Last month, Marvel Comics and writer Dan Slott generated considerable attention with the 700th issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, arguably their flagship title. All they had to do was kill Peter Parker. To their credit, there was something decidedly novel about the way it was done. In issue #698 Peter swapped bodies with one of his worst enemies, Doctor Octopus, who happened to be dying at the time. Doc Ock's body then died two issues later, and Peter's mind supposedly along with it. It was the the culmination of a storyline that, according to Slott, has been brewing since issue #600 way back in 2009 in which Doc Ock's progressively deteriorating condition is first disclosed. I actually have that issue, so I can attest to this.
The cat is sort of out of the bag now, as it has been revealed in Superior Spider-man #1 that Peter Parker isn't really dead; he's, for lack of a better description, a disembodied consciousness, one that's apparently even capable of influencing Doc Ock's decisions on a subconscious level as he prevents Ock using his body to kill supervillains. So instead of a "permanent" change as was strongly suggested by Slott and Marvel's marketing crew, in order to quell the more cynical fan reactions, this development is more of an extended storyline, the idea behind which, I suppose, being to follow Peter's journey back into his own body, and to see what happens to it in the meantime. Marvel's marketing materials are already teasing that Spider-Ock gets booted off the Avengers, no doubt because he's still an egomaniac and a prick.
Down the line, I may give this story a look in collected form, but I really can't help but shake my head at all the hype that basically surrounded what is destined to be a finite storyline, much line the Clone Saga of the 1990s, in which Peter Parker was replaced by his clone. In fact, to the credit of the creators of the Clone Saga, the change they had in mind, however harebrained, was a permanent one, and it was only violent fan reaction (in the pre-internet age, no less) that stayed their hand. The thing is, the only way to really get people's attention is to fool them into thinking that the plot development is for keeps.
In a way, Marvel are in a better position now than they were when they destroyed Peter Parker's marriage to Mary Jane Watson; because that change was always envisioned as permanent it was inevitable that they were going to alienate fans. Now that the truth has been revealed about the Spider-Ock saga, fans who may have been ready to drop the book with the apparently demise of Peter Parker may now be willing to give this story development a chance to see where Slott can go with it.
The ball, therefore, is in Slott's court, and Marvel's.
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