Overall, I liked this issue. No, really. Stegman takes the ball that Slott hands him and really runs with it, reminding of me of the beautiful artwork that Marcos Martin delivered for our last tour of Peter's subconscious, in "Amazing Spider-Man" #655. I thought Stegman did an amazing job with the sequence that begins the tour, with Peter standing on a deserted street, misspelled landmarks of his life collapsing around him. It really sets the stage for where the rest of the issue goes.
Moreover, the fight between Peter and Otto is a real tour de force, with Slott really exploring how both characters see themselves and Spider-Man. Pete calls upon his family and friends as his representatives of his strength to fight back Otto, but Otto brilliantly hurls Peter's enemies at him as representatives of his failures. (That scene with snippets of Peter's enemies appearing in boxes was unbelievably cool.) But, it's the moment where they both peel back their "masks," revealing their costumes under their faces, that everything is suddenly on the line. Slott really conveys the sense that it's no longer a game, the two of them moving around chess pieces on a psychological board. It's the final moment.
However, I'm not really thrilled with how that moment happens.
Ultimately, my problem with that moment is that Slott again does two things that annoyed me about "Amazing Spider-Man" #700 in the first place. First, he sullies Peter by having him do something that he views as irreparably breaking his own moral code. In "Amazing Spider-Man" #700, Slott has Peter decide to kill Dr. Octopus, declaring that he would never again be able to be Spider-Man (even if he somehow survived) because he had crossed that line. Here, Slott has Peter admit that he was trying to prevent Otto from operating on the girl so that he wouldn't get his hands on the neurolitic scanner and discover Peter's presence. To be honest, in both situations, Peter faced a real existential threat and I think his actions can be morally justified by arguing that they were for the greater good. Killing a guy who just tried to destroy the world (and could use the good offices of Spider-Man to engage in even more outrageous acts of mass destruction) and delaying surgery for a girl in order to regain control over his own body are both steps that can make sense when you view how dangerous the alternative outcomes would be. Slott argues that Peter doesn't view them as justifiable and I get that. But, similar to a problem I actually had with issue #655, I think Spidey's authors often view him as way too adolescent in his moral approach. After having spent years of his life as Spider-Man, Peter knows that these sorts of decisions aren't as black-and-white as his authors occasionally portray him as seeing it. I'm not saying that Peter should go all Punisher and view the ends as always justifying the means, but I think Peter is capable of occasionally seeing the ends justifying the means in certain situations. By denying him that moral complexity, his authors often make him a much more one-dimensional character than he needs to be.
Second, this moral failing leaves Peter once again "dying" broken and alone. In fact, issue #700 at least had him die somewhat less depressingly, with Otto pledging to uphold Peter's memories by becoming a hero. But, with Peter entirely wiped from Otto's mind, it stands to reason that this pledge could be in jeopardy, something that Peter would know as he faded into oblivion. Moreover, Slott implies that Otto is actually right (and not delusional) that Peter no longer deserves to be Spider-Man, that somehow his attempt to prevent Otto from operating on the girl invalidated his previous lifetime of doing good. We're left with Peter questioning whether he's worthy as his life ends and, if we are really to believe that Peter is gone, it's an awful way for his story to end.
But, of course, he's not. The real question, now that this transition phase has come to an end, is where do we go from here. To be honest, Slott now confronts the same problem that the editors of the Clone Saga faced, namely Otto now has to operate as Peter without knowing anything about Peter. It's ultimately what kept the editors of the Clone Sage from allowing Ben Reilly to become Spider-Man (or, more to the point, Peter Parker), since it would be difficult to explain why he didn't have information about his "missing years." But, it also opens the back door, namely Carlie. On the face of it, it feels like Peter is now lost to us, but Slott wouldn't have introduced the Carlie sub-plot if that were true. With Otto more likely to act like Otto and less like Peter now that he's wiped Peter's memory, it stands to reason that Carlie is going to have an easier time convincing people that he's not really Peter.
At this stage, we've set the stage for the story I wanted from the start, Otto unrestricted. Although I'm not thrilled how we got here, I'm a lot more interested in where we go from here.
No comments:
Post a Comment