Thoughts on Superior Spider-Man #1

Variant cover to The Superior Spider-Main #1,
Art by Joe Quesada

The first comic I ever read was an old back issue of Spider-Man. The adventures of Peter Parker were the stories that brought me into comics in the first place and made me the fan that I am today.

However, I stopped reading Spider-Man after they published the One More Day storyline by J. Michael Straczynski (the creator of Babylon 5) and Joe Quesada (the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics at the time). While I liked Straczynski's work on Amazing Spider-Man and likes the things he did with the character and Quesada's artwork for the storyline was good, I felt it was a complete mess of a story and the way they dissolved the marriage between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson was utterly stupid and corrupted the character of Spider-Man for me.

Because of that, I have refused to buy another mainline Spider-Man book until they have fixed the idiocy that is One More Day. So, when I heard about The Superior Spider-Man and saw the preview images of Spider-Man with Mary Jane had me at least curious.

So, while at my local Hastings (which is where I buy my comics now since my local comic shop went out of business), I saw the 1st issue sitting on the wrack and decided to give it a read. After reading it and giving myself a few hours to actually think about it, I have exactly three words that perfectly encapsulate my feelings on this book:

This is weird.

Now, as a fan of comics, I'm used to weird concepts. Hell, some of my favorite stories are rather weird when you really break it down (Atomic Robo is a perfect example of this) and I love them for it. However, for reasons that still remain a mystery for me, the idea of Dr. Octopus' consciousness being inside Peter's body and he now suddenly wants to be a good guy is just...weird to me.

I just don't understand why Octopus would not suddenly want to be a good guy while in Peter's body? To me, it would make a lot more sense if he tried to besmirch one of his greatest enemies by doing horrible things while in his body. Now, if I remember correctly, the reason he's now a good guy (or at least acting like one) is because of the latent memories of Peter Parker that are still possessed by the body. However, that just seems like a really weak explanation to me.

With that being said, I will say the fight scenes with the D-List Sinister Six (and Octopus' reaction to this group) were good and how he ended up defeating them in the end was rather cool. I also like the reveal at the end, giving us a hint to the future of this series.

While it had some good elements, I don't think I'll be adding Superior Spider-Man to my pull list anytime soon. I'll probably give the next two issues a read (I almost always read the first three issues of a series before making a final decision on it), but I doubt they'll actually make me change my mind.