Avenging Spider-Man #15.1 Calls Doc Ock’s Redemption Into Question Already

The first full issue featuring Otto Octavius as the new, “superior” Spider-Man hit the stands last week with considerably less fanfare than Amazing Spider-Man #700, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t sell out all over the country. Avenging Spider-Man #15.1, though, feels almost like it’s a story that should take place before the events of Amazing #700, as Otto is in Peter’s body, sure…but he doesn’t seem all that “redeemed.””With great power comes great responsibility,” Otto says to himself at one point in the issue. “More or less.” That’s pretty much the approach taken to his characterization throughout.The story of the Superior Spider-Man is a redemption tale, to hear the creators and editors tell it. Otto is a damaged man who has spent years of his life dedicated to greed and destruction, and now he finds himself obliged to fulfill the dying wish of a man he killed–that Octavius should spend the life he’s taken from Peter wisely and make the world a better place as Spider-Man.This issue goes a long way toward exploring what’s been going on in Doc Ock’s head since, for the most part, it’s been Peter the readers were following during Amazing Spider-Man, even once Otto swapped their bodies. Christopher Yost and Paco Medina, in that respect, give us a great “origin story” for the Superior Spider-Man, but on the other hand it’s an origin that seems a bit out of sync with what we saw in the other title.Medina is the highlight of the issue; while Yost’s script is good, it seems so dissonant with the way Dr. Octo-Spidey is portrayed in the final pages of Amazing Spider-Man that it’s difficult to reconcile the two and ends up feeling like the two writers are working toward entirely different goals. The art, though, is beautifully rendered, and little things–like Peter’s work goggles foreshadowing the changes to Spider-Man’s uniform–are nice touches.Medina also excels at showing emotion, and that’s key in an issue like this. They forced an awful lot of plot and character development into a fairly small package here, so the pacing was key and Medina nailed it. Facial expressions and body language, skills that are criminally underrated unless the reviewer happens to be talking about Kevin Maguire, are used effectively here as key storytelling tools.The spare use of splash pages in such an “important” issue suggests that Medina was more interested in telling the story than re-selling his art at exorbitant prices, and if that seems like a cynical and narrow way to look at things, take a walk through any number of recent “key” issues to see what I mean. It also means that the final splash page, showing off the new Spidey in his tweaked costume thwipping his way across the New York skyline, is that much more effective since its impact hasn’t been dulled by a bunch of other big, splashy images before it.