A while back Peter Parker had his brain hijacked by the dying Doctor Octopus and our mainstream continuity was treated to a welcome change to Spiderman in the form of Superior Spiderman. Otto Octavious was never particularly evil, his ends just justified his means which is a damn slight nicer than villains like Carnage and the Red Skull. Sadly, our time with Octavious at the reins has come to an end. I mentioned in a previous article that Parker's personality hadn't been wholly purged and so he would still influence Octavious from time to time. Considering the story has ended we might as well play a bit of catch up before moving on.
Octavious realizes that Parker is still in his head and so they do battle in his mindscape with Octavious winning and casting out Parker. Octavious then goes on in typical fashion, perusing a Doctorate degree which Peter never attained (to attempted for that matter), alienating all of Parker's friends and family by treating everyone who was not him as a bumbling fool and setting himself up with a great deal of henchmen, Spider Robots and an island headquarters from which he could personally police all of New York.
Yadda, yadda, Inhumanity (which I will get to in a later article), yadda 2099, blah blah Goblins yap, yap, SO!
Octavious eventually realizes that he doesn't have it in him to be a hero. That the responsibility that comes with his new body's power is something he simply cannot bear. And of course Peter Parker is still kicking around deep in the brain so Peter is Spiderman again and no longer an Avenger, no longer getting his life together at Horizon Labs, no longer has the wealth of friends. Sound familiar?
It should, because this was essentially One More Day. The entire Octavious as Parker story line amounts to pressing the reset button on Spiderman AGAIN. I have no idea why Marvel refuses to let Spiderman grow up. First was his marriage with Mary Jane and becoming a respected member of the Avengers. People knowing his secret identity and having to deal with the fallout. that's a recipe for great stories and until One More Day was providing just that. Now we have a Spiderman who was well respected as both a member of the Avengers and within the scientific community with his inventions and patents at Horizon Labs. Once again he was on his way to having a life and now he's broke and alone all over again.
The notable difference between Superior Spiderman and One More Day, besides the length, is the quality of the reset. One More Day was so poorly done that even all these years later you can't talk about disappointments with Spiderman without mentioning it. It was sudden, made no sense, and there was no proper justification. Mephisto just randomly had the power to change all of history with no one remembering. A power he never used before nor since despite all the times such a power would have been VERY useful against the heroes he fought against.
Comparatively things with the Superior Spiderman reset make a certain amount of sense. The public has grown wary of a Spiderman who kills and maims. The Avengers have grown ever more worried as time and again a trusted ally has alienated himself and taken to a darkening path, coming into conflict with them on a few occasions. Parker is coming back into a life where over the course of months Octavious has destroyed any semblance of a life he once had. His personal relationships have all been sabotaged, many in irrevocable ways, his professional life has tanked, though he does now have a doctorate degree and he isn't trusted and beloved by the public as he once was.
The difference again comes in the form of a justifiability around the circumstances of his life reverting to square one. Despite all the magic and science in Marvel, Aunt May can't be saved from a single gunshot wound so Peter grows ever more desperate in spite of the fact that she explicitly asked him to let her die. Compare that to losing face with the Avengers because you punched off Scorpion's lower jaw since you had no idea that Peter was always holding back. Which makes more sense? While at first I was frustrated at the fact that once again we are being told that Peter Parker is not allowed to grow up and evolve as a character I had to admire the way in which Marvel went about doing this reboot. While they could have had a brief excursion and rebooted Parker with a 6 issue series (bad guy takes over, tries to be evil Spiderman, people figure out and save the day but populace against him now) they instead gave us almost a year and a half as the story was crafted and unfolded in a logical way. In some sense it's like reading Incorruptable as we watch a man who has no clue how to be a hero attempt to do just that.
Superior Spiderman was actually a thoroughly enjoyable run as we got to watch Octavious see much of his own world from the outside. More importantly, through Octavious, we got to see more of Parker's personality. Despite being monumentally intelligent Octavious is utterly unable to handle the various responsibilities that Peter has managed to maintain in both his civilian and hero persona. The weight of his responsibilities is something rarely explored and its only when we see someone else trying to take them on that we notice just how monumental they are.
Tightly written with some great character building moments and set pieces Superior Spiderman may have just been an elongated reset, but it was a well put together one and worth a read.