Superior Spider-Man #21

[cyberghostface]

So Stunner is out for revenge against Spidey for the "death" of Otto Octavius.



Ock goes to see that Angelina is alright and also to prevent her from bothering anyone again.









Also meanwhile Carlie visits "Ock's" grave (knowing its Peter) only to find out its empty. She is kidnapped by Menace and taken to the Green Goblin.

Comments

[mrstatham]

Well, that was an utterly pointless plot thread to bring up and then dismiss. It's like Slott is giving us all these ways SpOck could fuck things up and then just going "LOLnope!"

But isn't anyone with, I don't know, half a fucking brain, going to essentially figure out that something looking like classic white-suit 90's!Ock was walking around WHEN THE ORIGINAL PUBLICLY DIED FUCKING MONTHS AGO? Or are we meant to turn on the blinders for this like every other contrivance in Slott's run?

[skjam]

Presumably he only turns on the avatar when with the people he wants to see the "living" Octavius rather than have it walk from his hideout to whoever's house.

[cyberghostface]

Wouldn't be the first time he was killed and came back from the dead (not to mention all the times that he was presumed dead but wasn't).

[lbd_nytetrayn]

'Well, that was an utterly pointless plot thread to bring up and then dismiss. It's like Slott is giving us all these ways SpOck could fuck things up and then just going "LOLnope!"'

I think they might be going for more off a twist on the old "how will our intrepid hero get out of THIS predicament?" idea, but with the fact our "hero" is really a villainous mastermind in disguise.

[gamerguy]

In the Marvel Universe, it's a known thing that it's darn hard to actually kill a super, even if you have sizzling DNA on a platter. People accept that kind of thing.

[halloweenjack]

Slott depends on the Idiot Ball trope heavily. Angelina Brancale is totally fooled by the very same gimmick that she just used herself, and so is Dr. CobblepotLaMaze, who must know that Parker could probably get access to some pretty impressive disguise tech if he couldn't just make it up himself. (And even if SpOck established his Ock bona fides with things that only he and the other person would know, so what? People keep secret journals.)

[skjam]

Oh, that could be good. Now that Spock has let a select few people know he's alive, they won't blink an eye when his reanimated corpse comes to fight "Spider-Man." Especially funny if it now has Ock's original memories.

[captainbellman]

Oh, Otto Octavius, I miss you more than ever. Where did you go? Why would you leave poor, sweet Angelina alone with this...thing?! And how the hell has Carolyn Trainer not avenged your passing already?

[shadowpsykie]

i'm slightly offended that he said Vader was from Vulcan.... i twitched...

[chrisdv]

It's a Back to the Future reference.

Marty dresses up in a radiation suit & gas mask, and talks to his teenaged father claiming to be Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan.

[shadowpsykie]

ah hahah okay. i remeber that now.... shame on me... i should be punished...

[icon_uk]

Somehow I never saw Octavius as being a Back to the Future fan

[lieut_kettch]

Pete would be though, so I imagine the BTTF trilogy is pretty vivid in his memories.

[chrisdv]

Sure, but this isn't Otto Octavius.

It's Dan Slott's pet character, Slotto Octavius.

[funbox]

That actually made my day, Noprize to you mister

[thehood]

I don't know, i actually think Otto would be a Back to the Future fan. Especially since he has dated himself by making that reference.

[beyondthefringe]

Me neither.
I can only imagine that some of his pals in the Sinister Six were watching a trilogy marathon while waiting for the next big score, and he happened to come in at some point. There's Electro on the couch with the popcorn, and Sandman, and Vulture is maybe griping about how movies haven't been the same since they added color, and Ock is all "What is..." and then he steals the popcorn with a tentacle.

Either that, or in a spare moment he researched a handful of stupid pop culture trivia and jokes so he could try to get down the wisecracking Spid.... nah, he'd never go that far to maintain his charade.

Back to the Future!

[blue_bolt]

Silence Earthling!

[damar148]

So another trolling by Slott. "So you thought SpOck would be in trouble? THINK AGAIN LOSERS!".

[grazzt]

Would it have really been that much better if it played out differently? If Peter was disgraced by some nobody, it would have been seriously anticlimatic. I'm just happy that Ock was able to settle this the way he did: I assumed he was going to kill the guy.

I was also sure he was going to seriously injure Stunner in the way he dealt with her, but the solution to that problem was also pretty good too.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah I was a bit worried that she was in for a fridging beforehand.

[damar148]

It seems rather suspicious with the 'Take it to my grave' line and Spock responding 'Yes you will' and the guy appearing even more terrified so I would not count out him still murdering the guy to keep the secret.

[cyberghostface]

I don't see how this is trolling. More like "How is Ock going to get out of this?" and following up on it.

[stillanerd]

Sure, but it also makes Stunner's VR device into an all-too convenient deus ex machina to bail out Doc Ock. Plus, it just raises the question of when and how Dr. Lamaze got a hold of Doc Ock's unpublished research papers in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Dr. Lamaze hasn't seen Otto since their time in graduate school together, which, if that's the case, is how Lamaze could've gotten a hold of them. And, based on the art, both Otto and Lamaze are presumably in their mid to lat 50s while Peter is in his mid to late twenties. Which then means that, according to what Doc Ock told Lamaze, Peter would have had to have been still in diapers at the very least or not even born yet to have been Doc Ock's "secret assistant."

[kuronotenshi]

Your logic has no place in the world of Spider-Man according to Dan Slott.

[benuben]

"based on the art, both Otto and Lamaze are presumably in their mid to lat 50s"

To me, they look more like they are in their late 40's.

[bardbrain]

Plus, we don't know if Otto was a traditional tudent, do we? People often get Ph.Ds later.

Generally, you're looking at 7-10 years for a Master's and Ph.D. Less in the sciences but maybe Otto worked as an engineer.

Sure, I've known some who had a Ph.D at 22. It's not the norm though. You're generally looking at 30+ and many people are 40 or 50 before they even get it. Pop culture tends to ske things by highlighting young geniuses with Ph.Ds.

I should note that "Peter" is only getting it by using what are presumably decades of prior research from a genius.

Plus, speaking as someone who's been in school awhile now... I think people who get their degrees quickly do fit the idealistic super-hero type whereas taking the extended path and dealing with IRBs is more likely to make you actually say things like, "These fools and their so-called ethics stand in the way of my progress and the progress of humanity!"

Which I may have said a time or two.

[captainbellman]

That, and it demonstrates his inability to portray his hero's current love interest in a positive light without humiliating that hero's ex-girlfriends and lovers.

Already in the past two issues he's had Black Cat get beaten up and MJ do humiliating pratfalls, all to make Carlie look oh-so-capable at seeing the truth where they can't; now he's humiliated and hurt Angelina to big up Anna Marie.

It's...almost as if he doesn't know how to make one female character look good without making another one look bad in order to make a clumsy comparison.

[cyberghostface]

Well again Carlie only knows the truth because she had a huge head-start on everyone else; Ock flat-out told her.

I don't agree that the other exs are being humiliated, all of those are different plot points for different storylines.

[yvonmukluk]

And she shared this suspicion with...nobody at all. It's not like the Avengers have telepaths on speed-dial who could have confirmed that story in like 5 minutes or anything. Would be a whole lot quicker than faffing about following the money!

Or Mary Jane instantly figuring out that Kraven (granted she didn't know it was him specifically) was imitating Spider-Man back in Kraven's Last Hunt when he was far more brutal than Peter, while SpOck was even worse than that and apparently didn't cause her to make a similar realisation.

[thehood]

Except that's not what he's doing. MJ wasn't there when Peter in Doc Ock's body told Carlie about the body switch, she has no way of knowing.

And i don't see what Black Cat getting beaten up has to do with anything. That was just Otto being a jerk with a grudge. Otto has never really liked Felicia after all.

And Otto treated Angelina well and even let her go. So i don't see how you can say it was done to "big up" Anna.

[captainbellman]

This whole storyline is the victim of poor research anyway. If Slott had looked up the relevant comics at all rather than just browsing the character's wikipedia page, he'd have found that Angelina had no idea how to use the Stunner VR equipment as they were the invention of Carolyn Trainer, the second Doctor Octopus. Even in Trainer's absence, someone else would have to be there turning the machine on for Stunner to emerge.

[an_idol_mind]

Couldn't one just say that Angelina learned to use the VR equipment since her last appearance?

[icon_uk]

So she can't educate herself using Trainer's notes?

[flint_marko]

I've recently read all of her appearances, and I don't think it was ever stated that she had no idea how to use the equipment on her own. I think it makes more sense to assume that Ock or Trainer told her how to use it, or set it up so she'd be able to to do it on her own, than to assume someone was always there waiting to hook her back up whenever her virtual body disappeared.

[captainbellman]

Well, why didn't she use it to get revenge on Spider-Man before Carolyn approached her in the "Resurrection of Ock" story?

Besides which, whether or not she learned how to use it the machine still requires two operators - one in the giant cocoon thingy and the other person tapping in data.

[flint_marko]

She actually did use the machine to go after Kaine during the Trial of Peter Parker storyline.

And I'm guessing the vr machines were destroyed when Carolyn's headquarters was blown up in the Scarlet Spider miniseries, so she wasn't able to turn into Stunner again until Carolyn contacted her later.

[his_spiffynesss]

Well, what if this is the out for bringing back Peter?

What if Pete's consciousness has been inside his skull all this time, repressed by Octavious' will but finds an out by connecting to the virtual machine?

[sadoeuphemist]

What the heck is the story behind Dr. Lamaze? He is really close with Dr. Octopus, to the point where he keeps it a secret that he's still alive, and he's totally willing to flaunt his relationship with a dead supervillain to the public. But then Dr. Octopus shows up on his doorstep and says, nope I was relying on Peter Parker's genius this whole time, and he totally buys it.

[beyondthefringe]

I actually read this as him being terrified and afraid for his life.

[yvonmukluk]

And...why didn't Carlie get in touch with the Avengers/Mary Jane/ANYBODY ELSE now she has the proof that Ock pulled a Grand Theft Spider-Man before visiting the grave? Was there ANYTHING that visiting the grave would accomplish to prove this? At all? And couldn't it wait to get in touch with anybody else first?

But then this is the same woman who never even thought to mention 'oh hey Ock claimed he was Peter who'd had a bodyswap' to anyone at all back when this trainwreck started, so I guess I shouldn't be at all surprised at this level of stupidity. I know it was to keep this storyline moving, since that sort of thing would mean that the Avengers would actually take time to confirm/deny it and expose Slotto, but that's really a blatant indication of how contrived this plot is. I mean really, the way it should have gone would be Carlie immediately taking her suspicion to the Avengers, who would have done a proper scan, rather than 'eh, he's not a skrull', and Slotto would have been stuck in the raft for an afternoon till Reed fixed it.

[yvonmukluk]

Fake Edit: I mean, why bother looking for proof when the whole thing could be proved or disproved by one brain scan?

I mean is Slott trying to make Carlie look like a dumbass? It'd be better if she'd grown suspicious on her own, and started looking for proof on her own accord to convince the Avengers to look into it. You know, like MJ should have done (it's not a case of Carlie-vs-MJ, they both should have gotten suspicious. Along with pretty much everyone else in the Marvel Universe)

[bariman]

The Avengers actually did force Ock to do a brain scan, and aside from a single blip, he read normal. Ock later figured out that blip was the "ghost Peter" we had been seeing, and did a "Parker-ectomy" on himself.

[yvonmukluk]

But that was because they didn't have anyone who could read the results or calibrate the equipment probably (which defeats the point of doing the scan, really). And it was primarily looking to see if he was a Skrull/doppelganger, as far as I'm aware. If they suspected Ock was in Peter's head, do you really think they'd half-ass it?

Granted, they shouldn't have half-assed it in the first place, but my point still stands.

[thehood]

Because she had no proof and she can't go to the Avengers without evidence. You don't seem to realize how insane that would sound without proof.

[bariman]

Shouldn't Dr. Lamaze go to the police? Witness protection and such? A thought-dead supervillain just showed up and threatened him, and told him Peter was behind a lot of Otto's "greatest ideas." As in, and accomplice to his crimes. Wouldn't that at least get Peter investigated by the police? I mean, it is a matter of public record that Otto has been involved with Peter and his family before, like the time he almost married Aunt May. And "someone who publicly died is secretly still alive" is actually plausible in the Marvel U, so there's that.

[cyberghostface]

I don't think there's anything to imply that Ock threatened him, just that he sat down with him and told him that Peter was his prodigy.

[kintotech]

...Yeah, I'm pretty much waiting for this all to explode spectacularly in his face at once.