This post talks about developments in The Amazing Spider-Man #74. Anyone who has not read this comic book and plans to do so should stop reading this now.
(SPOILER ALERT)
And with the conclusion of Nick Spencer's run on The Amazing Spider-Man he has officially excised from canon the 2004 story by J. Michael Stracyznski and Mike Deodato, "Sins Past," which retconned into Spider-Man's history a sexual tryst between Norman Osborn and Peter's then-girlfriend Gwen Stacy, the way a skilled surgeon might extract a tumor. This risible tale was a story that had stood as part of Spider-Man canon for seventeen years, with editors and writers refusing to touch it because of how intricately the retcon had been woven into the history; apparently people simply lacked the imagination needed to make it work...until Nick Spencer came along.
As gratifying as it was, however, Spencer stopped short of undoing arguably the one Spider-Man story more widely loathed than "Sins Past," namely the 2007 story "One More Day," in which Peter Parker quite literally sold his marriage to the devil to save Aunt May's life. It was honestly a crying shame, because Nick Spencer would have gone down in history as a legend. He had already undone the resurrection of Kraven the Hunter in a misguided but well-intentioned sequel to "Kraven's Last Hunt" and with "Sins Past" he had managed to show just how serious he was about righting wrongs that had been done to Spider-Man's history. Undoing "One More Day" would have been his crowning achievement, the story that would have sealed his place in the firmament of truly great Spider-Man writers like Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, Roger Stern and J.M. DeMatteis, to name but a few.
So why didn't he?
It's simple, but worth stating anyway. "Sins Past" may created a headache that proved too complicated for Marvel editorial to undo for years, but it was also a completely unnecessary evil that touched on a character who had been dead at the time for thirty-one years. There had been no new Gwen Stacy stories from the time she had died in 1973. Her story had been told and was a cherished part of Spider-Man's history, right up until its bitter ending. Retconning it with "Sins Past" was completely pointless as it added nothing to the character, or to Peter Parker, and had proved to be far more trouble than whatever "benefits" Marvel editorial imagined they had gained from the brief moment of notoriety. Marvel didn't see any value in keeping this story canon; the fact that it was ignored by almost every writer after Straczynski showed how deeply they wanted to bury it. A few writers and fans have said Marvel were just better off pretending it never happened, but I beg to disagree.
Fortunately, so did Nick Spencer, who had both the imagination and the balls think of a story that would undo "Sins Past." Sure, he had to think out of the box, tapping into a storyline that took place at a time when Norman Osborn was supposed to be dead, but he made it work. Bottom line, Spencer did Marvel a huge favor, and it's highly doubtful that any writer or editor would ever want to restore this abomination to canon. Straczynski himself, who has long denounced "Sins Past" as a complete distortion of what he wanted to write, has given his seal of approval.
Now, "One More Day" was a similarly detestable storyline, but it achieved an important goal for Marvel which they had been working towards for quite some time.
It's no secret that Marvel had been trying to undo Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson's marriage for several years prior to "One More Day." The infamous "Clone Saga" which introduced Ben Reilly and even attempted to retcon him as the "true" Peter Parker was actually Marvel's first high-profile attempt to make Spider-Man single again, which ended in catastrophic failure and Ben Reilly's (ultimately temporary) death, but it would not be the last. In the early noughties, Marvel made an attempt to kill off Mary Jane that ended up being so half-assed that they coudn't even keep her dead for a year. She and Peter ended up separating, which didn't last very long either. Then, "One More Day" was hatched, and the rest is history.
Reinstating Gwen Stacy's squeaky clean, all-American girl image was hugely beneficial to Marvel, especially since they're now actively promoting an alt-universe version of her as one of their heroes. In contrast, the benefits of reinstating a married Peter and Mary Jane are debatable at the very least, especially considering the trouble that Marvel's editorial had gone through for years to get to this point. I imagine it's not an ordeal editorial would want to repeat, so even if Spencer had pitched it to them, they must have ultimately said no.
I'd argue that Marvel has even come full circle, with Ben Reilly (who got better) about to resume his duties as the main Spider-Man again, though I'm sure this is but a temporary status quo. Rather than regret what they didn't do, though, I prefer to just bask in what they actually did.
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