Here we go.
After the last issue of Superior Spider-Man, we learned that Otto Octavius is making it a point to go his own way, far removed from the tried and true methods Peter Parker had when wearing the webs. We’ve seen him kill. We’ve seen him savage. We’ve seen him callous and arrogant. Then we saw him blackmail the mayor of New York City in order to get a free island headquarters, and we’ve seen him order up some minions and a brand new costume.
Now, in Superior Spider-Man #14, we find out just what Ock is planning to do with these new resources – an all out war on crime. His target now – the eyesore of evil in Hell’s Kitchen known as Shadowland. Apparently, Ock has been taking down the heads of crime families left and right overt he span of a few days, and even when it comes to the Kingpin of Crime Wilson Fisk and his cabal of Hand ninjas, expediency is the name of the day. Well, that and regicide, as he so eloquently puts it when he shows up at Fisk’s front door with a horde of minions (Spiderlings!) and giant mechanical spider-bots (Arachnaughts! ARACHNAUGHTS!) with intent to wipe Shadowland out and kill the Kingpin and his pet Hobgoblin in one fell swoop.
Say what you will about missing Peter Parker, but there’s something viscerally awesome about Spider-Man barking out orders to his Spider-Army like a hardassed field general before wading into the fray himself to mete out justice to a longstanding pillar of villainy. The new duds are slick, by the by, complete with a backpack that gives him four extra retractable limbs – reminiscent of both his Dr. Octopus days and Peter’s Iron Spider tech. I will nonetheless miss the previous look, where Octo-goggles were subtly inserted into the classic big white eyes of the Spider-mask.
The kick of the issue – if it wasn’t kick enough watching Kingpin have to resort to the killing of Smedley Kornfeld, a genetically modified and generally clueless body double of his on the payroll specifically to allow Fisk to fake his death when he needed to – is that there’s a heretofore unknown chink in the armor of superiority around our new Spider-Man. It seems the new Green Goblin (who may be the old Goblin for all we know at this point) somehow is able to operate in plain sight of Spidey’s hordes of surveillance bots and not register at all. A Goblin Protocol is in effect, and it seems the “Goblin King” is now the “Goblin Kingpin of Crime,” as Spider-Man has wiped out all his competition and doesn’t seem to know he exists.
I don’t care what anybody says – I am loving Dan Slott’s Superior Spider-Man. This is a singular era in Spider-History that I’m glad to be on board for. We’ve had 50 years of Parker and I’m sure we’ll have 50 more once this is over. To be fair, my first regular readership of Spider-Man fell during the Clone Saga, so I’m not inherently opposed to the idea of other people slinging the webs. I liked Ben Reilly. I like Kaine as the Scarlet Spider. I like Flash Thompson as Venom, and somehow, I like Otto Octavius as the Big Spider On Campus. And with Humberto Ramos and his wildly kinetic pencils filling this book with a vibrant energy, there’s nothing not to like – aside from the notion that maybe the new Spidey is punking out veteran villains like the Kingpin a little too easily – but then again, there’s no way even Fisk could’ve seen a Spider-Army coming.
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say this book is actually superior to the ol’ Amazing Spider-Man, but it’s relentlessly fascinating entertainment. Our familiarity with the characters has been turned on its ear, or maybe dropped on its head, and there’s a sense that all bets are off, and we have no idea where this is going (beyond, of course, the likely return of Peter Parker in time with the movie sequel next year). Imagine what happens if the Goblin turns out to be Harry Osborn again, and Spider-Man straight-up kills him without hesitation, because Ock couldn’t care less about Peter’s friendship. Or maybe this will turn out to be Gabriel O’Hara, the Goblin 2099, and that’s why Spider-Man 2099 is going to come into town thanks to the Age of Ultron effect.
No idea, man. And that’s exciting.
