After knocking socks off with the tremendous Spider-Man 2099 arc (which demands a new series of its own, Marvel) while also giving us the first real hint of an eventual Peter Parker return, Dan Slott uses Superior Spider-Man #20 to remind us that Otto Octavius is still very much in the driver’s seat, even as he goes about the business of changing Peter’s life. How? By clocking the Black Cat square in the face.
This is a drastic change in the relationship between Felicia Hardy and Peter Parker. Once lovers, usually friends, occasionally jerks, there’s a rhythm to the way they would interact, a push and pull, back and forth which allowed Felicia to slink around the ever-flabbergastable Peter, while he eventually drew out her conscience. The former Dr. Octopus, however, has none of that history with her, and he’s not one to beat around the bush, so to speak. So when a Black Cat robbery interrupts his cross-town trip to date his science tutor, Ms. Marconi, there is no song and dance. He stops just long enough to knock one of her teeth out with a sucker punch and web her up for the police before taking off again to make for an impressively romantic dinner with Anna-Maria. A radical redefinition of the Spider-Cat relationship in the span of two angry, heartless pages that will leave him with a much nastier, vengeful Black Cat to deal with in the future.
Otto is still going about remaking Peter’s life. With Horizon Labs gone, he’s actually planning to launch Parker Industries, and he gets a loan from his uncle-in-law John Jameson, his Aunt May and even his Horizon colleague Sajani Jaffrey to keep it all above board – and away from his secret Doc Ock bank accounts he’s using to fund his Spider Island Army. Accounts that have been uncovered by Carlie Cooper, the one woman who knows about and is trying to prove the Freaky Friday mindswitch, and accounts that she plans to bring to the attention of the Avengers. That’s not the only threat, though – Parker Industries hinges on Peter finally getting his doctorate, and while presenting his thesis, everything threatens to be unraveled when his teacher, Don “The Schnoz” Lamaze, calls him on the fact that he’s apparently plagiarizing the work of Dr. Otto Octavius – which Peter has no means to deny. Can the huge risk he’s taken with Parker Industries fail before it begins if Lamaze gets him expelled and ruins his reputation?
Also in this issue, we flashback to Madame Web predicting that “all the spiders will die” (and considering Venom and Scarlet Spider have been canceled, this seems to be coming to pass already – what that means for Miguel O’Hara has yet to be seen), and then a heavyset woman emerging from a coma, traumatized at the news of the “death” of Otto Octavius. It turns out she was in love with him, and she also happens to be the true identity of the virtual-reality powerhouse known as Stunner. She’s out to get revenge on Spider-Man for killing Dr. Octopus, unaware that Otto lives on in Spidey’s body.
Giuseppe Camuncoli’s art is solid as usual, and Slott continues to make this book goddamned fascinating, constantly reordering and redefining Spider-Man’s universe – or ‘undoing the web,’ as Jessica Carpenter puts it – by shifting the man at the center of it to his absolute archenemy. Make no mistake, the Green Goblin has been displaced as Spider-Man’s worst foe. Dr. Octopus has now earned that honor in spades. The debate will rage that the death of Gwen Stacy tops anything Otto has done so far, but Otto has killed Spider-Man himself, taken over his body and destroyed nearly all his relationships, and it’s more than likely that somebody close to Peter is going to die before the dust settles. There’s nothing the new Goblin Kingpin of Crime can do to best Doc Ock in this competition.
Or is there?
