QUOTE: Look I'm not a fan of JMS, but(Behold the Ultimate Truth), his retcon explanation, though still heavy handed makes more sense and has a fluidity that could have worked way better.  I can easily see his complaints about the "It's magic" (non)explanation.

Logical sure, but a little too "throwing out the baby (and the baby's older siblings) with the bathwater" for me.  I think they tried to do a little too much with OMD.  Had they resolved the other matters prior to OMD and saved that storyline for "just" undoing the marriage and getting Harry back, it might have worked out a little better.  (Albeit an infinitesimal amount for many, including me. :-) )

Or, if a particular divergent point was required, the marriage was already in play.  The only point to going back as far as the drug storyline was to retcon out Sins Past.  A laudable goal to be sure, but frankly I can't stand JMS pissing and moaning about how he didn't REALLY want to do Sins Past and only went along because he knew he'd be able to retcon it out later.  If he really didn't want to tell that story he shouldn't have done it in the first place.  It's not like JMS was four issues in and about to do the big reveal when Joe Q told him the kids couldn't be Peter's.  He hadn't even started the story yet!

"Look I'm not a fan of JMS, but(Behold the Ultimate Truth), his retcon explanation, though still heavy handed makes more sense and has a fluidity that could have worked way better.  I can easily see his complaints about the "It's magic" (non)explanation."

I think JoeQ's way, as stupid as it is, was the best choice.  JMS' retcon has three fundamental problems.

1.  People still won't like it.

2.  There's no way to undo or revamp that much continuity and have it all make sense, which leads to...

3.  It sparks an impulse in the audience and creators to go back and explain the new way everything happened.

If you're going to violate continuity to this degree, I think you're better off doing it and moving along.  Pretending you can justify and explain it in any meaningful way will only exacerbate the problem when you end up spending more and more time trying to sustain that pretense.

Mike

Hmmm, this is interesting. Ultimately, I think I prefer what JMS did: It's very Star Trek like and it preserves Peter's character -- he "loses" MJ in order to save his friend. That's the price he must pay for doing the right thing, which of course, is typical Spider-Man. Quesada's solution has Peter committing a selfish act and making a deal with the devil.

Quesada's objection seems to be more about not wanting to remove "20 years of continuity," yet his "solution" has the same problem, as those stories didn't play as written. It's a very DC "solution" ("Uh, Wonder Woman was never in the JLA, it was Black Canary in those stories." A "fix" that never made sense -- Black Canary is not even in the same ballpark, powers wise, as Wonder Woman. It's as though Wonder Woman's only purpose was as the "female character," when from a logical standpoint, swapping her out with a male character with equal abilities would have made more sense).

The only drawback to JMS's plan is that it's tied to a really old storyline, but given the current fanbase, that probably wouldn't go over their heads. And so long as it helps create a blank slate for BND, then so be it. It's also pretty hard to f*ck up. Quesada's plan has a built-in "fix" that anyone can remove.

Hmm, I really don't see the title being 'un-rebooted' back to the mess it had previously been...

But then again....

Gregg, I'm so sorry for your loss.