Superhero deaths aren’t a new phenomenon. We saw Superman die, then come back reborn.
At the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Batman may or may not have died, most fans choose to believe he made it out at the end, but usually there is some kind of resurrection when a superhero bites the big one. As The Dark Knight Rises set up for potential future Batman movies, it’s not who’s inside the suit, it’s what the suit and the Bat symbol represent.
There’s also now going to be a similar death and rebirth for issue number 700 of Spider-Man.
As the Associated Press confirms, in #700 Peter Parker will lose a big battle to one of his biggest foes, but he will be resurrected through very bizarre means. Peter’s mind is inside Doctor Octopus, who will then become a good guy and carry on Spider-Man’s legacy after Parker goes to Marvel heaven.
As Dan Slott, who’s been writing Spider-Man for a good hundred issues, told Entertainment Weekly, “This is an epic turn. Every now and then, you have to shake it up.”
As for Doc Ock, who’s gonna make a turn for good, “Gone are his days of villainy,” Slott continued. “But since it’s Doc Ock and he has that ego, he’s not going to try and just be Spider-Man, he’s going to try to be the best Spider-Man ever.”
As Slott continued, “This Moriarty in the head of Sherlock. This is the greatest villain inside the body of the greatest hero and trying to do good. This is a guy who was a couple steps away from a bucket list, and now he’s got a whole new lease on life. That’s really going to change him.”
With Doc Ock taking over the Spider-Man hero business, the new incarnation will be The Superior Spider-Man in early 2013. As to how the fans will react to all of this, we should find out soon enough because the issue just came out on December 26. It’s certainly a bold move, and there’s a lot of room for interesting ideas with this, especially with the moral questions of the ends justifying the means, as well as whether Doc Ock can really leave being a bad guy behind completely. It’s certainly an interesting and risky experiment, and we’ll see soon enough if it all pays off.
