This is the year of the Spider. With Tom Holland soon to take center stage in the MCU in this year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man fans have never been happier. And yet, rumbling in the background, there’s still a long-running controversy – one that Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott waded into over the weekend.
In a heated discussion on the Comic Book Resources forum, Slott openly discussed the Spider-Man marriage – and the shocking events of One More Day…
What You Need To Know
It all began in 1987, when Stan Lee was attending a comic book convention. He was asked a simple question: Could Peter Parker and Mary-Jane ever get married? Well, back in the day Lee was writing a Spider-Man newspaper strip, and he decided to go with it. It wasn’t a “We have to do it” scenario – it was a “Why not?”
To Marvel’s surprise – and, in truth, to Stan Lee’s – the marriage became headline news. Having talked with countless figures at Marvel over the years, Dan Slott reflects:
“It was that media attention that got people at Marvel going, “We’ve got to get a piece of that!” And so the marriage was rushed into the comic continuity. In the book at the time, Black Cat was the current love interest. There’s even a scene in one of the issues before the big media announcement, where MJ’s lack of being in the book is the source of an actual joke. Peter and MJ’s romance was quickly re-ignited and their super-fast courtship towards the marriage was inorganically shoved into the Spidey books ASAP. One of the most legendary Spider-Man stories of all time, KRAVEN’S LAST HUNT, had to quickly be rewritten to include the fact that Peter and MJ had been married– as the original draft had been written about a non-married Spider-Man.”
Unfortunately, no sooner had Marvel married Peter Parker off than they began to second-guess the decision. The 1990s and early 2000s saw countless attempts to end the marriage – from break-ups to one arc where MJ went missing in a plane crash! Finally, in 2007, J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada headed up the arc known as “One More Day.” In this disturbing plot, Peter Parker makes a deal with the Devil – literally, with Marvel’s Satan-analogue, Mephisto – in order to save Aunt May’s life. It’s at the cost of his marriage, too, with history rewritten as the price he and MJ must pay.