Fancomics: Doc Ock is Doc Obvious and Avengers Arena Reactions

[auggie18]

Doc Ock is doing a really terrible job of hiding the fact that he stole Peter Parker's body. I have a very hard time believing Mary Jane didn't catch on to this immediately.


WARNING! SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS ARENA.



Poor Mettle.



Red Raven was actually a legacy character. She died in the second issue of Avengers Arena by flying into an invisible forcefield. A lot of people took it as a "bird flying into a window" joke, but I saw it as more of glass ceiling joke.

That doesn't change the fact that it was pretty pointless/tasteless.
 

Comments

[silverhammerman]

I'm with you on Ock not being very unsubtle from what we've seen so far, but the idea of MJ being with him even knowing who he really was still makes me uncomfortable, even as a joke. Just the idea that anyone who knows Spidey could possibly be okay with Ock riding around in Peter's body skeeves me out, and imho is the biggest reason that Spider-Ock won't work as a status quo without making everyone around him either behave massively out of character, by being somehow okay with it, or just staggeringly stupid, to not see the obvious Ock behavior that you pointed out.
I didn't know that Eric O'Grady had died though, and having read up about it on Wikipedia I'm kind of saddened by his death. True he was a totally dick, but he was at least self aware and actively trying to better himself.
I enjoyed the jokes though.

[bjornwilde]

Is that Nomad 2 in the last comic? I didn't realize she'd died. =(

ETA: Ah I see, Onslaught Unleased. Never read it and what I read on Wiki sounds like BS so she's alive in my canon.

[shadowpsykie]

you know, once that lease is up the lease is up, even if it is Onslaught's lease... :D

also, i don't know, the way she died seemed very openended.

[kevinroc]

I will never understand Marvel's decision to kill off Cassie and Eric so Scott can go back to being "the one, true" Ant-Man.

[ablackraptor]

Yeah, especially considering that, as far as the Ant-Man family goes, Scott, from what I've seen, is the least popular with the fandom. Everyone I've spoken to about Ant-Man has said they find him rather boring. It seems like they're putting their eggs in the wrong basket there.

[nefrekeptah]

I don't think that was the reasoning. Plus, I'm getting a little tired of talking about Marvel like it's a hive mind.

[salinea]

You mean they are not under Phalanx leadership?

[kevinroc]

Cassie was DEFINITELY killed for Scott. They said as such when they discussed Children's Crusade #9. The mini was predicated on somebody having to die and that would lead to the team's collapse. The possibility was even discussed for killing Scott again but it was deemed terribly wasteful to bring him back for two issues just to kill him off again.

You could make a point about Scott dying for Cassie in the first place. But that leads to the female legacy glass ceiling joke presented above.

And going back on legacy characters like this feels more like a DC move. (Although between Cassie dying for Scott and Dr. Voodoo dying so Dr. Strange can go back to being Sorcerer Supreme, Marvel may be earning a rep for this as well.)

The claim may be a bit iffier on Eric also dying so Scott can be the "one, true" Ant-Man.

[practicalcat]

Yay, Cassie was stuffed in the fridge for her dad but also for her teammates! And by "yay" I mean lots of four letter words unsuitable for general audiences.

Ugh, I hate plots hinging on "someone" dying. If you're going to kill off a character, it had better be a freaking swan song for THAT CHARACTER.

[kevinroc]

The idea behind Cassie's death is better in description than in execution. Because she just charged at a cosmically empowered Dr. Doom after she thought he killed her father and knocked him on his ass.

Challenging Doom to a fight and not winning isn't the most shameful way to go out. (It's no flying into a force field.)

But of the characters in the strip, Cassie has the best odds of coming back. Not just because she's a costumed adventurer in the Marvel Universe but because her father's origin is saving her. And you can't be the "super hero dad" if you aren't a dad. (I suppose they could give Scott another kid but that kind of substitution never works.)

[practicalcat]

It's not a bad death certainly, there is no shame in taking on Doctor Doom and not winning when he's not cosmically empowered. But it's still a female hero dying to further the stories of other male characters rather than her own, so it's still part of the trend, and it still rubs me the wrong way. Though I will agree that, of the cast, she's the one most likely to get resurrected somehow.

[kevinroc]

Agreed on all fronts. And certainly the fall-out was bungled horribly. (It still makes no logical sense in-universe why the super heroes would do nothing when Doom kills one of their own before their eyes.)

The whole scene with Scott holding his daughter is essentially trying to evoke the "Supergirl is dead" cover from Crisis on Infinite Earths. A male hero holding the body of his younger, more innocent (and usually female) counterpart. You would think they would retire that old cliche by this point.

[philippos42]

Eric O'Grady's dead?

Truly we are in a Dork Age.

Not because Eric O'Grady's dead, just in general.

[ablackraptor]

Yeah, he died in Secret Avengers and was replaced with a 'Descendant', an evil amalgamation of LMDs, synthazoids, and deathlok tech that infiltrated the team, and recently destroyed the base they were stationed in.
During the same run, Jim Hammond was killed again, brought back and kept in stasis as he healed, then switched sides to join the Descendants. Yeah, as much as I like the title, its got a lot of problems.

[espanolbot]

Yay! He was an asshole, and an unentertaining one which made him mostly unreadable.

[biod]

I liked him in Thunderbolts and the Initiative, at least.

[akodo_rokku]

I take issue with "unentertaining". Irredeemable Ant-Man was one of the most entertaining books in years!

[majingojira]

It's odd because he died a rather heroic death, so I can't complain as much as I'd like.

Even for all his assholishness, he died being a hero. Weird, isn't it?

[captainbellman]

"I flew into a forcefield. That's seriously how I died".

Hey, it was good enough for Thor in "The Cabin In The Woods"...

[espanolbot]

And the Superman-expy the High in Stormwatch. Though he was liquified by the force of the impact, but eventually regenerated in time to start the apocalypse.

[richardak]

I hesitate to ask, but are Pete and MJ back together? Or, rather, were they back together, and now MJ is with Otto-in-Pete? What's going on there?

[ablackraptor]

Hard to explain, but sorta. They were getting closer, and MJ confessed she still loved him, but Ock!Peter was the only one to find out, when he tried to seduce her in an attempt to prove he's better than Peter. Apparently, however, he's not going to pursue a relationship with her because he considers it a 'distraction' from his 'being better than Peter' thing.

[richardak]

Thank you. I knew there was a reason I don't read Spider-Man.

[silverhammerman]

Where'd you hear/read about Ock not pursuing a relationship? I mean, it's a relief is he isn't, but I wasn't aware Marvel had said anything about it.

[ablackraptor]

I think they said it in the .1 issue of Avenging, though I might be wrong there since I haven't actually read the issue and I'm just going with what I've read others say about it.

[silverhammerman]

Really? I think it could just be wishful thinking that you've been hearing. Given how Marvel's teased us about the possibility of a relationship between the two I doubt that they'd go ahead and dismiss the idea so quickly, especially in the pages of Avenging, since it's the companion series. I suppose it could have been a last minute addition after they realized how controversial the idea was, but having seen Marvel's idiotic reaction to fan outrage and printing time I don't think they could have made that change in time for this issue to go to print.
It's a wonderful idea though, so I'd like to be proven wrong.

[nefrekeptah]

Well, the easiest way to do that would be to read the series in question. That way you'll know for sure whither or not you're proven wrong.

[silverhammerman]

I have pretty much zero interest in the series aside from wanting to know whether or not Marvel is really so tone deaf as to hook up Ock and MJ, so I don't have any plans on buying it out of morbid curiosity when I don't care for the general direction.
That being said, if the series actually gets some positive buzz and they don't pursue an MJ/Ock pairing I'll gladly pick up the issues that I missed and start reading, but I'm already spending too much money on comics to take a chance on a series that I don't have confidence or interest in, much less one that's in danger of heading in a direction that I find morally repugnant. This is a wait and see series for me.

[espanolbot]

Hee. ^^ Personally I've always read Doc Ock with a German accent due to their voice direction in the 90s Spider-Man series (dunno, guess they thought that being named Otto meant that he was from a German speaking country, as opposed to being from Cincinnati or something).

Really amused at the idea of Peter just walking around and talking to people in a German accent and no one paying any attention to it.

Still, at least he's being more subtle than say, Doom would in that situation. :)

[captainbellman]

Just as a wee bit of constructive criticism - Cassie's pose in that final panel is a wee bit odd. An alternate route would have been for her to have one arm behind her and the other in front, both elbows bent at a 90-degree angle, implying the motion used in the stomp.

Or, alternately, given how close Eric is to Raven and Nomad in the second panel, a giant Monty-Python esque foot might have sufficed.

Sorry if this seems pedantic. It just bugged me.

[auggie18]

Yeah, I redrew it a few times and it kept feeling off to me. Wasn't satisfied with the final pose, but ended up sticking with it. Pretty sure arms can't bend the way I drew them there either...


I originally went with the Monty Python foot thing, but there really wasn't anything to identify the foot as Cassie's and it seemed important to make it clear that she was the only stomping him.

[captainbellman]

I feared that might be the case with the Foot. Possibly a slightly large hand grabbing him like a doll, with some blonde hair strands hanging down from the top panel edge?

[shadowpsykie]

heh, it would be funny to see Peter/Ock doing more Ock stuff.

"YOu boorish Creetins!"

[salinea]

the glass ceiling joke is funny because it's true.

[bizarrohulk]

There's an obvious solution to the "Doctor Obvious" problem - just have all of the Spider-Man titles written by Brian Bendis, then Otto's dialogue will be completely indistinguishable from Peter's (and everyone else's, come to that).