Spider-Man Is Dead. Long Live Spider-Man.

This Wednesday saw the release of the 700^th issue of the Amazing Spider-Man and the ending of the series. Writer Dan Slott has been teasing for months of the big reveal ending of this issue since it leads into the new series the Superior Spider-Man whom readers has known for months NOT to be Peter Parker. A week ago I read the issue myself, but waited to voice my opinion to prevent spoilers. Here’s the kicker though; there are no spoilers. Spoilers are something that occurs when you don’t know what’s gonna happen; anyone with half a brain would’ve seen this outcome. I’m just gonna go right out and say it before going any furtherer: Doctor Octopus, Otto Octavius is the new Superior Spider-Man!!!

Now how did this happen you might ask? Well, I could take you through the whole shebang of *cough* “story”, but I’ll keep it short. Through Spider-Man’s recent and repeated interaction with the hive mind of Ock’s octobots, the villain obtained access to Spidey’s mind and was able to swap mindframes with him. Dr. Octopus now had Peter Parker’s body, memories, mind and worst of all, all the powers of Spider-Man. Meanwhile, Peter is trapped in the dying body of his enemy and makes one last desperate attempt to win back his body and life. With the help of some villains, Peter in Octopus’ body tries to lure “Spider-Man” in a trap to switch back their minds. In the end though, when the transfer is supposed to happen, it’s revealed that Ock has imbued the Spidey outfit with carbonadium, making the swap impossible. He deals Parker in Ock’s body one final blow, but as our hero is dying in the body of his enemy, something happens. Dr. Octopus experiences Peter’s memories fully; the loving home and childhood provided by Uncle Ben and aunt May, the loss of his uncle Ben, Captain Stacy and Gwen Stacy’s deaths. He feels how all the things Peter’s ever done took immense amounts of courage, will and determination. The scope of Spider-Man’s entire existence and willingness to do it all over again, including saving Octavius’ life even after all that’s happened overwhelms Otto.  He’s reluctant, scarred of the unimaginable task he has taken upon himself by stealing Peter’s identity and asks his dying archenemy HOW he can do this to which Peter answers: “Because you have to. Because with great power…” “… Must come great responsibility, I understand” Octavius finishes. As Peter is dying in Octatvius’ arms, the former villain promises to carry on the mantle of Spider-Man and protect New York. At the same time he proclaims to become an even better Spider-Man than Parker was, with his intellect and powers he proclaims himself the Superior Spider-Man.

And that’s it. Apparently, all it took to change YEARS of evilness in Dr. Octopus was experiencing Peter Parker’s memories. Finally, he understands how precious a life really is and how with great power comes great responsibility. Give me a fucking break; Octavius already HAD great powers and he had decided to squander them and become a supervillain, because he was selfish and small-minded, end of story. Slott calls this “giving Dr. Ock a new lease on life” and that, I can be just fine with. It’s the fact that he has to take over Spider-Man/Peter Parker’s identity in order to obtain this lease. I find it ridiculous and I find it extremely out of character for Octavius to make this switch to the “good side” that fast. I mean, it happens in less than 3 pages?

I will admit it, I’m an old school Spidey fan so of course I prefer Peter Parker to be Spider-man, but that’s not the main reason I’m unsatisfied with this turn of events. It’s just really bad storytelling. I won’t really loose anything because of these changes since I haven’t been reading Spider-Man ever since Dan Slott took over as writer. I gave the man a shot, found it terrible and decided not to go on reading it. But since this would be the last issue of the Amazing Spider-Man and it was well known somebody would replace Parker, I had to check it out. It was as bad as the rest of Slott’s writing and most of all, it simply made me appreciate that I hadn’t spent any money on Amazing Spider-Man issues for the past 2 years. The fact that Peter Parker dies isn’t really that significant; comic book characters die every now and then and returns as well and I find it doubtful we won’t see PP again one day. It might be a while, my money is on somewhere between 1-2 years, but we’ll see. Should it happen that the new Superior Spider-Man becomes a complete failure the status quo could be reversed sooner than planned. In any case, it’s not as if anything is ever truly permanent in the comic industry, no matter what the writers or companies might say. All of this can also be attributed to the value of shock. The “oh NO, they did NOT” effect is a good way of increasing sales and it’s been seen before in comic books.

According to Slott, one of the exciting things of this new Superior Spider-Man is that we get to see a more dark and gritty Spider-Man, although still a hero; a more Batman-like Spidey. My answer to that is if I want to read Batman I’ll read Batman. Which, I might add, I do and do you know why? Because it’s actually worth reading. We already have a VERY Batman-like comic; it’s called Batman and there’s only one.  Spider-Man is and has always been a more light-hearted comic. Somehow, this seems sort of as an attempt to make Spidey appeal more to older readers, but GOD I hope that’s not the case. Simply because an awesome writer already did that with the character and he did it with the real Spider-Man, Peter Parker, and that man was Joe Michael Straczinsky. And some idiot boss at Marvel decided to erase all of that and have Dan Slott and a bunch of other mediocre writers do the Brand New Day stories which basically saw Peter Parker reduced to the nerd/looser he used to be as a teenager. Of course, it’s a matter of taste in these things, but if the desire is to have a more mature audience read the comic, why the fuck would you go along with this new lame approach? “Archenemy takes over hero’s mind/memories and hero dies in archenemy’s body”? Wow, that’s really a weak move in my opinion, simply because it seems to depend on the reader finding it believable that a villain changes his life perspective in a matter of mere minutes. How is this a better way of going about it than having the original hero character, in this case Peter Parker, evolve as a person/hero/character? That’s exactly what Straczinsky did and it was awesome.

What bothers me the most though, and I should properly say that I really am pissed at how shitty a story issue 700 was, is something the writer said about writing Dr. Octopus as Spider-Man:

"Doc is kinda like me: He's short and schlubby. This is a guy who now gets to be in the body of Peter Parker.”
Read more at http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/JoshWildingNewsAndReviews/news/?a=71777#MvB1tJDvauXcyFOO.99 

I’m sorry, but seriously? Is that what all this is about? Gee, poor Dan Slott, he couldn’t see himself in Spider-Man, only Dr. Ock. So now he went and got the opportunity to turn Ock (Himself) into Spider-Man. This whole horrible parody of a story is really about a case of the grumpy kid tantrum. Well I’m sorry mr. Slott, you’re still a terrible writer and you killing off Peter Parker just proves how little understanding you’ve ever had of this character.

In the end, no matter how long Slott or anyone else claims this new stat quo will last, I will at this moment swear to you on my life: Peter Parker will be back.