Superior Spider-Man Team-Up Special #1 (Marvel)

Via Comic Book Database

writer: Mike Costa

artist: Michael Dialynas

For those of you in the reading audience who aren't familiar with the "Superior Spider-Man" concept (what I call Doctor Spider-Man), it's Dan Slott's extended arc wherein Otto Octavius, the erstwhile and dying Doctor Octopus, swapped bodies with Peter Parker, so that he is now operating as Spider-Man.  To his mind, a superior Spider-Man.  (The early comics repeated this motif ad nauseum.  It was awesome.)

As far as I can tell, the resulting stories left Otto feeling pretty smug.  He went about correcting all the mistakes Peter had made in his life.  (So he was also the Superior Peter Parker.)  But he also realized how much he'd screwed up his own life.  The villain who lost to Spider-Man so spectacularly (heh) so many times had been beaten up so often his body had been reduced to a vegetative state, which was the situation that left him with his most desperate, and successful, gamble.  But he was always on the defensive.  How could the stories present him any other way?  Everyone knows by now when a major superhero is replaced or die, they come back.  Otto Octavius was never going to stay Spider-Man.

So the stories have been pretty interesting.  It's the first time this replacement gimmick has been explored so forthrightly.  For most of the arc's run, the writer was, of course, Slott, who has been the sole Spider-Man writer for a few years now.  (A stark contrast to the "Brand New Day" era that had a whole team of writers who rotated on the semi-weekly series.  This included, incidentally, some of the last Mark Waid material I truly enjoyed.  Dude should write Spidey again.  Kismet.)

Finally, some other writers got to play in the sandbox.  One of them is this issue's Mike Costa.  I love Mike Costa.  I adore Mike Costa.  I want to have Mike Costa's babies.  I physically want to change genders so I can do this.  

Okay, I'm perhaps disturbingly exaggerating.  But you get the point.  His Cobra comics for IDW's G.I. Joe franchise are among my all-time favorites.  I've been waiting years to see acknowledge that the rest of the comic book industry recognized his talent.  DC's New 52 launch in the fall of 2011 saw him get one such shot with Blackhawks, but it kind of seemed that company totally misunderstood what he'd been doing.  So to have seen Costa pop up at Marvel more recently was somehow more encouraging.  Usually, DC does what's right by me and Marvel tends to blunder.  But in this instance, Marvel's best foot was forward.

Besides Doctor Octopus, Costa also has another wild high concept from some recent comics to play with.  When Brian Michael Bendis finally left the world of the Avengers behind (his legacy only happens to be the whole Avengers cinematic universe, aside from a few token elements from the Ultimates), he tackled the X-Men for the first time.  In All-New X-Men he had the radical idea of bringing the young X-Men from the team's origins into the present, one that saw founding member Cyclops fallen into the role of the modern Magneto, a would-be mutant savior who has seemingly forever compromised himself.  Become the villain.

There's also Bruce Banner/Hulk thrown in, but the key thing to understand is that Costa's story involves his understanding of both Doctor Spider-Man and the All-New Original X-Men.  He gets both of them really well.

It's refreshing, because he doesn't write anything like his cerebral, methodical Cobra.  Okay, his deep sense of character certainly dominates. This is exactly what his subjects need.  If he's to do a fairly throwaway story, that has them commenting on each other, Otto barely able to control his arrogance, but proving himself heroic enough to overcome all over again his worse instincts, Young Cyclops getting some perspective from Banner, then this is absolutely the comic that should have resulted.

Not essential.  Once you've read one Superior Spider-Man story you've kind of read them all, and this one doesn't advance it at all.  But it's a worthy commentary.  And it proves Costa can adequately play in another sandbox.  More than adequately.  He proves the equal of both Slott and Bendis.  Not bad for the new kid.