Quote: But what about MJ qualifies her to start heroing about?

I still think it's part and parcel of the already-infamous "deal," and that private little whisper that Mephisto thought was really damned funny.

*****

SER: So, now the devil creates superheroes? What a swell guy.

I've gone on and on about this, but I think a key element in fiction is that you can't trust the devil and that any deal made with him falls apart. He does not play fair and you've lost just by dealing with him.

Well, since we're discussing it out in the open now, Mephisto popped up and offered to un-inviso my supposition from a page or two back.  It was never inviso'ed in the first place, my Coke is still nice and cold after the meeting that was sprung on us here at work, and...hey...apples with caramel dipping sauce now.

Jackpot's the "pre-OMD" Mary Jane.  The whisper to Mephisto was to sweeten the (jack)pot for him, and ask that she be kept intact to make her pain (and his enjoyment) that much greater.  Either Mephisto or a "higher power" split her from the "BND" Mary Jane and made her Jackpot...Mephisto would do so to enable her to be near Spider-Man as a peer but unable to reconnect and rebuild what was taken from them; a "higher power" would do so as an escape hatch to undo Mephisto's shenanigans.

Argh!  But the Coke...it's watered down now!  Curse you, Mephisto!

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Brad, I'll have to do some digging through the "New Joe Fridays" columns over at Newsarama, but I recall the question about the permanence of the unmasking coming up there.

I'm pretty sure that Mephisto's final trick is that Spider-Man's sandwich will suffer from the bread turning out to be a little dry.

Well, it happened to Homer.....

OK, Brad. Found the "New Joe Fridays" dealing entirely with the unmasking rather quickly.

http://www.newsarama.com/NewJoeFridays/NewJoeFridays02.html

Time is/was somewhat coloring my recollections, in that Quesada was rather cagey in phrasing his answers, and that same column announces "One More Day" without naming it or providing any hints as to its content, other than the statement, "I can't wait until this same time next year, I bet Peter will be virtually unrecognizable from the character that he used to be!"

The following week's column http://www.newsarama.com/NewJoeFridays/NewJoeFridays03.html probably has the statement that's been filtered in my mind by time, as its whole context (coupled with the previous week's column and 20/20 hindsight) shows that, despite the cagey answers, they were ready and set with OMD before the unmasking (the specific line I'm thinking of is italicized & underlined...the last sentence of the quote):

[quote]NRAMA: Yeah, but at least some of that came from reports of Kevin Smith in a radio interview saying that there have been plans in place to undo Spider-Man's unmasking "in a few months" and the plans were in place before the issue came out?comment?

JQ: Well, I didn't hear what Kevin said, so I have no idea if that's true or not, I've only heard of it filtered through someone reporting what someone had posted on some messageboard. Remember, just two weeks ago on this very site, I mentioned Warren Ellis' name and suddenly it was all over the net that he was writing Thor and that I had said as much. But, more to the point, if Kevin had said that, I have no idea how he would know, I haven't spoken to him about it. I can also tell you that come 2007, Spidey will still be public and unmasked.[/quote]

So, credit where it's due to Quesada for phrasing things just right.

What Spider-Man needs most right now is really long hair and a hook for a hand.

Spider hook, spider hook,

Makes it hard to read a book.

Really hard to turn the page.

Drives him into a spider rage!

Watch out! Here comes the spider hook!