The Superior Spider-Man Returns #1
Oct. 11th, 2023 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_daily
”New twists. New turns. You'll just have to wait and see what tricks we've got up our 8 mechanical sleeves.
The die?
It will be cast.” — Dan Slott
A flashback to Otto’s time as Spider-Man…
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Date: 2023-10-11 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 01:39 pm (UTC)He literally thought her voice was just his own brain.....man that is some next level mental problems.
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Date: 2023-10-11 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 12:17 pm (UTC)Yes, I realize this is a statement about what actually happens to women and POCs in the workplace. And sure, the old "stop distracting me, you prattling underlings...WAIT, I'VE GOT IT, I'M A GENIUS" gag is a classic throwaway bit. But the whole point of the Superior Spider-Man was Ock trying to be better than his old self, which sometimes led him to succeed and sometimes led him to fail in new and interesting ways.
I think it would be more in line with that for Ock to fete his underling and actually share the credit with her for half an hour or so...and then his ego could kick back in, after #23 has had a taste of the idea that he could treat her as an equal. Every time he remembered the breakthrough, her role would get lesser and lesser until it was erased entirely. This would play into the idea of the revision of memory, it'd still give her plenty of reason to resent and sabotage him, and it'd feel true to the character. Instead, well, we get this: a 2020s social issue, handled with 1940s-level subtlety.
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Date: 2023-10-11 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 11:48 pm (UTC)I think Otto doesn't need to be so over-the-top as Cartman because unlike Cartman (who disregards his friends' common sense all the time), Otto has no one to oppose him or call him out. We saw him talk himself into other beliefs after the momentary impulse to try better left him.
In the story as a whole, we do get a sense of his ongoing relationship with #23 (first known as Estrella), and why she has reason to feel jilted. I just wish the load-bearing column of plot on these pages wasn't so shaky.
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Date: 2023-10-12 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 02:11 pm (UTC)Most of the story is a flashback, and even by the end of it Otto is still Otto, not Spider-Otto. So it's not really a "return", is it?
(Maybe a return to Superior Spider-Man, but that feels like a stretch.)
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Date: 2023-10-11 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-12 11:25 am (UTC)