So this is what 50 years of stories has come to. In a surprising move Marvel decided to end The Amazing Spider-Man with issue 700, what was puzzling at the time is Spider-Man is Marvel’s most popular hero. But with comics you need a way to bring in new readers as evidenced with DC’s relaunch of all of their comics, the very popular “New 52”. When this was announced I was at first sad but I started to think, “what story would I tell if I was given the chance to tell the last Spidey story?”

Dan Slott has been writing Amazing Spider-Man for the most part of the last 100 issues. While some of the stories have been good, his run as been wildly inconsistent. You can tell that he does love Spider-Man and he has some pretty outlandish ideas, some work like “New Ways To Die” were fantastic. Others like “Ends of The Earth” left a lot to be desired. But his ideas were always there and as a life long Spidey fan I could see the potential. 

 Most of the time however his ideas seemed scattered and unfulfilled. He kept trying to put Spider-Man in bigger then him moments. I disliked that a lot of the time Spider-Man was a supporting character in his own book. This was never more so then the last big storyline featuring Dr. Octopus “The Ends of the Earth.” In that story Doc Ock is dying and he is playing his trump card, basically using satellites to kill millions of people on Earth (this story is going to pop up in my critique of Amazing 700). In the end Spidey could have let a dying Octavius do just that, die but he chooses what any hero would, he still saves the bad doc.

 It’s pretty obvious that Dr. Octopus is Dan Slotts favorite Spider-Man villain. That’s fine, Doc Ock is a great villain, in his biography in  Spider-Man: Inside The World of Your Favorite Neighborhood Hero, it describes Otto Octavius “thinking of himself above moral concerns and valuing his perceived scientific triumph above human life.” Slott nailed that on the head in his stories featuring Doc Ock. Otto not only wanted to appear superior(see what I did there) to average people but also he had no value on human life, his end game was killing MILLIONS of people. Fast forward to issue 698 where it is revealed that Octavius has somehow managed to switch his and Peter Parker’s mind, meaning that he now had is brain in Spider-Man’s body. And Peter was trapped in the dying, decaying body of Dr. Octopus. 

 I really liked this twist. You knew something was wrong with the character of Peter Parker, especially the way he was hitting on Mary Jane. It was scary thinking that what would a psychopath do with the power of Spider-Man. Also Peter was now in a race against time because he is dying in Doc Ocks body. It was a couple of tense issues. But then came issue 700…

With the clock ticking Spider-Man uses his intelligence to try and switch his and Ock’s mind before Octavius’ body dies for good. The issue starts strong with Peter actually dies and goes to “heaven” where he meets all the loved ones he has lost over the years. Slott stumbles here with some of the familiar lines of dialogue and then adds to the cliche in which Uncle Ben tells him he can’t hang out here while Doc Ock is using Peter’s body to do what he pleases. Telling Peter that he has built too strong of a reputation to let him ruin his good name. 

As the story moves along Peter confronts Octavius in the Avengers Tower with the help of Scorpion and Hydro-Man(remember Peter is in Doc Ocks body). A fight ensues and Peter is soon over powered by the Superior Spider-Man(see what I did again), and Octavius chases down the Scorpion. In the fight with Scorpion Otto soon learns that Peter held back a lot of his strength. He punches the Scorpion so hard he punches his jaw right off! I like this part because it shows how great of a hero Peter Parker is, he would never use his full strength to hurt someone. But this area of the book is plagued again by pacing issues, and I like Humberto Ramos, but his MJ is really distracting and sometimes his art jumps all over the place. 

Next is the part of the book that will be debated for a long time. Peter soon realizes that he won’t be able to get back to his body, so he convinces Otto that he has to carry on his(Peter’s) legacy. He is able to use a octobot to make Otto feel what he has felt and with the weight that he has carried. Otto then in the course of 3 pages changes his whole demeanor and tells Peter that yes he will be THE HERO Peter was! What?! He literally just got done trying to kill millions of people and just because his sworn enemy says you need to carry on my legacy, Otto says “you got it pal!” Thus the Superior Spider-Man is born as Peter Parker dies not as a hero, but in shriveled up old fart of a body.

I understand that sometimes after 50 years you need to shake up the status quo of a hero. But you can’t make him go out like a bitch. I love Peter Parker, I think he is one of the greatest characters ever. And now he is no longer in any of the Spider-Man books, whether it’s Amazing Spider-Man, or in Ultimate Spider-Man. Marvel has tried this before when they brought back his clone and said the clone was the original Spider-Man basically pissing away 20 years of stories. And then again when he made a deal with the Devil so he wouldn’t be married anymore, again pissing away 20 years of stories. What a minute, why does Marvel love messing with Spidey? I guess even in the real world Spider-Man suffers from the old Parker luck…