Think about it. Spider-Man's secret identity was revealed, his Aunt May was dying, he was a wanted fugitive, he basically turned into an Anti-Hero and did several questionable actions. Marvel wrote themselves into a corner and you knew they just had to do some sort of retcon/reboot/mindwipe. It wasn't even a real reboot, they just fixed Spidey's idenity and Aun May issues, and retained the characters history except for replacing the word "marriage" with "moved in together" (crazy I know). But honestly seeing the state the Marvel U was at the time, what suprised me was the fact that the "reboot" was only limited to the Spider-Man world. I mean look how things were back then, Cap was dead, Thor was dead, the F4 broke up, Iron Man was leading SHIELD and was acting totally out of character, Matt Murdock was in jail and accused of being DD, a large number of heroes were considered outlaws, Hulk was on a different planet, a lot of relationships were strained, some villains were considered heroes.. Hoesntly I was expecting something similar to DC's crisis where the entire world would be retonned, maybe something involving Uatu, Doctor Strange or an invasion from Mephisto (I was into Marvel Ultimate Alliance at the time so these characters were fresh in my mind), so I wasn't really surprised by the event, though of course surprised by removing Peter's thing with MJ. What do you think? Should OMD have been expected? Did anyone see something like this happening at the time?

I agree with everything about Spider-man because I've been saying almost the exact same thing for years

but I do not agree with the rest of the Marvel Universe needing a reboot...all that other stuff was fixable but when you expose a character's identity you're pretty much left with only one option to put back to normal

The thing, is that they could had try something else.

The whole deal with the devil reboot, was another gimmick in an era that only looks to sell based on hype, publicity and gimmicks.

Or at least have the b@lls to do a full reboot.

I feel like you're a little late to the party with this.

@danhimself: That's true, and as we saw, all these things ended up getting fixed. But at the time, it seemed to me like they were destroying the Marvel U and then reboot it to build it from scratch. things were just crazy back then, and a lot of stuff took several years to fix (Thor, Iron Man, Cap etc..). Now thinking about it, dardavil's identity is now public, and while he's dealing with it well for now, I wonder if they eventually find themselves in a corner and end up mind wiping everyone.

I don't mind the restoring of his secret identity but I hated that they dropped legitimate character development. If they wanted him and Mary Jane split up that's fine just let them get divorced, they want people to forget his secret ID that's fine he can call one of the 12 high powered telepaths he's on first name basis with or call in a favor from Dr. Strange, as for the Anti-Hero thing, every single Marvel hero including Captain America has gone down that road at some point and got through it without needing a retcon. As for Aunt May, she has become a crutch for the character and its long past time for her to go.

You should always expect retcon's. They've been going on for a very long time and I doubt its ever going to change. Its the nature of the industry. When you have characters that have existed longer than writers writing them have been alive, you're naturally going to come across hiccups and you're going to have no other choice.

So yes, OMD was to be expected and I'm sure we'll see more retcon's in the future.

I agree with actions needed to be taken but I hate how OMD was done. How is selling your marriage to the devil better than a divorce? Needed to keep the identity secret? Sentry did the same thing without selling his marriage to the devil, heck, his wife forgot too. OMD was just a shoe-horned gimmick.

I'm going to completely disagree that OMD was inevitable. I think it could have easily been avoided. IMO at the end of the day OMD Sucked then sucks now and will always suck.

@anjales: well SOMETHING was bound to happen, i mean marvel universe is always changing, one min spiderman has a baby next its kidnapped and never spoke of again so on and so on. The thing is making a deal with Mephisto is what most people hated, what's even worse is all Mephsito did was orchestrate events where Reed, Tony ANd Strange combined science and magic to give peter a second chance since reed and tony pretty much ruined his life. Ok so remove Mephisto from that equation. Reed tony and strange could have done the same thing, they didnt NEED the deal with the devil plot lol. I think they realized this and later wrote a story involving those three in hopes people forgot about Mephisto, because if not they wrote a plot over top of a plot....so stup

dont worry people will forget you are spider-man

what i will do is sit by while these three make people forget you are spider-man

ok deal

@anjales: Well Iron Man started as an secret identity character and he has successfully evolved from there, so why can't Daredevil or Spiderman?

I understand OMD was handled the way it did because Joe Q felt Peter divorcing would break the hearts of young readers who look up to him as a responsible icon who would never put his family through hurt like that...but the deal with the devil did just as much damage to him and MJ.

Ultimately, I don't think OMD really accomplished anything, I know people keep (bafflingly) insisting on loyalty to 616, but I've long since stopped considering it the end-all/be-all of Marvel canons. It is not the same universe I grew up reading so I now reject it. Peter and MJ have been happily married for 28 years in the daily newspaper strip and they have advanced in age and have families in various other alternative timelines (though whether or not that lasts past Spider-Verse remains to be seen), I think, for the forseeable future, there will always be a married Spidey thriving through this uncertain period and in that sense I'm happy and I feel confident so long as it exists somewhere, then the hope exists it will find it's way back into the regular books