In 2007, Marvel Comics unexpectedly decided to end the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson-Parker in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man.
J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada's "One More Day" saw Peter and MJ enter a bargain with the devil Mephisto to save his Aunt May's life after she was shot. The villain agreed to save her in return for their marriage and it's since been strongly hinted that he did so to stop them from having a daughter - Spider-Girl - who would eventually destroy him.
As a result of Mephisto's spell, the world forgot Peter was Spider-Man (after he'd revealed his identity to the world in Civil War) and history was rewritten to make it so that these two had never got married.
It's been close to two decades since the story played out, but many fans remain desperate to see Peter and MJ's marriage restored. Recently, Marvel Comics has attempted to placate fans with Jonathan Hickman's Ultimate Spider-Man, a series about an older web-slinger who is married with two children.
That's not Earth-616, though, and at last weekend's Baltimore Comic Con, Marvel Comics veteran and current X-Men editor Tom Brevoort was asked about editorial mandates at the publisher.
"If you're working for Marvel, the ground rules are all the characters are Marvel's and Marvel as an institution gets to decide what's right and what's wrong for these characters. So there are certain things you don't want Spider-Man to do," he started. "He can get back with Mary Jane. He just can't actually tie the knot with Mary Jane."
Talking about mandates which are firmly in place, Brevoort explained, "Those are the ground rules going in. If you're going to work on whatever character - if you're going to work on Daredevil, you're going to have to deal with the fact that he's blind and he's probably going to stay that way for a while."
Last year, Marvel's Editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski said that keeping Peter and Mary Jane from getting married was a preference rather than a set rule, something he also suggested could eventually change.
"It’s not a mandate by any chance. In 2 years or 5 years, something could change, someone could have the greatest story – Zeb [Wells, currently Amazing Spider-Man writer] possibly – for why they should be married again, if they make it through their current trials and tribulations."
"There’s no mandate that any character should or shouldn’t be married, it’s just where the story takes us and what we think is the best for the creative team at the time, and what they choose to do with the stories."
During Nick Spencer's Amazing Spider-Man run, Peter and MJ did grow close and there were hints that Mephisto was unhappy about that. In fact, the hero was about to propose before time-travel shenanigans led to them growing apart.
Amazing Spider-Man #1000 isn't that far away and, based on how well Ultimate Spider-Man has been selling, that would be the place to make things right between these characters...