Objection! Artist John Romita’s classic cover for 1987’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 was somewhat misleading. Unlike the direct market cover, which depicted the tuxedoed Peter Parker and his lavishly-styled bride Mary Jane Watson with their friends and family, the more famous newsstand edition showed a red-and-blue-suited Spider-Man marrying Mary Jane. (The giant-sized special wedding issue saw Spider-Man’s villains — Doc Ock, Hobgoblin, Kraven the Hunter, the Lizard, Vulture, Mysterio, and the Kingpin among them — crash the ceremony, but only in Peter’s pre-wedding jitters dream sequence.)
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The actual hitching of Peter and MJ went off without a hitch, and the couple lived happily ever after… until the infamously controversial Spider-Man: One More Day made it so that they were never married, and Spider-Man: One Moment In Time retconned the wedding issue after effectively resetting Spider-Man for the Brand New Day era in 2008.
It’s still a sore point for fans who prefer Peter and Mary Jane as a married couple, which is why the just-revealed All-New Venom #7 spoiler variant cover by artist David Baldeón (Ben Reilly: Spider-Man) — a homage to the iconic and beloved Amazing Spider-Man wedding issue — feels like a symbiote tendril slap to the face. (Not to mention: one of the very first things Eddie Brock did when he bonded with Spider-Man’s scorned alien costume was terrorize Mary Jane.)
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The cover comes after Marvel revealed the former Mrs. Parker, a.k.a. the gadget-based superhero Jackpot, is also the current host of the Venom symbiote on the final page of Wednesday’s All-New Venom #5 by Al Ewing and Carlos Gomez. After the symbiote was separated from Eddie and his son Dylan Brock during the Ewing-penned Venom War, the new Venom’s identity was hidden from readers as Dylan investigated red herring suspects Madame Masque, Robbie Robertson, Rick Jones, and Luke Cage.
Along with the symbolic cover presenting the suspects as “wedding guests” alongside Dylan and MJ’s current beau, Paul Rabin, Marvel released a description: “MJ and Venom celebrate their new commitment to each other as symbiote and host — till death do they part.”
To recap: not only is Spider-Man’s once-wife turned ex-girlfriend now archvillain Venom, but Marvel editorial has made it clear there are no plans to annul One More Day despite overwhelming positive reaction to the married Parkers in Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s acclaimed Ultimate Spider-Man run.
“We have mostly moved on, and I wouldn’t hold my breath for an undo any time soon,” Spider-editor Nick Lowe wrote in the Amazing Spider-Man letters column back in 2023. “But I’ll never say never.”
All-New Venom #6
THE ORIGIN OF THE ALL-NEW VENOM! Now we know WHO the All-New Venom is…the question is HOW? What happened after the events of the Venom War? Why did the symbiote choose this host – and why can’t they separate? Jackpot confronts Venom – and she may not like what she finds out!
On sale: May 7
All-New Venom #7
VENOM VS. ANTI-VENOM! If Flash Thompson doesn’t take down the new Venom, his superiors will make sure it’s Dylan Brock who pays the price. But now that Flash knows who the new Venom is, can he pull the trigger on the human being underneath? And if he can’t…which sinister Spider-villain is waiting in the wings to do it for him?
On sale: June 4
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