If Spider-man is known for anything, it’s having one bad day after another.

You know, like, my-best-friend’s-father-killed-the-love-of-my-life kind of days?

But these last few days of Spidey’s may have been the worst of them all – for readers of his books, that is.

In One More Day, Spider-man saw his aunt shot, and forced into a coma from which she would, in all likelihood, never return. Then, he put on the black suit, (just in time for Spider-man 3) and went off to kill Wilson Fisk. Then he almost killed Wilson Fisk, but didn’t.

Oh Yeah, and this was pretty much all a result of that little unmasking thing at the end of Marvel’s Civil War.

So basically, Marvel royally screwed Spider-man in almost every way humanly possible, so much so, in fact, that they felt the need to find a way to start his life over. And where do you go when you want to start your life over properly?

If you answered Satan, you are correct!

That’s right, everyone’s favorite wall-crawler entered into a deal with the devil – not for his soul, though. Mephisto asked only that his marriage to Mary Jane was undone. All that would be left would be a faint memory, not of marriage per se, but of something better that would plague them for the rest of their lives.

So begins Spider-man: Brand New Day. Spidey entered into an alternate reality, but it seems the rest of the Marvel Universe is unscathed, and ultimately unchanged. Harry Osborn is alive and well, after spending some time in “London” looking for “engineers.” Huh. His father went to London after he “died” too during his last retroactive continuity change. I guess London is Osborn limbo?

Also, apparently, if Peter and Mary Jane never married I guess that Peter would have never discovered his ability to shoot webbing out of his wrists, because he’s using the mechanical web shooters again. He also lives with Aunt May again. Ah, the single life. Oh, and MJ is a superhero, probably?

I honestly have no idea what to do with this story. Part of me likes seeing Harry back, but yet another hates the fact that he’s alive, because it takes away from the Osborn legacy, and the story of his drug addiction and death, a classic, integral part of the Spider-man mythos. Regarding Harry Osborn, I think we’ll all have to see where they take the story. His presence gives them seemingly endless possibilities with the Green Goblin character, someone who has been missing a lively adaptation since, well, Harry was alive roughly fifteen years ago. On an aside, it seems as though Harry did have a brief spell as the Green Goblin in the new universe, but remembers none of it.

The webbing bit was probably the right choice, I was getting tired of seeing the Marvel try to accommodate the movie fan base – I was here first, damn it, and when they get tired of the countless resurrections a few months from now, I’ll still be here.

Now, I can see what some of you are going to say. You’re going to say, “see, he doesn’t mind Harry coming back even though his presence is obviously a ploy to get movie goers to read the book as well.” Well, as you can see, I anticipated your comments, and I have one thing to say. I am a hypocrite - a giant one, too.

Living with May again doesn’t bother me so much either. What really gets me is the fact that Spider-man made a deal with the devil. You would think he probably wouldn’t do that normally. Right?

And then there’s the whole Jackpot storyline. Jackpot is a new super-heroine for New York under the Initiative, with red hair and a costume with 777 across the belt. Now, one could surmise, since she uses the word “tiger” constantly, and her name is Jackpot (as in, “face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot!”) that she might be Mary Jane.

Maybe.

Spider-man recently met up with Jackpot, who said her name was “Sara Ehret.” Spider-man went to Jackpot’s apparent house only to find a woman named Sara Ehret who denied being Jackpot, and told Peter to “stay out of this.”

This combined with the added mystery of Mary Jane having traded something unknown to Mephisto for Spider-man’s identity to be kept secret, has many wondering what role Mary Jane will play in the storyline in the near future.

Now, the matter of Mary Jane gets to the heart of the problem with this story arc, since in many ways, One More Day and Brand New Day are both Peter-Mary Jane stories – hell, in many ways, Spider-man itself is just one big Peter-Mary Jane story. The problem here is that they have restructured the cast of characters and the role they play for the worse.

Spider-man has always been an underdog who would undoubtedly collapse if not for the support structure he has at home – namely, Mary Jane and Aunt May. Those are the two he’s never really had to live without, and they’ve always been there to support him, except for brief spells of absence. But now, May wants him out of the house, and Peter is job-hunting, and Mary Jane no longer speaks to him.

The idea of Spider-man being young again is intriguing, no doubt, but for those who want to find Spider-man young there is Ultimate Spider-man, the films, any one of the animated forms of Spider-man (I’d recommend the FOX kids Spider-man TAS or Spider-man and his Amazing Friends), and countless other forms of media.

In short, bringing Spider-man back to his youth is harkening back to a golden era in Spider-man’s past that, unfortunately, is gone, and by doing so, Marvel is cheapening what was a classic story about the interaction between four characters – Peter, Harry, Mary Jane and Aunt May. Instead of Amazing Spider-man feeling like the books we grew up with, it feels like a bastardization of a story we’ve come to know and love.