... And he's the one who's writing it.

The source of this allegation? J. Michael Straczynski himself.

The J. Michael Straczynski Message Archive

In the current storyline, there's a lot that I don't agree with, and I
made this very clear to everybody within shouting distance at Marvel,
especially Joe. I'll be honest: there was a point where I made the
decision, and told Joe, that I was going to take my name off the last
two issues of the OMD arc. Eventually Joe talked me out of that
decision because at the end of the day, I don't want to sabotage Joe
or Marvel, and I have a lot of respect for both of those. As an
executive producer as well as a writer, I've sometimes had to insist
that my writers make changes that they did not want to make, often
loudly so. They were sure I was wrong. Mostly I was right.
Sometimes I was wrong. But whoever sits in the editor's chair, or the
executive producer's chair, wears the pointy hat of authority, and as
Dave Sim once noted, you can't argue with a pointy hat.

So at the end of the day, all one can do is try to do the best one can
with the notes one is given, and try to execute them in a professional
way...because who knows, the other guy may be right. The only thing I
*can* tell you, with absolute certainty, is that what Joe does with
Spidey and all the rest of the Marvel characters, he does out of a
genuine love of the character. He's not looking to sabotage anything,
he's not looking to piss off the fans, he genuinely believes in the
rightness of his views not out of a sense of "I'm the boss" but
because he loves these characters and the Marvel universe.

And right or wrong, you have to respect that.

In spite of unconscionably, impossibly dumbshit clusterfucks like "Sins Past" and "The Other," I never thought I'd see a Spider-Man storyline that had a broader, deeper, and more permanently damaging effect upon the character and his franchise than the "Clone Saga," but Jesus Christ, it's official: Joe Quesada has finally trumped the worst that Bob Harras had to offer.

I mean, when even the guy who created total crap characters like Ezekiel and Morlun, and was willing to write The O-Face Of Norman Osborn without complaint, is telling you that your idea is bad, you need to take notice ...

So JMS's way not to sabotage OMD is to keep his name on the story he didn't want to write but bitch about it online? Is there such a thing as passive aggressive spin doctoring?

In your opinion as a fan; there are plenty who disagree with you. I'm not a fan of JMS or One More Day, but I'm not going to claim that Joe Quesada is a bad editor over one series taking a different direction, especially not when contrasted with all the books in the Marvel line that I actually do enjoy.

The only way I can see it is that JMS is hedging his bets and covering himself, so that if the story turns out to win favor with the fanbase, he can still claim partial credit for being "big enough" to "admit when he's wrong" (even though he doesn't, that's the way he'll spin it if this goes over well), but if it lives up to the almost universal criticism it's received online, he can say, "See? I knew this was bad, right from the start!"

... I would argue that one bad comic book can nearly deep-six an entire company, especially when the book in question is the flagship title of the line.
No, not everyone shares the same opinion of this story, and no, we don't know for sure how it will turn out, but a) every single one of the most widely circulated rumors about how it would turn out have been proven correct so far, and b) the vast majority of response online - and the response I've heard offline, from my area retailers and fellow shopgoers - has been negative so far, and the negativity cuts across all lines of fandom. Whether the fans prefer 616 or Ultimate, "classic" Marvel or the Quesada era, even single or married Spidey, almost all the responses to this story that I've seen have included some variation of "This is unbelievably, unforgivably stupid."
Hell, you should be as pissed about this as anybody, because if this was Paul Levitz dictating an Authority storyline to Mark Millar, I'm pretty sure you'd be the first one to call bullshit.

... After Spider-Man literally talked to every single scientist, magician and superhuman healer in the Marvel Universe, he wasn't able to find anyone who could save Aunt May's life from a gunshot wound - IN THE MARVEL FUCKING UNIVERSE, where so many people come back from the dead that it's become a career for many of them - and then, Mephisto showed up out of nowhere (no, not an exaggeration ... he actually just appeared in the third issue of the four-issue arc, with no build-up or foreshadowing whatsoever), and told Peter and Mary Jane, "I'll save Aunt May's life, but only if you allow me to RETCON YOUR MARRIAGE!!!"

Okay, he didn't use the term "retcon," but otherwise, that's almost exactly a word-for-word quote.

It's sadly amusing to note that Mephisto was seriously considered as one of the ways that Marvel could dig themselves out of the hole that the "Clone Saga" had become, but even Bob Harras deemed that idea too retarded for public consumption.

....that after one more issue of a four-issue arc dealing with one franchise character and two of his supporting cast, the books get a creative overhaul with new writers and artists, many of whom are very well regarded by the industry and fandom. One More Day is not so much a story as a means of clearing the decks for new writers; like Avengers Disassembled, it may be a bad story, but it'll give the future creators a clean slate to write on, and probably increase commercial and critical appeal too.

The only reason I can see people dreading Brand New Day is because Spider-Man likely won't be married during it. But the book went on for over 20 years without the marriage, and I'm certain it can continue to do so fine.

( As as for the Levitz/Authority mention; apples and oranges. The JMS/Quesada thing is about the attempt to give a franchise character who appears on all kinds of merchandise a wider-ranging appeal. Whereas the Levitz/Authority thing was about censoring a self-contained and highly acclaimed title. )

So he's essentially playing the role of the Hooded Hood in the Marvel Universe? Interesting.

I'll be honest, I don't hate the idea itself... although it strikes me as one you'd have to implement with a fair amount of poetic execution. My biggest complaint with how things are handled under Quesada isn't the huge, shocking changes in status quo, but rather how artificially they're handled, exposing stories as nothing more than lurches towards such obviously blatant shocking changes in the status quo.

When Gwen Stacey died, it seemed to be a tragic part of the story, not the reason for the story's existence.

... Some animals are more equal than others?

> ( As as for the Levitz/Authority mention; apples and oranges. The JMS/Quesada thing is about the attempt to give a franchise character who appears on all kinds of merchandise a wider-ranging appeal. Whereas the Levitz/Authority thing was about censoring a self-contained and highly acclaimed title. )

I call bullshit, because both titles were being written by "creators" who didn't actually create the characters in question, and I'm sorry, The Authority was a "franchise" from the word go, by virtue of all the characters being "owned" by the company that published them, and it became even moreso as soon as the title passed hands to a second writer, because that's practically the dictionary definition of a "franchise." With that distinction proven false, you're veering dangerously close to the territory of, "Only the writers I like should be free of editorial restrictions."