Chad, I don't like your idea mostly because Mary Jane would not want Peter to think she's dead, or in the clutches of one of his enemies, or be willing to cooperate in being used that way. If she does then she's a human piece of crap right from the Spider-Man 3 mold.

I'd say that once married the damage is pretty much done. There is very little way to credibly have a nice divorce. "I'm just not feelin' it anymore babe. But we can still see movies and eat steak together!" just doesn't work that well.

The closest you might come is Mary Jane THINKING that Peter cheated on her(if he did cheat he's a heal so he can't really cheat) and divorcing him, but still staying close to him because she still cares a lot about him but "just not in a wife sort of way". That would keep Peter striving for and never quite achieving the goal of getting her full trust back. Even something like that might smell to the reader of some jaded divorced writer maybe thinking that he'd feel better about his own divorce if a cool dude Spider-Man got divorced too.

I suppose if you MUST crap out an EVENT you could jump everything ahead five years or so and make it clear that Mary Jane thought Peter was dead for two of those years so remarried and  got pregnant. When Spider-Man comes back and finds out about it he realizes that she's happy and going to be a mother and the right thing to do is to let her go. They become close friends (but not lovers) in those next three years and he learns to be "Uncle Peter" to the new family. Then you start the book THERE and subtly flash back to explain what happened. And you do not worry about aging or describing too finely when he disappeared and how that gels with the rest of the Marvel Universe. The other heroes just agree that a few years ago Spider-man disappeard for a couple of years and everyone thought he was dead. Then he came back and they were glad to find out that he was alive and they threw him a "welcome back" pizza party and life went on. Hell, Maybe he was vice president of a kinder gentler Shi-ar Empire in a parallel Universe while he was gone. Maybe he had amnesia and lead the Spider-Children tribe in the Savage land for a while. Or maybe he got Microversed. Who cares? Anyway you could do the five year jump retroactively as some past event in Spider-man's life is changed by a time traveling villain to rearrange the last five years and not worry much about how it fits in with ^^***** universe continuity. We already broke trumps on that kind of crap with "House of M" anyway.

To me the best solution is simply to fade her into the background and not worry so much about her. We care more about Peter Parker when he's trying to get something to work out or swinging around fighting crime than we do when he's cuddling on the sofa watching TV.

We could only have to see his wife and him together every six issues or so. She is a supporting character. She does NOT need to be a co-star. And we don't need to see her up at 3 am with tears in her eyes wondering if he's dead everytime he gets buried alive or locked up in some secret super prison or trapped in Limbo. Spider-Man being married does not mean that Spider-Man is a couples book anymore than Superman getting married caused THAT to be a couples book, (or before than an investigative journalism book!)

Well, they seem to like real life over at M, so why not have MJ have an affair. Peter is gone most nights, all night, she gets lonely seeks love in the arms of someone else. MJ has her affair for at least 12 issues, and Peter is becoming suspicious and they argue more. Peter swings in one night and catches MJ in the act with her lover, and all hell breaks lose. She divorces him, and gets half of the nothing he has, and Peter and MJ part company on really bad terms.

Now here is the great part about this idea, you run a contest before doing this story. The old " You can appear in a Marvel Comic" one, and the winner gets to be the person MJ has an affair with. It would be great!;-)

Notice that this story is open to Peter getting left for the other man, or the other woman. Hey, they wanted real life. 

QUOTE: Well, they seem to like real life over at M, so why not have MJ have an affair. Peter is gone most nights, all night, she gets lonely seeks love in the arms of someone else. MJ has her affair for at least 12 issues, and Peter is becoming suspicious and they argue more. Peter swings in one night and catches MJ in the act with her lover, and all hell breaks lose. She divorces him, and gets half of the nothing he has, and Peter and MJ part company on really bad terms.

QUOTE: Now here is the great part about this idea, you run a contest before doing this story. The old " You can appear in a Marvel Comic" one, and the winner gets to be the person MJ has an affair with. It would be great!;-)

Okay, I take everything back. This is awesome.

So, bear with me...this just popped into my head...

The "fix" was essentially an alternate universe created by Mephisto, right?

Mephisto was created be the Marvel versrion of the Satan, right?

Everything else in this Universe is the same... as best as we know, BUT... the ongoing adventures of all the characters are taking place in a Universe created by SATAN, right?

Just an observation.

I wonder how that is going to play witht he religious right, right?

Howard

I wonder how that is going to play witht he religious right, right?

I think yer supposed to call us "evangelicals" now.

I think the whole Marvel Universe turned out to have been retroactively created by a crazy old man named Sise Neg (genesis spelled backwards) anyway who beat Dr. Strange, became God, and found out that he COULDN'T do it all better after all.

To me the best solution is simply to fade her into the background and not worry so much about her. We care more about Peter Parker when he's trying to get something to work out or swinging around fighting crime than we do when he's cuddling on the sofa watching TV.

We could only have to see his wife and him together every six issues or so. She is a supporting character. She does NOT need to be a co-star.

*************

Emery, I completely agree with this. Simply de-emphasizing Mary Jane was the best, most sensible, solution. While I certainly believe Spider-Man works better as a single guy, 95 percent of the good stories I've read would've worked with a married Spider-Man. Just don't make the marriage such a big deal.

Plus, a lot of the "solutions" to the marriage problem I've heard amount to amputating a finger to cure a hang nail. I really think the best thing to do at this point is just to try to move forward in a positive direction and not dwell on "One More Day".

This is the reality in which we now live and work. This is why talk of letting characters "fade away" is pipe dreams at best. This is why reboots will always fail.