The comic book world has been rocked and torn asunder by the announcement of a much-beloved character being given his death sentence. In Amazing Spider-Man #700 of the long-running series launched in 1963, Spider-Man dies with the super-villain Doctor Octopus’s consciousness entering his body to become the new Spider-Man. Wait, what?
In Amazing Spider-Man #700, Peter Parker is faced with the horrific constraint to transfer his consciousness into the body of Doctor Octopus to change him into a decent human, thereby forcing the consciousness of Doctor Octopus to enter into the body of Peter Parker. Upon doing so, the physical form of Doctor Octopus dies taking Peter with it – unfortunate. But in a less evil and younger form, Doctor Octopus stretches out and exclaims that he will become a “superior Spider-Man”, which neatly flows into the January launch of the comic book Superior Spider-Man, starring Doctor Octopus as Spider-Man. Seriously.
Such a controversial decision has not been without backlash as one writer of this story-line and long-time writer for the Amazing Spider-Man series, Dan Slott, has found. “Did I know fans were gonna be passionate about this? Sure,” Slott told Wired. “When we started dropping hints about what was coming up in Amazing Spider-Man #700, I was the first to make the jokes that when the issue came out I was going to have to pull a ‘Salman Rushdie.’ But let’s be honest about this. Comic fans have always been this passionate. They just haven’t always had a place to put their knee-jerk reactions that was instantaneous as the Internet.”
When Spider-Man was first brought to life by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in the comic book world in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962, it was controversially ground-breaking for a teenager to be in the role as a main superhero protagonist, as they would normally be consigned to sidekick protégé (Robin for Batman) or as a bit-part character (Jimmy Olsen for Superman). Peter Parker, a teenage high-school student and the secret identity of Spider-Man, displays many common trials and tribulations of growing up through adolescence – relevant to his young adult audience – with the additional weight of being a mutant superhero. This unusual direction, that has not been popularly replicated since, sees that Peter Parker has no mature superhero mentor and instead has to learn for himself that “with great power comes great responsibility” – the oft-quoted line said by his late Uncle Ben.
Stan Lee celebrated his 90th birthday last month. Lee underwent a pacemaker implant surgery in September 2012 to “ensure that [he] would live for 90 more years” as written in a statement to his fans, published in full on TMZ. Showing no signs of stopping soon and, like him, SpiderMan is a legend that will live on forever. Excelsior!
These are comic books. While controversial, something will happen to allow a way back. There used to be a saying that the only people who ever remained dead in comics were Jason Todd (the second Robin), Bucky Barnes (sidekick to Captain America) and Uncle Ben. In 2005 Jason Todd came back to life as the villain Red Hood and in the same year so did Bucky Barnes as Winter Soldier. Even Uncle Ben has made a couple of reappearance’s. Admittedly one of them was an alternate realities version brought to earth briefly by Mephisto the King of Hell and the other was when the Scarlet Witch rewrote all of reality in a fit of insanity (comic books are weird).