If there was ever a comic that challenged the Comics Daily “No Drama” rule at every single turn, this is it. 40 pages of nothing but industry drama exploding off the page. Is there even a story beneath this, the punchline to the worst editorial joke ever told? Apologies in advance, but this is going to be way longer than the usual word limit. Just believe me when I say, it needs to be.

First, let me be frank – I don’t like JMS. He’s driven me away from several books with his writing. As far as it’s possible to dislike someone you’ve never met - that’s me with JMS. I look at One More Day, however, and I genuinely sympathise with the man. It’s clear that he doesn’t want to be known as the man that broke up Spider-Man’s marriage. And luckily, thanks to Quesada’s constant, vocal opposition to the Spider-Marriage, talking about genies and bottles and whatnot, JMS is well and truly off the hook.

For, you see, Amazing #545 isn’t about a writer and his quirky ideas, like animal-totems or vampires. It’s about what happens when an editor looks at a title and decides that he’s the new and infallible Pope of Comicstown. “Spider-Man,” he decreed, “Is Broken. And Yea, Let What Is Broken Now Become Fixed.” And his will be done. But for a character he’s so intent on fixing, did Quesada even really understand what was broken, or did he just remember that the Spider-Man he loved was single?

Spider-Man, as a character, is fundamentally driven by responsibility. First, to Uncle Ben, who represents those who die if he doesn’t act – all the people he should’ve saved. Then to Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn, and all those others who died even though he does act - all the people he can’t save. Spider-Man’s central premise is the classic line – With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility.

One More Day shows Peter not taking responsibility. Why admit the mistakes you made when you can simply undo them by making a deal with Satan? Peter’s reasoning is as uncharacteristic as it is unheroic: “I couldn’t handle it.” As a character, that’s not Spider-Man. Even more so – on a technical, structural level, that’s not a Spider-Man story. If this were the beginning of a saga designed to show how Peter’s mistake dealing with Mephisto will eventually cost him dearly, well, good for Quesada – but it would also be the biggest editorial fake-out in history. This doesn’t read like a beginning of a Spider-Man era, it reads like the ending of one.

And beneath it all, we’ve got this one issue straining under the weight of a thousand questions. 30 pages of comic, an Aunt May profile and a reprint of Peter and MJ’s marriage, capped off with a page praising JMS’ run as writer. How ironic that that should appear in an issue he tried to disassociate himself with. In the comic, MJ and Peter take Mephisto’s offer, without asking the one question that needed asking – what would May want? Because we all know what she’d say, and the story can’t go ahead with that reasoning.

MJ pulls some strings, hopefully to provide an editorial get-out for the whole sordid deal, there’s a bizarre scene where Peter gets angry that Mephisto showed them the child they now won’t have, and then as quick as all that it’s gone – years and years of it. Marriage, organic webs, unmasking, two sets of new powers, almost certainly May’s knowledge of Peter’s identity and even some stories that were barely related, like Harry’s death. Luckily this hasn’t impacted Marvel’s continuity TOO widely because the power of Satan has allowed Mephisto to remove only “one stitch in time.” Well, let me hammer that analogy into the ground for you – if you pull on a stitch, eventually the whole thing can unravel. A person could be sent insane trying to think of all the stories that wouldn’t make any sense without MJ married to Peter, not just in Spider-Man but in the entire Marvel Universe.

But we won’t. The answer’s there in the story – a wizard did it. Doesn’t have to make sense. What matters is that after 20 years of stories that weren’t really about Spider-Man – the dark, gritty Spider-Man of the early 90s, the clone saga, a stalled John Byrne reboot, confusing mysticism and too many new powers, the character is finally, finally, finally fixed, right?

Right?