In case you guys still didn't know, the classic comic series Amazing Spider-Man came to an end in issue 700 with Peter and Doc Ock somehow having switched bodies. Old and feeble, Doc Ock's body dies taking Peter's soul with him, leaving Otto alive and well in Peter's young and powerful body. However, being bombarded by Peter's life memories give Otto a sense of justice and he's determined to fight crime and do good, but as a better and more Superior Spider-Man.
This whole idea left a LOT of fans angry and the message boards are full of complaints and people saying that they will drop Spiderman and Marvel as a whole. However, the biggest complaint is the idea of the slightly implied rape of Mary Jane or any other woman in Peter's life because if Otto-Pete were to do the deed with MJ, it would technically be against her consent because she would have no idea that she was actually sleeping with Dr. Octopus. And to rile up the fan base even more...
Issue 2 takes a little backseat to action-packed crime fighting and goes deep into the Doc's persuit of some MJ poontang. Does the Doc succeed? Let's check it out! And also since this issue does have Otto in Pete's body AND the ghost of Pete floating around, I'll reffer to the actual person as Otto or Otto-Pete, and the ghost as Peter.
Superior Spider-Man # 2 begins with 'The Peter Principle' and takes place a few hours or so after the events of the last issue. Everyone is applauding Spider-Man's triumph over The New Sinister Six and stopping them from robbing equipment from the Marla Jameson Memorial Wing. Jameson himself shows up and finally admits that he was wrong about Spidey all along and shakes his hand... much to the horror of the ghost of Peter Parker. It's just his luck that Jameson finally accepts Spider-Man and it's actually Otto Octavius under the mask.
Peter calls this 'crazy-town banana pants' which brings us to MJ mentioning this phrase as something Pete used to say. MJ and Carlie are discussing Peter, and how Carlie's arm is recovering from the last battle between Spidey and The Doc. MJ mentions that she might be getting back together with Peter, which surprises Carlie. I'm more surprised by this sudden made-up fact that one of Peter's catchphrases was 'crazy-town banana pants'. Let's make a bet that he'll probably never use it again after this issue.
Otto makes a lunch date with MJ, and Peter's ghost follows around hoping she would notice something weird and not go out with him. Suddenly a fire truck speeds by and MJ wonders if Otto-Pete is supposed to go and see what's up since he's supposed to be Spider-Man. Otto does leave but is angry that having to be Spider-Man interrupts his normal life. Otto looks through Parker's memories and sees that the original did have to put up with that crap all the time and figures there has to be a better way to have more time for his personal life.
Later that night, Otto works in his lab, now having The Living Brain reprogrammed to be his personal robot butler. He creates a 'Spider-Bot' and tells his robot servant to create eight hundred of them.
Otto sets up a second lunch date with MJ and she's worried if he has the time for it since he's supposed to patrol the city as Spider-Man. Otto explains that he has placed 'Spider-Eyes' all over the city and he can check all of them in a few seconds with an app on his smartphone. Both MJ and Peter's ghost agree that this is clever, but MJ thinks it's too clever for Peter. MJ is also confused about how 'Peter' has held press conferences and didn't go after the Sinister Six as soon as he knew where they were. Otto assures her that he is trying to be a better and more superior Spider-Man with more time with MJ, and then he asks her out.
And so the dates begin. Otto takes MJ to the Planetarium, and the date ends with MJ giving him a kiss on the cheek. Otto takes her ballroom dancing... and the night ends with MJ kissing him on the cheek. Otto takes her ice skating, and again MJ ends the night with a kiss on the cheek. Ghost Pete is overjoyed, but by now Otto is pissed that he hasn't gotten any yet.
Otto tries a fourth time and goes with MJ at a nightclub called M.J's. As the redhead supermodel shakes it on the dance floor, Otto is pondering what he's being doing wrong. Outside, several villains are checking out the nightclub. Otto and Pete both get the Spider-Sense, but Otto ignores it and decides what he needs to get with MJ is to throw an element of danger and excitement into her life. He goes with her and invites her to swing throughout the city with him. MJ and Otto swing throughout the city sky, much to the horror of Peter Parker.
stuff like that never happened to Clark Kent and Lois Lane..... I think...?
Otto takes MJ back home, but she can't invite him in since Carlie is still living there until her arm gets better. Otto swings off, angry that his plans to nail the redhead keep failing, and Ghost Pete is happy. However... and this is where stuff gets kinky...Otto realizes that he can have MJ any time he wants. Due to the fact that MJ and Peter had done the deed several times throughout their lives... Otto realizes he can access those memories and relive the feel of having MJ over and over again. Yes folks, Otto is reliving memories of Peter Parker/MJ sex and making them his own. Wow.
How can I NOT make some kind of perverted joke about this scenes??? I think the face 'Pete' is making at the top right is that one time MJ got on her knees and.... um.. anyways, hey, bonus point for adding that upside-down Spider-Man/MJ movie kiss from the Tobey Maguire series.
The next morning, Otto wakes up from a long night of MJ wet dreams (I'm not kidding) and decides he's over MJ and will now move on to hit on other women. Peter is upset and wonders if his existence is now doomed to just be floating around the Doc and watch him hit on women and mess up his life.
Just then, one of the Spider-Bots have detected something worth checking out. No, it's not Black Cat bending over, it's a group of Vulture-wannabes attacking Mary Jane's nightclub (she owns a night club?). Apparently, MJ's nightclub used to actually be Vulture's hideout, and his minions are looking for something that used to be there.
Superior Spider-Man swings through the city anxious to rescue MJ and ignores a random mugging. Otto decides saving MJ is more important. Whatever the bird guys are trying to steal, MJ decides that if the Vulture wants it, it can't be good, so she tries to stop them. The bird guys grab MJ and toss her out the window. Spider-Man arrives in time to see MJ falling and shoots out a web at her. Peter advises against this since the snap-back of being caught on a web-line could kill her (like what happened to Gwen Stacy). However, Spider-Man creates a huge web-net instead that catches MJ safely.
Otto starts to have Peter's feelings for MJ and sees her as more than a good time in the sack. MJ moves in to finally kiss him where it counts, but he stops her, much to not only her surprise but Ghost Pete's as well. Otto realizes that MJ is in danger as long as she continues to be with both Parker and Spider-Man and the only way to ensure her safety is to let her go and move on. Pete is surprised and admits that Otto did something that he could never do.
The issue ends with MJ telling Carlie what happened. Carlie's arm is getting better and she is eager to get back to her job. She has a flashback of the old and dying Doc Ock telling her that he's really Spider-Man (I assume in Amazing Spider-Man # 699 or 700). She says she case files to catch up on but she knows there's at least one mystery she has to solve.
Wow, what an issue. This felt more like some kind of superhero sit-com than a typical superhero action comic, but I liked it. Otto's constant lunches and dates with MJ not working out the way he wanted was priceless. MJ kissing him on the cheek and thanking him for letting him take things slow, while he grits his teeth saying he understands... it's funny stuff. Despite the epic cover, they never actually got to lock lips, and in the end Peter's morality within Otto's conscious won out and he decided to let her go to keep her safe. I find it interesting that Pete admitted he would never do that since it's what the Pete has been doing in the Spider-Man movies, both from Tobey and Andrew, but I guess he never did that in the comics. One More Day doesn't count since that was more about Aunt May's safety rather than MJ.
As for that scene of Otto reliving Peter's intimate memories with MJ... wow. I know technically he would be able to do that... but wow. I never thought they would go there. Not only would Otto know what it's like to nail MJ, he could always dig deeper and know how getting intimate with Carlie, the Black Cat and whoever else Spider-Man ever slept with felt like, almost as if he were there. I wonder how the Spidey fanbase felt about that scene, if there are still any left that didn't jump ship after ASM # 700. Speaking of past loves, I did like the small Gwen Stacy reference with NOT trying to save MJ by just trying to catch her with a web-line.
As for Peter Parker himself... well, he did add extra comedy to the issue and I liked his thoughts and inputs. He's able to even read Ock's thoughts and react to them, which is funny cause it looks like he's fighting against the thought boxes. My complaint is that the constant appearance of Peter promising to come back and now Carlie determined to find out what happened in the final battle between the Doc and Spider-Man all sounds like this will be some kind of 5-or-whatever-part story arc and not a new series. Again, like with Dick Grayson taking over as Batman during Bruce's time travel trip, I say LET THIS RUN FOR A YEAR OR TWO BEFORE EVERYTHING RETURNS TO STATUS QOU. We know this change isn't permanent, just run with it and have some fun while you can. I don't know if Ghost Pete is there to kinda let new readers transition from Amazing Spider-Man to this new series... or if it's due to pressure from all the fans threatening to quit Spider-Man if they don't return things the way they were before, but STOP IT!!! Let the Doc be the Superior Spider-Man for a while.
I wanna end this article by noting that mugging that Otto ignored to go rescue Mary Jane. Considering that he arrived just in time to save her from a fatal fall..... she would have died had Otto did what Peter wanted him to and take those few minutes to stop that mugger.
Yes I'm another one of those haters for what Dan Slott has done to the Peter Parker character. Make sure you congratulate him on annihilating Marvel's most popular character in the worst possible way. I sure Stan Lee likely would not or actually didn't approve of this. And yes, I realize he likely sold creative rights to this character years ago. There's a lot wrong with the whole idea that you can rip a person's soul out of their body through the use of science. I can see imprinting someone memories onto someone else's mind in the science fiction world, which is how I view what was done to initiate this storyline direction. What I mean is that Doc Ock succeeded in copying and imprinting both his memories & Peter's memories in a simultaneous swap. That's the only way I can describe it. One's soul is linked to each individuals LIVING BODY. Peter Parker did not experience any type of near-death experience where his soul was on the verge of passing to the other side or where he actually died & was revived a couple of minutes later, which in the fictional world of comics, his body could have been taken over through the use of magic when timed in that moment. But that's not how it was done! I also want to point out that in the Marvel Universe that magic does exist as well the existence of the human soul. So as the last remnants of Peter Parker's "MEMORIES" are eradicated in issue #9 of Superior Spider-man, I think the whole comic book fan base who has read the Amazing Spider-man over the years are getting insulted in the biggest way possible. This is because the writer is implying that we ALL are really comprised of accumulated memories & nothing more. So, not only does Dan Slott so-called creative writing fly in the face of established storyline parameters' for the Marvel Universe, he's basically telling everyone that he's an Atheist!
ReplyDeleteInteresting points. I was so wrapped up in the story I never saw it from a spiritual point of view. It's hard to justify religion in the world of Marvel where characters like the Scarlet Witch and Franklin Richards exist and can warp reality with godlike powers and Asgard exists.
ReplyDeleteI would assume part of Peter's soul stayed in his body and didn't finish crossing to the other side, and whatever the Doc did booted him out. Like a scientific exorcism.