This ain't your Amazing Spider-Man

Warning! this post might contain spoilers, abandon hope all ye who enter here!

Back in January Marvel launched its new Spider-Man title, Superior Spider-Man, after ending its Amazing Spider-Man series on issue #700. I have to say I was a little apprehensive going into the new Superior Spider-Man series, after my slight disappointment with how Amazing ended. Thinking to myself how odd it all felt that it really would not be Peter Parker as Spider-Man, but really Otto Octavious inside Peter's body. Yeah they almost did the same thing with the Ultimate Spider-Man franchise, but that was a different universe, and they out right killed Peter and replaced him with another kid. I also worry about what Otto is going to do as Spider-Man, will he truly be Superior?

It starts out with Peter, Otto, placing flowers on the grave of Otto Octavious, Peter, head hurting yet? Yeah I know. So it is his first day on the job as Spider-Man and who does he end up having a showdown with? A group of super villains calling themselves, dun dun dun, The Sinister Six. As you could imagine this does not go over well with Otto, because we know it is really Otto I'm just going to call him that from now on to relieve some confusion. This new group consists of Overdrive, Beetle, Speed Demon, The Living Brain, Shocker, and the acting leader Boomerang. I have to agree with Otto here, a pretty lame assortment of baddies, as he takes out the living brain first. But Speed Demon ends up being a big problem for him and he tries to run. I did not see that coming, but just as he was swinging away, Boomerang throws a nitro-rang which Otto dodges. But it turns in the air and starts flying toward a police officer. Otto dives tackling him and taking the exploding boomerang to the back, and he does not even know why he did it. As he recovers, Boomerang tries to slice him up with a razorang. I have to hand it to him, he picked a theme and is really sticking to it. But Otto slashes him with some claws he built into his new suit, and then the villains decide to hightail it. All in all an exciting beginning, blood, explosions, themed weaponry, and that is only eight pages.

Later we find out that when Otto slashed Boomerang it injected him with nano bots with GPS and audio transmitters. These will let him know where they are and what they are planning next, allowing him to plan accordingly well in advance. And plan he did. He takes out Speed Demon first, then with a power dampening field takes out the rest, save Boomerang. With the press watching he starts to pound on Boomerang, showing everyone that this Spider-Man is not one to be trifled with. I won't reveal what happens, but I want to say I was really surprised with this issue. Perhaps Otto can be a Superior Spider-Man, but he still has a long way to go in my eyes.
If you were not happy with the ending of Amazing, I suggest reading this issue it might ease your mind.

Spider-Man, Amazing no more

WARNING!! This post contains spoilers, if you read the comics but by some off chance have not read the final issue of Amazing Spider-Man, or any of the Superior Spider-Man, you might not want to go further as I will summarize a few things that have occurred in the Spidey universe.

Hello true believers! As Mr. Stan Lee would say. I am a big Spider-Man fan, as I have stated previously, I can remember watching the early '90s cartoon series religiously. And I have been reading The Amazing Spider-Man comic-book series for quite a while now. So you could imagine my surprise when Marvel announced that they were ending the series on issue #700, back in December. At first I was heart broken, how could they end Spider-Man? Then I was more curious, how will they end Spider-Man? Those questions rolled through my mind, I asked my close friends, and they admitted to being just as surprised as I was. So I continued to buy my comics, the number climbing closer and closer, until it happened, and my questions were answered.

Thanks to a string of events and a well placed spy, the King Pin got a hold of a Spider Sense jamming device that had been modified to heighten the sense to the point it was driving Peter crazy. Everything was a danger, then while fighting two hobgoblins he was able to focus enough to shut out the sense and fight. While all of this was happening Doctor Octopus, who is in critical condition, was able to control a small octobot, and while Peter was focusing on fighting and not using his Spider Sense snuck up and used it to switch bodies with Peter. He managed to do this by switching brain waves, thus resulting in the ultimate fate of Peter Parker.

The final issue of ASM is Peter inside the slowly dying body of Doc Ock while trying his best to switch bodies back with Otto, who is living it up as Peter Parker and trying to start things with Mary Jane. Peter, with the help of some villains who believe he is Doc Ock, break into the police station to steal an octobot for himself. While the villains cause havoc with officers, Peter goes to find the bot, and gets caught by none other then Carlie, his ex-girlfriend. Peter tries desperately to convince Carlie that he is indeed Peter but she does not buy it and Peter has to escape with the octobot. Now that is not everything, but I am not going to go and tell the entire issue to you, it is an extra large issue, I was very happy they did that.

Now how they ended it (and here is the big spoiler if you have not read it yet) with Peter failing to switch back and dying was very hard to take. I was not happy with it, but he was able to make Otto see the error of his ways and get him to promise to live as Peter and Spider-Man as best he could. Hard to believe, but it happened. I was not happy with the last issue, I was hoping that he was going to switch, or die some other way more heroically. But then thinking on it, he did die a hero, he saved the people he loved from a mad scientist. You might think, why didn't he use the bot to switch with someone else? Because that is not Peter, doing that would condemn that person to die, and he would never do that.

That is it, that is how he dies. It's sad and upsetting that a hero we lived with for a such very long time dies in such a way. Replaced by a villain he fought with almost his entire life. But a villain no more, haunted by the emotional memories of Peter's past he swears to become Spider-Man. But being the arrogant person that is Otto Octavious, he swears to be a better Spider-Man then Peter ever was, which is what I will be talking about next time... To Be Continued with