Superior Spider-Man Rescued Doctor Octopus From Creative Oblivion, But Created a New Problem

Doctor Octopus was one of Spider-Man‘s first villains, debuting in The Amazing Spider-Man #3. Otto Octavious was a scientist who made special thought-controlled robot arms that would end up being fused to him in an accident. This drove him slightly mad and Doctor Octopus was born. He’d found the Sinister Six, bringing together a team of villains to fight the Wall-Crawler. For a long time, he was considered one of Spidey’s greatest villains, but there’s a problem there – Spider-Man has such awesome villains that it’s a steep competition for who his greatest enemy is. As the years went by, the overweight scientist in the green spandex kept falling down the card.

The return of Norman Osborn was the biggest blow to Ock in the mid ’90s. At this point, the villain had mostly faded away, as bad guys like Venom, Carnage, Hobgoblin, and more all gained prominence. As great as Ock could be, he wasn’t the one who caused the death of Gwen Stacy, he mostly just dated Aunt May. The return of the Green Goblin didn’t completely kill Ock’s popularity, but that’s mostly because it was already gone. Marvel would try to push the villain when Spider-Man 2 came out, but it didn’t work at all. It wouldn’t be until the ’10s that Ock would come to prominence again, thanks to something fans never thought they’d see – the death of Spider-Man at his hands. This led to one of the best Spider-Man series of the 21st century – Superior Spider-Man. Ock got his biggest break ever but it’s also become a lodestone around his neck.

Doctor Octopus Needed Superior Spider-Man to Rise to the Top Again

Superior Spider-Man is one of the most important Spider-Man milestones for numerous reasons, but one of the biggest is that it made a lot of readers realize how important to Spider-history the villain was. I’m going to be honest – while we nowadays think of Ock as one of Spider-Man’s most important villains, that hadn’t been the case for years when “Dying Wish” rolled around. I started reading comics in 1991, and my first Ock story was “Revenge of the Sinister Six”. It was a fantastic story and it was also the last truly great Ock story for years.

Ock’s biggest problems was that despite being a key part of Spidey’s history, as a villain he really hasn’t had the effect on the hero’s life that other bad guys have. Green Goblin has the death of Gwen Stacy, Venom knew Spider-Man’s secret identity and terrorized him and Mary Jane, and Kraven the Hunter defeated the Wall-Crawler, took his place, then killed himself, never letting Peter get his win back. However, if you look at the history of Doc Ock, there’s nothing like that, other than the aforementioned Aunt May stories, which revealed that Ock was actually a better person than readers thought he was. He was certainly a threat to Spider-Man, but he had never made good on that threat in a way that other villains had.

“Dying Wish” changed all of that. Ock was dying and at his weakest, but he was still able to outsmart Spider-Man and defeat him, taking over his body. This was exactly the kind of thing that had been missing from the villain’s history; even if he never became Superior Spider-Man and it was a more standard death of a hero story, this still would have been the perfect addition to the villain’s history. Having him become Spider-Man on top of that, one who promised to be a better Peter Parker than the original, was the icing on the cake and it worked like gangbusters. We got to spend more time with the villain than ever, seeing him succeed in a way we never had before. He made good on his claim that he was going to be a better Peter, building him a better life than he was able to build on his own.

Superior Spider-Man would go on to become one of the best Spider-Man stories ever. It was interesting to see a villain take up the role of his greatest foe, fighting evil in his stead. Sure, Ock did some bad things as Peter (like all of the women that he tricked into thinking he was Peter and dating him), but readers got to see him in a whole new light. He was more than just the crazy scientist who had been getting beat on by Spidey for years and this helped make him more popular than ever.

Suddenly, fans were talking about him again for the first time in ages. Series writer Dan Slott had set out to prove that Ock was the best Spider-Man villain and it worked for a lot of fans. It made the villain more popular than ever, to the extent that when Peter took over his body again during a battle with Green Goblin, fans were sad to see Ock go. Superior Spider-Man gave an old, tired villain a new chance to shine. And then, because it’s Marvel, they messed it all up.

Marvel Made Their Favorite Mistake with Doctor Octopus

Marvel Comics loves going back to well and this was a huge problem for Doc Ock after he was Superior Spider-Man. Instead of using all of the growth of the character to make him great in his original guise, the publisher has kept trying to recapture his time as Superior Spider-Man. There have been some more body-hopping shenanigans, leading to him become the Superior Octopus, a melding that fans just weren’t interested in (it didn’t help that he was a part of Hydra in Secret Empire). He’s also straight up returned to the mantle of Superior Spider-Man for some nostalgia miniseries that never made a splash.

Doc Ock grew a lot as Superior Spider-Man, showing new facets of the character. It proved that he could be more than just the villain he always was. Instead of using this to take him down new roads, they just tried to bring readers back to the well. It’s been a massive disappointment for fans and it’s led the villain back to where he was before “Dying Wish” gave him another chance at stardom. Marvel made the best Doctor Octopus stories ever by making him Spider-Man, and then ruined it by not letting him be anything else.

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