Friday, March 22, 2013

Avenging Spider-Man #18 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

After recently deciding to abandon "Superior Spider-Man," I tried to focus during this issue on why I feel like "Avenging Spider-Man" continues to be the idealized version of the Otto/Peter switch story for me.  After all, it's my enjoyment of this title that confirmed to me that it's not the switch itself that's bothering me, but the way that Slott's approaching it.  After reading this issue, I think Yost is doing two things that provides a different (and, to my mind, "superior") take on the switch.

First, he isn't trying to make Otto "superior."  Slott's Otto is an insecure mess, maniacally driven by his need to outdo his greatest enemy.  Yost's Otto, on the other hand, is a way more grounded guy.  Sure, he's incredibly arrogant, as we see in this issue, where he spends a lot of time contemplating why he's better than a god.  But, he's also capable of learning.  He initially views Thor as unjustifiably arrogant in this issue, but he re-assesses that opinion when he realizes that Thor was willing to give his life to save the people that he protects.  It's a classic scientific approach, using new information to assess an initial hypothesis.  In other words, it's totally something that Otto would seem to do.  Slott's Otto, however, seems incapable of engaging in that sort of reflection, since his insecurity would leave him unable to admit that he might have been wrong in the first place.  I think that it's this aspect of the portrayal that bothers me most, since it reduces Otto to almost a cartoonish version of himself.  Yost's Otto, on the other hand, is a complicated guy and it's fascinating to watch him interact with the world through a new lens.

Along those lines, Yost makes Otto's moral dilemma a lot more interesting.  In "Superior Spider-Man," Slott has Otto completely embrace his role as a ersatz hero, an embrace so complete that it somewhat defies belief.  He goes from trying to destroy the world to upset when people hit children?  It's just never felt right.  In this title, though, Otto is still Otto.  He's not just saving New York because he feels a vague responsibility to do so, as Slott's Otto would; he's saving it because he feels at least partly responsible for setting the stage for Electro's battle with Thor.  It's a lot more believable motive and shows Otto really struggling with his new-found responsibility.  Although Slott may have initially pegged Otto's commitment to saving lives as inspired by Peter's final message in "Amazing Spider-Man" #700, he's spent most of "Superior Spider-Man" showing him driven more or less by his need to best Peter at his own game.  Here, Yost builds off the initial premise, Otto's debt to Peter, and in doing so makes his dilemma more interesting, a real internal struggle between good and evil.  He really casts some doubt about Otto's actual commitment to saving lives.  After all, why is he essentially collecting this Sinister Six in his underwater base?  Is he merely detaining them to keep his eye on them?  Or is it something more sinister?  By raising these sorts of doubts, it makes you want to keep reading.

In other words, in "Superior Spider-Man," Slott is encouraging the reader to read mostly to see if Otto's more brutal approach to being Spider-Man will tarnish Peter's reputation forever.  In "Avenging Spider-Man," Yost is delivering a detailed character study of a villain struggling to adapt to a new moral code.  Oddly, by lower the stakes, Yost seems actually to have heightened the tension.

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