Amazing Spider-Man #700

[cyberghostface]

Dying in Dr. Octopus' body, Spidey confronts Ock (in his body) one last time. Peter is unable to transfer his consciousness back, but as his life flashes before his eyes Ock receives them as well via their mental link, with himself in place of Peter in them.



Ock (still in Spidey's body) tells Spidey he doesn't want this, and asks how he can do what Spidey does. Spidey (in Ock's body) tells him that he has to, because with great power...



But "Ock" is dead.





While this will probably last as long as Captain America's death did, I actually like the idea of a (reformed?) Ock as Spider-Man. I think there's a lot of potential with this idea and I'm definitely on board for Superior Spider-Man.

So I'm surprised to say this, but kudos to Slott. I'm looking forward to see where Ock!Spidey goes from here.

EDIT: There's an interesting write-up here.

Comments

[zabilac]

I'm not really getting how Oc is suddenly reformed villain.

[icon_uk]

He's just had Peter's entire heroic career and ethos crashloaded into his own mind, the sheer strength of Peter's morality and heroism, which Octavius has just experienced as first hand memories, are more powerful than Octavius' petty greed and vanity. He can't be the villain any more because he's seen a better way of doing things, and having seen it, must act on it, because it's what Peter would have done.

[sadoeuphemist]

I don't know how that makes sense, seeing as how his response is to let Peter (in Ock's body) die and continue living as Peter, declaring he will be superior to Peter and be better than he ever was. That's not what Peter would've done at all.

[icon_uk]

Because the primary personality is still Otto. He's now informed by Peter's memories, but if you asked him his name his first repsonse would be "Otto Octavius". He'll live using the name "Peter Parker" because that's who he looks like and trying to live as anyone else would be pointlessly confusing.

And AFAIK he doesn't "let" Peter die. Peter dies because there's nothing that CAN be done to save him, but Otto can make that death less meaningless by continuing Peter's mission.

[sadoeuphemist]

Your argument is that he is becoming a hero because of Peter's morality and heroism. But he is not acting according to Peter's morality and heroism. He is acting according to Octavius' ego.

If he is infected by Peter's morality, surely the moral choice would be to admit the truth, to not live a life of deception, to seek to make amends, to reverse the mind-transfer, etc.

[icon_uk]

He is not acting purely according to it, because he has not been completely rewritten by it, he is still Otto Octavius with Otto's ego (as evinced here with his description of himself as a genius, as if Peter hadn't been one too), but he now has new memories, new aspects to personality merged into his own. He will act as a hero, because the part of him that is Peter won't let him be anything else, but on his own terms, because there is still a strong part of Otto in there. He can't be the Otto he was, but he also can't be Peter, he CAN be something else, something he didn't expect, Spider-Man, and still a hero, but exactly what it means to be a hero for this newly merged psyche is soemthing that is, at best, a work in progress.

Admitting to who he really was/had been would prevent him being able to be a Spider-Man, so there's pragmatism AND arrogance there.

Just because he's a hero now, with a different morality, doesn't mean he's going to be a nice guy.

[sadoeuphemist]

"He will act as a hero, because the part of him that is Peter won't let him be anything else"

See, that comes across as completely false. Someone with Peter Parker's memories and experiences won't become a hero under any circumstances, that's just deterministic. Maybe they might kill themselves, maybe they might become bitter at life. You would expect, that in Ock's case, where he became Spider-man through murder and deception, Peter's memories would lead to him coming clean, instead of continuing the deception.

How do you expect me to believe that Ock feels enough responsibility for the lives of the people of the world at large that he is compelled to go out and play the hero and save them, when the main thing he feels about the person he killed is a sense of superiority?

[arbre_rieur]

"Someone with Peter Parker's memories and experiences won't become a hero under any circumstances, that's just deterministic."

Exactly, which is why he very much *isn't* doing what Peter would do in the same situation. Giant ego, and all that.

[sadoeuphemist]

"How do you expect me to believe that Ock feels enough responsibility for the lives of the people of the world at large that he is compelled to go out and play the hero and save them, when the main thing he feels about the person he killed is a sense of superiority?"

[arbre_rieur]

A sense of responsibility and a sense of superiority aren't mutually exclusive. They can often go hand-in-hand actually, with a person feeling responsible specifically because an inflated sense of self-importance makes them think they're the only one equipped for the task.

[sadoeuphemist]

How is that supposed to work when he's responsible for the death of Peter Parker, but still feels superior to him afterwards and doesn't care all that much that he died?

[arbre_rieur]

Responsibility does not equal guilt. A sense of responsibility can come from a more remote, distant place than the trademark Parker (god bless 'im' for it) hand-wringing.

[arilou_skiff]

He's still Otto, but an Otto Octavius who's been hit by the full weight of what it means to be Spider-man, from the inside.

Is he going to assimilate all that and become Spider-man through and through? Hell no. But he can no longer be the villain he was, because that villain didn't have those experiences.

[silverhammerman]

What gets me about that is that Ock's essentially been brainwashed. So to me, he's not becoming a hero because he's genuinely had a good long think and decided to reform, he's doing it because his brain was actually rejiggered by Peter. He's not doing it because he wants to, even if he might think that's why he's doing it, but because he's been programmed to, and underneath he's still the same criminal asshole that he's always been.
Come to think of it, I kind of expect that to come up at some point in Superior Spider-Man (which I don't plan on reading) the idea that maybe Doc Ock's reform isn't as straightforward as it might seem could be pretty interesting.