Tangled Webs: One More Day The Straczynski Cut Part 1

Some of the major questions about One More Day are about writer J. Michael Straczynski’s original plans for the saga. It’s well-known that he had a different draft for Parts 3 and 4 than what ended up being published. The details of the changes have been much discussed, but some of the online interviews that came out at the time One More Day was published no longer exist, so there’s much information that’s been lost in the ether. This is an attempt to correct that, to find what was originally shared.

One More Day is one of the most controversial Spider-Man stories ever, and there can be some readers who think that a summary is completely unnecessary in an article on a Spider-Man website. On the other hand, it has been quite some time. The publication of One More Day in late 2007 is more distant now than the end of the Clone Saga (published late 1996) was when One More Day came out. For anyone unfamiliar with the context, after the events of the mini-series Civil War, Spider-Man had revealed his identity to the public, become a fugitive and taken up the black and white costume again (which did not actually appear in One More Day as the Back in Black arc was itself a last-minute development) while Aunt May was comatose after she was struck by an assassin’s bullet. Spider-Man was unable to find anyone in the Marvel Universe to help her, until Mephisto suggested that he could save Aunt May and make the world forget Peter’s secret. In exchange, Mephisto would reverse Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage. Peter and MJ ultimately agreed, learned that this meant the non-existence of their future daughter (a different topic I explored a few years ago), before the world was changed so that they were never married, even if parts of their souls would know the truth.

The question here isn’t about whether this was the right story, but what the JMS version would be. What is different about his original scripts for One More Day? One immediate caveat is that it wasn’t his decision to break up Peter and MJ. In a Reddit Ask Me Anything, he said that he would have been happy writing a married Peter and MJ indefinitely.

It’s a matter of historical record that Marvel wanted to unmarry Peter (but without the political weight of a divorce) and the book was commissioned by Editorial to achieve that. I had come onto the book to reunite the two, and I loved writing them as a married couple, would’ve been happy to continue doing that forever.

In his memoir Becoming Superman, he described how Amazing Spider-Man was different from his other projects as “an open-ended, monthly comic for an iconic publisher” in comparison to books meant to have a complete beginning, middle and end. So just like Zack Snyder’s true vision for the Justice League movie included things that were not in the Snyder Cut (Green Lantern! A love triangle between Batman, Lois Lane and Superman), JMS’ true vision for One More Day called for replacing it with Peter and MJ staying married, while Spider-Man continued to have adventures. It was one of the few times JMS didn’t have a grand ending in mind.

Straczynski wasn’t interested in writing the post-One More Day Spider-Man, but he didn’t want to leave what was sure to be a controversial story—the breakup of Spider-Man’s marriage—to someone else. However, his original scripts were different from what was published.

At some point, I’d love to see JMS’s original scripts for One More Day Parts 3 & 4. It’d be a great extra in some kind of trade paperback. But even without that material, we know a lot about what JMS wanted to do, and it includes much of the stuff that readers have said they hated about the storyline. For example, the inability of anyone in the Marvel Universe to heal the comatose Aunt May would have been part of JMS’s version. But that was a minor quibble.

Quesada explained in a CBR interview the ways in which JMS’s version differed from what had been asked for. This article at least still exists online.

When I was halfway through issue three of OMD, we received Joe’s script for issue 4. After reading it, we (Axel, Tom and myself) all quickly realized that we had a problem — the script we had just received was not the one we were expecting, and the events that were being set forth in that issue were going to conflict with the work that was already being done on “Brand New Day.” I thought that perhaps Joe had forgotten some of the stuff discussed at the summit meetings and the subsequent e-mails and discussions that followed, but that didn’t seem to be the case; this was the story he wanted to tell. In his story, Mephisto was going to change continuity from as far back as issues #96-98 from 1971. In Joe’s story, Peter drops the dime on Harry, and that helps get him into rehab right away. Consequently, MJ stays with Harry, and Gwen never dies and never has her affair with Norman, etc., etc. And in the end, Peter and MJ are never married.

This, in my mind, while it neatly puts the pieces back in some way, was not what we wanted to do. First, it discounted every issue of “Amazing” since that story arc. Second, the series of events that it discounts in the Marvel U are too far-reaching to contemplate. And third, it had severe ramifications for the creators already well underway on “Brand New Day,” the thrice-monthly “Amazing Spider-Man.” In other words, there was just no way to tell Joe’s story without blowing up the entire Marvel U and every Spider-Man’s fan’s collection. What we originally discussed with Joe and the group was much simpler and cleaner: The wedding? Something happened on the wedding day that prevented it from happening. The unmasking? Mephisto makes people forget it; much like the Sentry, it happened — it’s just no longer remembered.

JMS would still have used Mephisto as a villain. So the merits of erasing vows of holy matrimony by inking a deal with a demon are irrelevant in an analysis of two versions of a story featuring characters erasing vows of holy matrimony by inking a deal with a demon. His original version would not have had Spidey win over the forces of Mephisto.

The write-up on OMD from TVtropes.com demonstrates the doubt about whether Quesada accurately summed up JMS.

What Could Have Been: According to Quesada, JMS wrote the point where the new timeline diverged from the old one as be Harry getting into rehab back in the early 70s, thereby affecting relationships and meaning Gwen Stacy never died. Marvel’s writers collectively nixed it beforehand because such changes would affect the entire Marvel universe and invalidate nearly forty years of canon, and with two issues done they had to scramble to change the remaining two at the last minute. (If true, this could explain why JMS wanted his name off those issues; but all things considered, take this with a grain of salt unless we hear JMS’s side of the story.)

Some have assumed that Straczynski wanted to use Loki in One More Day, because Loki had appeared in two issues of the run credited to him. However, that material was written by Fiona Avery. The interview in which she talked about it seems to be lost to the ether (kudos to anyone who can find it), but Fiona Avery came up with her own plots for that storyline. It was her decision to use Loki, and it was not part of JMS’s master plan. Loki was also dead during One More Day, although since JMS was writing the Thor relaunch, he was the one writer who could have insisted on using the God of Mischief in the storyline without anyone complaining.

There’s no question about whether Quesada accurately summarized what JMS wanted to do. In a Newsarama article on the topic, Straczynski explicitly said those were his plans and that his main issue with Quesada’s explanation was that it left out his concerns with the final material. Unfortunately, that article has disappeared from the internet, so I was concerned that all that existed of it were old posts from the Crawlspace forum includes some excerpts from the email JMS gave Newsarama. Fortunately, the entire letter is posted on the NeoGAF forums. where JMS summarizes Marvel’s view as “It’s Magic, We Don’t Have to Explain it.” This was his biggest objection.

There’s this notion that magic fixes everything. It doesn’t. “It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it.” Well, actually, yes, you do. Magic has to have rules. And this is clearly not just a case of one spell making everybody forget he’s Spidey…suddenly you’re bringing back the dead, undoing wounds, erasing records, reinstating web shooters, on and on and on.

What I wanted to do was to make one small change to history, a tiny thing, whose ripples we could control to only touch what editorial wanted to touch, making changes we could explain logically. I worked for weeks to come up with a timeline that would leave every other bit of continuity in place. It was rigorous, and as logical as I could make it. In the end of OMD as published, Harry is alive and he’s always been alive as far as the characters know…so how is that different than he was alive the whole time?

It made no sense to me.

Still doesn’t. It’s sloppy. It violates every rule of writing fiction of the fantastic that I and every other SF/Fantasy writer knows you can’t violate. It’s fantasy 101.

It troubled me that it’s MJ and not Peter who is the one to actively make the decision.

I’d originally written the first issue of OMD to take place directly after May gets shot, and in fact turned in the first script directly after she gets nailed. Editorial decided to build in a block of issues for One More Day…meaning May would be in that bed for almost a *year* which I thought was just too long to make work.

And yes, I wanted to retcon the Gwen twins out of continuity, which was something I always assumed I could do at the end of my run. I wasn’t allowed to do this, and yes, it pissed me off. I felt I was left holding the bag for something I wanted to get rid of, and taking the rap for a writing lapse that I had never committed. Why this aspect was not brought up in the other interview, you’d have to ask Joe.

Mainly, the book was rewritten in the editorial offices to a degree that the words weren’t mine any longer, to a certain degree in three, and massively in four. If the work represents me, I leave the name there and take the rap; if it doesn’t, then that’s a different situation. There’s just not much of my work there, especially once you get to the last dong of midnight…everything after that was written by editorial.

Whether my work is good or it sucks, it’s mine. What came out of the end of OMD wasn’t, hence my desire to omit the writing credit. Joe graciously offered to share it on the last issue. I think that helped. Credit where credit is due.

What I don’t want is for this to turn into a public pissing match. Joe did what he did because he thought it was the right thing to do, and as EIC that’s his call, not mine. I respect and admire him. I hope this will be the end of the matter.

I would be very interested to see the original script, and how he makes it all work. But this isn’t a version of the story where Peter rejects Mephisto, or where people don’t remember the marriage. It was different from what Marvel expected, and that had implications for the next writers.