I've been waiting for this.
For a while now, it's been made pretty clear by Marvel (especially resident marriage-hater/Editor-in-chief of Marvel, Joe Quesada) that Peter and Mary Jane's marriage is going to be fucked with in the storyline dubbed 'One More Day'--a plot the Spidey comics are currently in the midst of telling.
And for as long as I've known that Joe Q was going to get his way, I've wondered what JMS's opinion has been. JMS (J. Michael Straczynski) has been the writer of Amazing Spider-Man for a long run in current Marvel and he also writes other comics, in addition to having created the television show Babylon 5. For as long as JMS has been writing Spider-Man, he's given MJ her own voice and concerns and goals and life and equal place in her marriage to Peter Parker. Every step of the way he's worked to express a relationship between the two that is passionate, dedicated, intimate, FUN, and important enough to both to take work and struggle and discussion. He's been so successful in my estimation that no argument about Peter Parker's marriage limiting the stories that can be told about him can sway me from wanting to watch the struggle of a superhero life for TWO people, not one. Not just a white guy who swings from buildings and through relationships with women and jobs. No, I want the story of a man growing up AND the woman who's been growing up right alongside him since the day their mutual, beloved friend was torn from them and they both dropped their facades and behaved honestly with another person. Together.
JMS is such a supporter of Peter and MJ that he wrote their love story into a miniseries about the Silver Surfer. THE SILVER SURFER, herald of Galactus and traveler of the cosmos. But there they were, loving and silly and beautiful together because JMS can express it so well and believes it should be so. (Five'll get you twenty they'll show up in Thor somehow.)
And you know what? JMS is the sole author penning the One More Day comics, though his illustrator is none other than Joe Quesada. That fact has floored me the entire time until today when I came across a link to his comments and, thank the gods, vindication!
"I'll be honest: there was a point where I made the decision, and told Joe, that I was going to take my name off the last two issues of the OMD arc."
Oh, JMS, why didn't you?
