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In 1987 Peter Parker married Mary Jane Watson in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21. Marvel celebrated the occasion with a big publicity push, which included a cake and a reenactment of the wedding with real-life actors at Shea Stadium.

However, none of this was originally supposed to happen.

Prior to the wedding ceremony, Tom DeFalco was the writer of Marvel's flagship title Amazing Spider-Man, and although he says the wedding was his idea - a happy wedding wasn't in his plans.

"[Mary Jane] was going to leave him at the altar,” DeFalco tells Popverse recently. “I don’t remember if it was to resolve things with her sister, but she was definitely going to leave him at the altar.”

DeFalco admits he doesn’t remember all the story beats because he threw away his notes years ago.

“I used to have a notebook filled with all our plans and stuff like that, but then when I would get off the series, I would take that notebook and throw it in the garbage.”

Tom DeFalco was removed from Amazing Spider-Man shortly before his wedding storyline, and things took a turn. According to DeFalco (who was also an editor at Marvel at the time), surprise fan enthusiasm for the then upcoming-nuptials during an unspecified convention panel by then-editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee led to Marvel's top brass changing those planes.

“I was kind of taken aback because Jim Shooter was at a convention with Stan Lee, and he had heard about it and said what do you guys think of Spider-Man getting married. Stan wanted Spider-Man to get married. [Stan] said, ‘What are you thinking,’ and everyone cheered. So, he said, ‘Okay, we’ll let them get married!’ At the time I thought it was a mistake, but I was no longer on Spider-Man, so it was not my problem,” DeFalco says.

However, it soon became DeFalco’s problem. Shooter was removed from his position as editor-in-chief, and DeFalco was named as his replacement. All of this happened as Marvel was in the midst of their Spider-Marriage publicity push. In fact, the switch was so late in the game that Shooter’s name still appears in the issue credits as editor-in-chief.

“About two weeks before the wedding was when they decided to change leadership. I became editor-in-chief, and a bunch of people ran up to me and said, ‘Are you going to stop the wedding?’ I said, ‘It’s too late! We’re supposed to be in Shea Stadium next week. They bought the wedding cake and everything.’”

DeFalco found himself acting as editor-in-chief for the story that he originally pitched, albeit with a different ending. DeFalco says that while he initially said the marriage was a mistake, he realized it was one of the best things to happen to the character.

“I thought it was a big mistake, and at some point I ended up writing Spider-Man again, and I realized if it was treated like a real marriage and we think of Mary Jane as someone who is married to a cop or a serviceman, all this does is add extra responsibility on Peter’s back. And to me, Spider-Man is always about Peter’s responsibility. Creating responsibilities for Peter, that’s a good thing.”

Marvel's most reliable superhero has proven he can do a whole lot more than just 'whatever a spider can.' Swing into Spidey's history with Popverse's...

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