"...with every intention of putting things back the way he found them upon his departure from the book."

Sorry, Todd, but PAD doesn't get off that easy.  The hand was just a superficial symptom of the overall disease.  PAD fundamentally changed Aquaman, just as JMS is fundamentally changing the Spider-Man character with this storyline.  I don't care if he was going to undo it in five or ten years.  The damage was done.  Thanks to that storyline, most kids today only know Aquaman as the hook-handed Ahab/Namor clone he created.

"...with every intention of putting things back the way he found them upon his departure from the book."

Sorry, Todd, but PAD doesn't get off that easy.  The hand was just a superficial symptom of the overall disease.  PAD fundamentally changed Aquaman, just as JMS is fundamentally changing the Spider-Man character with this storyline.  I don't care if he was going to undo it in five or ten years.  The damage was done.  Thanks to that storyline, most kids today only know Aquaman as the hook-handed Ahab/Namor clone he created.
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I agree that subsequent writers who kept the change & the editors who took PAD (what's the A stand for?) off the book without telling the new writers to reverse the change are more worthy of blame than the writer who intended the change to be temporary.

I'd google it but I'm afraid of what my come up if I put "Spider-Man kills woman" in the search field...This is the internet after all.
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You get some comic book reviews, and the report of a tragic death at Universal Studios. If you put the words in quotation marks you get no results, although maybe it'll link to this thread soon enough.

We'll just have to disagree, then, David.  I think that a writer's intended (but unreached) endpoint carries some weight, at least inasmuch as that writer having no control over subsequent writers and editors choosing to keep those elements from an ultimately-unfinished character arc.

Thus, I'd say that, in the context of the comment in this thread, making the association to Aquaman's (intended to be temporary) loss of a hand isn't a strong parallel.

QUOTE: Sorry, no. There are many writers who take an approach that is a variant of "So what? I/They can always change it later!" These writers forget that no one seems to really have any control over what gets carved in stone. Thru-out my career, I have always written my stories with an eye to the future, to whoever will follow, and I have thus kept in mind that a new writer should be able to pick up a series at approximately the same place I did, no matter how long I am on the book. Hence, the ever important (and often forgotten) illusion of change.

I think that's exactly what we're talking about with Aquaman...the illusion of change.  A good parallel would be the period in which you had She-Hulk in the FF.  Someone else could (and, if I recall, did), come along during the course of that storyline.  At that point, it's their call to either keep Jen on the team or bring back Ben.  If the subsequent writer(s) attempt to maintain that illusion beyond the point you would have, are you then, "to blame" for that?  And all simply because you were pulled outta the sandbox before you had a chance to put the toys away?

QUOTE: JMS's Spider-Man is making me more worried for the future of the character now,  than when I dropped the book during the clone years.

Which future?

By the way, I have read FNSM #1 today. Not bad, PAD has been able to write somethin' good involving that stupid totem matter. I'm afraid the next chapters will not be at the same level.

Sounds like he is not in his right mind.

Truthfully, for a long time I thought all this Morlun stuff was in his mind, as he undergoes whatever transformation he will undergo and because of his disease.