FUCK now I'm thinking about Spider-Man Noir again... The #1 thing wrong with Twilight in Babylon was the fact that Peter wasn't disowned. It goes against EVERYTHING in aunt May's character, in the world, in the setup and payoff...
May didn't even dislike Spider-Man! She HATED him! She hated everything about him! She screamed him out of her house! She told him he was everything wrong with the word and that she'd rather DIE than be saved by him! To his face! Because this version of aunt May's conviction is everything. And she informs so, so much about the world this comic is supposed to be set in.
Peter knew he'd be disowned if she ever found out. He knew that. And he had to grapple with it. So when she did find out, when she did disown him, it feels so cheap to just.... undo that. It doesn't feel right, it almost breaks the internal logic of the world. And it's so much less interesting anyways! ESPECIALLY to have it all happen off page.
Sure, the writing in general for Twilight in Babylon felt off. The private detective thing was clearly more for genre recognition than rooted in actual story. But nowhere does the lack of consideration for previous material show better than in aunt May.
