Okay, at this point, if you haven’t read Amazing Spiderman 698-700, shame on you. Turn in your Merry Marvel Marching Society card. And if you’re not old enough to know what that is, sorry. Not really. I will warn you that spoilers are a plenty from here if you’re behind in your reading, so try and catch up, will you? You can’t expect the Internet to wait for YOU to take your sweet time waiting to get around to what’s really important in life.
As we proceed into the era of Superior Spider-Man, virtually every discussion includes variations on the following:
WHINING of the HATERS: Wah! You killed Peter Parker! I hate change! Marvel sucks! Look how tough I am by using big boy words to display how narrow minded and immature I am! Wah! Change my diaper!
CYNICAL SPOILSPORT: Don’t worry, they’re gonna bring Peter Parker back within a year.
PERSPECTIVE: Chill out and enjoy the ride. In Slott we trust.
We at GvE are of the third category, and clearly biased against the first. I am reminded that everyone is entitled to their opinions, however, even if they are stupid.
Addressing the middle category, lets be clear, NOBODY thinks you’re a genius psychic for predicting this. Other people have stepped in for Superman, but Clark Kent always comes back. Same for Iron Man, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Thor, Ghost Rider, Bucky, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, you name it. These are icons. In the end, everything new is old again. The powers that be have hundreds of millions invested in Peter Parker as Spider-Man. And that’s okay. We get to take a welcome diversion that will develop Parker and make him that much more interesting at the end of what WE expect will be a very cool arc.
That said, while Dan Slott takes us on this wild ride, here are the players you want to watch.
Doc Connors – not as mindless as we were led to believe
LIZARD – I’ve already mentioned this earlier. Doc confession prison confession to Peter (when he thought he was talking to Ock) was significant. We now know that, somehow, Connors is in control of his alter ego. That little nugget HAS to have some value to Peter, wherever he is (and I’m guessing where he is is buried in his own sub conscience under Otto). Developments in Avenging Spider-Man and issue 700 seem to be hinting that Peter is in there somewhere and swarming hard to pull some strings. Connors HAS to be number one on his radar.
Morbius
MORBIUS -For much the same reason as the above, Peter briefly considered allowing Ock’s goons to free the living vampire. Parker has issues with him right now for sure, but there’s a reason he had become a player at Horizon Labs in recent days, and he played a role in Connors’ recent work as well.
SCARLET SPIDER – For some, Ben Reilly still remains an albatross of the abysmal Spider Clone saga. But recently, he’s been holding his own and gaining a following as a darker, less friendly neighborhood Spider-man. His confrontation with Superior Spider-Man is inevitable. Ad who knows Peter better than Peter’s own clone?
VENOM – This ones a double whammy. Pete’s best friend, Flash Thompson, and the symbiote that loves him. How will both react to a Peter Parker that ain’t quite right?
SILVER SABLE – Thought dead in Doc Ock’s last outing, but no body was recovered – and we all know what THAT means. What has she learned in her time buried in one of Otto’s old bases?
MARY JANE – She’s no dummy. She had it figured out once before. How long before she pieces the clues together?
AUNT MAY – Her ex-husband is in her nephew’s body. Ick.
NORMAN OSBORN – Another inevitable player just for shock value. But Osborn has taken shock value to incredible levels in the past few years. If he plays a role, it won’t be a bit role. I won’t even hazard a guess here how this will play out, just that it will be ugly if he’s in the game. Bottom line is that he’s been silent in Peter’s life since the end of Siege, and it’s time.
JACKAL – I’ve also mentioned this one before – it was not an accident that a lame character like Jackal was pulled out of moth balls recently. My guess is that sub-conscious Parker is going to suddenly have a very keen interest in clones of himself.
MADAME WEB – Remember, she predicted this. How long before she puts it all together?
THE SINISTER THREE – Hydroman, Paste Pot Pete and Scorpion. Spider-Man “killed” Doc Ock while he owed them each a few million bucks for busting him out of prison. They will need to take it out of someone’s hide.
MR FANTASTIC – Dark horse here. Smartest man alive, although probably would be aloof enough not to notice slight variations in Parker’s behavior. However, he IS the leader of the Fantastic Four, of which Spidey is a member (like Eric Clapton to the Beatles). He also has a weird little history with Doc Ock. Anyone remember that storyline? Sue’s second pregnancy during the John Byrne days?
There are a bunch others, or course. Black Cat. The Avengers. The Human Torch. The other third of the Sinister Six (Rhino and Mysterio). The list goes on.
Sure, part of the purpose of this little essay is to show you how smart I am. But more than anything, I wanted to demonstrate why I’m excited about this upcoming story arc. The possibilities are huge and mind boggling. And my bet is, Dan Slott is giggling his little head about what he has in mind.
Gonna be a fun ride!
Now watch Newsarama rip this off when they come out with their own oh-so-witty Top-Ten List list this week. I can’t wait to link to it!!!
Ain’t I a stinker?
Goodguy
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Agreed on The Lizard, but given that Connors was talking about rescuing Ock as he was, I have to wonder if his plan is still valid. It does read like a thick slice of foreshadowing though.
Morbius is another one to watch for sure. After current events I predict he will be brought through his own redemption arc. Will that culminate in his returning Peter Parker to us? Maybe, but the character’s track record for flawless science is more than slightly tarnished.
As for Scarlet Spider, better known as Kaine to those that knew him during the Clone Saga, I have certain reservations. As anti-90s era as I am, as much as I loathe the Clone Saga (frankly I hated it far more than One More Day), I think his solo title is sort of an idealized 90s comic. It takes a lot of what made Marvel in the 90s exciting to readers and casts off the excesses that bogged down stories of that period. To that end I welcome the scenario Goodguy paints above, a confrontation between Kaine and his newly ruthless other self. One place I hope the creative teams do not go – and I can see the temptation to do so as clear as day – would be to transplant the consciousness of Doc Ock into this waiting, nearly identical receptacle once Peter Parker returns, leaving us with a returned Spider-Man and a Superior Scarlet Spider who is now a few metal tentacles away from becoming a new, improved, and vastly more dangerous Doctor Octopus. That’s an appealing end result in some ways, were it not for the fact that Kaine’s solo stories have been largely compelling, if sometimes uneven. Hell, I even enjoyed Minimum Carnage, largely on the strength of the character interplay between Scarlet Spider and Venom.
Venom himself I consider something of a non-issue honestly. That character is gravitating away from the Spider end of the MU lately, a trend that I think suits this new iteration of Venom well.
Silver Sable I think is benched for a while. Mary Jane is a no-brainer, but she has been weirdly clueless thus far (Doc-Spidey addressed her as “woman” recently – you’d think that would have been a major tip right there, I’ve yet to meet someone who tolerated being addressed that way), and I wonder if out of necessity the writers will continue to portray her as being blind to the change.
The Jackal may be a player, but see my comments above regarding Scarlet Spider. Having him show up to convieniently provide a new host body for Parker or Octavius would be even more graceless than loosing Kaine to Doc Ock.
The others I can’t see having a deep involvement, but one you forgot was Carlie Cooper. In #700, Peter-as-Ock directly tells her that he is trapped in Ock’s body, and to prove it says that only she and MJ knows he is really Spider-man. She rather violently rejects this response, but I can’t help but wonder that as events continue to unfold that she might have serious doubts if she made the right call. She’s a smart cookie and easy to see as someone who could identify the issue and find a way to contact Reed Richards, Captain America, or even Daredevil (who Superior is about to cross over with) and lay down a case for something at least being wrong, if not horribly wrong, with Spider-man.
Carlie and Daredevil are good additions to the list for sure. I actually kicked around mentioning Daredevil because of the early crossover and Matt’s built-in lie detector.
So much of it boils down to how this unravels. Seems to me that somebody’s gonna figure this out. Also seems to me that Ock is too darn egotistical to let the world give Peter Parker the credit for his own brilliance – he’s gonna HAVE to tell SOMEONE how Ock won, how Ock is Superior. He can’t help himself.
Case in point: Avenging Spider-Man #15. Ock swims to his underwater lair, which looks like little more than a work desk and a pair of broom closets, because he’s convinced it is far more brilliant than what Horizon has to offer. Otto is so blinded by his own ego that it’s bound to be his undoing. In fact, he’s SO brilliant that he forgot he armed it!
This is what’s cool about comics, my friend. It’s not the tights or the super powers or villains – it’s the characters, the personalities that we have learned to care about. And it’s SO fun to speculate on this one, knowing we’ll be a little bit right, a little bit wrong, and (hopefully) a lot surprised and impressed along the way.
By the way, I don’t think Mary Jane was blind to Spider-Ock’s weird behavior. But seriously, how to you reconcile that kind of weird behavior? Pete’s never acted like that before. The last thing on her mind is going to be, “Oh no! Pete’s mind has been taken over by one of his arch enemies!”
When you act evil, does YOUR wife assume you’ve been taken over by a super villain?
Never mind. Who am I talking to.
Who are you talking to indeed!
Mary Jane has seen a LOT over the run of Spider-man, that’s all. Would she think that Doc Ock is possessing his body? No, probably not, but given her fear of Venom and the changes that the symbiote brought to Peter when he was using it, I would think she would be especially sensitive to prolonged changes in Peter’s behavior and alert someone. I’m actually hoping Slott addresses this sooner rather than later, because the more overtly Doc Ock he is, the more I keep waiting for MJ to engage him – at least ask him what’s bugging him!
You make a good point about Otto’s ego. Even if he can keep his mouth shut about defeating Spidey, I would think he would at least hit a boiling point once one of his inventions are picked up by Horizon Labs and the credit is given to Peter Parker! Octavius has a need for accomplishment, and for recognition – it has been a major trait of his character from his earliest appearances, and has been a theme in the last 100+ issues of Spider-man and his appearance in Iron Man as well. How long before it is insufficient that he be given accolades under what amounts to an alias? I would suggest that the potential for Otto to reveal himself near the end of this whole affair is probable.