Marvel Comics is, I think, out to ruin their most valuable property, namely Spider-Man. Here's a link to a CNN story (Thanks, John!) that explains most of it. Go read it and then I shall comment.
There has been much comment about this storyline, and far be it from me to say anything terribly new. Here is a link to a message board with way more comments from way more angles than I could ever come up with. There's plenty of links to other comments, too.
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=22720&PN=2&totPosts=1529
Here's my point: It's dumb. It's out of character for Peter Parker to make a deal with the devil, even to save Aunt May's life. For that matter, though Mephisto has long been a part of the Marvel universe, he's never really been associated with Spider-Man. You'd think a massive change like this would at least involve a bad guy familiar with the hero.
If the writers and editors wanted a way out of Peter and Mary Jane's wedding, they could have found a much better way.
Their marriage changed the relationships between the characters, especially Peter Parker, who can no longer be portrayed as a hard-luck loser whose life is made worse because he has to bear the burden of being Spider-Man completely by himself.
That said, in many ways Spider-Man and his relationships with the supporting cast was always something of a soap opera, even going back to the earliest issues. There has to be a way to take a married Peter Parker and spin that into some interesting, character-driven plots and subplots involving being married.
(Oh my gosh! MJ wanted me to get this spaghetti sauce home in time for supper but Doc Ock is holding the entire cast of "Friends" hostage in Grand Central Station! What do I do?)
In that vein, there's also something to be said about growing the character. Spider-Man has always grown. He graduated from high school, then college, then grad school, then he got married. Taking the story backwards doesn't fit in with what has gone on.
Further, the readers are more sophisticated than they used to be. Most comic book readers today are like me, 30-somethings who have been reading them forever. That audience is grown up enough to appreciate a different kind of Spider-Man story. If not, they can go back and read reprints.
The bottom line for me is that once that marriage was done, it shouldn't have been undone. There are lots of things in comics that get undone, but they usually involve villains barely surviving a fall out of a helicopter or over a waterfall or something like that. Too often, writers get the idea that they can take any story and use contrived logic to change it.
Further, every story that gets undone further erodes the confidence of the reader. If Superman dies, how much suspense is there that he will come back? None, these days.
(Just for the record, "Amazing Spider-Girl," the comic set in the future about the advatures of Peter and Mary Jane's daughter wasn't canceled. Does this tell us something?)
I quit buying Spider-Man comics at the beginning of this storyline. I had no interest in another earth-shattering "event" comic, no matter what it did to the characters. I didn't enjoy that last few few big events in Spider-Man's life, either. It makes me wonder if, after some 40-some years, all the stories that can be told about the character have been told.
I am very curious about the new story line, but I have so far completely resisted buying it, on the grounds that I don't want to support with my wallet that which offends my brain. At the same time, if the new set-up allows the writers to come up with good stories, I'll probably come back, eventually.
And, what the heck, if it doesn't work, they can always un-do the whole thing by having Peter wake up and saying the deal with the devil was all a bad dream. That would take about the same level of creativity as the current storyline.
For now, if I want to read Spider-Man, I'll just just go back and re-read the old issues from the 1960s and 70s when none of this was a problem. They are probably better anyway.
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