How would I fix Spider-Man?

I recommend the usual surgical procedure: first, you take your scalpel, and sever th--

Oh, Not that "fix"...sorry, misunderstood where you were coming from -- and good luck getting him to stand still, anyway!

CBG's cover story this month is about the "One More Day" storyline.  To save some typing.  It sounds like something JB talked about once.

I don't know how much "glory" there's been to Spider-Man in a long long time. Like, back around DeMatteis/Sal Buscema...

You can either ignore everything and reboot everything.

Or if Continuity must be adhered to...Spider-Man's very concept should be irrovocably changed in order to return it to status quo.

Blow it all up. Get rid of all current secondary characters. Turn Peter Parker into a villain, a Shadow/Creeper insprired creature of the night. The arc involves "Dark Spider-Man" living out the fantasy of criminal underworld rule, in order to rid his city of it completely. Yet still this villainous Spider-Man battles worse evil than himself.

By the time it's over, you've established new status quo, new secondary characters, even a new location and lifestyle for Peter Parker.

I think Spider-Man, in the Continuity of the adults, is a character who probably SHOULD be removed from his status quo. Fans and readers just won't accept these continual backtrackings. And frankly, if Peter Parker's an adult, the Spider-Man concept has long been compromised. So suggesting ridding him of that already severely-changed stasis is merely giving the customers what they want, and a more brutal take on Spider-Man would fit into current Marvel mode. Badass Spider-Man delivering cruel beat-downs would be kind of interesting; his "gang" would be even more interesting, if you brought in, say, the Rhino and maybe a couple of other D-level guys to give even more subplot with characters you never thought about being "cool". This wouldn't work?

I also think you could still reboot without this need to explain why, but fans won't accept it. Still, the whole Aunt May, Mary Jane, JJJ tiredness in the current Continuity should be done away with, if only temporarily.

I honestly don't know what can be done at this point. I'm sure something can be done, but I don't know what.

It's just been one avalanche after the other for years and years. Disaster after disaster. How can a character--even one as powerful as Spider-Man--survive that? Clones and reboots and magic and deaths and resurrections and mutations and on and on and on.

Hopefully, the rubber band has now been stretched to its maximum--Spider-Man is so far away from his roots, he just has to snap back to something resembling what he used to be.

The Lee/Ditko era should be the model to aspire to, but if a reboot were to occur, would that wipe out all the other great stuff that came after (Conway, Stern, etc.)?

There's just such a huge laundry list of things that need to be rectified: Peter's non-secret identity, the marriage, Peter's living conditions and status among the people (and other superheroes), the supporting cast, bad retcons (the magic origin/powers, Norman Osborn's return, Gwen Stacy's trip to Whoreville, etc.), and so on.

Where to begin, and how? How can Spider-Man be made accessible and fun again? New readers probably need multiple scorecards to make sense of the last 20 years (at least). And the movies have also damaged the character in their own fashion (Mary Jane as Peter's One True Love, organic web-shooters, etc.).

Where to begin?

I have given my solution for the whole Marvel Universe a couple of times, inspired by JB's mention of a Shaper Of Worlds solution that was ultimately not used for the "refresh" of the Spider-Man titles (and, yes, a bit of DC's Crisis):

Being in proximity to a massive battle with one of Spider-Man's villains leaves Mary Jane critically injured and holding on to life by a thread. Peter goes to every genius he knows for help and no one can immediately solve the problem -- though of course Reed Richards goes right to the lab to whip something up.  

Finally, in a panic and running out of time, Peter goes to Dr Strange to beg for a magical cure. Strange listens calmly, makes a gesture, and then raises an eyebrow in surprise. This crisis has brought Peter's guilt about Gwen's death to the surface, and Strange senses something amiss in the fabric of the universe connected to that event. "She should not have died," Strange says ominously. "That was not her fate, and your wife's imminent death is not her fate either." To set things right, Spider-Man must go back to re-live the battle with the Green Goblin. Strange sends Peter's astral form into the past, and this time Gwen is saved and the Goblin is captured alive. Huge celebration! Once this is resolved, Strange pulls Spider-Man back to the present day.  

Strange explains that the universe has now been "set right" and the world he once knew is no more -- everything is quite similar, but events from his past did not occur the way he currently remembers them. Indeed, he will forget the old world before too long. Spider-Man leaves Dr Strange's house and finds himself compelled to go to an address he doesn't recognize. He goes to the rooftop, changes out of his costume, and Mary Jane answers the door, saying: "Why so late, Tiger? So distracted by grad school that you almost missed another date?" Peter notices that she no longer has a wedding ring. He is overwhelmed with contentment as his memories of the old world swirl away.

All of the other books in the Marvel line come to a close the same month, leaving any loose ends tied up for good. The next month, the whole Marvel line re-starts with a clean beginning for each franchise eliminating most references to past storylines apart from the irreducible core of each character.

Probably too cosmic for Spider-Man, as JB has noted, but I think it gets us to the point where the Marvel Universe can be penetrated by a new reader.

Congrats Brendan!  You are the new writer of Spider-Man!!

Nice concept.  I think something similar was done around Spider-Man #500 where Peter has to relive every battle from his past until he could get back to the present.

After reading 'One More Day', I realized that the whole issue could have been told in 5 panels.  Interested to see where they are gonna take this.