Thursday, August 14, 2014

Sliding to the Edge of the Spider-Verse


As has been stated in a pervious post I don’t much care for Spider-Man. It’s not that he is a bad character, it’s just that I find him boring. There isn’t much to get me invested in him. This is not to say there has been things that I have not liked involving Spider-Man. I own a number of Spider-Man comics. A large chunk of those are from the 80’s but that’s mostly because they feature the character Black Cat in them. The 1990's Spider-Man cartoon is awesome & I'll gladly put it up there on the lists of great comic book adaptation cartoons. Heck, even the current Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon is half way decent (At least the few episodes I've seen have been half way decent). The Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends cartoon can be good for a laugh.

But why am I bringing this up? I’m going to talk about a Spider-Man comic. One that does feature something I do like: alternate realities. This should be no surprised. I just posted a post celebrating the 20th anniversary of Zero Hour, a series with an alternate reality element. I’m half of the way through an issue by issue review of Age of Ultron that has at least 1 alternate reality contained in it.

What am I going to be talking about? Superior Spider-Man #32, the prologue to the prologue series (Edge of Spider-Verse) to the main event (Spider-Verse). But didn't that book finish it run? Yes but the event of this issue & maybe other parts of the series take place during the run of the series. 

Imagine it’s October of last year. Ok, you got it? Well… forget all that since it being last October has no baring on the story. But there is some backstory you need to know which the first page fills you in on just in case the readers of said issue didn’t know what was going on. I did... sort of.

BACK STORY TIME: Otto Octavius, the villain also known as Doctor Octopus, was dying of something. Let’s say Butt Cancer. Otto doesn’t want to die so he figures out a way to go all freaky friday on Spider-Man. They swap bodies. Not sure what happens to the Octavius body but now Doc Ock in Spider-Man's body (who I'll be calling Octo-Spidey) changes to a darker kind of cool looking costume & proclaims himself to The Superior Spider-Man. This of course sets up the formation of an awesome comic book “Superior Foes of Spider-Man” If you haven’t reading it: correct that & do so. It’s awesome & you don’t have to worry about any of the Octo-Spidey stuff. You just get a fun team book.

Getting back to Octo-Spidey, in his *new* secret identity Otto-as-Peter works at a company called Horizon Labs where science happens. According to the recap page, There was a “temporal distortion” which I’m going to blame on Wolverine (see Age of Ultron #10 for more info on why). The distortion brings Miguel O’Hara, the Spider-Man of 2099 to 2013. He had a mission & not sure if he completed it or not (the comic doesn’t say). I guess he decided to stick around since he’s now hanging out in the present doing thing in his own series (which ties in the Edge of Spider-Verse event).

During the distortion, Octo-Spidey went missing for 24 hours & this comic tells of what he did. He did a lot. It all starts with with Octo-Spidey going to THE FUTURE! How? Giant explosion!  As he travels through time he apparently travels through Hypertime, the not much used but liked by Me DC Comics concept from the early 2000’s. He’s falling through a whirlpool which one can see reused art work from such past alternate reality stories as: 1602, Earth X, Future Imperfect, something involving Deathlok, Days of Futures Past & Old Man Logan.

Octo-Spidey falls out of the whirlpool & lands on a rooftop. He’s a bit woozy & stands up to find out that he’s 5 years too late!  No… wait… wrong comic book. That’s Futures End.  Octo-Spidey stands up & then crouches down in an odd pose to find out he’s in 2099! You can tell that’s 2099 since a reader board in the back says so & there is a billboard with the word Alchemax on it. 

On the next page I think there is a minor Blade runner reference in the background. If I remember the old Spider-Man 2099 comics they seemed to be very Blade Runnery. Octo-Spidey is web slinging around. What is that web connected to? I don’t know. The top of the panel I guess! While he slings around Octo-Spidey thinks to himself “Gotta get some some sweet future tech. Just think of what my giant brain could do with all that sweet future tech!”

About here I came to 1 conclusion:  Octo-Spidey is a giant Douche! He continues to be a big one through out the rest of the comic. I would assume that this was a theme in the book: Spider-Man is a giant Douche Bag! But apparently no one caught that he had been brain swapped. Or at least I heard about that being the case in a number of comics. As I have said: I haven't been reading Spider-Man but I hear things.

Back to the comic: I guess being in a costume is a no no since the police or what I guess passes for it in THE FUTURE tells Octo-Spidey he’s under arrest. Possible reason: First Degree Douche Baggery.

We have a minor fight scene (it’s 1 panel) & then Octo-Spidey meets up with the brother of Spider-Man 2099. He has a flying car. Flying Cars are cool. There is a bit of “I’m not who you think I am? You are exactly who I think you are?” but not really. Brother Guy (Gabriel O’Hara) assumes this is still Peter Parker & not the body swapped Otto Octavius. The reason Gabriel knows Petter Parker is the 2 Spider-Men had met before. Gabriel flies off in his cool car back to Spider-Man 2099's apartment. There they met up with a “holo-agent”, a hologram that is the user interface for the computer. Gabriel says the holo-agent use to have a personality but had been reset back to it’s baseline form (vaguely male & is colored yellow or green depending on the panel).

Shortly there after Octo-Spidey kicks Gabriel out of the apartment so he can do science. Octo-Spidey asks the hologram where he can get him some sweet future tech so he can himself a time machine. There are 2 choices: 1 from Stark/Fujikawa & the other being from Alchemax (which I guess is the company that Horizon Labs becomes). Octo-Spidey also wants hologram man to call him “Doctor”. I guess his ego isn’t big enough to have it call him “Master”. 1 quick 2 page spread of a montage later we see a bit more douche baggery (actual line of dialogue: If this is the future, I am not impressed). 

We next find Octo-Spidey is hard at work in the surprisingly still mostly intact but abandoned Empire State University campus. The lab he is in looks surprisingly clean given how things look outside. Also why is the campus still there? There are clearly more futuristic buildings built up around it. Why is it still there? Also, why is he there? He had the usage of the apartment. He didn’t need to go there. But he is & is hard at work at the machine Quinn Mallory made in the show Sliders. 

As Octo-Spidey works on what the holo-agent calls a “portal” we see that he has changed it’s form into that of a little girl who is colored yellow here but later on is colored pink. Why? I don’t know.  I might if I read the comic before this but I didn’t so it’s just something kind of weird. He turns on his portal & has the holo-agent girl download themself into his gauntlet. Not sure how a computer program from 86 years into his future downloads herself into his wrist gauntlet. Maybe she is backwards compatible?

They walk through the portal & end up in… an alternate universe first shown to us way back in 1977 in the first issue of What If. Here we see a world where Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four (they became the Fantastic Five) but we see the four members (yes, four. It doesn’t show where the Invisible Woman is & given the story she might not even be there) are found dead amidst a destroyed building of some kind.  Alternate Spider-Man is found dead with 2 big holes in his chest. On finding the dead spider-man, Octo-Spidey figures out that this is not his home time period. Even Holo-Girl confirms this. They are at the wrong “vibrational frequency”. So we are working on the same level of science that 1960’s DC Comics did for dimensional travel which is the best kind of science for made up dimensional travel!

On the next 2 pages we see Octo-Spidey travel to 3 other worlds. The opening monologue for early seasons of Sliders is basically this issue so far: What if you found a portal to a parallel universe? What if you could slide into a thousand different worlds? Where it was the same year, and you’re the same person, but everything else is different. And what if you can’t find your way home?

In those 3 worlds we see 2 worlds based of House Of M & Civil War. The third has flying police cars & a Spider-Man is a suit of armor (like the one he got in Web of Spider-Man #100). All 3 are dead, all 3 have chest wounds. All 3 are also surround by destruction. Octo-Spidey has started to collect data on the dead Spider-Men. He & Holo-Girl find out that each have been “suffused with the same exotic energy” but that energy is not native to any of the universe they have visited. We flip the page to see the Spider-Man (from the Spider-Man: India comics) fighting with some masked man who is wearing a kind of cool (minus the stupid looking helmet) retro looking outfit.

It’s Morlun. This “big mystery” was ruined in the images & text released to hype the Spider-verse event. They sold the series as: Morlun travels to alternate realities to kill the Spider-Man of that world but the various Spider-man team up to stop him. If this masked man is not reveled to be Morlun, it will be someone working for him.  As Indian Spider-Man fights Morlun, Octo-Spidey comes into help. While Morlun is distracted, He is trapped under a building that Indian Spider-Man pulled down on to him.  Instead of finishing the fight, Octo-Spidey takes Indian Spider-Man away. Morlun frees himself & knows Indian Spider-Man is gone. Where have they gone? Octo-Spidey is collecting Spider-Men across the multiverse to fight against Morlun.

We end this story with Indian Spider-Man & Octo-Spidey meeting up with other alternate Spider-People. Presented there are a six armed Spider-Man (which could be from the Mutant X universe or a few other places), Ashley Barton (Spider-Man’s grand-daughter & Hawkeye’s daughter from Old Man Logan), Spider-Man (from the What If? one shot “Spider-Man vs. Wolverine”), Spider-Monkey (from Marvel Apes) and the Spider-Man from the Spider-Man: Noir books.

There is a second story in the issue but it’s how Octo-Spidey recruited the Spider-Man from the What If? one shot “Spider-Man vs. Wolverine” from 2008.

FINAL THOUGHTS: A part from the general doucheness of Octo-Spidey it’s a good issue. I look forward to the rest of the event.

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