Nerd Rage: Amazing Spider-Man #698 Review

Editor’s Note: With Great Spoilers, Comes Great… Spoilers. Yeah, there’s no way around it, this review is loaded with spoilers. Proceed accordingly.

Writer Dan Slott has been promising for months that Dying Wish, the final story arc of The Amazing Spider-Man before it closes up shop with issue #700 and is reborn as something called The Superior Spider-Man, would be so incendiary that he would have to go into hiding, and that he would, as he said on Twitter a few days ago, “Ruin your childhood.”

Well, that “final” story line opens in The Amazing Spider-Man #698. And while I don’t want to kill Slott because of the opening to this story (I want him dead for completely different reasons. He knows what he did), I will go on record that he’d better follow this up with one Goddamned good explanation and iron-clad timelines… and I still think it might end up going the way I originally predicted a month and a half ago.

Another Editor’s Note: Seriously, there are spoilers pouring out of this thing after the jump. I have the Bolivian Viral Tourettes Flu, am loaded with antihistamines and anti-diarrhetics, and therefore my self-control is compromised. By the way, the chick in The Crying Game had a dick. See? I am NOT to be trusted.

In The Amazing Spider-Man #698, Dr. Octopus is locked in a iron lung on super prison The Raft, living his final days, when he mutters, “Peter Parker.” Outside The Raft, one of Ock’s octopus robots from the March / April Ends of The Earth storyline in Amazing Spider-Man, repeats the name. Cut to Peter himself, showing a great deal of joy in web-slinging, his lucrative job in research and development for Horizon Labs, and in putting the moves on Mary Jane. While visiting his Aunt May in the hospital (and simultaneously shamelessly hitting on MJ), he gets a priority call from The Avengers, telling him that Doc Ock is asking for him – Peter Parker, not Spider-Man. Peter goes to the raft, confronts Doc Ock, and…

Look, there’s no way to review this fucking book without ruining the surprise: Doc Ock somehow switched bodies with Peter. Somehow the process involved gaining access to all of Peter’s memories, and Ock intends to allow Peter to die in Ock’s old, broken body, and take over Peter’s life in his place.

Before I address the big reveal, I want to address Slott’s writing on the issue, vis a vis the characterizations: it is rock solid. Slott writes Ock-as-Peter in a way that doesn’t give up the ghost in any way until the penny drops. However, once you know that it’s Ock in there, if you go back and read the issue again, it is obviously Dr. Octopus in there. From attacking an apparent super-villain with more force than is necessary (with the comment that he’s trying to find out if he has the power to stop him), to seeing a wound on his own face and having to stop and “remember” why he has it, to his obvious confidence in hitting on Mary Jane, it works exactly the way it has to. It come across as Peter being confident… but once you know the secret, it’s clear that it’s Octopus’s arrogance at work under the hood. It works like seeing The Sixth Sense the second time: once you know, you can’t stop seeing it; it’s obvious once you know the truth, and you can’t believe you missed it on the first read. The characterization would have been an easy thing to fuck up and either give away early, or write unconvincingly so that the reveal feels like a cheat, but Slott walks the tightrope masterfully.

But then there’s the reveal… and Dan’s got some ‘splaining to do. There are two possible times where Doc Ock could have gotten control over Peter’s body: either during the Ends of The Earth arc eight or nine months ago, or else that Octobot had something to do with it… and it had better be that Goddamned Octobot. Because otherwise, I need to go back through months and months of various Spider-Man, Avengers and Avengers Vs. X-Men issues to see if the characterization holds up… but I can already tell you that it doesn’t. However, even heavily medicated as I currently am, I recognize that it’s more likely that the Octobot was involved, so I’ll let the long-term theory go for the time being.

So assuming that the Octobot somehow facilitated the body-switch, including taking all Peter’s memories, what will piss people off about this is the tease that Peter Parker will die trapped in the body of a decrepit old fuck, unmourned and alone (not me; I came to terms with dying that way years ago). Which is understandable, and no way for a hero like Spider-Man to go out, but trust me: it’s not gonna go like that. I can see Ock using his custody of Peter’s life to utterly ruin it – my guess is that he learns pretty quickly that having powers and smarts doesn’t mean you’ve got what it takes to be Spider-Man, and he fucks it up egregiously – and it ultimately forces Peter, on getting his body back, to assume some kind of new identity while remaining Spider-Man, but trust me: Peter will not die this way. So I can see what there will be a fairly large volume of Nerd Rage over this issue, but take my word for it: it’s not gonna be warranted.

Richard Elson’s art on this issue is really one hell of a match, and kind of a surprise coming from the guy I last saw drawing nightmares and outlandish fantasy in Journey Into Mystery. What worked best for me was his actual Spider-Man: it is realistic, without any of the overly-acrobatic, triple-jointed look that, say, Todd McFarlane popularized. Elson’s Spider-Man mask doesn’t contort unrealistically to show emotion, and the webs on Spider-Man’s costume are even spaced widely. In short, Elson’s Spider-Man looks like classic, John Romita, 1970s Spider-Man, which is the look I want on what will be, ostensibly, Spider-Man’s last story. Beyond Spider-Man’s design, Elson draws generally realistic figures and expressive faces (although there is one panel where MJ looks like she was hit in the left eye with a crowbar), dynamic action and a clear panel layout. If we’re gonna pretend that this is the last Peter Parker Spider-Man story, I want a classic look, and Elson delivers it excellently.

So the ultimate question is: despite the implications of a sucker’s death for Peter Parker, and knowing full well that, no matter what happens, this is the beginning of the end of the Amazing Spider-Man comic book (although trust me: someone at Marvel Editorial has already started a spreadsheet with the row Superior Spider-Man #1 = Amazing Spider-Man #701), does it work? And my answer is a resounding: hell, yes. Between the well-written twist of this book, and the world of implication that a villain in control of Spider-Man’s mind and body could mean, this was one damn well-executed comic book that has me sitting here with tremors to see what’s coming next… and I still think what’s coming is another meeting with Mephisto and Aunt May’s swan song.

Actually, those tremors might be from the flu, but either way: this one is worth checking out. Recommended