One More Day is responsible for a multitude of sins, but perhaps the most ridiculous is Spider-Man's reasons behind selling his marriage to the Devil (yes, this is a thing that really happened): he didn't want his Aunt May to die. Dear old frail Aunt May, who has been clinging to the last vestiges of her life since the sixties. Honestly, it's about time you just let her die. It's not fair to her, Peter. It's her time. And yet she's still around, and Mary Jane's off gallivanting with a hunky fireman, all because you can't accept that an old woman will die eventually. Why is that, Spidey? Well, probably because the one time he did make peace with that fact, it ended up being a load of hooey. Amazing Spider-Man #400 is one of the greatest single issues in the character's history. Peter decides to finally tell his - terminally ill - Aunt that he's been sneaking off in red tights and fighting crime this whole time. She tells him she always had her suspicions, before collapsing. Despite their best efforts, she eventually passes away, in her own home, surrounded by her loved ones. It's an incredibly powerful story, and one that was long overdue. Spoilt slightly when it all turned out to be a plot by Norman Osborn to drive Spidey insane, and that the woman who died was an actor. The real Aunt May was later found, alive and well. What? Seriously, what? Why would the Green Goblin even do that? And when she was found, four years later, she had a bomb in her brain. From the sublime to the ridiculous indeed. Where would you even find someone who looked that much like Aunt May that her nephew would be fooled? When you're asking that of a comic where a radioactive spider bestows superpowers and not fatal poisoning, you know something's gone wrong.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
