Superior Spider-Man #2
Written by Dan Slott
Art by Ryan Stegman and Edgar Delgado
The short of it:
Just a heads up, if you haven’t read the first issue or know how it ends, and you like surprises, just go ahead and turn back now. I’m spoiling away. I literally can no review this book without doing so.
Because the ghost of Peter Parker is a talkative little bastard, but I’ll get to that in a second. Ock’s second day on the job as Spidey and he’s already a media darling shaking hands with J. Jonah Jameson. Wait, what? He recovered stolen items from the Marla Jameson Memorial Wing at ESU and that’s enough to make for a happy Jonah. Ghostly Pete is blown away by this complete and total insanity. Crazy-town banana-pants. MJ has her own insanity to deal with, of the same variety, but thankfully has her new temp roommate, Carlie Cooper, who has her own insanity to deal with as well! Don’t forget, Carlie is nursing an arm injury after shooting at Ock…who was Pete at the time, and said as much. She hasn’t told a soul, but MJ, on the other hand, spills the beans about Pete wanting to get back with her. AWKWARD!
So Ock is Pete, and he’s trying to outdo Pete, and he fails. He tries to date Mary Jane but has no idea at all how difficult Peter Parker’s love life is thanks to Spider-Man, and it leads to some humor. Humor and him trying to Dock Ock the situation, which leads to him creating a way to have some free time to try and date Mary Jane. Which he proceeds to do in the most dated ways possible, and with negative results. Then danger strikes and he turns into a weasel trying to get laid. Still, more fail, but it leads to EXTREME creepiness. Like, one of the most unsettling panels I’ve seen in Spider-Man since Sins Past creepy. Anyway, Vultures attack MJ’s nightclub because it used to belong to THE Vulture, and Octo-Spidey has to save the day, but in the end Otto figures out, and over explains, why they can’t be together.
And while this makes sense to MJ, it just creates more doubt in the mind of Carlie, which means she has to get back to work!
What I liked:
- Peter, dead or whatever he is, being in this book is the life saver. I mean, it’s just further proof as to how long the status quo can really last, since one of the two main characters can’t be seen or heard by anybody. Still, his commentary on anything and everything is what makes this book.
- For as obnoxious crazy as Ock gets from time to time, I can’t help but admire the brilliance from Dan Slott. An iPad app to let him patrol the city with Spider Bots. That’s freaking awesome.
- Otto’s rationalizing of Pete and MJ’s relationship was perfect. Like, really, if they aren’t going to be married or together, that’s the reason why. The reason they worked as a couple was because they were married, because they couldn’t just break up every time one of them got angry. Without the marriage I really can’t see a reason why they would want to give things another go around, and that actually makes me sad. Happy that Otto can’t score with her, but sad for the fact that my first Spider-Man comic was the annual where they got married.
- It’s little things, but the Ock descriptions are great. “Lunch with the Watson woman”, “Watson Dating Trials”. It’s amusing because Ock has no respect for women and it’s not disguised at all.
What I didn’t like:
- I get that Otto is a creepy old man who had no luck with women, but he is beyond creepy and it only gets worse. His usage of Peter’s memories made me want a cold shower.
- Why is it that the only person really suspicious at all that Peter isn’t Peter is the ex who dumped him for being Spider-Man? Carlie has barely even been around since Spider-Island.
- With Ock going full blown mad scientist as Peter, how is nobody picking up on it? His co-workers think he’s just turning into a dick, and his friends don’t notice anything. Was Peter just that socially not there that nobody realizes he isn’t a prick?
Final thoughts:
So if issue three features a moment where Ock is about to do something that would get someone killed, and Peter screams at him not to do it and the person lives, I’m labeling it a cliche. In the first issue he made Ock not beat Boomerang to death, and this issue has him make Ock not Gwen Stacy MJ.
Gwen Stacy is a great verb. It means ‘to shoot a web right at the ankle of someone falling, and hope you didn’t just snap their neck like a twig’.
Ocking it can be a great verb too. It can mean ‘to be a sickeningly creepy wastoid who can only sleep after getting off to someone elses memories’. I may use it often depending on how much love I personally give to this book.
So for all the times that Spidey has saved Jonah, or his son, or his father, or his friends, or his co-workers, or at times his wife (except for that time he didn’t save Jonah’s wife); Jonah could not get over his blind hate of Spidey. So that changes because Spidey brought equipment to something named after his wife? In front of the press? The whole beginning to the issue felt a little jammed in there.
I’m glad Carlie is back and looking to become a major character again, her back burnering after Spider Island was a shame. Given the way Slott writes Peter’s women, she really is the more sensible choice, and if she winds up being the one to dig to the bottom of what’s really happening, and helps save Peter, then maybe she’ll get real shot at being Pete’s first long term relationship that isn’t MJ or Gwen. I think she’d just need three years to qualify, I mean, he and Gwen were only together about that long before she died.
Overall: 7.5/10
