As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- If he was desperate enough to do a Deal with the Devil, why didn't he just try to strike a deal with Iron Man, or at least accept his money?
- For that matter, why didn't he make a deal with Doctor Doom at that point? For all that Doom is a villain, he can relate with desperately wanting to save someone you hold dear, given how he went out of his way to save his mom from Mephisto. In fact, Doom would have been the very first person to warn Peter against making any sort of deals with Mephisto, because they are never as clear cut as he presents them, while Doom at least always exposes clearly what he offers and what he expects in return. But no, Peter dismissed the idea because of Doom being 'evil'. As opposed to, you know, Mephisto the Boy Scout.
- Doctor Doom also murdered his own girlfriend, made a magical costume out of her skin, and sold her soul to a trio of demons, demons who served Mephisto. In a story where he did not make clear what deals he was offering (twice - the girlfriend thought he was wanting to get back together with her; the Fantastic Four thought he was going to release their child from Hell if they surrendered.) And he doesn't especially like Spider-Man, who foils his plans regularly and is good buddies of the man he hates most in the world. As you can guess, he probably shouldn't have bargained with Doom.
- Actually Spider-Man did try bargaining with him, but he and everybody else Dr. Strange let him visit said they couldn't do anything. This brings a whole new level of dumb. Spider-Man goes to Dr. Strange, Reed Richards, Black Panther, Dr. Octopus, Hank Pym, and Dr. Doom, and none of them can heal a simple bullet wound despite technology they have access to, or vast magical powers in Strange's case to the point where he at times has been criticized as a Deus ex Machina. As for Doom's dislike of Spidey, he probably would have made an effort to save Aunt May if Spidey had thougth to tell him, "Reed Richards admitted that he was incapable of doing this. So I came to you." Doom's done things like that in the past, just to prove he's better.
- Actually, given that healing Aunt May would give Doom a chance to simultaneously show up both Reed Richards and Mephisto, who are Doom's #1 and #2 most hated entities in all of Marvel, you'd think he'd quite cheerfully break the space-time continuum trying.
- He explicitly saved Reed's child to show up Reed (with the only part of the bargain being that he got to name the son so Reed could never forget it). If he's willing to do that for his hated enemy, I think he'd do the same for Spidey.
- Also, at what point in the creative process for the story was the idea "Time-traveling supervillain" not accepted? Seriously, if you want to do this kind of story fine, but for cryin' out loud, goofy ideas are better than mind-numbingly bad ones.
- This option actually had a valid reason not to work. Time travel in Marvel Universe doesn't change history (unless it's a part of it) it simply creates an Alternate Universe. For same reason Peter couldn't simply go back in time and save aunt May. In cases when time travel does change the present (don't know why) it usually threatens to cause the end of the world and so has to be reversed ASAP. Or at least that's how it worked.
- Actually, there are two people known to have invented a time travel method that avoids the 'many-worlds' problem and lets you actually change the main timeline, and ever since the Time Variance Authority was taken out of action again nothing stops them from using it (except each other, which is why they mostly don't). Of course, since these two people are (who didn't see this coming?) Reed Richards and Victor von Doom, we're right back to the original Headscratchers.
- Not long before this story, Loki had said he explicitly owed Spidey a favor (Spidey had saved the life of Loki's innocent half-mortal daughter, and the god of mischief was genuinely grateful). Granted that calling in a favor from Loki was probably going to end badly, but wouldn't Peter think to resort to that before accepting help from frigging Mephisto?
- For that matter, why didn't he make a deal with Doctor Doom at that point? For all that Doom is a villain, he can relate with desperately wanting to save someone you hold dear, given how he went out of his way to save his mom from Mephisto. In fact, Doom would have been the very first person to warn Peter against making any sort of deals with Mephisto, because they are never as clear cut as he presents them, while Doom at least always exposes clearly what he offers and what he expects in return. But no, Peter dismissed the idea because of Doom being 'evil'. As opposed to, you know, Mephisto the Boy Scout.
- Elixir is a mutant who has brought people back from the literal edge of death before—he healed someone after their heart was torn out, an instantly fatal event, and they were fine and dandy afterwards. He couldn't heal Aunt May. Her injury? A sucking gunshot wound. So let us recap: a man with virtually omnipotent healing power, who can rewrite DNA at a distance and who brought another character back from an instantly fatal attack, an Omega Level mutant on par with Jean Grey in his particular field...was unable to repair the cellular damage (inconsequential damage by comparison) caused by a simple human gun. Mind you, even Angel, a much, much less powerful healer, was able to bring Jubilee back from the brink when she was crucified by the Church of Humanity. And compared to Elixir, Angel's healing power is basically a fresh bandaid. "Lol wut" doesn't even begin to cover it man.
- On top of Elixir and Angel (and Lifeguard and Darwin and a few others) after the Decimation the X-Men put together an entire team of super scientists all of whose field of study is the human body. Additionally, Beast was able to quickly contact a dozen or so super villains for whom fixing a bullet wound would have been almost no effort (Sugarman, Dark Beast, Mojo, Spiral, Mr. Sinister, ect.).
- From a narrative standpoint, why not have Mary Jane get shot? At least there's more drama, since Aunt May is 5,000 years old, give or take 4,900 years. Then Peter would have to weigh Mary Jane's death with Mary Jane's love, which is a lot more of a Sadistic Choice than Mary Jane's love vs. Aunt May's death.
- If I had to guess, because Peter going to extreme and sometimes morally questionable lengths to save Aunt May has been done before (see Franchise Original Sin), and so it was the motivation the writer's jumped to.
- From the other angle: how did Aunt May, a 10,000 year old mummy, give or take 9,900 years, survive a 30.06 bullet to the chest? She should have been instantly killed. Are we sure the only robots were Peter's parents?
