Spider-Man the Torturer Revisited (Amazing Spider-Man #687 spoilers)

[stillanerd]

 

As some you folks know, there was some recent controversy generated by an article from Colin Smith's "Too Busy Thinking About My Comics" blog, which concerns a scene from Amazing Spider-Man #685 (part 4 of Ends of the Earth) in which Spidey and Silver Sable attempt to get Sandman to reveal the location of various facilities that Doc Ock is using to construct his climate altering satellites.  Here's the scene in question:


 

Now you may be wondering why I'm even bothering to bring this up again.   Well, that's because this weeks Amazing Spider-Man #687, the finale for Ends of the Earth, did it for me.  During the scene in which Spidey and Silver Sable infiltrate Doc Ock's underwater base (which, in yet another nod to the classic Master Planner Saga, is also flooding), we have this exchange between them:

   

Now, the fact that Sandman's daughter could be used as leverage to get the Sandman to work for them makes perfect sense and was the very thing I brought up in the comments section when this topic came up right here on the Scans Daily. However, the fact that it's being brought up only now by Silver Sable at this point in the story is essentially an admission that the entire "acid-boarding the Sandman" scene was completely and utterly pointless!   Because if both Spidey and Silver Sable already knew they had the leverage of Sandman's daughter as a means to get him to cooperate, then why in the hell didn't they use it beforehand?  Why did they have to resort to pouring acid on him when they already knew there was a much easier and more ethical way to get him to talk and persuade him for his help?!

Oh, and note how Spidey states that Sandman wouldn't cooperate with them now considering what they did to him?  Well, Spidey, if you didn't allow Sable to pour acid on the Sandman in the first place, then he wouldn't have had a score to settle with you, now would he?  You're basically admitting that Silver Sable made the situation worse; but if you knew this was the case then why didn't you anything to stop her?!  For a guy who is supposed to a super-genius--something which Dan Slott has repeatedly reminded us over and over again--you sure can be a complete and utter moron at times.

Comments

[cyberghostface]

Might want to put this under a cut.

[stillanerd]

Yeah, forgot about doing that. Thanks for the reminder. :)

[shadowpsykie]

*sigh* and this is why so far, no matter what DC hsa done, it is getting 75% of my comics money and Marvel is getting.. MAYBE 25%

[q99]

This is why DC gets 10%, Marvel gets 10%, Antarctic Press and Red 5 get about 20% between the two of them, IDW gets 30%, and Archie gets 40%.

[halloweenjack]

This is why I don't have a pull list at my LCS.

[cleome45]

I tried to make one, but a giant glowing winged credit card with drippy fangs swooped down from the sky and carried it away. :p

[nefrekeptah]

Did it maybe occur to anyone that they did try that, and Sandman refused to believe them, because there's no way he'd go along with Ock's plan in the first place unless he was convinced that he would'nt go through with his "kill everyone on earth" plan?

[sadoeuphemist]

No, because Silver Sable is talking about it like it's still a perfectly reasonable option, and Spider-man's only rebuttal is, 'oh but you poured acid on him'.

[nefrekeptah]

Maybe because by that point Otto wasn't pretending to want to save the world anymore, making it that much easier to convince him, especially with Rino right there freely admitting it. And it is a valid point.

[stillanerd]

Except Sandman is still encased inside the containment cell back on the Swan reduced to his single "consciousness grain" so presumably they stopped talking to him once they got what they needed to know from him back in ASM #685.

Secondly, given how Spidey was able to convince Mysterio to switch sides BEFORE Doc Ock stopped pretending to want to save the world, it wouldn't have taken much to persuade Sandman to help them by mentioning that he could save his daughter. After all, if Doc Ock could persuade Sandman to work for him under the promise of helping him get his daughter back, and Spidey was able to stop Sandman, in part, by showing Keemia's name on his "Pink Elephant" device, then what's to stop them from using the promise of saving Keemia to get Sandman to join their side.

But let's take into consideration that they had already tried persuading Sandman to join them by saying Doc Ock's plan would kill Keemia. Why then would Sable still think it would work to get them to help them stop Doc Ock when it presumably didn't work before? After all, if he wasn't convinced Doc Ock was really out to destroy the world before, what would convince him now?

Also, the reason why Spidey's rebuttal is nonsensical is because if the only reason Sandman won't cooperate with them now is because they poured acid on him, and if Silver Sable believed it was a reasonable option to use Sandman's daughter as leverage to help them all this time, that means that it was a viable option beforehand, then Spidey's essentially admitting that pouring acid on the Sandman was not only UNNECESSARY, it only made things WORSE. And if Spidey knew this to be the case, then why did he even go along with Silver Sable pouring acid on the Sandman in the first place?

[nefrekeptah]

So they give him some more sand and bring him with them. Not a big problem there.

Secondly, what evidence has he got that he can save Keemia, or that Keemia even needs saving in the first place? Especially considering that Spidey's the reason Marko lost his daughter, giving Marko a very good reason not to trust anything Spider-Man says. A big reason that this arc was so interesting was that Spidey had no evidence whatsoever that Doc Ock was going to do anything other than what he said he would do, going only by past experience and gut feeling, which might be enough for his friends, but not his enemies.

After all, if he wasn't convinced Doc Ock was really out to destroy the world before, what would convince him now? Octopus and Rhino dropping all pretenses and admitting to it, that's what.

See, the fact that it's makes no since that they didn't try it before is what makes me think that they did, and we just didn't see it. Because not only is it out of character for Spider-Man to stoop to something so objectionable before trying out every possible alternative, it's also a big faux pas on Dan Slott, who has previously shown to have a great understanding of Spider-Man and written some of my favorite Spidey moments in recent memory, including one scene in just the issue right before this one. Basically, I have too much faith in the writer to think he got that part of Spider-Man so badly wrong.

[stillanerd]

I get what you're saying. Because I agree: it was grossly out-of-character for Spidey to do what he did in ASM #685. But what makes it even more objectionable than it already is, IMO, is that, by having Spidey and Sable even make mention of the fact that using Sandman's daughter as leverage was something still on the table--at least as far as Sable was concerned--then it also suggests that Dan Slott was well aware of this idea as well, and could have used that idea instead of the acid-boarding scene all along but choose not to do so.

[sadoeuphemist]

You're just making up a lot of things that aren't in the story. If Silver Sable says 'hey maybe we could try this' the obvious implication is that they haven't tried it yet. I don't know how on earth you're concluding the opposite.

[nefrekeptah]

Yeah, because the story doesn't make since otherwise and it's a perfectly legitimate explanation. That's were I'm getting it.

[sadoeuphemist]

Either way, your faith in the writer is misplaced. He has either "gotten Spider-man wrong", or created a scene that is so badly written that it implies the exact opposite of what it is intended to. Why doesn't Spider-man simply respond, "we tried that, it didn't work"? So it is not a legitimate explanation in the sense that it is the opposite of what we are shown.

[kraesil]

...*facedesk*.

Yay for contradictory logic?

[cleome45]

I can't decide if this whole thing is more or less depressing/tasteless/off-putting than that mess involving Chameleon and whether or not Peter had drunk sex with his then-roommate.

Maybe we could just declare a tie.

[cyberghostface]

Oh god, don't even remind me. I love how people still try to justify Pete's behavior in not telling his roommate that she might have been raped.