Amazing Spider-man 55 Preview

[Jness]

It doesn't mean people aren't interested at all, it just means that threads tend to go off the rails here... it happens all the time regardless on how interested people are in current storylines.

I never said "interested at all", I said that when the focus of conversation is something completely different to the issue it's indicative of level of interest in the actual story at hand. If there was that much interest or desire to discuss, we woulda seen it.

[Jness]

but the storyline wore its welcome out internally and they wanted Peter back

I've never heard or read this about "Superior Spider-man" and I feel like I had been reading obsessively about it at the time? Link or source? Would love to read more about it.

[Huntsman Spider]

So was Zack Snyder's Batman V. Superman, but you know that's not what I meant. Structurally Slott's story lacked the cohesiveness you get with KLH or Watchmen or for that matter CIVIL WAR where each issue and so on leads somewhere and it happens at the right moment and instance. Superior Spider-Man would have worked better had it been a limited thing. Daredevil Born Again had Miller send Matt Murdoch to hell and back in 8 issues, every one of those issues is better than the entirety of Slott's corpus, leave alone Superior.

There was nothing in the story to justify the length...paradoxically what defines Superior is the length. Few would care much about it if it had been shorter. Which is why I think people are distracted by the length of that storyline from looking at it in the proper context.



If the conclusion to the story is that Peter really was the true superior Spider-Man then yeah...I'd say the absence of those elements invalidates the story at least in terms of how it's framed at the end and by Slott in interviews. The story's engine fundamentally argues that Otto was Superior to Peter, and that vicariously since it spends so much greater time on Otto's triumphs and devotes little to none on Peter resisting and overcoming him, I think one can argue forcefully that Slott was "on the devil's party and didn't know it". The only way you can make a case for Superior is by saying, "Yes, Otto is correct, Peter sucks, he's a terrible Spider-Man and is wasting and squandering his life, and someone else can live it better than he has." Which is what I mean when I say that Superior Spider-Man works fundamentally as a parody and spoof of Spider-Man, a rather mean-spirited one in fact. In the case of KLH, JMD's sympathies are obviously with Peter even if the story is fundamentally told from the villain's perspective. The most epic moment of that entire story is when Peter rises out of that grave himself, it's a moment that's up there with Peter lifting the machinery in MP-Saga.

Now of course...you can argue or excuse by saying that Slott is showing and emphasizing Peter's compassion and caring side that he's not some macho guy who invests his life in owning his enemies (which again was also the point of KLH in fact, the point of KLH). But that means that Peter needs a moral victory. If Slott's point in Superior is that Peter self-sabotages his life out of guilt (which was Otto's analysis and given that Slott has said multiple times that Peter is "self-destructive" without ever clarifying if he means saving people selflessly is being self-destructive...I have to think that Otto is speaking for the author here)...but if that was Slott's point, then Peter after coming back to his body needed to admit right then and there that his doctorate was fake and false, he needed to divest himself of his company either say "Look this company means a lot and it's employing people but I can't be associated with this, i will sell all I have for pittance, I insist that the company be renamed from Parker Industries to...I don't know Horizon or Modell or Jaffrey Industries...but I won't have any part of that." Spencer bringing those chickens home to roost at the start of ASM#1 for me at least, (regardless if Spencer intended this or not) reads like a rebuke to that storyline.

That needs to have happened but instead Slott had him passively accept that on a silver platter. I mean there was a similar moment in Mark Millar's Marvel Knights: Spider-Man which again that story was in part a kind of spoof of Spider-Man and a little irreverent at times (i.e. Peter's fights with villains was encouraged by corporations to keep him from going against the man) but even then Millar allows a moral victory when after coming across money that he could use for himself, Peter instead selflessly gives it to Vulture's daughter no questions asked.



Not really. Carlie appeared in just five issues in Spencer's entire run, Randy has appeared in about 10.

I actually liked that twist and thought it made sense for the overall setting, that in a world where corporate-driven scientific R&D had directly or indirectly created superheroes and supervillains, that the more corrupt of those corporations (and their cronies in the political and military spheres) would use comparatively pettier crimes committed by supervillains to keep superheroes distracted from using their powers, abilities, and/or resources to enact meaningful changes and improvements in society that would lessen those corporations' power, stature, and influence.

[Frontier]

In a certain way, Superior is only a story you can do in comics. If you want to adapt it proportionately, you needed to do a full season with Otto-in-Peter, with maybe the opening and closing episodes featuring Peter. If you do it as a movie, you'd need to adapt it as a two-parter with one full movie as Otto-in-Peter, and the sequel's final act bringing Peter back. That would be a hard sell because you are banking on Tom Holland hamming it up as Otto-in-Peter for a full movie and not being Peter (which given how poorly "Emo!Peter" went down in SM-3 is a tough sell). Whereas KLH can be translated to cinema. Do it like the third Batman movie where the first and last act featured Bruce Wayne as Batman but the middle act featured Batman in Prison. In a hypothetical adaptation, that middle act would be Kraven-as-Spider-Man and Peter bursting out of the coffin could be done like how it was in Kill Bill 2.

Having said that, the Clone Saga is also a story you can do in comics as is most of the Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane comics, as is other inane comics from past eras. So "a story that only works in comics" cuts many ways.

They adapted it in the latest cartoon.

I don't think spinning 30 issues of Otto owning and coming up on top can be undone or cancelled because Otto went "Scusi! Mille regretti" at the end.

It's not good drama certainly.

The book selling as well as it did says otherwise at least as far as how far fans are willing to follow a villain protagonist (or a villain playing the hero).

Carlie had MJ meet the Lookouts (which hasn't shown up in a single issue since that one) and then helped her pack luggage. And then sorta served as expositor for the rise of the Sin-Eater. That's not a great deal at all.

She helped MJ take down FemElectro too.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

They adapted it in the latest cartoon.

As you said it was five episodes rather than a full season.

The book selling as well as it did says otherwise at least as far as how far fans are willing to follow a villain protagonist (or a villain playing the hero).

Civil War also sold well as did Maximum Carnage (in fact eyeball wise, those two sold far better than Superior) and Michael Bay sells well too.

I don't think "selling well" is immunity from criticism or actual dramatic flaws in a set-up.

[Somecrazyaussie]

When the last page or two of a thread discussing an upcoming comic is devoted to discussing an unrelated storyline that happened 6 years ago, I think that says a lot about how interesting people find the current arc. =)

Last Remains will likely read better when collected in a trade. The major problem is that it is padded. We've had issue after issue of Harry screaming at Peter "confess!"and smacking him around just to prove how powerful he is. The Sin-eater stuff ultimately went nowhere. The Order Of The Web stuff (especially in the astral plane segment) could have been skipped over.

People just want it to be over with due to the fact it has been dragging on. They want answers (we will get more questions more than anything).

With Hunted the extra issues made sense. This was just a cash grab.

[Somecrazyaussie]

But this is besides my point. If Slott had this scheme of comparison between Peter and Otto...that's totally valid. Just because I disagree with that, doesn't mean that it's invalid by default. They made it work in the PS4 game and the Raimi movie to some extent. The point is leading up to Superior, Slott never established that. You can argue that he was doing it to preserve the surprise of Superior and so on...but the lead-up to Superior and so on is essentially a stunt and a gimmick about a villain taking over Peter's life. It wasn't making any inherent case for Otto as protagonist because he and Peter were similar. The version of Otto that Slott established until then didn't make that case at all. Retroactively in the pages of Superior, Slott did that to pad it out...but that's after the fact stuff.

I agree. It's why I never like Superior until after it was done. It was basically moving the goal posts while the game was still being played out. Too many plot contrivannces, poor characterization, trying so hard to show Otto could be a good guy... if only he had Peter's upbringing/a positive influence (which is something Slott did try to get across).

Well, the game and the movie both set out with the intent that Otto would be sympathetic from the get-go. But the comic version was just a flat out bad guy as that is what he was designed to be. It took a lot of back-peddling to try and change that around for Superior to work.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I agree. It's why I never like Superior until after it was done. It was basically moving the goal posts while the game was still being played out. Too many plot contrivannces, poor characterization, trying so hard to show Otto could be a good guy... if only he had Peter's upbringing/a positive influence (which is something Slott did try to get across).

Well, the game and the movie both set out with the intent that Otto would be sympathetic from the get-go. But the comic version was just a flat out bad guy as that is what he was designed to be. It took a lot of back-peddling to try and change that around for Superior to work.

Superior Spider-Man doesn't really work if you read it by itself...i.e. just the 30 issues of Superior, you need to have read Dying Wish, and even that story is a payoff to stuff Slott introduced in #600 and then again in Spider-Island (which happens to be better than anything else Slott did after that), and Ends of the Earth. So the weak setup and foundation is a problem for the entire story. And that's why I call it "KLH with padding". Had Slott not had the platform (ASM 2 times a month) he would have been driven to pare it down, because telling Superior as a monthly story necessitates a certain economy. The issue of padding the story for so long also led to decisions like the entire supporting cast and fellow Avengers completely losing their minds so that they buy and fall in with Otto's deception. If Slott didn't have so much time and space to tell his story, stuff like say writing the supporting cast out of the story or other superheroes off-world or busy with adventures somewhere could have been justified. It doesn't work if you are stretching it for some 20 odd issues over a year bi-monthly, so that means you have to make everybody a moron in order for your character to come off as smart.

The padding of Superior is what ruined the story...but at the same the padding is the story. What defines Superior is a gimmick and a stunt, having Otto-in-Peter run around all Spider-Man titles and team-ups for more than a year and so on. Had Superior been told as a contained story it wouldn't have been memorable and the flaws of Doctor Octopus acting like the Chameleon would have been remarked on from the get-go.

I've never heard or read this about "Superior Spider-man" and I feel like I had been reading obsessively about it at the time? Link or source? Would love to read more about it.

Slott said more than a few times that Superior was supposed to lead into Spider-Verse but the fact was that the second Garfield Spider-Man was coming up, and Marvel wanted Peter back in the costume on the racks when the new issue came out.

The other is that when he pitched Spider-Verse at a Marvel summit (a kind of get-together where writers-editors and others gather socially and pitch ideas and get feedback from peers), most of them gave their opinion that a storyline that was a crossover of every adaptation and alternate version of Peter Parker needed to have 616 Peter at the center and not Otto-in-Peter.

So that's why the end of Superior feels so rushed and why the return of Peter is so underwhelming. In fact, Slott didn't fully write the conclusion to his signature story. The dialogue of that issue was co-written by Christos Gage. Do you remember when Alan Moore punted part of the writing duties of say, Swamp Thing's last issue to another writer? Do you remember when Frank Miller let somebody else finish the last issue of Born Again? Or for that matter, Dematteis on KLH?

Obviously there might be other deadline issues and so on, but I think a writer offloading the climax of the story, and with the return of the main character to boot to someone else, is a big tell (regardless of intent) of how one should interpret the nature of the final issues of the story.

[Kingkalamari]

Yknow had 54 been a expository dump I think 55 could be pretty great, but the added danger of restored evil Norman and Kingpin means that the events of 55 are guaranteed to be disrupted and probably only give us a lingering sense of the bigger picture. What's a bummer is there is alotta dialogue heavy stuff between Peter/Harry that would work great, and really there should be quite a bit given the friendly terms theyve been on rather to continue to keep punching each other instead. It seems like Last Remains was built to raise more questions than answer them, and rereading 50-54, Kindred's preemptive reveal in 50, Sin-Eater's plot through the .LR issues, and The Order's plot all weigh down the story significantly, basically dampening story beats that are great in Last Remains.

Kindred's identity reveal in 50 feels so tacked on by editorial probably from people complaining about how long it was taking it completely spoils the reveal in #53 which wouldve been a aboslute gut punch, and it instead just leaves the buildup and tension of 53 to be something we already know.

Sin-Eater's crisis of faith and hunting Molurn doesnt really go anywhere in the plot as 54.LR reveals, if they wanted his end to be the same, they shouldve just had Kindred manifest Carter again after the demons were removed from the Order and return to him, and have Carpenter take him down the same way as 53.LR, it wouldn't of made quite the difference since Molurn's powers didnt really shine at all and Sin-Eater just offs himself quickly. Or just rewrite the story a bit if keeping the Sin-Eater story in to have him confront Kindred after discovering the truth to be a plot device/expository machine to help Parker get the upper hand.

I've seen others say the same thing but Kaine/Ben/Otto not being here, especially with Kindred's comments really seems off. If they end up being a deus ex machina to the plot in 55 itd be nice but also feel unearned given theyve been completely absent from the story, despite really being thematically important.

[Lukmendes]

Spencer didn't ignore Rhino's Clone Conspiracy truce, he just undid it by having him and Peter be friendly until Peter let him get captured by Taskmaster, and now he hates him again.

Yeah he eventually corrected it, but what I meant was that Free Comic Book Day issue, where Rhino is a villain randomly attacking the city just because.

Well it wasn't. It got back a whole bunch of readers who hadn't followed or read Slott's stuff, and it explained all the stuff needed to understand it in the pages itself.

Well, that and people have an idea of what happened with Superior and Peter going worldwide, and you have to know those things, otherwise it feels like fake character development, like "Oh I did those bad things, but I correct them in this issue, so whatever" lol.

I mean does anyone need to read Dennis O'Neil's run to appreciate "Nothing can stop the Juggernaut"

At it's core that story is just an episodic villain battle, a good one, but ultimately you just need to know Spidey.

or for that matter any story with Gwen Stacy to appreciate "The Night Gwen Stacy Died".

Well, Gwen is mostly unconscious in that story, and then she dies, the story is more about her death than her as a person.

Not that reading her stories give her any more depth than "She likes Peter and hates Spider-Man" lol.

I think that's cutting Superior way too much slack. The point about Superior is that this was a stunt and a gimmick not a real storyline with a beginning-middle-end. Slott never intended Superior to end the way it did. It was supposed to end with Spider-Verse but the storyline wore its welcome out internally and they wanted Peter back, and that's among other reasons why Peter's return feels so underwhelming...and the fact that the return of Peter feels so anti-climactic as compared to his humiliation and defeat in Dying Wish and the 9th issue undercuts the entire moral and thematic agency of the story. In KLH, Peter's return was epic as f--k. Not the case here. Peter had agency in KLH in choosing to return whereas in Superior and before, he's just passive.

Slott really likes to make Otto beat Peter in moments like this, hell, his return in Clone Conspiracy relied on that, since Ben was making a clone of Otto's body, who logically would have Peter's mind, and Otto had to kill the mind of that clone to get that body back... Yeah lol.

Roger Stern referred to some of Dennis O'Neil's stories in his run too. His famous "Nothing can stop the Juggernaut" spun out of a need to resolve a subplot that O'Neil had left him (namely the character that O'Neill introduced, Madame Web, knew Peter's identity, which Stern didn't like) so he came up with a story to make her suffer amnesia, and expanded on that to the extent that nobody cares about that incidental detail on reading that story.

So just because Spencer refers to stuff in Slott's run doesn't give it value. "Nothing can stop the Juggernaut" hasn't, to my knowledge, made people read up every Madame Web story, nor do people who praise it go "to really appreciate this you need to read the O'Neill run".

Funny thing is that, last time Stern used her in ASM#239, it's heavily implied she still has her powers and knows that Peter is Spider-Man still, so he left that open for anyone who wanted to use, but also made it so that she still may not know.

Well, Superior definitely would completely fall apart with a married Spider-Man because of MJ because it would've made even less sense for her to not figure out the body-switch and the relationship dynamic even more skeevy.

It already falls apart because everyone loses all their IQ around Otto to only suspect something is up, but ultimately never thing much of it lol.

I don't think he's trying to make everyone read every Carlie Cooper storyline either but he felt her worth enough to include in his run to a certain extent several times. She's had more to do than Randy has.

And she showed up less than Randy in Spencer's own run... Like, before Sins Rising, I think she only showed up in the issue with her return, where she introduces that support group, and then in that date with MJ issue, where I think she helped defeat Electra?

If Slott's point in Superior is that Peter self-sabotages his life out of guilt (which was Otto's analysis and given that Slott has said multiple times that Peter is "self-destructive" without ever clarifying if he means saving people selflessly is being self-destructive...I have to think that Otto is speaking for the author here)...

Slott had at least 3 situations where a character makes an assessment of Peter, which he doesn't offer a rebuttal to, implying they're right, the Otto one isn't even the first one, the other two are these:

https://i.imgur.com/hLCLP0Q.png

https://i.imgur.com/jpHHOdf.png

(ASM#672)

https://i.imgur.com/I92bobq.png

https://i.imgur.com/ZE1Dtfq.png

(ASM#23 vol 4)

And the curious thing is that, not only all 3 assessments are wrong with if you keep Spider-Man's character in mind, they're wrong even by Slott's own interpretation of Spidey, since Carlie is wrong, Peter is not a costume, he's both Peter and Spidey, and Slott shows that. Otto is wrong, Peter doesn't self sabotage as Horizon Labs itself showed that Peter was trying to use the science for good, and Big Time even has him getting nervous when he can't come up with ideas. Gwen is wrong, as Peter tries to find happiness, as in Slott's own run he dated a few women, and tried to get together with MJ... It's so weird Slott writes the character and misses the point of stuff he himself wrote...

Of course, maybe Carlie and Gwen are supposed to be wrong, as Carlie doesn't know Peter that well, and Gwen doesn't know what Peter's life was like after her death, but Otto literally was in Peter's head and came to that conclusion, so he's more likely to be right... And fact that the scene with Carlie and Gwen plays out in a similar way is very noticeable...

but if that was Slott's point, then Peter after coming back to his body needed to admit right then and there that his doctorate was fake and false, he needed to divest himself of his company either say "Look this company means a lot and it's employing people but I can't be associated with this, i will sell all I have for pittance, I insist that the company be renamed from Parker Industries to...I don't know Horizon or Modell or Jaffrey Industries...but I won't have any part of that." Spencer bringing those chickens home to roost at the start of ASM#1 for me at least, (regardless if Spencer intended this or not) reads like a rebuke to that storyline.

Not really. Carlie appeared in just five issues in Spencer's entire run, Randy has appeared in about 10.

His appearances are mostly glorified cameos until he started to date Janice, and even then he still doesn't do much.

Carlie was involved in introducing MJ to that support group, which was done more so to develop MJ, so Carlie didn't do that much there, but then she gets more involved with the plot and even makes interesting comments in Sins Rising, that's more than what Spencer's Randy did.

One thing about Spencer is he seems to feel he needs to use every single character in Spider-Man at least once before his run ends. Look at Carlie or Deb Whitman for example.

I'm pretty sure Deb wasn't even name dropped in Spencer's run, and so far she definitely didn't show up yet.

I've never heard or read this about "Superior Spider-man" and I feel like I had been reading obsessively about it at the time? Link or source? Would love to read more about it.

You being serious or sarcastic?

If serios, it's a status quo post ASM#700, where Otto takes over Peter's body for 30 issues, and ASM is replaced with "Superior Spider-Man", but Peter came back in the finale and ASM returned as well, that's the gist of it

I actually liked that twist and thought it made sense for the overall setting, that in a world where corporate-driven scientific R&D had directly or indirectly created superheroes and supervillains, that the more corrupt of those corporations (and their cronies in the political and military spheres) would use comparatively pettier crimes committed by supervillains to keep superheroes distracted from using their powers, abilities, and/or resources to enact meaningful changes and improvements in society that would lessen those corporations' power, stature, and influence.

Think I made a comment last year or so in how it'd be cool to make Daredevil have a retcon that shows he started to fight normal villains, realized what was going on, and went after those guys after a while, that way the differences between his earlier stories and current ones can make sense.

Civil War also sold well as did Maximum Carnage (in fact eyeball wise, those two sold far better than Superior) and Michael Bay sells well too.

I don't think "selling well" is immunity from criticism or actual dramatic flaws in a set-up.

Don't forget Clone Saga, sold so well that it's the sole reason it overstayed its welcome to such an extent lol.

Just read #55 the ending was shit. Nothing was explained or resolved and Spencer keeps dickteasing us with OMD bullshit

If true, not really surprised... For whatever reason, writers who tease such stuff, like to keep teasing forever, and Last Remains doesn't feel like a story to conclude anything, I even doubt Kindred is gonna be defeated lol.

[Huntsman Spider]

Yeah he eventually corrected it, but what I meant was that Free Comic Book Day issue, where Rhino is a villain randomly attacking the city just because.



Well, that and people have an idea of what happened with Superior and Peter going worldwide, and you have to know those things, otherwise it feels like fake character development, like "Oh I did those bad things, but I correct them in this issue, so whatever" lol.



At it's core that story is just an episodic villain battle, a good one, but ultimately you just need to know Spidey.



Well, Gwen is mostly unconscious in that story, and then she dies, the story is more about her death than her as a person.

Not that reading her stories give her any more depth than "She likes Peter and hates Spider-Man" lol.



Slott really likes to make Otto beat Peter in moments like this, hell, his return in Clone Conspiracy relied on that, since Ben was making a clone of Otto's body, who logically would have Peter's mind, and Otto had to kill the mind of that clone to get that body back... Yeah lol.



Funny thing is that, last time Stern used her in ASM#239, it's heavily implied she still has her powers and knows that Peter is Spider-Man still, so he left that open for anyone who wanted to use, but also made it so that she still may not know.



It already falls apart because everyone loses all their IQ around Otto to only suspect something is up, but ultimately never thing much of it lol.



And she showed up less than Randy in Spencer's own run... Like, before Sins Rising, I think she only showed up in the issue with her return, where she introduces that support group, and then in that date with MJ issue, where I think she helped defeat Electra?



Slott had at least 3 situations where a character makes an assessment of Peter, which he doesn't offer a rebuttal to, implying they're right, the Otto one isn't even the first one, the other two are these:

https://i.imgur.com/hLCLP0Q.png

https://i.imgur.com/jpHHOdf.png

(ASM#672)

https://i.imgur.com/I92bobq.png

https://i.imgur.com/ZE1Dtfq.png

(ASM#23 vol 4)

And the curious thing is that, not only all 3 assessments are wrong with if you keep Spider-Man's character in mind, they're wrong even by Slott's own interpretation of Spidey, since Carlie is wrong, Peter is not a costume, he's both Peter and Spidey, and Slott shows that. Otto is wrong, Peter doesn't self sabotage as Horizon Labs itself showed that Peter was trying to use the science for good, and Big Time even has him getting nervous when he can't come up with ideas. Gwen is wrong, as Peter tries to find happiness, as in Slott's own run he dated a few women, and tried to get together with MJ... It's so weird Slott writes the character and misses the point of stuff he himself wrote...

Of course, maybe Carlie and Gwen are supposed to be wrong, as Carlie doesn't know Peter that well, and Gwen doesn't know what Peter's life was like after her death, but Otto literally was in Peter's head and came to that conclusion, so he's more likely to be right... And fact that the scene with Carlie and Gwen plays out in a similar way is very noticeable...

but if that was Slott's point, then Peter after coming back to his body needed to admit right then and there that his doctorate was fake and false, he needed to divest himself of his company either say "Look this company means a lot and it's employing people but I can't be associated with this, i will sell all I have for pittance, I insist that the company be renamed from Parker Industries to...I don't know Horizon or Modell or Jaffrey Industries...but I won't have any part of that." Spencer bringing those chickens home to roost at the start of ASM#1 for me at least, (regardless if Spencer intended this or not) reads like a rebuke to that storyline.



His appearances are mostly glorified cameos until he started to date Janice, and even then he still doesn't do much.

Carlie was involved in introducing MJ to that support group, which was done more so to develop MJ, so Carlie didn't do that much there, but then she gets more involved with the plot and even makes interesting comments in Sins Rising, that's more than what Spencer's Randy did.



I'm pretty sure Deb wasn't even name dropped in Spencer's run, and so far she definitely didn't show up yet.



You being serious or sarcastic?

If serios, it's a status quo post ASM#700, where Otto takes over Peter's body for 30 issues, and ASM is replaced with "Superior Spider-Man", but Peter came back in the finale and ASM returned as well, that's the gist of it



Think I made a comment last year or so in how it'd be cool to make Daredevil have a retcon that shows he started to fight normal villains, realized what was going on, and went after those guys after a while, that way the differences between his earlier stories and current ones can make sense.



Don't forget Clone Saga, sold so well that it's the sole reason it overstayed its welcome to such an extent lol.



If true, not really surprised... For whatever reason, writers who tease such stuff, like to keep teasing forever, and Last Remains doesn't feel like a story to conclude anything, I even doubt Kindred is gonna be defeated lol.

I think Chip Zdarsky may have touched on that a little in his current Daredevil run, with Matt realizing all his years of crimefighting may not have actually made that much difference due to him setting his proverbial sights too low.

[TheCape]

Yeah he eventually corrected it, but what I meant was that Free Comic Book Day issue, where Rhino is a villain randomly attacking the city just because.



Well, that and people have an idea of what happened with Superior and Peter going worldwide, and you have to know those things, otherwise it feels like fake character development, like "Oh I did those bad things, but I correct them in this issue, so whatever" lol.



At it's core that story is just an episodic villain battle, a good one, but ultimately you just need to know Spidey.



Well, Gwen is mostly unconscious in that story, and then she dies, the story is more about her death than her as a person.

Not that reading her stories give her any more depth than "She likes Peter and hates Spider-Man" lol.



Slott really likes to make Otto beat Peter in moments like this, hell, his return in Clone Conspiracy relied on that, since Ben was making a clone of Otto's body, who logically would have Peter's mind, and Otto had to kill the mind of that clone to get that body back... Yeah lol.



Funny thing is that, last time Stern used her in ASM#239, it's heavily implied she still has her powers and knows that Peter is Spider-Man still, so he left that open for anyone who wanted to use, but also made it so that she still may not know.



It already falls apart because everyone loses all their IQ around Otto to only suspect something is up, but ultimately never thing much of it lol.



And she showed up less than Randy in Spencer's own run... Like, before Sins Rising, I think she only showed up in the issue with her return, where she introduces that support group, and then in that date with MJ issue, where I think she helped defeat Electra?



Slott had at least 3 situations where a character makes an assessment of Peter, which he doesn't offer a rebuttal to, implying they're right, the Otto one isn't even the first one, the other two are these:

https://i.imgur.com/hLCLP0Q.png

https://i.imgur.com/jpHHOdf.png

(ASM#672)

https://i.imgur.com/I92bobq.png

https://i.imgur.com/ZE1Dtfq.png

(ASM#23 vol 4)

And the curious thing is that, not only all 3 assessments are wrong with if you keep Spider-Man's character in mind, they're wrong even by Slott's own interpretation of Spidey, since Carlie is wrong, Peter is not a costume, he's both Peter and Spidey, and Slott shows that. Otto is wrong, Peter doesn't self sabotage as Horizon Labs itself showed that Peter was trying to use the science for good, and Big Time even has him getting nervous when he can't come up with ideas. Gwen is wrong, as Peter tries to find happiness, as in Slott's own run he dated a few women, and tried to get together with MJ... It's so weird Slott writes the character and misses the point of stuff he himself wrote...

Of course, maybe Carlie and Gwen are supposed to be wrong, as Carlie doesn't know Peter that well, and Gwen doesn't know what Peter's life was like after her death, but Otto literally was in Peter's head and came to that conclusion, so he's more likely to be right... And fact that the scene with Carlie and Gwen plays out in a similar way is very noticeable...

but if that was Slott's point, then Peter after coming back to his body needed to admit right then and there that his doctorate was fake and false, he needed to divest himself of his company either say "Look this company means a lot and it's employing people but I can't be associated with this, i will sell all I have for pittance, I insist that the company be renamed from Parker Industries to...I don't know Horizon or Modell or Jaffrey Industries...but I won't have any part of that." Spencer bringing those chickens home to roost at the start of ASM#1 for me at least, (regardless if Spencer intended this or not) reads like a rebuke to that storyline.



His appearances are mostly glorified cameos until he started to date Janice, and even then he still doesn't do much.

Carlie was involved in introducing MJ to that support group, which was done more so to develop MJ, so Carlie didn't do that much there, but then she gets more involved with the plot and even makes interesting comments in Sins Rising, that's more than what Spencer's Randy did.



I'm pretty sure Deb wasn't even name dropped in Spencer's run, and so far she definitely didn't show up yet.



You being serious or sarcastic?

If serios, it's a status quo post ASM#700, where Otto takes over Peter's body for 30 issues, and ASM is replaced with "Superior Spider-Man", but Peter came back in the finale and ASM returned as well, that's the gist of it



Think I made a comment last year or so in how it'd be cool to make Daredevil have a retcon that shows he started to fight normal villains, realized what was going on, and went after those guys after a while, that way the differences between his earlier stories and current ones can make sense.



Don't forget Clone Saga, sold so well that it's the sole reason it overstayed its welcome to such an extent lol.



If true, not really surprised... For whatever reason, writers who tease such stuff, like to keep teasing forever, and Last Remains doesn't feel like a story to conclude anything, I even doubt Kindred is gonna be defeated lol.

I remember Slott saying once that his favorite characthers were the f@#$ ones, so i feel that his crticism toward Peter are intended to be taken at face value, but apparently even him can keep that idea straight. Speaking of Slott i finally almost finish with his run, i just need to read Go Down Swinging and his annual and i'm done. P.S Venom Inc was really stupid and the rest of his legacy issues are very bland.

I'm pretty sure that Jness was talking about Jack's comment about Superior ending sooner than Slott intended.

[Conn Seanery]

No spoilers for this issue until it comes out tomorrow, please. 9AM EST.

And that doesn't mean talk vaguely about it now and get people to PM you for details, BTW.

[Lukmendes]

At least 40% of Americans don't have life insurance though. So if Peter's meant to represent the everyman and working-class guy, that fits the pattern (https://www.insure.com/life-insuranc...erinsured.html, https://www.worldatwork.org/workspan...life-insurance). And since this is a real thing, I don't think it can be said that he's irresponsible for not having it. Because does that mean the 40% of US Uninsured in real life are irresponsible?

He's also a super-hero who risks his life literally everyday 'cause New York has some douchebag trying to rob a bank or nuke it every 5 seconds, and he tries to stop them all, so yeah, one could figure that having a life ensurance would be helpful, specially back during JMS' run when he was married.

Even then, this isn't about irresponsibility, it's about him being short sighted, this is just one example.

The Batgod is a rich kid who had access to the best gym teachers...Peter's a poor kid who had to figure out all this by himself rather than operate a custom rig PC in his basement to help him solve crime. It's part of the general cultural tendency that we no longer have real compassion for the struggling poor scrapper even in an idealized sanitized form as Peter. And it's not an accident that the "teenage-izing" of Peter has generally removed class issues, and always frames Peter's story as about him needing validation.

It's like we can't imagine Spider-Man as Batman's equal anymore, when that was how Spidey was shown in JMD's Spider-Man/Batman crossover, heck in the original Marvel/DC TASM v. Superman crossover. In those stories, Spider-Man was treated as the colleague and equal of the World's Finest, whereas today he'd be treated as some Robin or Supergirl type.

I was comparing the level of hyper competence lol.

Plus Slott's Peter hardly lacked money and had dumb gadgets too, like a fucking "Anti Sinister Six" suit, but my point is still mostly about hyper competence, and Batgod was only mentioned as a joke about Spidey's competence being that good in those moments.

That's why I feel the only way to make sense is to see this as a parody. Whereas Spencer does feel like he's writing Peter Parker the character and not a spoof, as did Chip Zdarsky, as did Tom Taylor.

Zdarsky started out so bad I dropped his comic for a while lol.

He improved a lot though, very fast too, kinda funny his Spectacular#2 was just obnoxious to read, and Spectacular#6 was pretty good.

That's part of why I think the whole "Peter was the Superior Spider-Man all along" which the story ends is so insincere, disingenuous and unconvincing. Slott's own writing betrays the thumbs on the scale, where his creative and imaginative sympathies lie, and fundamentally I do think that the point Slott is making (whether he intends it or not) is that Otto was Superior to Peter.

About the best thing that can support this idea that "Peter is the Superior Spider-Man" is that in the end, when things got too tough, Otto just gave up 'cause he couldn't handle it, while Peter just never stops as long as he can.

Even then, while that's something Peter has over Otto, it just feels like such a basic message.

It's like ASM#801, while that story is not wrong about Peter being a good hero 'cause he saves people from small crimes, it's such a basic message... And considering the kind of character Spidey is, which Slott was writing him for so long, that's all he can say? It really didn't help it when Zdarsky's Spectacular#311 came out not long after, and it felt like he understood Spider-Man better... Yeah.

Edit: Awshit, deleting spree, should've seen that coming lol.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

He's also a super-hero who risks his life literally everyday 'cause New York has some douchebag trying to rob a bank or nuke it every 5 seconds, and he tries to stop them all, so yeah, one could figure that having a life ensurance would be helpful, specially back during JMS' run when he was married.

The superhero stuff wouldn't be covered in Life Insurance especially since he has a secret identity. He could pass his injuries as accidents and so on but that would be committing insurance fraud. (Can you get Life Insurance if you are a superhero? That feels like a Fantastic Four kind of story...I mean who can insure a family that do not have regular mortal biology, and basically have free healthcare since they are the only beings who can heal and treat anything that can potentially injure them?).

About the best thing that can support this idea that "Peter is the Superior Spider-Man" is that in the end, when things got too tough, Otto just gave up 'cause he couldn't handle it, while Peter just never stops as long as he can.

The "Peter just never stops" thing is undercut by the fact that nothing Peter did helped him get his body back. He was basically some backup "break glass when it's time to end story" switch. So yeah...that dog doesn't walk even if it is a basic message as you said. Even that basic message is disingenuous.

It's like ASM#801, while that story is not wrong about Peter being a good hero 'cause he saves people from small crimes, it's such a basic message...

The message is that Spider-Man doesn't save the world because he's not Thor or Black Panther but he helps the regular people and saves lives. That entire point has a kind of condescension because it implicitly assumes that "saving the world" stuff matters or counts for more...it's the "below my pay grade" thing from MCU Homecoming writ large. It's the equivalent of saying doctors and nurses or first responders aren't as heroic as astronauts or soldiers. To internalize that as a vallid sentiment is to surrender ground to a toxic concept to start with.

It's also hypocritical on Slott's part since so much of his run had Peter involved in bizarre high concept stories...like Parker Industries, Go Down Swinging, Spider-Verse, Clone Conspiracy, and even before that Spider-Island. Slott himself never wrote or cared much about Peter in a working-class reality (and going by most of his output, I don't think he has an interest in that in general...which fair enough write what you like)...it's like now at the end you are affirming a version of Spider-Man you didn't write. It's a bit like assuming you wrote Paul Jenkins' Spider-Man when you didn't.

So much of Slott's take is rooted in genre and not in real life. Take "No one dies" the big emotional punchline of that is "bad characters in comics come back from the dead more often than good characters" and like really...that's your take on grief. You are getting meta on grief?! The art in that comic and Slott's run in general is often a lot better than the writing deserves. It's probably the outstanding example of a Spider-Man run where the art was so far better than the writing.