One More Day/YMMV

"Looking back on all this, I think it would have made for an intriguing, compelling, thought-provoking story... but not anything that should ever be done in a Spider-Man comic. In fact, what's so blatant to me now is how Spider-Man is completely overshadowed by the events of this story - he's little more than a plot device, a pawn. And that's not what the readers want to see. Hell, it's not what I would want to see, either!"
 * Abandon Shipping: Averted. Such gross mishandling has been made that Peter/Mary Jane shippers are more devoted than ever now.
 * Alternate Character Interpretation:
 * Peter's attempts to save Aunt May: Responsibly working to fix a mistake he made, or irresponsibly trying to dodge the consequences of his actions?
 * Actual quote when he's scrambling to find a way to save her: "At least it won't be my fault!"
 * The decision to give up the marriage: Heroically sacrificing love to save a life (as Quesada says), unwisely giving up love for someone who has already had a full life and is ready to move on, or stupid by default (regardless of the first two) because it was set up by a demon?
 * Mephisto: Trying to induce suffering on two truly in love people by destroying it? Trying to off Peter and Mary Jane's kids using the marriage excuse to throw them off? Has Deadpoolesque fourth wall breaking powers, and is doing this to piss off the fans? Or has no motivations of his own because he's just an Author Avatar for...
 * Joe Quesada: Genuinely trying to free up Spider-Man for new storyline possibilities (albeit through a less than satisfying manner)? Trying to live vicariously through a character he grew up with and he wishes he could be (filtered through his own view as how he should be)? Or a living incarnation of both maliciousness and hackery?
 * Bile Fascination: Okay, admit it, even if you weren't a fan of Spider-Man, you've been tempted to buy a copy of OMD just to see how bad it is. Or you just torrented the whole thing, borrowed the trade from a library, or read it in the store; all much smarter ideas.
 * Broken Base: Half the fanbase would like to know what the hell happened to their beloved characters. The other half would just like to forget Peter Parker ever made a pact with Satan and just enjoy the new stories. Note the base is only broken on how to react. Everyone hates OMD.
 * If you think that "everyone" hating OMD is an exaggeration, consider this: a Google search for "I like/liked One More Day" returns a grand total of 14 hits (excluding those that refer to this page). To give you some perspective, "I like Uwe Boll" returns about 45 thousand results. One More Day is less popular, according to Google, than being kicked in the balls (19 results if you search for both "balls" and "nuts").
 * The stories following the reboot have certainly been Base Breakers. Some people love what the reboot has done for the series. Others still maintain a "it wasn't broken so it shouldn't have been fixed" mentality.
 * Others also believe that these stories could have been told without screwing up 20 years of comic book continuity.
 * Character Rerailment: It sure wishes it were the great bridge to return Peter Parker into a single, fun, character. It wishes so hard.
 * Designated Hero: Peter makes a deal (or rather, guilt-trips Mary Jane into making a deal) with the devil to feel better about himself, despite it being healthier to accept he screwed up, despite his Aunt May's spirit telling him she is okay with dying, and despite the One-Above-All telling him to accept her death.
 * Note that the One-Above-All is not an expy of the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Judeo-Christian God (unlike Mephisto, who is a devil expy). He literally is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Judeo-Christian God. The one that quietly devout Methodist Peter has been worshiping all his life. Yes, this character told his God to bunk off, made a deal with a greater demon, ignored all the maxims by which he's tried to live his life, and is still supposed to have our sympathy.
 * Die for Our Ship: Rewrite Reality for our ship.
 * Dork Age: Surprisingly, Brand New Day averts this somewhat. Yes, people hate the relationship mess and want it fixed and forgotten as soon as possible, but for the most part people are willing to take the other retools (such as updating the classic rogues gallery and trying out some new villains) and judge them on their own merits. Some hope these changes will be carried over once the marriage comes back.
 * Esoteric Happy Ending: Quesada has stated that he looks at One More Day and sees Aunt May saved through the Parkers' Heroic Sacrifice of their marriage. Most fans see the Official Couple being forced apart and the villain getting what he wants.
 * Family Unfriendly Aesop: So when you follow a fascist's (Iron Man as he was then being written) suggestion to do away with keeping your superhero personality a secret and suffer the foreseeable consequences, you accept you made a mistake and -- oh wait, you sacrifice your loving wife, marriage, and future kid TO THE DEVIL because you can't accept responsibility? Wait even the editor thinks it's better than divorce? WHAT THE HELL!?
 * And One Moment In Time has taught us that marriage is ultimately unimportant because you only need to do so if you plan to have kids. Because without kids, a marriage is just words on paper.
 * Fanon Discontinuity: A very unpopular story.
 * One More Day is just Joe Queseda's fanfiction and Carlie Cooper is his Mary Sue.
 * Which becomes even more painfully, embarassingly obvious when you find out Carlie is named after (based on?) his daughter.
 * Fixer Sue: Mephisto in One More Day, Mary Jane in One Moment In Time.
 * Fridge Logic: If he was desperate enough to do a Deal With the Devil, why didn't he just try to strike a deal with Iron Man, or at least accept his money?
 * For that matter, why didn't he make a deal with Doctor Doom at that point? For all that Doom is a villain, he can relate with desperately wanting to save someone you hold dear, given how he went out of his way to save his mom from Mephisto. In fact, Doom would have been the very FIRST person to warn Peter against making any sort of deals with Mephisto, because they are never as clear cut as he presents them, while Doom at least always exposes clearly what he offers and what he expects in return. But no, Peter dismissed the idea because of Doom being EVIL. Yes, because THE DEVIL totally isn't also evil, is he? Apologies, but this Troper's forehead has a date with the nearest wall...
 * Doctor Doom also murdered his own girlfriend, made a magical costume out of her skin, and sold her soul to a trio of demons, demons who served Mephisto. In a story where he did not make clear what deals he was offering (twice- the girlfriend thought he was wanting to get back together with her; the Fantastic Four thought he was going to release their child from Hell if they surrendered.) And he doesn't especially like Spiderman, who foils his plans regularly and is good buddies of the man he hates most in the world. As you can guess, he probably shouldn't have bargained with Doom.
 * Also, at what point in the creative process for the story was the idea "Time-traveling supervillain" not accepted? Seriously, if you want to do this kind of story fine, but for cryin' out loud, goofy ideas are better than mind-numbingly bad ones.
 * This option actually had a valid reason not to work. Time travel in Marvel Universe doesn't change history (unless it's a part of it) it simply creates an Alternate Universe. For same reason Peter couldn't simply go back in time and save aunt May. In cases when time travel does change the present (don't know why) it usually threatens to cause the end of the world and so has to be reversed ASAP. Or at least that's how it worked.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight - Or maybe Funny Aneurysm Moment, hard to say. This isn't the only time they tried to "un-marry" Spider-Man - the Clone Saga was originally supposed to be this . One of the ways they were going to fix that mess was to reveal the whole saga was a contest between the characters Judas Traveller and Scrier, the latter of whom turns out to be, you got it, MEPHISTO! Who would have put Spider-Man in a Shaggy Dog Story Stable Time Loop just so he could claim Judas Traveller's soul. As the person who had the idea put it here:


 * And for the record, this comment was made before One More Day occurred. Start laughing or weeping, true believers!
 * This Superman cover.
 * The whole story is basically this What If story... except now it's canon.
 * Never Live It Down: Spider-Man makes a Deal With the Devil.
 * Joe Quesada making this mess.
 * Relationship Sue: Not a part of One More Day or One Moment In Time proper, but connected: Carlie Cooper, the new Official Couple Love Interest. Not only is everyone shilling her, you know she's the Creators Pet because she's named after Quesada's daughter. Also a Replacement Scrappy.
 * In mid-2010, Marvel released a one-shot called The Many Loves of the Amazing Spider-Man. The cover featured Gwen Stacy, Felicia Hardy, Mary Jane Watson-Parker, and... Carlie Cooper.
 * Running the Asylum: The MO is Quesada reversing Spider-Man's marriage to Mary-Jane, which happened when he was a young man.
 * Shipping Bed Death: Joe Quesada's exact reasonings for this storyline was that Peter being single would open doors to more interest storylines than a Peter who was tied down.
 * They Just Didn't Care
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Mary Jane's concerns in OMIT about Spider-Man being trouble for Peter and his loved ones are pretty valid. If she had voiced them after Aunt May got shot, then we might have had a decent breakup story instead of all this magic retcon nonsense.
 * But divorce would make Peter a poor Role Model and age him significantly.
 * The whole point of this stupid book was to retcon Peter back to his single days, so the writers could explore it how ever they wanted... so naturally, the first issue after sees Carlie Cooper appear to set her up with Peter as the new OTL? Well done exploring him as a bachelor, Marvel.
 * True Art Is Angsty: Somebody clearly swears by the Joss Whedon maxim of "happy people equals boring television comics.''
 * Villain Decay: As the Escapists The Big Picture puts it, what does the Devil get out of this, other then the satisfaction of erasing some wedding pictures from existence?
 * Wiping out Spider-Girl or a possible future heroic daughter of the Parkers along similar lines from existence in this universe? Destroying a marriage that until that point was well along the path of setting the marital example that God would favor? Putting am impossibly perfect woman next to Spider-Man in hopes of later using her to corrupt him somehow? Infecting real children and adults who he knows are reading all these events as comic book stories with the idea that selling out to the Devil is preferable to marriage at the first sign of an emergency?
 * Still quite a step down from regularly tangling with Silver Surfer.
 * What an Idiot: Why would Mary Jane agree to sell her marriage to the devil?
 * You Fail Logic Forever: Quesada claims Mary Jane is the hero because her actions ensure that Mephisto would never meddle with the Parkers - he can't mess up their marriage if they were never married. Yet, he did mess things up by releasing that guy...
 * Or another take on Quesada's statements is that she's the hero because Mephisto is denied his prize thanks to her - which would have also happened if she didn't take the deal in the first place. (Also, it shouldn't be that easy to Scam Cthulhu.)