Spider-Man’s Worst Storyline Completely Lacked No Way Home's Courage
Warning: contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home!
A much-derided Spider-Man storyline shares more than a few similarities to Spidey's most recent cinematic outing, No Way Home. Unfortunately, the movie made choices that proved it had more courage than a similarly themed comic. This, of course, was the One More Day storyline that took place at the end of J. Michael Straczynski's run and was illustrated by Joe Quesada.
As a result of the Marvel superhero Civil War, Peter Parker revealed his identity to the world. When the Civil War was over, Peter Parker had to deal with the ramifications of his villains knowing his true identity. During this time, Aunt May was shot and on her deathbed. In order to save her, Peter quite literally made a deal with the devil. He entered into an agreement with Mephisto to remove the knowledge from the world that Peter Parker was Spider-Man and, in turn, save Aunt May's life. This meant that Peter and Mary Jane's marriage would end in the process.
No Way Home faces a similar circumstance as Mysterio reveals Peter's identity to the world. Spider-Man's life is thrown upside down and Peter asks Doctor Strange to make it right. However, by the end, Peter realizes that the only way to fix things was for everyone to not just forget Peter Parker was Spider-Man but to forget Peter Parker altogether. This was a bold decision the comic shied away from. Instead, people just forgot Peter was Spider-Man, which created a whole host of problems for future Spider-Man stories as Dan Slott began his record-setting tenure with the character.
Much of Spider-Man's history has to do with many characters knowing his true identity. To remove that major detail means to rewrite his entire biography, which consists of decades worth of stories. Spider-Man canon became an absolute mess in the years after the One More Day storyline. Even when Peter had to take off his mask in front of other people they would either see a blank face or would somehow magically forget the name and face of the person they had seen shortly after. Eventually, as more time was put between current arcs and One More Day, the rules behind Peter's identity magic became looser. There were ways around Mephisto's spell so that people could actually remember Peter with Spider-Man in some circumstances while his identity would remain safe in others.
Eventually, the implications of One More Day were abandoned entirely over time without any clear indication of how or why it happened. This all could have been avoided if One More Day had made more of a bold decision like No Way Home had. Instead, Spider-Man was left with a muddled identity mess that he had to deal with for years.