Brian Geeks Out

Spider-Man and his wife Mary Jane made a deal with the devil to save his Aunt May at the price of erasing their marriage.

There are just too many things wrong with that for me to comment...

...who am I kidding.

1. Not a good idea

The marriage was good.  

MJ was good.  Heroes need strong support.

The marriage makes Peter a more realistic character.

2.  How it was done was not good.

A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL?!?!?!  AND THEY WERE WILLING?!?!?!

True love forsakes all others.  Peter and MJ were first in each others life, even before May.

May had Ben.  Her time was up.  May would have given her life to keep Peter and MJ together.

The ends don’t justify the means, there were a lot of different ways to get to their ends.

3.  The reasons were not good.

- Sales & press (progressive companies place customers, quality and integrity and their highest priorities)

- The misconception that a single spider-man is more interesting than a married Spider-Man (insulting)

- Reset continuity (disrespectful to the fans and previous creators)

- To make Spider-Man more accessible to younger readers (wrong way to do it)

Part of me thinks that this whole OMD/BND is a part an elaborate story that just starting out with the MJ/Mephisto drama.
I think they knew how readers were going to react and that they are using that to build towards something...else.These Marvel guys put a lot of thought into how they present things to the readers, including the images they leak and the things they say on forums, blogs and panels.  All the things people are quoting Quesada saying a year ago (about how if he was EIC 20 years ago Spider-Man would have never been married) could have been scripted in anticipation of this event, YES A YEAR AGO.  They do these things.
And when they plan an event it's never about the initial drama, I don't think that this is just something as flippant as 'the way it's going to be.'
These guys think big and they think long term.

There are some interesting implications about how this relates to House of M and Secret Invasion
My best guess is that over the next year Mephisto is going to screw Peter over, May is still going to die and in the end we'll see some 'Power of Love' thing and Peter will be back with MJ.  And then we'll look back and say, "wow that was brilliant."

Well, it was great while they had it.