One of the problems with being heavily invested in fictional characters is that you never know when the creator of those characters will change something about them and upset you. There's less danger of that happening when your life revolves around real people. It would be highly unusual, for example, if you woke up one day to find that your mom who died 10 years ago had actually never died at all and was now in the kitchen making breakfast. But in the fictional world, stuff like that happens all the time.

I'm not just talking about Dumbledore being gay, either, because that didn't really change anything about the Harry Potter stories. I'm talking about things like season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where suddenly Buffy had a younger sister who had never existed before. I'm talking about George Lucas' revisions of the first three Star Wars movies, plus the lackluster second trilogy, all of which caused some nerds to declare that Lucas had destroyed their childhood. (Side note: If altering some movies can cause the destruction of your childhood, then either you are exaggerating, or your childhood was stupid.) I'm talking about the infamous Bobby Ewing incident on Dallas, when an entire season of episodes turned out to have only been a dream.

The latest example of this practice -- known as "retconning," or "retroactive continuity" -- takes place not in film or television or literature, but in the clammy, fat-fingered world of comic books. Spider-Man (aka, Peter Parker) and Mary Jane got married way back in 1987. But now a new story has Peter making a deal with a demon named Mephisto: In exchange for saving Aunt May's life, Mephisto erases all of Peter and MJ's memories of their marriage together, basically taking them (and the story) back to square one.

The reaction from hardcore fans was immediate, loud, and punctuated by asthma attacks. Erasing 20 years of comic book history is a huge insult to fans, not to mention a lazy storytelling device. The behind-the-scenes reason for the change is simply that it was a mistake to let Peter and MJ get married in the first place. A married, domesticated Spider-Man isn't nearly as interesting as a single guy. Part of the character's appeal when he first appeared in 1962 was that he was a regular kid with flaws, problems, and worries. Marrying him off nullified a lot of that.

Could the writers have chosen a different way to bring Spider-Man back to his roots? Sure -- they could have killed Mary Jane. That probably would have made fans angry for entirely different reasons, though. As comic book writers have learned over the years, it is impossible to make ANY change without upsetting the hardcore fans. If the story doesn't look exactly like the version in the nerds' imagination, then it's WRONG.

But the larger issue is one that is obvious to anyone who has seen the Spider-Man movies: Aunt May ruins everything. Things will be going along fine, and then Aunt May will show up to deliver a corny speech about heroes or responsibility or something, and suddenly no one's having a good time anymore. And now Peter is canceling out two decades of history just to save her life -- the life of someone who looks to be in her late 80s anyway! And she's been in her late 80s for over 45 years!

LET HER GO, PETER. No good can come from this. You've wiped out your marriage (OK, maybe some good), and you've outraged some obsessive readers. I suggest you stay away from comic book conventions and parents' basements for a while.

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Eric D. Snider (website) has never been the same since Bewitched changed Darrens on us.

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