Superior Spider-Man is all the rage right now, with spin-offs and tie-ins and guest-starring everywhere. Who would have thought that putting Dr. Octopus’ mind into the body of Peter Parker would yield such fascinating results? Watching a supervillain attempt superheroics through supervillain methodology – like giant spider-themed robot monsters, elaborate lairs and hordes of slave-bots and minions, not to mention out-and-out murder – has been compelling reading, thanks to writer Dan Slott managing to take an idea that could have blown iup in his face and making it into something weirdly invigorating. It never stops being entertaining when Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man keeps spouting off high-minded big-word condescension that makes him seem more like Nobody’s Antisocial Municipal Spider-Man.
All that said, we know that Peter Parker has to make a triumphant return to his true self at some point, if for no other reason than getting trapped in an old man’s decaying body and dying in it is far too chumpy a way for him to make his final exit from the Marvel Universe. If cross-promotional logic holds any sway, Peter will likely rise again right around the time of the theatrical release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Electro Boogaloo. So how is Slott going to go about it, and will he do it in a way that preserves the hotness that is Superior Spider-Man at the same time? We don’t know, but here are some potential ideas on what could work.
Christopher Yost has had the Jackal skulking around in Avenging Spider-Man/Superior Spider-Man Team-Up, and the easiest, most accessible way to have the best of both worlds might be to have Peter returned to his own body – through Dr. Strange shenanigans in the netherworld where his soul is trapped or some such – and Otto Octavius’ mind dropped into one of the Jackal’s never-ending supply of clones – making it all the more amusingly ironic, given how much Ock complains about the existence of clones as abominations in last week’s “Sibling Rivalry” crossover with Scarlet Spider. Send Ock off to some other city and you get double the Spidey, double the fun.
It could work, but it does have some drawbacks. For one, it’s too obvious. Secondly, it’s redundant, as we’ve already got a spider-clone who’s set up shop in Houston as Scarlet Spider. You might get around that by having the Jackal find some old Otto Octavius DNA and drop him into a clone of his old body, complete with pudginess, jumpsuit and bowl-cut, and everything’s back to normal… but this bodyswap too much of a life-shattering occurrence to just be reset to the status quo without any lasting effect.
As we’ve seen, The Age of Ultron was a pseudo-event series which seems to have existed only to introduce Neil Gaiman’s Angela into the Marvel Universe and leave a massive gaping hole in the space-time continuum for anything Marvel might want to do. It’s likely going to be responsible for the upcoming appearance of Spider-Man 2099 into Otto’s shenanigans (and having Miguel O’Hara become the 616’s main Spider-Man for a while could be awesome, too), so why couldn’t it also shunt an earlier version of Peter Parker into the present day? Pluck him from anywhere in time, maybe from before the first clone story, or preferably from two days before the body switch or something like that, and let him have a knock-down drag-out with his mind-thief to prove who’s the better Peter Parker and the superior Spider-Man – two very different concepts. This could also allow for keeping the best of both worlds, as Doc Ock can remain alive, young and spry while allowing Peter to resume his life. Maybe Otto can re-up his old name and get back to being Octopus-themed, too, just so it’s not another spider-knock-off running around.
Tying into the AoU effect is the fact that Galactus has sauntered over to the Ultimate Comics Universe, which will cause a Cataclysm in which all Ultimate books are canceled and replaced with Cataclysm-based miniseries… and we don’t know for sure what will happen after that. Could be the end of the Ultimate Universe, could be that the Ultimate Universe becomes a new ‘Counter-Earth’ on the other side of the sun to replace the one that everyone forgot is already there thanks to Franklin Richards and Heroes Reborn and all of that. We do know, though, that Miles Morales, the current Ultimate Spider-Man after the death of young Peter Parker, will be making a trip to the 616, where he’s met the adult Peter Parker, thanks to the crossover story Spider-Men.
Given all the hype around the creation of Miles Morales as a black Latino Spider-Man (a major hero mantle being taken up by a not-white-guy for once), one assumes that if anybody survives the end of the Ultimate Universe, it will be him. He could fit in any number of ways, although it’s tricky to imagine exactly how he’ll make the transition without losing a bit of oomph – Comics Alliance has a good piece on that. He could run into Superior Spider-Man and be the one to push the ‘hey, this isn’t the normal guy’ suspicion over the edge, and start the full-on backlash to find out the truth. He could step into the role of Spider-Man after seeing how the current guy is doing it, and have a competition as to who is the better Spider-Man, or he could take over the role as New York’s main Spider-Man for a while once he finds a way to defeat Otto and before Peter returns, although that might feel as though Peter’s getting cheated out of the righteous beatdown he owes Ock for stealing his life and body. Miles could be instrumental in bringing Peter back somehow, but after Ock is beaten, it’s entirely possible that Peter will be shellshocked enough to not want to resume the role of Spider-Man right away, since he’ll have an immense amount of damage to repair in his personal life thanks to Otto’s disdain for it. Thus, Miles Morales gets to fill in for as long as it sells well.
It also bears mentioning that before the Ultimate Universe, there was Marvel Comics 2, an attempt to tell stories in the future of the current Marvel universe, but not as far as 2099. Instead, we saw an older, injured and retired Peter Parker and Mary Jane trying to mentor their daughter May “Mayday” Parker in the ways of being Spider-Girl. Thanks to AoU, she’s fair game to show up as well. Maybe she and Miles and Kaine and Miguel and Flash Thompson’s Venom and Spider-Woman, there’ll be a whole Spider-Family forming around Peter. Or the memory of Peter if they actually decide not to bring him back.
Perhaps the whole movie-tie-in publicity stunt will feel too obvious and forced, and maybe that means they won’t end Superior Spider-Man when we expect them to… or maybe not at all. Maybe they’re avoiding the mistakes of the Clone Saga simply by not trying to claim that this will be the new Peter Parker forever… but doing that anyway to see how long fans will go along with it. We had 50 years of Peter Parker as The Amazing Spider-Man, so maybe Otto can get a few years under his belt as well. Peter may remain dead as long as Captain America did. Or as long as Colossus did. Or as long as Norman Osborn did.
The trouble with that is it leaves the expectation there. There will always be that sense of ‘okay, okay, when is Peter coming back?’ and the longer that gets drawn out, the more impatient some people will get no matter how much they’re enjoying the current storyline. This just won’t happen. You’ve gotta eventually be able to buy a Spider-Man book and get Spider-Man in it – the one we’ve all got the cultural shorthand with. If Peter Parker’s superhero origin wasn’t so perfect, maybe they could get away with this, but as it stands, probably not. That’s not to say they won’t try it anyway.
While Otto Octavius is maddeningly egotistical and prone to fits of antipathy writ large, we’ve seen moments of self-awareness poke through his insistence upon becoming The Superior Spider-Man. He quickly heaps rationalizations and diversions on those moments, but they are there. As dark and twisted as it began, his life as Spider-Man is still his journey to becoming a hero – trying to save a world he once wanted to murder in its entirety. The apex of that arc would have to be the realization that what he did was evil from the outset, and the only way to truly be a superior hero is to put right what he did wrong – something Peter Parker never did with his negligence that led to the death of his Uncle Ben. He could find a way to restore Peter Parker himself.
Of course, this will have to come after having that realization beaten into him, because the Avengers and all of Peter’s friends will have been played for suckers for too long, and they need to have their redeeming moments. His ex-girlfriends are starting to suss out the case, but the Avengers have been stymied twice – once for not having smart enough people on hand, and another by being misdirected by a threat beneath their notice, so they just keep thinking “well, I guess Peter’s just being a dick lately.” There’s only so long Earth’s Mightiest Heroes can be none the wiser.
Once upon a time, Kaine murdered Otto Octavius during the whole Clone Saga mess, and he was brought back thanks to some help from The Hand, the secret spooky ninja cult that’s pretty big on black magic stuff like that – see also, Elektra. Considering the fact that Superior Spider-Man just wiped Shadowland off the map, they will be primed to find a way to strike back at him, and reanimating one of his oldest foes might make sense for them. This time, however, when they revive Dr. Octopus’ dead old body once again – perhaps restoring it to its youth in the process – it will be brought back with Peter Parker’s mind intact, because that’s who was in the body when it died. With Peter in a young, able body sporting four mega tentacles, he’ll be able to put up a much better fight than he did in Amazing Spider-Man #700, and he’ll be in a better position to make that switchback happen for reals. Of course, being resurrected by The Hand will come with some drawbacks – and some bad mystical mojo will start going down. Good gravy, this could even bring Mephisto back in the picture, and you know bad things happen when he mucks around in Spider-Man’s life.
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So, there are six quick options. Surely, you can think of more, and maybe Slott, Yost and their crew of creators have come up with something completely different and not even close to these ideas. What would you like to see?
