By: Joe Quesada (writer), Paolo Rivera, Quesada, Danny Miki & Richard Isanove (art), Joe Caramanga (letters)
The Story: In the second chapter of One Moment In Time, Joe Quesada goes to greater lengths to explain what happened on the day of Peter and MJ’s failed wedding and ties this failure to One More Day.
What’s Good: If you wanted to pick at the scab of One More Day, this is an interesting way to do it that actually has me slightly curious about what will happen in the next couple of issues of this One Moment In Time story arc.
Going back to last issue, we had a couple of revelations: One, that Peter Parker missed his own wedding because a fat guy was lying on top of him. Two, during the deal with Mephisto in One More Day, MJ also made Mephisto promise to leave Peter/Spidey alone for all time as her condition for giving up their marriage. Both of those tidbits come into play in a slightly interesting way here.
What I think happened in this issue is that Quesada is telling us that no wedding means no marriage, and no marriage means Mephisto doesn’t show up as Aunt May is dying because there is nothing that he wants to take away. Thus, I think Quesada has just ret conned One More Day out of existence. If you’re doubtful about what this means, you’re not alone. Go read any internet message board on the issue and you’ll find a lively discussion.
The reason I put this in the “what’s good” section is that it does open up some interesting avenues for Spidey going forward. Namely, what about his secret identity? If OMD is gone, that would have to mean that the secret identity is history too, right? Also, what about MJ’s part of the deal? If OMD never happened, then Mephisto never agreed to leave Peter alone forever and that would kind of imply that we’ll be seeing Mephisto in the next issue or so. I literally have zero clue what will happen next in this comic book, but am interested to see how this trainwreck concludes.
The art is a mixed bag, but Paolo Rivera’s work is very nice. I’ll talk about the rest of the art below.
What’s Not So Good: I still don’t understand why Marvel would choose to address a very poorly received retcon (OMD) with another huge retcon. WTF?
I also don’t like how Quesada resolves the hanging issue of Aunt May’s health. If Mephisto isn’t saving her, someone will have to and it appears that Peter saved her by doing CPR. I’m calling bullshit on this. Human bodies just don’t work that way. It just doesn’t work that after all the medical professionals have done everything that they can do with defibrillators, etc. that a family member could perform some Spider-strength chest compressions and bring her back. Spider-strength isn’t going to make a brainstem start a heart beating again…it’ll just crack the ribs worse.
Quesada’s art really stunk on this issue. Peter and MJ both look like they’ve taken up competitive eating. I’m sure the guy is just rusty because he’s been mostly an editor for a long time, but why not just let Rivera draw the whole issue?
Lastly, I’ll direct more cold-shoulder at the Spidey Sundays back-up from Stan Lee. Why they keep tossing this lightweight fun pap at us after a very complex and confusing issue is beyond me. I can’t imagine anyone is spending two seconds on this back-up compared to trying to figure out the current status of Spider-Man’s continuity.
Conclusion: I don’t like the general premise of this story-arc and think it is unnecessary, but I do think I understand where they are going and it opens some interesting possibilities.
Grade: C+
-Dean Stell
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Conclusion