One more yawn

Joey Q has been talking about doing it for at least a year.

The publicity was hinting at it for months.

Every fan has been assuming it for the last six months.

Every blogger has been complaining about what a bad idea it is.

And so the biggest twist in the Spider-Man story One More Day is... that it's exactly what everyone has been expecting all along.

After a year when the level of misdirection at the big two has reached the point where creators lie in interviews and publishers put out misleading solicitations for comics that will never be published, I am a little baffled to find the biggest Spider-Man story of the year to telegraph its big conclusion months before the first issue was even published.

So I'm now left wondering what they are going to do when the next movie rolls around and it features Spidey and Mary Jane as an item, given that last time Marvel bent over backwards so far to identify with it that they put him into his black costume for several issues for no good reason other than it was in the movie.

I'm less wondering how they are going to integrate the new status quo into the overall Marvel continuity that is so tightly clenched that if Thor sneezes in one comic, Daredevil hears it in another, because it's that obsessively tight continuity that puts me off reading any of the individual titles I might be interested in if they weren't going to be suborned into some huge uberstory every other issue.

I hope Joey Q is happy. Because I'm not sure anyone else is.