Last week’s Superior Spider-Man #9 is par for the course in maintaining and promoting that controversy; even the very solicitation of the tile promised readers that after reading this issue, they would be even “angrier” than they were after reading Amazing Spider-Man #700. Maybe that’s because the outcomes of both stories are almost the same: Peter fights Doc Ock to get his body back, and Doc Ock defeats and kills Peter Parker. The difference is that this time, Peter and Doc Ock’s battle literally occurs within each others minds, and the Peter who dies this time around is “Ghost Peter,” the remnants of Peter Parker that still resided in his body who could only float around and watch (and be very annoying in the process) how Doc Ock was screwing up his life and reputation.
To be brutally honest--Peter losing to Doc Ock yet again shouldn’t have come to a surprise to anyone. Not only are there subplots still in place that are dependent upon Doc Ock pretending Spider-Man, but Marvel’s own promotional material and solicitations for future issues didn’t exactly obscure the fact that Doc Ock was still in the driver’s seat. To those who are upset over the fact that Peter Parker was killed yet again and, if you believe the hype from Marvel, is never coming back (despite comics being a medium notorious for bringing characters back from the dead), then with all due respect your anger is misplaced, although perfectly understandable. Rather, if you want to get upset about this issue, then I recommend focusing it on how Peter was portrayed in his supposedly "for real" last moments.
To understand what I mean, you have to go back an issue earlier to Superior Spider-Man #8. In that issue, Doc Ock learns about an “anomaly” in his brain patterns which, readers know to be Ghost Peter. However, to get more conclusive results, Doc Ock has to retrieve his "neurolitic scanner," which had been stolen by the doctor-turned-vigilante Cardiac in order to operate on a little girl with brain damage. Doc Ock is able to track down and break into his secret underground medical care facility, where we then get the following scene:
Superior Spider-Man #8, p. 14 |
Superior Spider-Man #8 p.17 |
Which leads us right into Superior Spider-Man #9, in which both Peter and Doc Ock essentially have a “winner take all” battle literally within their own minds. And for most of the comic, it’s absolutely spectacular. The gorgeous and stellar imagery by artist Ryan Stegman; Peter summoning mental projections of his loved ones past and present, while Doc Ock counters with projections of all of Spidey’s rogues gallery; the clever usage of in-jokes from past Spider-Man history; the philosophical debate over what defines a hero; the despair Peter feels as his memories are wiped away as each manifestation of his supporting cast is “slain” before his eyes, including Uncle Ben--and his failure to even recall their name--all of it is shaping to be the best issue of Superior Spider-Man Dan Slott has penned to date.
And then, this happens:
Superior Spider-Man #9, p.18 |
That’s right--Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel's flagship character and the guy we've been told for 50+ years is "the hero who could be you," admitted that he was so desperate and afraid of Doc Ock, that he was willing to risk the life of an brain-damaged, helpless and innocent little girl just to save his own skin.
Now some of you will be quick to point out that, technically, this is not the real Peter Parker. At the beginning of the issue, Doc Ock observes that “Ghost Peter” is really just Peter’s memories that Doc Ock decided to keep in order to reference and better pull off his deception, and that somehow, these memories have gained self-awareness and thus only think they are the real Peter. Which also blunts some of the earlier criticism that Slott brought Peter back too soon after his death. Unfortunately, Doc Ock also states in this issue that the nature of “Ghost Peter” proves that people “really are the sum of their experiences,” which means that even though “Ghost Peter” is, for lack of a better phrase, another Spider-Man clone, he might as well be Peter Parker. Thus the implication is that everything “Ghost Peter” did is what the real Peter Parker would’ve done.
Also, it’s evident that Doc Ock is exploiting Peter’s tendency to blame and doubt himself as a means of bullying him into submission. His chastisement of Peter isn’t just throwing stones in a glass house--it’s an avalanche of giant boulders plowing through a glass suburb. After all, it’s not as if Doc Ock was the only person who could’ve performed the operation, especially since Cardiac (who is a licensed doctor) is also in the operating room. Not to mention that the little girl was only hospitalized to begin with because of Doc Ock, nor did Doc Ock consider the little girl’s safety and welfare when he was initially so hell-bent on getting back his scanner. (Come to think of it, when has Doc Ock ever cared about the safety and welfare of children before Superior Spider-Man?)
Superior Spider-Man #9, p. 16 |
But are we expected to believe that this also means that Peter, after all his years as Spider-Man, would be the kind of person who, when his back is up against the wall, be capable of, let alone even think about, risking the life a child if it meant saving himself? The answer, according to this issue and its creators, is an unequivocal yes.
Also, in this particular instance, this wasn’t just an instance of Peter “having a moment” and then “shutting it down;” the page from issue #8 coupled with the one from issue #9 shows that Peter was actually in the process of doing the wrong thing and that it was Doc Ock shutting him down through his sheer force of will. The intention may have tried to convey that Peter is an imperfect human being who had a moment of weakness, but it also winds up saying that, deep down, Peter is a morally weak, self-righteous hypocrite--which is exactly what Doc Ock accuses Peter of being.
Understand, I’m not advocating, nor do I expect, Peter Parker to always be exemplary or not make stupid decisions. Part of his appeal and popularity comes from the fact that he, just like the rest of us, is an imperfect human being who tries, and sometimes fails, to do the right thing. After all, as Slott points out, Peter, as a teenager, “let that burglar run by, he could have done anything to stop him and he didn't” and thought about using his powers to punch Flash Thompson, or consider doing nothing when Flash was in danger. And that’s just it--he was a teenager, someone who didn’t know any better, who was still learning that the world didn’t revolve around him. To still characterize Peter as someone who, as an adult, is still that self-absorbed and that willing to put his own welfare ahead of others makes him someone who hasn’t learned a damn thing since his uncle got shot.
So although the issue is supposed to make us feel sorry for Peter, it inadvertently winds up doing the exact opposite. It makes the superhero no better than the super-villain--which is absurd on it’s face considering that Doc Ock has often endangered countless lives, including a deliberate attempt at killing billions of people just to prove that he could.
Superior Spider-Man #9, p. 17 |
And there's another potential silver lining. During their battle, Doc Ock claims that Peter is unworthy to be Spider-Man because Peter is willing to show mercy towards his enemies, and that doing so puts more lives in danger and makes him just as guilty of murdering innocent lives as the murderers themselves. The irony is that Doc Ock fails to see that he is the beneficiary of that very mercy. It was Peter who choose to rescue Doc Ock from drowning in the Ends of the Earth. It was Peter who, in the last moments of his life, tried to instill in Doc Ock the value of “power and responsibility” in trying to change him for the better. Even in this issue, Peter tries to give Doc Ock another chance to prove that he has changed for the better. And yet Doc Ock not only refuses to give that same “quality of mercy” not only on Peter’s enemies, but also on the man who was willing to give him a second chance in the first place.
Likewise, this is another instance which the hero falls while the villain appears to triumph, with nothing to stand in their way, only for the hero to miraculously return and glorious triumph in the end. Doc Ock may have succeeded in killing Peter yet again but at the cost of having Peter’s memories to fall back on. Not only does this make Doc Ock’s task of pretending to be Peter and Spider-Man that much harder, but he has also removed the closest thing he had to having a conscience. After all, it was those very memories that started to change Otto for the better. Without them acting as a guide, he may have unknowingly sabotaged his own journey in finding redemption just as it was about to begin. More and more, the Superior Spider-Man is shaping up to be a series in which both Peter Parker and Otto Octavius are deconstructed then rebuilt as characters to examining what really makes Spider-Man Spider-Man.
It's just a shame Peter wound up looking like "the bad guy" in order to get there.
Superior Spider-Man #9, p. 19 |