Talking of bad stories leading to an improved status quo, this week also sees the much-delayed Amazing Spider-Man #546 - the first part of "Brand New Day."

More than enough has been written about "One More Day", and almost nobody really thinks it's any good.  Even Joe Quesada, while claiming to be terribly proud of the project, describes it in terms more suggestive of a necessary evil.  But there are two main issues here: how to change Spider-Man's status quo, and what changes to make. 

I have some sympathy for Quesada's basic complaint.  The marriage was probably a mistake.  With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been a lot easier if they'd just moved in together, which would have left open the prospect of a break-up.  Moreover, like most books, Spider-Man isn't just a character, he's a format.  That format was largely dependent on soap opera, and locking him permanently into a relationship with Mary Jane to the exclusion of all others (save for stories about divorce, death or adultery, all apparently considered unsuitable for a flagship character) closed off a lot of his traditional story subjects.

What's more, the Spider-Man books have drifted miles from that basic format in recent years.  They've completely lost sight of their supporting cast, and disappeared into a world of their own.  There is much to be said for taking the character back to a winning formula.

The question is how to do it, and this is where Marvel botched it spectacularly.  At first glance, you might think that "One More Day" is an example of spectacular disregard for continuity.  I've seen that argued (and even welcomed).  But in fact, on closer inspection, Marvel's approach is rather more garbled than that.

When DC do this sort of thing, they rewrite history, literally altering their universe to reflect the new reality.  But Marvel have opted for a weird hybrid approach.  The marriage has been erased from history - after all, Marvel don't want a divorced Spider-Man.  But all the other changes have been effected by altering the memories of everyone in the universe.  In this way, Marvel are trying to have their cake and eat it, by asserting that past stories are still "valid", while simultaneously emptying them of any continuing meaning.  Meanwhile, the new writers are saddled with characters whose thoughts and motivations are, if you take this stuff literally, infected from top to bottom with false memory syndrome.

In order to think that this is a good idea, you have to have a rather bizarre and obsessive attitude to continuity.  The only advantage of doing it this way, instead of just rewriting history wholesale, is that it preserves the formal validity of earlier stories as part of present day continuity, even while denying them any meaningful place in that continuity.  In other words, you have to ascribe a talismanic significance to the importance of retaining these earlier stories as part of the canon, as an end in itself.  This is a very strange way of approaching the problem, and delivers the worst of both worlds.

But we're here now.  Let's ignore the methodology, and treat it as a reboot.  What do we have?

We have Dan Slott and Steve McNiven in a retro story that returns to the classic Spider-Man format.  He's down on his luck.  He's living with his aunt (though in fairness, not for long).  His supporting cast are back.  He's going to end up taking photos for the Daily Bugle.  There are hints of girl trouble.  Mary Jane is nowhere to be seen.  There's a none-too-threatening lead villain (a mugger wearing a Spider-Man mask), and a more threatening villain in a subplot.

It's a Spider-Man comic, built to a well-worn formula.  McNiven's art is as attractive as ever, and no doubt Marvel are hoping that the artists of Civil War will lend some star power to the series.  The writing crew are an odd mix.  Taking turns to write storylines, we have Dan Slott, Bob Gale, Zeb Wells and Marc Guggenheim.  They've all produced decent comics in the past - Guggenheim is probably the least consistent, but he still has some entertaining comics to his name.  They're critically respectable.  But they're not big names, and it's clear that this is going to be a series sold on the strength of Classic Spider-Man rather than any particular creator.

Nothing wrong with that, if you ask me.  If any Marvel character is bigger than an individual writer, it's Spider-Man.  This doesn't strike me as any worse than the writing crews on TV shows.  If you really wanted to write a deeply personal magnum opus, you probably wouldn't be doing it on Amazing Spider-Man in the first place.  It works for TV.  It can work for Spider-Man.

I rather liked this first issue.  I can't say it's a great piece of work, because it's really just about re-establishing the status quo.  However, it put a smile on my face.  It's nicely paced, pleasantly entertaining, and cosily familiar.  Some people will see that as a bad thing, and I can understand why.  Yes, there's a problem with putting the brakes on any attempt to grow the character.  But the way in which the character had grown, even prior to J Michael Straczynski's run, had lost sight of the series format, and had failed to replace it with anything better.

I would rather read this series than any version of Spider-Man we've had in the last few years.  It's a god-awful device to get us here, to be sure.  But it's a respectable destination.  Whether the device will alienate readers to such an extent as to turn Spider-Man Classic into New Coke remains to be seen...

Rating: A-

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