8 Times Marvel And DC Screwed Over Comic Book Creators

3. J. Michael Straczynski Clashed With Marvel Over One More Day

Amazing Spider-Man 545 One More Day
Marvel Comics

It's impossible to find a Spider-Man comic more controversial than One More Day. The comic undid years of Peter Parker's development by erasing the events of Civil War and 1987's The Wedding, which had seen Parker marry longtime love interest Mary Jane Watson, and has frequently been criticised as an example of mainstream superhero comics' inability to genuinely move forward.

Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada had a long running dislike for Parker and MJ's marriage, believing that Spider-Man was losing touch with the hip, modern youths of the late noughties. So in a bid to make him 'relatable' again, Quesada came up with One More Day, which he planned to draw as a conclusion to J. Michael Straczynski's run on Spider-Man.

Although Straczynski was reportedly okay with erasing Parker's marriage (at least according to Quesada), the writer went on the record to state how dissatisfied he was with the comic, and how he initially wanted his name taken off the last two issues. In a now deleted post, Straczynski said the following:

"In the current storyline, there's a lot that I don't agree with, and I made this very clear to everybody within shouting distance at Marvel, especially Joe [Quesada]. I'll be honest: there was a point where I made the decision, and told Joe, that I was going to take my name off the last two issues of the OMD arc."

Would Straczynski have preferred to end his Spidey run in a different way? Quite probably, one would surmise based on this statement. Instead, he was forced to cap it off with the worst Spidey story of all time, and it takes some beating to dethrone the Clone Saga in that category.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.