During and after Superior fans and creators (including Dan Slott himself) have asserted that the storyline positioned Doc Ock as Spidey’s greatest enemy; even greater than Norman Osborn. But does that assertion hold up to scrutiny?
For decades Spider-Fans have debated whether Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin and Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus deserves the crown of Spider-Man’s Biggest Bad.
There is A LOT that can be unpacked regardless of whose side you are on.
However, my intent with these articles is to debunk the notion that Superior Spider-Man definitely proved Otto the winner.
Every instalment I shall be dissecting something from Superior often cited in favour of Otto. And where appropriate I shall be comparing it to relevant events from Norman’s history.
In this first part we’ll examine Otto successfully stealing Peter’s body.
In Amazing Spider-Man #698 readers were shocked to discover that Doctor Octopus had gained control of Spider-Man’s body. Meanwhile Peter Parker was trapped in the severely handicapped and dying body of Otto Octavius.
Surely this feat alone makes the case for Otto’s superior intellect and skill over Osborn?
Well it would…if Otto hadn’t gotten extremely lucky.
In ASM #695 a device controlled by Tiberius Stone (a deceitful colleague of Peter’s) inadvertently caused Peter’s Spider-Sense to go into overdrive. When the story concluded in issue #697 Peter was actively ignoring his Spider-Sense.
It was at this point that Otto struck.
In the preceding months Ock had mapped out Peter’s brain patterns in preparation for his attempt at hijacking his body. Mentally controlling a golden Octo-bot containing his own brain patterns, Otto attached it to Peter’s head and overwrote the wall-crawler’s brain. Instead of his own brain patterns, Peter’s brain now contained Otto’s. Simultaneously Ock re-wrote his own brain.
The end result was the mind of Otto Octavius in the body of Peter Parker and vice-versa. All this was elaborated in ASM #699.
Had Doc Ock struck the day before or after his last ditch scheme would’ve failed, ending in his own death.
Not exactly a feat of evil genius is it?
Otto has the insanely good fortune of being positioned at exactly the right place at exactly the right time on the one day Spider-Man’s happened to be ignoring the one thing that was near guaranteed to have protected him.
Honestly, I have no idea what Otto’s original plan even was. He had no way of knowing Peter’s Spider-Sense was going to be malfunctioning when he initiated his scheme. If not for fate his efforts would’ve come to nothing. Hardly worthy of the ‘Master Planner’ moniker, right?
Otto’s victory was also heavily contingent upon Peter’s own stupidity. In ASM #698 ‘Otto’ (really Peter) was in contact with Captain America, Wolverine, Spider-Woman and Hawkeye. It was through them that he asked for ‘Peter’ (really Otto) to come talk to him.
These Avengers knew Peter’s secret identity. Two of them had even lived with him in Avengers Tower during J. Michael Straczynski’s run on ASM. He’d had years of shared experiences with all of them. All Peter had to do was tell them the truth and then mention something only he would have known about. He could have reminded Captain America of the time he introduced him to Mary Jane in ASM v2 #50. He could have brought up his and Logan’s encounter in Berlin during Spider-Man vs. Wolverine. He could have mentioned the time when he, MJ and Aunt May first moved into the Avengers HQ.
And yet Peter never even considered this before ASM #698. And when he does consider it in ASM #699 he dismisses the idea because the Avengers wouldn’t believe him. This is ridiculous considering the number of similar situations that have occurred in the Marvel Universe. Doctor Doom swapped bodies with Reed Richards Fantastic Four #10, a classic tale from the most iconic FF run ever.
Wolverine bore witnessed to Emma Frost forcibly swapping bodies with Storm in Uncanny X-Men #151-152, part of the iconic Chris Claremont run on the title.
Much later Wolverine witnessed yet another notable body swap within the X-Men ranks. This incident involved the villainess Cassandra Nova placing her mind in the body of X-Men founder Charles Xavier, whilst Xavier was left trapped in her own body.
With the element of surprise, the leadership of Captain America and the muscle of the Avengers (even just those four), Doc Ock would’ve been unlikely to escape. Meaning Peter would likely have been able to reacquire his body and Otto would’ve lost.
On the other hand though, some of Norman Osborn’s schemes have been helped along by luck but very rarely actively relied upon them. In ASM #39 Norman scored the greatest victory any villain had landed at the time by learning Spidey’s true identity.
This wasn’t coincidence and it was not helped along by luck. Norman’s plan was to stage a stick up somewhere that’d be sure to grab Spider-Man’s attention. His goons would then administer a gas that would dampen all his senses, including his Spider-Sense. Then the Goblin would simply follow him from a far, observe him out of costume and use his newfound knowledge to strike.
That’s a pretty ambitious and logical plan. And you know what? It 100% worked!
The only real x-factor was whether or not Spidey would be exposed to the chemical gas. It could be argued on this front Norman got lucky. But honestly, no battle plan is fool proof and always involves some degree of risk. Had gas failed to make direct contact with Peter it is possible it might still have done the job by simply being in the air near or around him. Even if that’s a stretch, Norman could very easily have just tried again. Here are numerous ways he could’ve exposed Spidey to the gas even during the battle we see in ASM #39. He didn’t need the stars to align just perfectly for his scheme to work.
This was similarly the case in the ‘Revenge of the Green Goblin’ storyline from 2000. At the time Mary Jane was believed dead making Peter vulnerable. Norman thus chose this time to strike, but his plan was never contingent upon that. This plan entailed disabling Peter’s Spider-Sense once again and then slipping him drugs and a hypnotic device, disguised as toothpaste and a CD respectively.
He followed up by luring Peter into a trap, capturing him and physically/mentally torturing him for weeks. His ultimate goal was to convert Peter to ‘the dark side’ and have him accept Norman as his father.
True, in both cases Norman’s endgames failed. In the former his own hubris was his undoing. And in the latter Peter’s own inner strength narrowly saved his soul.
Nevertheless, what is honestly more impressive?
a) A last resort plan that would’ve definitely failed were it not for the greatest of luck and the (highly uncharacteristic) stupidity of your opponent.
Or
b) One of many schemes that were perfectly sound, had a high probability of success, and worked like clockwork up until the very, very, very last minute.
Perhaps my point would be clearer with short analogy.
Who is the superior sprinter?
The person who came first the day the other sprinters happened to be unwell?
Or the person who came second the day the other sprinters were in top shape?
In both cases, it’s obviously the latter.
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At this point in Marvel history, no established superhero that has their mind swapped with a villain should ever think “I can’t go to these other heroes, they won’t believe me!” This is as common as two new heroes meeting for the first time and fighting each other over a misunderstanding.
Your overview reminds me of criticisms of Captain America; Civil War, in which Zemo’s plan depended to a ridiculous level on sheer dumb luck, and all the characters acting stupid. Like, how did Zemo even get into the holding facility where they had Bucky? Why would the authorities assume that some rando guy in a ball cap and long brown hair was definitely Bucky? For that matter, how did an explosives-laden truck get anywhere near the U.N. conference center? In what universe would Steve Rogers, in full CA uniform, attack and beat on innocent German police? “Superior Spider-Man” was just like that. It had enough juice to keep it rolling as a really elaborate What If? story, but was marred by miles of lazy thinking.
@William Sinclair. I don’t agree about Otto’s entertainment value/design/personality being unmatchable, but only because that’s a case of personal taste for the most part. It boils down to what flavour of foe you enjoy. A lot of people clearly adore Carnage’s OTT personality. Venom’s design is obviously very appealing given how merchandised he is.
I do agree with everything else you wrote though. It’s just not a competition when you take everything Norman has done into account.
What’s ironic is that it was Slott himself who established Peter’s nonchalance over what Otto did to him. I agree he did Superior partially to place Otto as numero uno but his own follow up totally undermined that. In contrast every moment of melancholy connected to Gwen Stacy is directly attributable to Norman’s hand.
I also agree about the plot armour. I will sort of be touching upon that in future instalments. It should be noticed that the plot armour didn’t stop after Superior either. Among other moments, Otto was deemed an unworthy meal for the Inheritors in Spider-Geddon because his (then current) body was 50% Peter’s DNA and 50% his own. However that’d render him genetically the son of Peter and Otto and various Spider-Totems were descendants of Peter’s too.
Doc Ock is my favourite Spider-Man villain bar none, I don’t think another villain in the rogues gallery can match him when it comes to the sheer entertainment value of his design and personality. However, I’ve never once thought of him as being on Norman’s level as Spider-Man’s archenemy, the sheer amount of crap Norman has put Peter through completely outclasses anything Otto has managed to do. At the end of the day, Otto just wasn’t designed to be Spider-Man’s greatest enemy on a personal level, he was designed as an immensely intelligent mad scientist with dreams of conquering the world, and he stayed that way semi-consistently until Superior Spider-Man came along. The Green Goblin did start out as a wacky trickster character with a fun halloween theme, but he’s since matured and evolved into the villain who can hurt Peter in ways no other villain can. I get the impression that Slott really wanted to make Otto into the kind of villain Norman is, and ‘top’ Norman by making him literally take over Peter’s life, but in the end, the events of Superior Spider-Man didn’t end up affecting Peter in the same way Norman’s worst schemes did, Peter got over it so easily that he seems to have been more inconvenienced by the whole thing than anything else. It now feels like a very brief victory on Otto’s part, one that, as this article points out, was achieved entirely by luck. During the story-line in general, Otto rarely came across as intelligent, it felt like he had heavy plot armour on, as everyone lost 1000 IQ points just to allow the title to continue.