Reign is a much better story than anything in OMD/BND. Even though MJ is dead in it she's arguably one of the biggest characters in the story and her relationship with Spidey is one of his driving factors later on. And, despite what the internet would have you believe, there's a lot more to it than "spider-spunk". The story's far from perfect but it's not as nearly as bad as people are making it out to be.
Really, this hardly takes the cake for "the worst Spider-Man idea ever". Maybe if MJ was killed off in ASM this way, but taken in its full context of the larger story, this pales in comparision to Spider-Man actively making a deal with the Marvel version of Satan.