[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by WebLurker

Why does Annie need to be the same character as that unborn kid from the OMD future that never came to pass? In the original RYV comic, at the time when Annie was an infant, it's established that Spider-Man is not very well-known to the superhero community, his secret identity is not known to any of his fellow superheroes, and he's never been an Avenger, all things that are not true during "Back in Black," but are very true in the pre-Clone Saga era.

Even that doesn't really fit though. He WAS still quite well-known to other heroes because by that point he hafld been interacting with many of them pretty often. Also the only ones who knew his identity were primarily Daredevil, Wolverine, and the New Avengers once he joined them. No one else did except Green Goblin and Venom. Everyone else who knew didn't find out until he came out at the beginning of Civil War.

This is not super well-known outside the (defunct) Marvel forums at the time, but JMS actually wrote TWO endings for OMD. The other one had Peter and M-J reject Mephisto's deal, and Annie would have subsequently been born in that version. Unfortunately Quesada disallowed that ending and that is one of the biggest reasons JMS left the book immediately after the OMD arc. So yes, she WAS intended to be that same child originally. However as I mentioned before, the retcons (and there are MANY) created by OMD/BND has caused a great deal of confusion and stories that no longer match up. More so with all the universe-merging and dissolving that has gone on due to the Regent storyline. We now have at least three "versions" of the main 616 Spidey history that diverge in important ways, all because of that original snafu of the deal with Mephisto. As I recall, the scuttlebutt around the Marvel site at that time was that M-J's deal with him had something to do with the child she was carrying, and involved a "backdoor" reset to allow them to have their life together back. That was hinted at by at least one staff member then and was also hinted by JMS himself at one point. He was VERY pissed at having been told to write that marriage-ending plot after he had spent a good part of his run making it important and interesting again. He felt it was a slap in the face to be told that none of it was going to matter going foreward.