penciled by Kaare Andrews and John Romita Jr.
inked by Andrews and Scott Hanna
colored by Marcio Menyz
Welcome back to the Cucktacular Spider-Man, which is basically the central theme of Marvel's flagship book nowadays.
Picking up from last month's revelation that Mary Jane Watson now regards her new partner Paul, who was only just introduced to readers less than a year ago, to be the love of her life, this issue dives a little further back into the history of how that happened. To make a long story short, while Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, was busy over the course of a few hours working out how to get back to Mary Jane while she was trapped in another dimension with the murderous, powerful Rabin, MJ, through the "magic" of "time moving differently" was bonding with Paul and falling in love with him, as well as with a couple of children whom they rescued who, suspiciously, just happened to look exactly like them.
Peter is understandably distraught by what has just transpired, but apparently Rabin and Wayep are nowhere near done. All of this, after all, is just flashbacks; the main event is yet to come.
So, now we're all caught up, and while Peter was at least spared the ignominy of Zeb We--err PAUL impregnating his one true love, this ridiculous reverse deux-ex-machina of a time lapse, doubled with children magically appearing out of nowhere, is still some of the most cruel, below-the-belt sabotage of Peter's life that the Spider-Man brain trust have subjected him to since selling his marriage to the devil, and if I understand things correctly, there's at least one more horrific tragedy just around the corner. In fact, if I may do the unthinkable and actually compare One More Day favorably to this monstrosity of a story, I'd like to point out that the events of that story basically sprang out of Peter's decision to sign up with Tony Stark in the superhero civil war, and to out himself to the public in the process. Aunt May getting shot was a tragic but avoidable outcome which made it all the more affecting. Peter thought he was doing the right thing when he outed himself, but it ended up biting him and his loved ones on the ass. THAT's the essence of the infamous Parker luck.
In this scenario, when confronted with a terrible threat, Peter did every single thing right, from not backing down from yet another life-threatening situation to doing anything and everything to get back to Mary Jane. I detest how this story has been marketed with the tag-line "what did Peter do" as though it was somehow his fault that Mary Jane broke up with him, which is how the marketing of this story has been leaning for the better part of a year.
What is so particularly hateful about this book is how unbelievably lazy the writing feels. Nothing about MJ's and Paul's ordeal, which lasted several years in their weird time bubble, feels like it makes any sense beyond the plot requiring it to happen. There's a limp-wristed attempt at pseudo-science to explain how they've held off life-threatening forces for something like four years, but it really doesn't make any sense. Mary Jane falls for this loser because the plot dictates that she needs to. Full stop.
This is the payoff of a year's worth of mystery box storytelling, and it sucks. It's a shame because Wells has, in the interim, given readers some solid, memorable stories involving a whole bunch of characters of Spidey's library. I've written elsewhere that Wells is a talented writer, albeit one with a penchant for bizarre stories, like the one in which Curt Connors, aka the Lizard, ate his son. It's a shame to think that Marvel are literally dipping into the hate-reading well, because judging by the fact that Wells has shut down comments on his social media, that's literally what they've tapped into right now.
It's also a shame because it's always a pleasure to see Kaare Andrews' work on something other than cover art, and I would have truly loved to have seen more of it on a Spider-Man book under far different circumstances. And no, not even my usual affection for the unspectacular but solid artwork of John Romita Jr. is enough for me to think this story is anything other than rage-baiting garbage.
Oh, and as if to rub salt in the wound, this issue is extra-sized and extra-priced, and has a forgettable side story featuring Spider-Man and Black Cat going out on a date, written and drawn by people whose names I can't even be bothered to remember or check right now.
3/10
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