This past Tuesday afternoon Spider-Man writer Dan Slott tweeted this warning to Marvel readers: “Set your watch. Your next Spider-Man related freak out is on the way.”
Slott wasn’t just whistling Dixie. Marvel has premiered their latest “Summer 2015” teaser (which we’re still convinced are all related to Secret Wars) and it’s another callback to an iconic and now controversial moment in Spider-Man history – his wedding to Mary Jane Watson in 1987’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21, undone in 2007’s One More Day storyline … but with a twist.
The image (which also includes the copy “Renew Your Vows”) doesn’t just call out the wedding, but seemingly suggests an alternate reality in which MJ’s and Mary Jane’s child wasn’t seemingly mysteriously abducted by Norman Osborn (Mary Jane believed the baby was stillborn) and pretty much never heard from in the 616 again, much to the chagrin of Spider-Man fans at the time. There was, of course, another alternate universe where she grew up as Mayday Parker and became Spider-Girl, in the MC2 world, but even there we didn’t see a modern-day Spidey and MJ raising her as a younger child.
Freak out en-gaged…
There’s no telling how big a role each of these teasers will presumably play during Secret Wars, but if Marvel is suggesting the mystically annulled marriage and return of his living daughter is in play, it confirms that every past Marvel story and continuity thread is indeed on the table as the publisher has promised and there is no telling what Marvel may change or restore in the post-Secret Wars Marvel Universe.
For Amazing Spider-Man current writer Dan Slott’s part, he says, “I’ve officially been told to stay off the internet [today].” He followed up posting the teaser image on his own twitter account (with only the hashtag #SpiderManRenewYourVows in the text of the tweet) with a simple message. “Signing off for the day. My one & only comment: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #9 Part 1 of #SpiderVerse Out next Weds. :-)”
Slott also, stoking the teaser fires, changed his twitter profile picture to the original wedding cover to your left, and his header image to the teaser. He did the same on facebook.
The walls of time and reality are already breaking down all over the MU, and if Secret Wars brings all the fracturing to a resolution and incorporates popular concepts like say Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099 and Miles Morales all in one reality, and possibly even restores Spider-Man’s marriage and daughter into things, it’s hard not to start thinking about the future of the Marvel Universe without using the term “reboot.” With dan Slott writting who knows.