasked himself, and Aunt May still was shot and sent into comatose. The only difference was that in this new Universe, instead of being approached by Mephisto, Peter went back to the hospital and performed his magical CPR. In essence, the only thing the deal itself accomplished was erasing Peter and Mary Jane's marriage from existence.
 * Which just goes to show the lengths that Quesada went to destroy the Parker marriage, something he was known to hate for a very long time.
 * Epic Fail: Joe Quesada, in One More Day you have demonstrated the storytelling insight and Possession Sue affect of a thirteen year-old fanfic writer who has only ever read Twilight. Please kindly go to Hell and stop trying to run the asylum. There are actual psychiatric patients there that need editorial help.
 * And all because you don't like the idea of Spidey being a married man and want Mary-Jane to disappear, despite THOUSANDS of fans taking the polar opposite opinion. Joe, people like you are the reason this troper fears stupidity becoming contagious.
 * Of course we've missed the biggest Wall Banger of all: Joe Quesada, despite damaging one of the most iconic superheroes of all time possibly beyond repair all because he ALONE didn't like the idea of Spidey being anything but an unmarried loser, rubbing the angered fans noses in it whenever possible, and sales plummeting faster than the life expectancy of a convicted child molester in a steel cage match with the Punisher, NO ONE AT MARVEL HAS HAD THE COMMON SENSE TO FIRE HIM AFTER ALL THESE YEARS.
 * The whole point of the book? Erasing the marriage so the writers could explore Peter as a bachelor.. so the first issue after introduces Carlie Cooper so she can be the new OTL. Great job exploring his single life, Marvel. Totally worth it.
 * Makes you wonder if the whole "Exploring Peter as a bachelor" angle is just an excuse for Quesada to pair him up with his pet character. Derailing Love Interests doesn't even begin to cover this.
 * Seeing as she's supposedly based off his daughter, it may be he got rid of MJ to pair him up with his own kid.
 * It's worse than that. Let's not forget that Quesada has a tendency to turn Spidey into his own personal Author Avatar. So he's pairing his own avatar... with his daughter's avatar. What the fuck.
 * "See, to me, the reason I wanted to get married was to have kids. If that's no longer a part of the equation, then marriage is just a piece of paper." - This is definitely NOT MJ's opinion about marriage, but Joe Quesada's. Makes you wonder what he thinks about his wife and daughter...
 * The sad thing is, not long after he made this he lost his job as editor--and is now in charge of assuring that all Marvel properties are in-character and adhere to continuity. Talk about letting the fox guard the henhouse...
 * No, the sad thing is that that's not even how it happened. Joe Quesada didn't lose his job. He got to live out the rest of his run (another few years, giving him a solid ten year run like most EIC) before volenteering to step down in order to get a role that gives him just as much power. Before, he had the power to control the publishing of stories based on his own opinion. Now, he has the power to control what is and isn't published, before they're given to the new EID, the only thing he can't control is if the new guy likes it or not. Throughout all this however, the executives, the ones who control who's in charge, never thought to even tell him to listen to the fans, which would have caused a massive raise in sales had they done so. This is the real wall banger of OMD: How anyone could allow someone to commit such a character assassination and not get fired. He didn't get fired for OMD, he didn't get fired for being a massive asshole to the fans, he didn't get fired for plumetting Marvel into a new Dark Age, he didn't get fired for OMIT, he didn't get fired for being incredibly unpopular, as with what happened to Chuck Austin, he didn't get fired for drawing Peter Parker so that he looks like himself. He got to finish his term and step down, complete with Marvel.com announcing a 'celebration' for his ten year fucking aneversary. This is what's wrong with the comic industry today. Executive Meddling is almost never a good thing, but had it happened a little here, we could have avoided a lot of shit.
 * Why, for the love of God, did Spider-Man listen to Mephisto of all people? He should already know who Mephisto is, having dealt with his son in the past, so he should know that the guy is basically the biblical Satan! So if you know that the literal devil wants to make a deal with you, why the hell would you follow up on that offer, especially if you're one of the smartest, most moral and kindest superheroes around?!
 * Not to mention he's friends with someone who has been royally screwed over by Mephisto. You'd think he'd know better.