Spider-Man now single: OMG

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nobody could have seen this celebrity breakup coming: After more than 20 years of marriage, Spider-Man and Mary Jane are kaput.

Joe Quesada, editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, said it was time to shake things up in the life of Peter Parker, the nerdy New Yorker who upon being bitten by a radioactive spider attained the ability to transform himself into a web-spinning world savior. And it was easier to do that, he said, if Parker wasn't married.

This week's plot twist left many comic-book fans climbing the walls.

"When we first did it, the reaction was, 'How could you do this? This is a terrible thing to do," said Quesada, who invented the story line that turned Spider-Man into Single-Man.

"But with the first issue of 'Brand New Day' (this week's comic book in which Spider-Man returns to single life), our letters very quickly changed to people saying, 'This is fantastic. This is the Spider-Man we remembered. We didn't know what we'd been missing."

With Spider-Man footloose and fancy free again, Quesada says, he'll be able to have new adventures, get into new dilemmas and, who knows, maybe even woo back Mary Jane.

Well, the pair didn't exactly get divorced. After Peter Parker's beloved Aunt May was wounded in an attack, Spider-Man and Mary Jane reluctantly struck a deal with the devil-like Mephisto in which he erased everyone's memory of the couple's time together in exchange for May being restored to good health.
 
The story was received less than warmly by fans who thought that after 21 years of marriage Pete and MJ really were going to make it.