One Moment in Time

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"See, to me, the reason I wanted to get married was to have kids. If that's no longer a part of the equation, then marriage is just a piece of paper." —Mary Jane

After One More Day, any retcon in the Spider-Man continuity other than the main ones (summed up in a two-page spread following that saga) was left unexplained, much to the fans' chagrin; Quesada's response to most fan questions came in the form of a Shrug of God or assertion that A Wizard Did It.

Fast forward to summer 2010, where Quesada finally gave fans some answers throughout four issues of ASM, entitled One Moment In Time.

Obviously, the announcement of answers - as well as a chance to see Petey and MJ getting back together - coming was met with rejoicing... initially.

By the end of the first issue of the OMIT story arc, the overall feeling of the storyline was, basically, "You wanted answers? Here ya go.".

It seems that Quesada was really annoyed by the (rather justifiable, anyway) numerous demands of explanation (Peter even says at one point, "can't we just go back to being cold and distant to each other?") and, in the end, the result came off as one final "now I hope you shippers have had enough, 'cause I'm sick of your crap - enjoy the story of Peter and MJ's final kiss! *cue middle finger*", and, as such, it arguably managed to be even more frustrating than One More Day itself.

Unfortunately, the story mostly chose to resolve the problems with One More Day by simply retconning them away, leaving a sizeable number of fans less-than-satisfied.

(NOTE: Please help move One Moment In Time-specific examples from the One More Day page)

Tropes used in OMIT include:

• Author Tract: As Mary Jane's quotes demonstrates, OMIT illustrates Quesada's stance on why he felt marriage was a necessary aspect of the Spider-man mythos.
• Derailing Love Interests: Mary Jane, see the page quote.
• Ironic Echo: "He's always running off as Spidey when you least expect it". The look on Mary-Jane's face just screams "NOT FUNNY".
• Mythology Gag: Spider seeing a criminal he didn't catch before coming back to hurt those dear to him. Now, we know Joe Quesada wanted stories set during Spidey's High School era to appear in recent issues, but this is ridiculous.
• Retcon: The Story actually retcons how the Deal with the Devil occured. In the original, Mary Jane made the deal, after Peter essentially guilt-tripped her into doing it for him. Here? Mary Jane takes the initiative to make the deal because Peter would never even think of making the deal.
• Retraux: The past is drawn as similarly as possible to the original "The Wedding!" storyline. Given Quesada's OMD art got lazily re-used, this comes off as a nice change. Of course, it's weird when past-bride-to-be MJ gets her cell phone.
  • And when Spidey references the "But I did just stay at a Holiday Inn" joke from the present-day's ad campaign... in a time set years before that campaign started.
• The Reveal: The whole point of the story is to literally reveal what happened on Peter and MJ's wedding day, but on a smaller scale it's also revealed that the two completely retained their memories of their past lives.
• Serial Escalation: Though this was meant to stop people from complaining about OMD, it actually managed to piss the fans off even further about the decision for MJ and Peter to split.
• Shaggy Dog Story: In the end, making the deal with Mephisto in the first story accomplished absolutely nothing. History still plays out exactly the same, Peter still unmasks himself to the world, and Aunt May still gets shot. The big difference being instead of making a deal with Mephisto in the "new reality" Peter spends more time Aunt May, spiriting Aunt May back to life in the process. The deal was never truly needed.
• Ship Tease: Promos for One Moment In Time and afterward suggested that Peter and MJ would rekindle their relationship after being estranged since One More Day. But instead it was...
  • Ship Sinking: And this time, it's for real.
  • Dan Slott seems to be working to get them back together, though.
    • All Slott has done is highlight just how close the two are as best friends. Peter and MJ being pals is all Marvel want them to be. Although Slott's run continues to show that MJ still loves Peter, she, for reasons explored in this story, cannot bring herself to be Peter's intended again.
• Voodoo Shark: In the end Mephisto never did bring Aunt May back to life. All he did was prevent Peter and Mary Jane from ever being married. It was the power of Peter's love that brought Aunt May back to life. Two million dollars of donation, the top minds of the Marvel Universe, and the Mystical Powers of Dr. Strange couldn't save Aunt May but Peter's love did. Yeah. Even though his love for her compelled him to run around the world asking everyone who he could think of that could help for help.