Satan Aborts Spider-Man's Baby

Those of you who are comics-savvy will recognize the title as a reference to One More Day, a completely awful Spider-Man story, which I hope will be forever remembered as Satan aborting Spider-Man’s baby. If you don't recognize it, open a Wikipedia tab.

There’s already been reams of analysis of how absolutely terrible and ill-planned this story was by people much more talented and articulate than I, so I’ll just boil down a few of my objections to it:

• Peter is portrayed as an immature character, but from the very first comics he was thinking of marriage, money and taking care of his aunt. He now lives with his aunt and has no job to speak of. He couldn't have known that this would happen, but he knew he was giving up a wife, a future and potential children.
• This is a trend with Marvel. Look at Johnny Storm. Almost every new author gives him a “coming of age” story or just treats him like a playboy from beginning to end, completely forgetting that he was married and expecting a child at one point. Guess what happened? Lyja the Skrull conveniently disappeared (yes, she was a Skrull, but he loved her even after that revelation) and their child was retconned out of existence. Johnny was a grownup. Now his own sister calls him Paris Hilton.
• THIS IS WHY PEOPLE DON’T TAKE COMICS SERIOUSLY. Every time you spit on characterization, TWENTY YEARS of continuity and any conventions of good storytelling in favor of the almighty status quo, you demean all comics. I know comics fans. We’re prone to a bit of exaggeration. But Joe Quesada is literally and without hyperbole dragging the dignity of the superhero genre down to the level of children’s stories solely to pursue an irrational personal agenda.
• My father and mother are middle-aged comics fans. Comics are a constant presence in my life. I don’t even know what it’s like to not read comics. Whenever I talk about them with a non-fan, I have to stop for a moment to try and figure out if they’d recognize a certain character or plot. I buy issues and then I buy trades. I easily become obsessed with characters, authors (ask me about Brian K. Vaughan!) and artists (I would probably buy a Wolverine comic with a Jo Chen cover JO CHEN I LOVE YOU). One More Day (and Civil War and Secret Invasion and almost all post-Alias Bendis… I could go on) makes me want to give up superheroes forever.

One More Day is just plain dumb.