Smoking: The Superior Spider-Man #22 (And As A Whole) Review

I haven’t written about The Superior Spider-Man in a while, even though I am still reading it and still generally enjoying it, because it is beginning to succumb to The Walking Dead disease.

Here’s what I mean: we all know full well how The Superior Spider-Man is going to end. No matter what writer Dan Slott says on Twitter and at conventions, we all know that Peter Parker will return as Spider-Man at some point before the Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie opens on May 2nd next year. And even if you choose to believe that Marvel’s overlords at Disney will be willing to allow that corporate synergy and mindshare (Christ, I feel dirty just typing that) to pass since the movie’s owned by Sony and Columbia, the signs are all here that Peter Parker will return and Otto Octavius will suffer a fall. Otto’s showing hubris, he’s arrogant, and his sense of superiority is rubbing damn near everyone the wrong way.

All the signs point to Otto falling from grace and Peter returning, and the problem is that every reader knows this. Because we read comic books, and we know full well that dead only means dead in comics if the dead guy is Uncle Ben, Thomas Wayne or Martha Wayne. So we all know that the broad-stroke ending of Otto falls / Peter returns is coming (the same way we’ve known that Negan falls / Rick triumphs is the likely ending of the Walking Dead arc that’s been going on since 2012)… but it seems it has been going on forever.

And the events of The Superior Spider-Man #22 continues with the long, slow arc of Otto blindly heading toward a bad end, with yet another instance of Otto interacting badly with someone who would expect Peter to know and be friendly with him. And it’s certainly enjoyable enough, particularly in seeing J. Jonah Jameson’s reaction to some of the events of the issue… but it is also still more of the same interminable setup for a story for which I’m becoming damned impatient to see the punchline.

Otto has used investments from Peter’s Aunt May and her husband Jay to open a startup tech company, with Otto using all of his usual charm to hype up the new employees with quotes from The Art of War and Rorschach from Watchmen. While Otto shows May and Jay around and woos his dwarf employee Anna Maria (because even in Peter’s body, Otto is still smart enough to hit his weight), Flash Thompson / Venom has answered a call from his former flame Betty Brandt to investigate the apparent return of The Crime Master, who knew who Flash was and might come after his family. As Flash goes into battle with Crime Master’s crew, Spider-Man gets the call to deal with it, with the grudging blessing of Mayor Jameson, who is chafing under the control of Otto’s blackmail to allow Spider-Man to operate with impunity. Otto jumps into battle and attacks Flash, who reveals his face through the Venom symbiote to get Spider-Man to stop attacking. Of course, Otto has no clue who Flash Thompson is…

So this is yet another issue that gives us more setup toward an eventual fall by Otto, with not a hell of a lot of payoff. Seeing the money and effort that Otto has put into the startup is a good setup for an inevitable collapse by some force or another, which further sets up the financial ruin of Aunt May and Jay who fronted the money for the entire operations. And seeing Jameson finally apparently come up with some kind of plan to stick it back to Spider-Man was really kind of thrilling. I’ve been reading Spider-Man comics since I was five years old, and a Jolly Jonah who works with Spidey just feels unnatural. So it was good to see ol’ Jonah with at least the beginning of a plan to stick it to Spider-Man again.

But again: that’s part of the problem with The Superior Spider-Man as a whole: we know that Otto is eventually going to lose. So we know that Parker Industries is going to fail, and we know that it’s going to cause Aunt May to lose everything, because we know that Otto is gonna lose. So while seeing those things gives us a nice sense of impending doom, there’s not a lot of suspense there. It’s only a question of when the bottom is going to fall out and how, and that is vastly less satisfying than an organic story playing out.

And I recognize that the same could be said of any comic story; of course the good guy is going to win in the end. That always happens. But the difference is that most comic story arc are about six issues / months, tops. And while some elements of story can last a lot longer – the old “who is the Green Goblin / Hobgoblin?” mystery from the older days of The Amazing Spider-Man lasted for years – things generally wrap more quickly. And when they don’t, it’s not that big a deal, because part of the unspoken covenant between comic creators and readers is that we all know that the story doesn’t end.

And that’s the problem I’m having here; we know that this story is going to end. Otto is going to lose, and Peter is going to come back. And because I know that, I’m beginning to get fatigued from this story. Sure, it’s interesting that Otto’s started a company, but I know it’s fucked. Sure, it’s intriguing that he’s got a staff and Spider-Bots surveiling the city, but I know it’s gonna end in cries of “fascism!” And that knowledge just dulls the effect of everything, and makes me want to get to the damn real climax, already.

Here’s an example, and one I might have used before: I saw The Sixth Sense back when it was in the theaters, and while I knew there was a twist, I didn’t know what it was. When Bruce Willis was at dinner with his wife, I figured out that he was dead. And the instant I figured that out, I was ready for the movie to get to the end to see if I was right and how it all wrapped up. The rest of the movie didn’t matter to me. And that’s where I am with The Superior Spider-Man: let’s get to the money shot, for Christ’s sake!

Jesus, this review has gone off the rails from a discussion of issue 22 to the story as a whole, which wasn’t really my intention when I sat down. But maybe it’s time to have that discussion, because again: I am reading The Superior Spider-Man, and I am still generally enjoying it. Like I said, this issue has some interesting stuff, and while I’m getting a little tired of seeing Spider-Man conflict with someone who thinks they know him, it’s always fun to see Spidey tangle with Venom. And Humberto Ramos has some good art in this; while I’m never a huge fan of his mangaish style, he’s drawing the Otto version of Spider-Man as darker and more menacing, which was a good look for me.

But I really have reached the point where I am ready to start seeing the resolution of this whole story. Each issue so far has had a lot to inform it, and I still enjoy it, but I am ready to see the final battle between Otto and Peter. This has been a decent enough story, but Watchmen changed the world in 12 issues, while The Superior Spider-Man has taken 22 just to get maybe 2/3rds of the way back to normal.

A wiser man than me once said that you know a movie’s going off the rails if, by the middle of the second act, you start wishing for a cigarette. At just past the 11 month make for The Superior Spider-Man, I’m about ready to start smoking a road flare.