The Superior Spider Man #1 review: vengeful and fresh

So if you haven’t checked in on your friendly neighborhood wall crawler here’s what’s new. In the epic (and overpriced) issue of Amazing Spider Man 700, Doctor Octopus died. This would normally be no big deal, but Doc Oct had created a device that switched Peter Parker’s mind with his own, so when our favorite villain with a bowl cut died, it was actually Peter Parker’s mind.

Towards the end of the issue, Peter’s spirit, for lack of a better term, integrated with the mind of Doctor Octopus and controlled his actions to the extent that he was still going to be a super hero. Doc. Oct agreed and said that he would be a genius Spider-Man who would use his advanced years in the younger body to lay the smack down on some criminals.

Before delving into #1 of The Superior Spider-Man we needed to have that background information, didn’t we?

The stage is set for a smarter, mentally older Spider-Man, who will probably continue doing good, despite having done evil for all of his life. Superheroes have done the body switch before, but to have one of the hosts actually die is interesting and the main reasons why we got the book.

I used to read Spider-Man regularly. It was our go-to comic book, but after a while the adventures of a young adult trying to figure out life, plus the art just got boring.
Doctor Octopus as the Superior Spider-Man is different. He sneers when he’s at dinner with Mary-Jane, drinks alcohol, tries to run away during a fight with the Sinister Six and physically looks like a mad scientist when he’s working.

The biggest changes come during the fight scenes when he tries to hurt some of the villains. They’re a bit taken aback, even questioning Spidey about why he’s playing so rough. At the end of the battle Spidey is whaling on this one guy about to kill him, until the ghost of Peter Parker steps in. Spider-Man can’t see, feel or hear the ghost mind you; but we can see the faint outline of a being ‘guiding’ him to do the right thing.

The art is realistic, a little dark, frantic and the story is interesting because you’re not sure who you’re rooting for. In the end Peter Parker’s mind will somehow make it back to a physical object, thus making Peter Parker the real Spider Man again. That’ll probably be in about 10 issues, but the story has enough life and promise that we’ll give it a go.

Yeah, I’m a dad, but I was once just a comic book geek.  Once a week or so, I’ll highlight some of the comic books or graphic novels that are on our radar screen.  New comic books come out every Wednesday to your local store, stop by and visit them for the most up to date news or visit Comic Book Resources.