Quick Hits: Doctor Spider-Man (Marvel)

As everyone knows by now, one of the biggest comic book stories at the close of 2012 was Doctor Octopus switching minds with Peter Parker and thus becoming Spider-Man, and obnoxiously continually plugging the name of the new series that would replace the long-running Amazing Spider-Man.

All of this began in Amazing Spider-Man #698, in which the switch actually occurred.  I finally picked up a copy at Barnes & Noble, because this story for better or worse is a big deal.  It's Amazing Spider-Man #700, however, that everyone latched onto, an oversized celebration that forced Otto Octavius to relive Peter's greatest moments, the ones that helped shape his life, and therefore made Doc Ock realize what a complete joke his criminal career had been, thereby making the transition into Spider-Man not just about being his own worst enemy but a curious kind of redemption.

Avenging Spider-Man #15.1 will probably be overlooked by just about everyone forever, but it's a nice transitional meditation on the whole affair, and I'm glad it was available when I finally decided I cared and everything else wasn't.  

Superior Spider-Man #1, meanwhile, is pretty much exactly what you'd expect.  Otto isn't quite as benevolent as Peter's Wonderful Life might have led readers to believe, but most readers weren't really paying attention to the details, and neither was writer Dan Slott, who appears to be as conflicted by the whole story as his lead character.  On the one hand he's had to acknowledge for impatient and bothered readers that this is all temporary, and on the other he's had to pretend that it is.  In the meantime it's all a game of trying to exploit it to the best possible degree.  Slott calls this the biggest and best story he's ever wanted to tell, and in a lot of ways it is.  It was pretty awesome when Sylar and Nathan Petrelli did it in the fourth season of Heroes, too.  

Doctor Spider-Man really exists because of the Brand New Day era, where everything old was made new again, which somehow left dear Otto on the verge of death for years, constantly attempting one last desperate ploy after another.  Slott himself, once he launched his Big Time era, seemed to leave Otto out of his plans, and now here he is, in the middle of the biggest plan of them all.  All pretty shocking for an iconic villain who starred in the most popular of the Spider-Man movies.

Everyone knows that Peter will get his body back.  Will Otto have changed at all when he's evicted from his superior footing?  Will he even survive?  Only time will tell.  Fascinating stuff told tolerably well in the meantime...