I think its pretty unanimous among people that this is the single worst spider-man decision marvel has ever made. Worse than the clone saga simply because it ****s up a lot of things in just about every other book and presents peter, who had lived several years assuming aunt may was dead in a bizarre, oedipal position where he chooses his geriatric, always near death aunt over his wife. Obviously when sales start to plummet like they did during the clone saga they're gonna have to resolve this in some way and i suggest that they make peter pay for his decision...dearly.
I like the idea of karma in comics and i especially like it when supposedly normal heroes have to pay for being jerks. My two best examples being Cyclops basically abandoning his wife and child to get back with jean grey, thus causing inferno and daredevil driving heather glenn to suicide.
Now how to bring things back... If i'm not mistaken, Mary Jane remembers everything as part of mephisto's deal. I would set up a storyline wherein she is still in love with peter but cannot forgive him for choosing his aunt over her. have him try to get back with her until she in someway, suicide or otherwise, dies because of her feelings of inadequacey. I would also have aunt may find out peter's secret identity and take it in the worst way possible and at the same time, have peter realize mephisto's responsibility in some way, prompting mephisto to completely mess up peter's life using his entire rogues gallery until he's had some sort of "born again" type moment or is hauled off to jail by the initiative or something. Now to actually restore things, he would need the help of someone who's dicked around with mephisto before and the only people that Spidey's chummy enough with are probably Stephen Strange or Matt Murdock. either way, end it all with some final horrific confrontation with mephisto where peter realizes he has to let go of his aunt and accept that life goes on and he's married. That its not normal to have unhealthy maternal attatchments in his mid-thirties. and restore everything the way it was except do something like add a bonus showing that mephisto had May Parker all along and that this was all some kind of ultimate revenge carried out by norman osbourne back when he stole the baby in the first place.
thoughts?
I think it would be rather interseting that from this deal, a new villain has been created, one that did not exsist in the previous time-line, I would like to see Spider-Man go back to basics; back to the old ways, one thing I really want to see is Eddie Brock return as Venom, but the idea of a price to pay is a great idea.