A few months back, I answered a question about who still knows Spider-Man's secret identity in the Marvel Universe. During the discussion, it was evident that not a lot of folks knew what, exactly, happened as a result of Mephisto's spell (or whatever you want to call it) in One More Day that took away Spider-Man's marriage. Did it bring Harry Osborn back, as well? Did it hide Spider-Man's secret identity? Did it bring back Aunt May's house in Queens? I'll answer it all here...

We'll quickly set the scene. In 1987's Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (by Jim Shooter, David Michelinie, Paul Ryan and Vince Colletta), Peter Parker married Mary Jane Watson...



In 2006's Civil War #2 (by Mark Millar, Steve McNiven and Dexter Vines), Spider-Man revealed his until-then closely guarded secret identity as part of a show of solidarity with the Iron Man-led movement to support the Superhuman Registration Act (As we all know, Spidey revealing his identity was very similar to Japanese-Americans going into Internment Camps).

In Civil War #5 (by Millar, McNiven and Vines), Spider-Man decides that what Iron Man is doing is wrong, and breaks from Iron Man's side and goes on the run with Mary Jane and Aunt May...





The problem was that it was not just the government after them now, but also criminals with grudges against Spider-Man. So the Kingpin of Crime, Wilson Fisk, tried to have Spider-Man assassinated by a sniper in the motel he was staying in with MJ and May and, well, things went poorly...







So Peter's guilt-o-meter is going off the charts at this point. It was his decision to reveal his identity that put them at risk and then it was his Spider-Sense that made him leap out of the way of the bullet, leaving it for Aunt May.

By this time, Peter had already seen a villain destroy Aunt May's home in Amazing Spider-Man #518 (by J. Michael Straczynski, Mike Deodato and Joe Pimentel), forcing her, Peter and MJ to move into Avengers Tower...





So anyhow, a grief-stricken Peter tries everything he can think of to save Aunt May (except, you know, look into that favor that Loki owed him) and ultimately, in 2007's Amazing Spider-Man #545 (by Joe Quesada and Danny Miki), Mephisto shows up and he says he'll save Aunt May if Peter and MJ trade him their marriage for Aunt May's life. They agree.









In the epilogue of that issue, we see the then-new Spider-Man status quo...









Okay, so Aunt May is alive, she has her house back, Peter is single, his secret identity is back to being unknown and Harry Osborn is alive. How many of those things happened as a result of Mephisto's spell? Go to the next page to find out!

The first thing that was resolved was Harry's return from the dead.

In Amazing Spider-Man #581 (by Dan Slott, Mike McKone and Andy Lanning), we see how Harry is still alive and, as an added bonus, we see how Aunt May's house was repaired!











Okay, so in the original Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21, Spider-Man ties up one of Elektro's henchmen...





So in Amazing Spider-Man #638 (by Joe Quesada and Paolo Rivera), we see that this prisoner escaped through freakish means (a bird accidentally opened the lock on the police cruiser he was sitting in the back of) and then he encountered Spider-Man the night before Spidey's wedding and knocked him out, so that he missed the wedding the following morning...







In the following issue, after Mary Jane calls off the wedding after Peter refuses to quit being Spider-Man, she agrees to get back together and says that they don't even need to be married...







So continuity then continued from that point forward, only instead of Peter and Mary Jane being married, they were just living together as a committed couple.

Then everything else happened, including Civil War, Spidey revealing his secret identity, Aunt May being shot, etc. Only now Aunt May just pulls through miraculously (after Spidey did some super CBR on her).

Spider-Man turned to Doctor Strange, Mister Fantastic and Iron Man to make the world forget his identity, and they worked out a scientific and magical spell that did so. In Amazing Spider-Man #641 by Joe Quesada and Paolo Rivera, we see the spell in action, but then Peter pulls Mary Jane into the spell, as well...









This move backfires when Mary Jane finds out and thinks about it and decides that, honestly, she would have preferred NOT remembering his identity, since there is so much stress on her being a part of this life. This leads to their break-up.

So Mephisto was responsible for the marriage never happening, he was responsible for Aunt May miraculously living and I suppose you could say that he was somehow responsible for the secret identity spell, in terms of like, "Maybe he made it so that Tony Stark and Reed Richards would go along with it" or whatever. I believe Marvel's official position is that he was only responsible for the marriage and Aunt May living (even there, I recall someone saying something silly like, "Since they never got married, that means One More Day never happened" which makes no sense, so I presume it was just a sort of kind of joke), but if a magic dude promises to get rid of your secret identity problem and then your secret identity problem goes way, I think it is fair enough to credit said magic dude.

But Harry's return, Aunt May's house and Peter and MJ breaking up were all outsid of the realm of Mephisto's spell.

So there ya go!

If anyone else has a question they'd like to see answered, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com