Inferior Octopus/Superior Goblin Part 2: Killing Spidey

In this instalment I’ll be dissecting perhaps Otto’s greatest feat in Superior: His (alleged) murder of Spider-Man.

As discussed last time, through the ‘mind swap’ Otto commandeered Peter Parker’s healthy body whilst Peter was left in Otto’s old and dying body.

But lets add some more context.

Due to the radioactive accident that first turned him into Doctor Octopus, Otto Octavius’ body was unable to recover from the cumulative head injures he’d suffered during his criminal career. As such his body was effectively crippled and growing ever emaciated. When he learned all this in ASM #600 he had only 12-18 months to live. By the time he hijacked Peter’s body (ASM #697-698) he was on his very last legs with about a day to live, even with medical intervention.

It was Peter’s mind that was trapped within Otto’s body when it finally gave out. And so Doc Ock finally killed Spider-Man, a win that no other villain (including Norman Osborn) had ever accomplished…

…Right…?

There is a lot to say on this point.

For starters Spider-Man has in fact literally died before. A cosmically empowered Doctor Doom murdered him and a host of other heroes in Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars #11, inadvertently reviving them in the next issue. Spidey at least arguably died in Spider-Man #17, during which he had an encounter with Death and her would be lover Thanos. Due to his body failing along with injuries he sustained fighting Morlun, he died in Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-man #3; consequently returning to life in ASM #527.

And this is to say nothing of instances where he would  have died if not for a villain deciding otherwise. Perhaps the most famous example is in Web of Spider-Man #31 where Kraven the Hunter traps and shoots him. His shot administered a drug that simulated death but they very easily could have been real bullets had the Hunter desired. In fact What If…v2 #17 explores that very possibility. In Spectacular Spider-Man #242 the Chameleon successfully renders Spider-Man unconscious and could easily have taken his life, instead opting to mentally torment him. In the same run, Kraven’s son (Alyosha Kravinoff) repeated his father’s feat by dulling Spider-Man’s senses and shooting him. Once again this was merely a drug but had they been real bullets Spider-Man would have died.

And then there is Norman Osborn. Following his ‘death’ in ASM #122 Norman Osborn successfully established a criminal organization of his own in Europe and a means of keeping tabs on Peter’s activities. With these resources, his ability to remove Peter’s Spider-Sense (see Part 1), and his knowledge of Peter’s true identity, Norman could easily have murdered Peter in his sleep. We see in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #75 that Norman even has chemicals that simply drain Peter’s strength temporarily.

So Norman could  have killed Spider-Man whenever he wanted. It just wasn’t the be all and end all of his goals as far as their rivalry was concerned. Norman never simply wanted to take Spider-Man’s life; he wanted to destroy  him first. This is first alluded to way back in ASM #39.

In Superior Spider-Man Team-Up #11 (an untold tale set pre-Clone Saga) Norman directly admits this fact to Otto himself.

That story was published towards the very, very end of the Superior storyline, so perhaps it’s a little unfair to count it. However, Norman also directly stated these desires in PPSM #75.

And as further food for thought, in Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #12 Norman sent Peter a letter explaining he actually enjoyed their duels, and that they gave him a certain sense of fulfilment.

So for most of his criminal career, Norman never wanted to simply take Peter’s life even though he absolutely could have.

But for the sake of argument let’s say Spider-Man had never even come close to dying before. Let’s say Norman and every other villain did want to simply kill him, just never managing to pull it off.

Within that context, wasn’t Otto’s murder of Spider-Man demonstrative of his superiority over all the web-slinger’s other foes?

No, it absolutely wasn’t.

Because Otto never  killed Spider-Man during the Superior storyline.

I’m not splitting hairs over the definition of ‘murder’ or ‘killing’. * Rather it’s simply a matter of understanding how exactly Otto facilitated the ‘mind-swap’.

The main explanation comes from ASM #699 when Peter accesses Otto’s memories. From them he learns that his repeated use of Otto’s control helmet (introduced in ASM #600) gave Otto access to his brain. With this access he was able to map out Peter’s brain and with his mentally controlled golden Octobot rewrite it with his own brain patterns whilst simultaneously re-writing his own brain with Peter’s brain patterns.

If you know your Marvel history you’d be aware someone’s ‘brain patterns’ are not actually their specific mind. It is simply a copy  of their mind. Classic Avengers comic books actually dive into this a lot. When Hank Pym created Ultron he based its A.I. upon his own brain patterns. Similarly when Ultron created the Vision he partially based his neural processor upon the brain patterns of Simon Williams/Wonder Man’s.

In both cases Ultron and Vision are clearly separate entities to both Hank Pym and Wonder Man respectively.

Hopefully this analogy will make things clearer.

Imagine the human brain as a computer hard drive and the mind as the data on the hard drive.

What Otto did was create a back up copy of his mind and another of Peter’s mind, saving both onto a ‘USB’ (the golden Octo-bot).  He then uploaded the backup of his mind onto Peter’s brain (‘overwriting’ Peter’s original mind). Simultaneously he uploaded the backup of Peter’s mind onto his own brain (overwriting his original mind).

However, it might be argued that this is an issue of semantics. Brain patterns, mind-swaps, etc. it’s all made up science after all. You could easily argue Peter was just using the wrong terminology in ASM #699.

Well, that argument falls apart when we examine Slott’s stories beyond ASM #700.

The biggest giveaway is the mere presence of ‘Ghost Peter’ during the course of the Superior Spider-Man on-going. ‘Ghost Peter’ is stated to be a manifestation of Peter’s memories, not a literal ghost.

If Peter and Otto had truly swapped their minds then how could Peter have died in ASM #700 but still been in his own body (albeit in the backseat) during Superior #1-30?

There is plenty of other proof within Slott’s run, but the definitive evidence was provided in Superior #9 and ASM v4 #20; the latter being part of the ‘Clone Conspiracy’ storyline.

In the former issue Otto prepares to erase Peter’s memories in order to expunge Ghost Peter. He states explicitly that ‘a set of his [Peter’s] memories’ existed in the golden Octo-bot due to Peter’s attempt to regain his body in ASM #700.

In the latter issue, the Jackal/Ben Reilly clones Doc Ock from the corpse of his old body. A further copy of Otto’s mind created during Spider-Verse tried to control this newly cloned body.

However, upon accessing it’s brain it discovered a copy of Peter Parker’s mind who’s last memory was of dying in ASM #700.

At the time Peter Parker was alive and well, in control of his old body. This means that the Parker mind within Otto’s clone body must have been a copy of Peter’s own mind, and by extension the mind that had been in Otto’s original body was also copy of Peter’s.

So the Otto Octavius who was in control of Peter’s body from ASM #698-Superior #30 in truth was never the real Doc Ock. And the Peter Parker who died in Otto’s decrepit body in ASM #700 was never the real Spider-Man.

In other words Doc Ock never killed Spider-Man.

But maybe we could still argue this counts as some kind of win in Otto’s favour. He never killed Spider-Man, but he still killed a copy of Spider-Man’s mind. That’s still a pretty impressive feat isn’t it?

What other Spider-Man foe has ever accomplished that?

Well, Norman Osborn actually

He too killed a copy of Peter’s mind. It just happened to also be living in a copy of Peter’s body at the time and went by the name Ben Reilly.

In PPSM #75 Norman impaled Ben with his Goblin glider, ending his life.

Ben wasn’t exactly fighting fit at the time, but neither was the copy of Peter inside Otto’s weakened dying body. He was struggling extremely hard to not let death take him during the fight and was also fighting in a body he had very little fighting experience in.

In contrast, Ben Reilly was in command of his own body that he had plenty of fighting experience in. And his injuries were predominantly the result of Norman personally beating him up.

Like part 1 I ask you what’s honestly more impressive?

a)     A copy of the hero’s mind, trapped in a weakened body they aren’t used to, running out of time whilst the villain stands triumphant over them

Or

b)     The villain beating up a copy of the hero’s mind and body, who’s got years of fighting experience in that body, and then serving a finishing blow**

The answer is pretty obvious.

*Technically speaking you could argue that Otto’s old body died regardless of anything Otto as Spider-Man did to it. Its not exactly clear cut if the single Spidey powered punch Otto dealt was the critical hit that did in ‘Peter’. For myself I always presumed Otto’s body just ran out of time.

**And surely Norman also deserves some ‘bonus points’ considering the real Spider-Man witnessed Ben’s death and was clearly saddened by it?