Somewhere on a parallel Earth...

...the "One More Day" arc featuring the Amazing Spider-Man was published, as originally scheduled, in weekly installments throughout the month of August 2007.

On that same earth, Allan Heinberg's "Who is Wonder Woman" and Kurt Busiek's "Camelot Falls" similarly achieved unbroken regular serialization.

On the other hand, Newsweek will have skipped its third week in a row, Time has missed more weeks than it has hit in 2007, and People and Us are in the midst of a month-long crossover. They sell in the tens of thousands, and they are only available at small shops called "news-stands". But I digress.

Unfortunately, I don't live on that earth. I have to buy comics on this one, where Marvel disguises a $1 price hike by hiding it in plain sight, in a "Still 395 cents" bullet-burst. Where the Marvel hype machine, with tongue in cheek, insists that "if you only read one comic this decade," it should be part two of a four-issue arc.

Where Joe Quesada can allow the flagship title of the Marvel Comics Group to drift so far off-schedule that these four "weekly" August issues are now "monthly" issues, barely expected to conclude the arc before the end of the year.

Assuming no additional delays.

I wonder how this story, on its completion (assuming it ever is completed, and with Ultimate Hulk vs Wolverine on a year-plus delay, surely it is permissible to question it), will compare to the Spider-Man epic by Lee and Ditko that concluded in Spider-Man #33.

That only cost twelve cents.

That only took one issue to tell.

That was published on schedule.

That didn't bring in a deus-ex-machina new character, or have Peter threaten to sell his soul, to tie everything together neatly.

That also saw Spider-Man facing a lethal threat to both himself and Aunt May, one that was clearly far beyond his ability to overcome, yet overcome it he did, when all else failed him, with raw determination.

Boy, I tell you, they don't make comics like that anymore.

Except, maybe, on that parallel earth.