Review: Spider-Man: Octo-Girl Vol 2

Just as reading and reviewing the Spider-Man: Shadow Warrior manga led to my seeking out Spider-Man Kizuna, it also reminded me of the manga series Spider-Man: Octo-Girl. The work of the My Hero Academica: Vigilantes creative team of Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court, the series launched in the states in the fall of last year (I reviewed the first volume here), and this second installment was released back in May. It looks like the third volume was just released last week, so I suppose it's past time I got caught up.

For an original manga, the series is remarkable in how closely tied into Marvel comics continuity it is. In his afterword in the first volume, writer Furuhashi explain how he became enamored with "one of Spider-Man's more antiquated and obsolete villains", Doctor Octopus.

Essentially, he read a Japanese translation of The Superior Spider-Man (the Dan Slott-written series wherein Otto Octavius swapped his consciousness with that of Peter Parker and thus becomes Spider-Man for over a year). His excitement of that particular storyline led him to read about a decade's worth of Spider-Man comics, those published between 2009 and 2019, made him see the villain in a new light, and, ultimately, to create this manga, in which he could introduce readers to "a new perspective on the appeal of Doctor Octopus." 

Charmingly, he also wrote that his ultimate goal was to someday have one of  the "western comics" include a cutaway gag referring to the events of Octo-Girl, which has a premise that might sound pretty bonkers in its description, but is really not that big of a leap from what Slott and Marvel were doing with the characters during their storylines.

If you haven't read Spider-Man: Octo-Girl Vol. 1 (and I would certainly recommend you do so!) or even my review of it (you do read every single thing I wrote, don't you?), that premise is this: After backing himself into a corner during a fight with Spider-Man, Doctor Octopus attempts to transfer his consciousness from his current, seemingly-about-to-die body to a pre-prepared clone one, but due to various circumstances, his mind accidentally ends up in the body of a Japanese school girl who was in a coma.

She soon "wakes up", though, and so the mind of Doctor Octopus is now "sharing" a body with middle-schooler Otoha Okutamiya. After acquiring a spare set of metal arms from a Japanese safe house of his, cutting Otoha's unruly long hair into his signature bowl cut and trying to violently assert his dominance over her misfit school "chums", Otto and Otoha reach a sort of arrangement.

Using a high-tech device disguised as a cute octopus hairclip, the two can switch control of Otoha's body back and forth, and the person not currently in control can still communicate with the outside world. That communication is often accompanied by a hologram of one of them, being projected from one of the wondrous metal arms (And thus readers get to see plenty of Otto, even though his body, which Spidey actually saved from splattering on a New York City street, is stuck in a hospital bed in America, seemingly in a coma).

In the first volume, the pair agreed to work together to try to get Otto back in the right body, which meant stealing a particular brain scanner of his invention that was then being used at a Japanese hospital (the scanner's earlier usage on the injured Otoha was part of the circumstances that landed Otto's mind in her body). 

There were, of course, complications. 

First, there was the appearance of Sakura Spider, a multiversal Spider-Man variant that ended up in our world (Apparently introduced in the Deadpool: Samurai manga, according to Furuhashi's occasional behind-the-scenes info provided between chapters, as well as a page of flashbacks involving Deadpool). Then there was the fact that Otoha's classmate and estranged childhood friend seemed to be working on something high-tech and possibly nefarious in a warehouse. And some drama involving the weirdest of Otoha's classmates. And, in the first volume's cliffhanger ending, there was the appearance of another Marvel character: The Superior Octopus, which is Doctor Octopus' body in a clone composite of Peter Parker and Otto Octavius. ("It's kinda like... ..if you and Spider-Man had a kid together?" Otoha says of the clone, to which Otto replies, "Silence! Such phrasing is unseemly! Rather, I have improved upon my archrival's power.")

I haven't previously encountered this particular version of a Doctor Octopus-in-Spider-Man's-body character before personally. As you can see on the cover of this second volume, he looks a bit like a Spider-Man with Doc Ock's arms and with a white, black and green-highlighted costume. (This character, it is explained, is apparently a "past" version of Otto's consciousness, which must have been uploaded into a clone body when his system kept trying to do so after the original mix-up that led to Otto and Otoha sharing her body).

In this second volume, Furuhashi and Court give us a backstory of another of Otoha's classmates who is in on the secret, rounding out the character in the same way they did with a girl in the first volume. This also adds another player to Otto's growing Japanese girl gang.

In this volume, our heroes—or perhaps I should say "protagonists", given Doc Ock's insistence that he's not a hero—spend the better part of the book's page count in conflict with Superior Octopus. 

Discovering the truth about Otto/Otoha, he captures her and takes her back to his warehouse HQ, where he plans to delete the villainous Otto consciousness (the original and up-to-date version) from Otoha, freeing her and permanently disposing of a supervillain (Superior Octopus is still in a trying-to-be-a-superior-superhero phase, which the original Otto has since gone through and gotten over). 

It's up to said girl gang to help Otto get back in control of Otoha's body (and the octopus arms) so he can defeat the Superior Octopus; this he ultimately does by using Otoha's hijacked body as a sort of human shield. That is, he can beat the hell out of Superior Octopus with his metal arms, while S.O. refuses to land a blow on an innocent little girl.

The conflict ends in a draw. Though Otto is perfectly willing to kill off the Superior Octopus, he's saved by the appearance of Otoha's childhood friend, now wearing a high-tech, bird-themed super-suit that she has invented, making her look a bit like a new version of a Vulture. 

The rest of the volume tells us more about Otoha and her friend's childhood, the tragedies they experienced, and their falling out. Takoyaki, the Japanese snack made from octopus tentacles, is involved, as I suppose was inevitable in a manga featuring octopus-themed superhero characters. The friend now wants to use her super-suit to gain vengeance against a corporation she holds responsible for the death of her father. 

Spider-Man also appears, albeit in a single, brief scene set in New York, wherein he fights and defeats the streaming super-villain Screwball. This seems to suggest that we haven't yet seen the last of Spidey in this series, and that he will eventually interact with our protagonists again.

The pleasures of the series first encountered in the first volume remain the same here in the second. A megalomaniac and genius who thinks he knows better than everyone, Otto Octavius is a fun character, and it's especially fun to see him dealing with problems he himself finds trivial, like those faced by a middle-schooler, problems he can't help himself from trying to solve, even while protesting how ultimately unimportant they are to a man of his stature.

And Court's depiction of the lead is great, as her expressions and demeanor so drastically shift, depending on whether Otoha or Otto are in the driver's seat of her diminutive body. 

Court is also great at the action, of which there is a great deal, choreographing the often-inventive uses of the various characters' metal tentacles. (As spectacular as the various fights are, and as dramatic as the scenes of the Octopuses looming menacingly on a pair of their arms might be, I think my favorite images in this volume are those of Superior Octopus in "disguise", in which he wears a wide-brimmed hat and trenchcoat over his extremely conspicuous-looking costume. I find it especially funny as, earlier in the book, we see him out-of-costume on the streets of Japan, where it is of course easy enough for him to blend in.)

The situation obviously lends itself towards humor, of which there is also a lot, but the story sort of covers similar ground to the Slott and Marvel stories it is inspired by. That is, Doctor Octopus repeatedly sliding into regular acts of heroism. Even this version of the character, who has already attempted to be a superhero and found that it brought him nothing but suffering and that has thus re-embraced villainy, seems to have an innately heroic side that can be coaxed out in the right circumstances. 

This volume ends with Superior Octopus and the Vulture-like girl going to storm a corporate headquarters together, Otoha declaring that she will eventually make-up with her friend, even if it seems like the next step will be to have Doc Ock fight to stop her. 

******************

Interestingly, this volume includes and eight-page "mini-comic" at the end, which was a tie-in to the 2023 movie The Marvels. Furuhashi introduces it by saying it was meant to be less of an ad and more of a primer on the characters and, amusingly (at least to me), he writes, "Doing the necessary research took quite a bit of time"...

Yeah, I imagine tracking Marvel's "Marvel" characters over the course of some 55 years of characters changing codenames and costumes took a while, let alone then trying to reduce, say, the history of Carol Danvers into a single splash page and some 25 words of text.

Sure, it's fun to see Betten Court drawing Carol, Monica Rambeau, Kamala Khan, Movie Nick Fury and, on the opening page, seemingly all of the Captains Marvels ever. But, as someone who has written so much about super-comics continuity over the years, here on my comics blog as well as in articles intended for "civilian" readers, I found some of Furuhashi's statements fun to read.

For example, here is the first of two pages devoted to Captain Marvel Carol Danvers:

This is Carol Danvers.

Formerly Ms. Marvel...

...Now Captain Marvel.

After a complicated sequence of events...she inherited the title... ...and the weighty responsibility that comes with it.

Yes, "a complicated sequence of events" is a nice simplification of the typically byzantine history of a superhero, and can be applied to like, just about any of 'em at this point. 

I also liked the page devoted to Monica's history:

And this is Monica Rambeau. She's gone by a number of code names... ...which is plenty common for heroes with long careers.

Again, true. And it is certainly a gentle way of saying that writers, editors and publishers often flail about with what to do with some characters, especially one-time legacy characters that aren't successful enough to hold that legacy name forever, but are popular enough to keep around, so the publisher has to keep trying to find something that works for them...

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 2: Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man

Though well aware of its existence, and familiar enough with it that I knew of its dynamic cover by Carmine Infantino and Ross Andru, Dick Giordano and Terry Austin, I had never actually read the 1976 Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man #1, the very first collaboration between the two biggest American comic book publishers* and the first time any of their characters would meet one another in a shared story.

I had a pretty good excuse, though. I wasn't yet born when the book originally hit newsstands (Although I guess I had a second chance when it was collected in 1991's Crossover Classics, and a third chance in 1995 when it was republished in a "special collector's edition").

The recently released DC Versus Marvel Omnibus is giving me another chance though, and this time I seized it.

This collection certainly primes the reader to appreciate just how significant the comic was at the time. 

There are several different prose pieces from various comics professionals that discuss the book's publication. These stress the care that went into assembling the perfect creative team: Writer Gerry Conway was chosen as the only one at the time to have written both characters, pencil artist Ross Andru because he had drawn both and was the current Amazing Spider-Man artist. They also stress the incredible cross-company wrangling that went into every panel. (In his afterword to the collection, Tom Brevoort writes that "Superman/Clark Kent and Spider-Man/Peter Parker appear in exactly the same number of panels in the story and are in aggregate the same relative sizes in each." He didn't believe Marvel and DC were quite that exacting with the portrayal of the characters when he first heard it, so he actually consulted the text to check it out for himself and realized that they actually were.)

Readers at the time would also have been clear on what a big deal it was. Not just because superhero comics fans would have of course known that the two publishers' characters had never met, but because of the presentation of the book: It was published in tabloid format and cost a whole $2.00. That will seem like a steal to today's serial comics readers, who are used to shelling out $3.99 for a 20-ish page story, but in 1976, the average comic book was still only 30 cents. 

The original comic also contained a pair of short introductions running in parallel columns on its inside front cover, one from Marvel's Stan Lee and one from DC's Carmine Infantino, both trumpeting the rarity of the occasion. 

Inside, the action pauses at three points for page-length recaps of the origins of the heroes and the villains (the latter of whom share a single page), apparently there for any DC-only readers who weren't sure who this Spider-Man fellow was, or any Marvel-only readers who were somehow unfamiliar with Superman's whole deal.

As to why those two characters were chosen, well, that's obvious enough as to probably be not really worth mentioning. They were each publishers' most popular flagship characters, and each was the apotheosis of his respective publisher's protagonists. 

As for the villains involved, they are Superman's archenemy Lex Luthor and Spider-Man's villain Doctor Octopus, who are both derivations of the basic mad scientist archetype. (Reading this in 2024, I did wonder why the Green Goblin wasn't chosen as the Spider-Man villain featured, as the movies and 21st century comics had lead me to believe that he was Spider-Man's number one adversary. Was that not the case in the mid-70s? Or was the Green Goblin currently dead at that time?)

The book opens with a splash page featuring the two characters facing off, with the credits between them—oddly enough, "Edited By: Carmine Infantino and Stan Lee" is the top credit, perhaps this book's equivalent to "Stan Lee Presents"...?—and the title of the story blaring in the lower left corner: "The Battle of the Century!"

From there we get a 15-page Superman solo story in "Prologue 1". After a great double-page spread of Andru's Superman streaking into action towards a giant, city-smashing (and now rather retro-looking) robot, we get what amounts to a Superman solo story. 

The robot, piloted by Lex Luthor (wearing his familiar Super Friends get-up) steals a maguffin from S.T.A.R. Labs, and though Superman defeats the robot, Luthor and the doohickey escape. Superman briefly returns to the Galaxy Communications Building—this was during the time Clark was a TV news anchor—where we meet jerk prankster Steve Lombard, Galaxy owner Morgan Edge and Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen. Clark's not there long, though, leaving to track down Luthor for another battle, one that ends with Luthor being taken to jail...after he stashes the thingamabob for later use. 

From there, Clark and some co-workers take off for New York City, where they will be attending the "World News Conference."

After the aforementioned page detailing Superman's origin (In five panels and about 75 words; Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely would famously get it down to just four panels and eight words in 2006's All-Star Superman), it's Spider-Man's turn. 

His "Prologue 2" is also a 15-page solo story, this one opening with a double-page splash of Spidey reclining on a flagpole, as his Spidey sense alerts him to the presence of some thieves atop a nearby roof-top (These splashes look great in this format; I can only imagine how impressive they were in the original tabloid format). 

The thieves turn out to be in the employ of Doctor Octopus, who Spidey battles until the villain makes his getaway in a flying ship with its own set of tentacles. The police show up just in time up to chase Spider-Man away, their guns blazing (That's one big difference between the two red-and-blue clad heroes; Spidey is considered an outlaw vigilante, while Superman is embraced as a beloved celebrity).

Peter Parker stops at the Daily Bugle to sell pictures of the Spider-Man/Doc Ock fight to J. Jonah Jameson, a sequence that includes these two sublime panels, depicting Jameson's reaction to a terrible, terrible photo of Parker's that Jameson accidentally had run on the front-page. From there, there's a few panels of an attempted date with Mary Jane Watson, during which Parker must make a lame excuse, dash off to become Spider-Man and resume his battle with Doc Ock, this time defeating him and sending him to jail. 

In the last panel, Parker and the Bugle staff head to the same news convention the Galaxy staff was headed to.

The two prologues, which have now accounted for 30 whole pages of the book, or well more than your average superhero adventure already, do a great job then of establishing the characters, in costume and out, as well as their basic milieus and supporting casts and ongoing conflicts.

It's worth noting that both look, read and feel like a regular Super-Man story and a regular Spider-Man story—or, I suppose one could say, a "real" Superman story and a "real" Spider-Man story—which likely argues that the publishers made the right call in hiring creators with past experience on both characters. 

It helps, I suppose, that this was a time in which both superhero publishers were much more strict with the basic designs, looks and depictions of their stable of characters, and they tended to have to be drawn a certain way in order to look like themselves. These days, there is much more leniency given to super-comics artists, and designs can vary quite radically, depending on the personal styles and whims of the artists. (By the way, some of the aforementioned prose pieces noted that John Romita Sr., one of the two definitive Spider-Man artists, was tasked with re-drawing the Peter Parker faces in this comic, just as Neal Adams re-drew some of the Superman figures. Neither is credited for their work in the final product, however.)

And then, after a one-page, five-panel Spider-Man origin recap, it's time for a third prologue, this one a much shorter, five-page one in which Lex Luthor and Dr. Otto Octavius meet one another in New Mexico federal "Maximum X Security Penitentiary Number One," apparently some sort of special prison just for super-villains. Despite supposedly being escape-proof, Luthor breaks them both out and they escape together, with Luthor riding on Doc Ock's back like he was a horsey as he runs away on his metal tentacles.

Then, finally, it's time for the crossover to really start. 

At the news conference, Clark tells Lois Lane about "Comlab One-- The world's first orbiting communications laboratory!", which is apparently on display there. Lois then meets young Peter Parker, who saves her from a fall, and then, immediately afterwards, she meets a rather petty and possessive MJ (MJ: "I guess you're not the liberated type--eh, 'Miss' Lane? Some men like that sort of thing. Some men dig their women, 'feminine'." Lois: "Pull the claws in, MJ. Peter's cute-- --but he's a bit young for me, don't you think?")

Then, suddenly, Superman—actually, "Superman"—swoops in, fires weird beams from his eyes at the ladies, and then they both disappear, as the hero flies away. 

Clark and Peter both rush to change clothes and then meet in the sky over the roof-tops for the first time, the moment afforded another two-page splash. 

In Marvel fashion, they immediately come to blows, Superman having "heard reports" about Spidey and thus assuming he's behind Lois' bizarre disappearance, and Spidey, having seen Superman blast them with eyebeams, assuming Supes is to blame (In actuality, it was Luthor disguised as Superman; Luthor also gives Spidey a surreptitious blast of a "red sun radiation device" to power him up enough so that he'll be able to go toe-to-toe with Superman...at least for the length of a fight scene). 

What follows then is a dynamic 12-page fight scene, unusual in its length and choreography. It doesn't end until the red sun radiation wears off, and there's a fun sequence in which Spidey pounds away at Spider-Man for several panels, Andru drawing multiple arms on the wall-crawler to suggest how often and how fast he's throwing punches into Superman's chest and abdomen, and Superman just stands their stoically, absorbing the ineffectual blows, until Spider-Man steps back to look at his hands, now encased in pink jagged lines to suggest pain, and remark "Oboy." 

With their battle over (The unsurprising winner in a contest of super powers? Superman), the two finally calm down, realize neither is to blame for their love interests' disappearances, and decide to team-up, with Superman dragging Spidey behind him as he flies by a strand of webbing, Spidey having somehow fashioned skies of webbing to "air-ski" behind Man of Steel.

After pages of investigation, the two heroes eventually track Luthor and Doc Ock to the abandoned satellite headquarters of Luthor's Injustice Gang, from where Luthor enacts his world-imperiling plan. Using the thing stolen from S.T.A.R. in the first prologue, he's able to hijack that fancy communications satellite that Clark pointed out to Lois (and readers) earlier, using it to fire a beam that somehow generates hurricanes numerous and powerful enough to engulf the whole world (I'm not a scientist, so I'll just have to take Luthor's word for it that making giant hurricanes is well within the abilities of the communications satellite). 

Luthor will only relent and call off the super-storms if the United States government pays him "ten billion dollars within the next hour."

As Superman leaps out of the satellite and flies to Earth to intercept a two-hundred-mile tidal wave that will destroy the Atlantic coast of America, Spidey battles the villains, encouraging Doc Ock to ultimately turn on the mad Luthor ("I can't let you do it, Luthor!" Octavius cries as he smashes computers with a tentacle, "The Earth is my home, too!")

Eventually, the day is saved, as are the heroes' respective love interests, both of whom are at this point in history completely ignorant of the double-lives their men are currently leading.

At 100 pages—bigger even than an 80-page giant!—the book likely read as appropriately epic in 1976, and surely the bicentennial kids at the time would have felt they got their two bucks worth. Heck, at that length, it's basically a short graphic novel, published at a time when that word wasn't part of the average comics reader's regular parlance.

Conway and company certainly do a fine job of thoroughly introducing their heroes and villains, to an extent that later crossovers wouldn't even attempt, as the publishers would eventually (perhaps rightly) assume that anyone reading superhero comics at all would be pretty familiar with the participants in any crossovers (Like, why would you even pick up a book about Batman and The Punisher or Galactus and Darkseid if you weren't already familiar with them...?).

The creators also devote themselves to comparing and contrasting these heroes, boiling down and then accentuating what make them each unique and likable in the first place, and giving readers little moments of interest, like the panels in which MJ and Lois meet one another, or those where Edge and Jameson run into one another and discuss their talented but lacking employees Kent and Parker.

It's pretty much the ideal inter-company crossover comic.

That said, the intensity that went into the discussions and behind-the-scenes crafting of the comic was such that neither Marvel nor DC seemed to want to repeat it, even though it was the first of a whole series of crossover comics, being followed by a 1981 re-teaming of Superman and Spider-Man and a Batman/Hulk crossover, and then a 1982 Uncanny X-Men/New Teen Titans crossover. 

For each of these, the publishers would essentially take turns running the crossovers, so that they didn't need two teams of executives and editors counting panels or measuring figure drawings on the way to production. 

We'll look at the first of these second-wave crossovers next week. 

Next: 1981's Marvel Treasury Edition #28, featuring Spider-Man and Superman

*Actually, Tom Brevoort writes in his DC Versus Marvel Omnibus afterword that while the companies were in discussions for the Superman/Spider-Man crossover, both happened to be working on different adaptations of The Wizard of Oz. Rather than compete with dueling comics, they released their first joint venture: MGM's Marvelous Wizard of Oz. That comic does not, of course, appear in the omnibus. 

Review: All-New X-Men/Indestructible Hulk/Superior Spider-Man: The Arms of The Octopus

No, seriously, that's the title of this particular graphic novel: All-New X-Men/Indestructible Hulk/Superior Spider-Man: The Arms of The Octopus. Marvel left all of the participating characters' adjectives attached to their names, and included all of their names before the subtitle. You might think it would make more sense to just call this thing Arms of The Octopus, as it's not like there are any other All-New X-Men/Indestructible Hulk/Superior Spider-Man trades out there that they would need to distinguish this from, but you, my friend, are not involved in Marvel's trade program. Nor will you ever be, because you are a rational human being, and not a pack of rabid wolves with a ouija board, magic eight ball and dart board.

The reason the title is so unwieldy is that it is attempting to reflect the three books the "Arms of The Octopus" storyline originally ran through, All-New X-Men Special #1, Indestructible Hulk Special #1 and Superior Spider-Man Team-Up Special #1. They may seem like three completely unrelated titles from completely different corners of the Marvel Universe, and that's because they are, but Marvel's done similar big stories in seemingly unconnected books in the recent past. Previously, they would connect three annuals with a single story; here they went with "specials," perhaps because "annual" implies something that happens on a yearly basis, and that would mean they wouldn't be able to use a #1 should they do it again the following year.

The story is written by Mike Costa, a writer who had done quite a bit of work on IDW's various licensed comics (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, G.I. Joe), and does a fine job of finding a way to connect these three rather disparate books and characters into a story that seems completely organic and logical. And while the fact that the story occurs in specials rather than the main books, and is written by a different writer than the writers handling the monthlies starring these characters (Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Waid and Dan Slott, respectively*), means that nothing too terribly important or meaningful to their overarching stories can occur, Costa does a pretty great job of making the stories feel somewhat important...if not advancing the various plots to any great degree, at least reinforcing some of the themes and conflicts from their home books.

The story is also pretty funny, I thought. It's a serious story played straight, but the way the characters interact with one another is quite amusing. Costa gets similar mileage out of the time-lost teenage X-Men from the 1960s in the 21st century that Bendis does, particularly Beast and Iceman, and their interactions with the "Superior" Spider-Man (Who, remember, is actually Otto "Doctor Octopus" Ocatvius's mind in Peter Parker's body) is great, as this Spider-Man is dour, arrogant, easily frustrated and given to supervillain-style speeches and outbursts.

The plot is this. The four original X-Men who haven't quit the Jean Grey School like Angel has—that is, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast and Iceman—journey to New York City to spend the time being teenagers. Beast meets an attractive grad student who is studying time travel related science under a professor of Beast's (from the past), and he goes back to her lab to meet his former teacher, Dr. Jude.

Suddenly, they're attacked by Doctor Octopus...a young, dumpy-looking Dr. Octopus in green spandex and with a bowl-cut haircut. This can't possibly be Doctor Octopus, as no one knows better than Spider-Man, who shows up to boss the teen heroes around and punch out what may be himself from the past.

They try to figure out what's going on with the Silver Age Dock Ock's sudden appearance, but can't study him too closely, as he's giving off incredible amounts of gamma radiation—a possible side-effect of time travel? Naturally, Spidey calls in the world's foremost expert on gamma radiation, Dr. Bruce Banner. While all the doctors are trying to puzzle things out, The (also dead) Abomination shows up and starts wreaking havoc, at which point it's assumed that somehow the X-Men's presence in the present is messing with the time stream, and they decide they have to check on their time machine before any more villains come through.

And then there's a bit of a twist, which Costa telegraphs just so. It's a neat twist; nothing mind-blowing, but enough to keep the story interesting, enough to keep it from being too predictable. Each chapter is narrated by a different brilliant scientist/superhero: Hank "Beast" McCoy, Bruce Banner then Octavius. And each is drawn by a different artist, all of whom are quite good, and all of whom are close enough in style that the changes aren't jarring...particularly the first two, who are extremely compatible. They are, in order of appearance, Kris Anka, Jacob Wyatt and Michael Dialynas. As I said, they are all good, but I think I like them in that particular order as well, with Anka being my favorite of the three and Dialynas my least favorite.

Despite the goofy title, it's actually a satisfyingly sizable, super-fun superhero comic, and one I'd recommend. Perhaps especially if you can borrow it from a library, as Marvel's charging $15 for the 120-page adventure.

Of course, it's not the only story in All-New X-Men/Indestrucible Hulk/Superior Spider-Man: The Arms of The Octopus. Included for no reason I can imagine other than that they needed to jack up the page count above 120 pages if they wanted to charge $15 for the trade, they've included weird-ass Wolverine one-shot Wolverine: In The Flesh #1 (which X-Men x-pert and fine writer Paul O'Brien reviewed quite well when it was originally released), a long-in-the-works Wolverine comic written by a celebrity chef I've never heard of, in which Wolverine teams up with said celebrity chef. I didn't read it yet, but I may before I return the trade to the library. It's such a weird place to find it though, as the only real connection to the story that it follows is the extremely tenuous excuse that, perhaps, Wolverine is an X-Men, and there are some X-Men in the preceding story. But with all the other places a Wolverine one-shot could be collected—like, say, a trade collecting any of the many comics in which Wolverine is prominently featured, perhaps a collection of one of the three ongoings with Wolverine in the title, perhaps Savage Wolverine, which is a continuity-lite, anything-goes anthology series featuring Wolverine comics by different creators.

But no, they just stuck it in the back of this trade because...they had some extra pages to fill, I guess?

Delayed Reaction: Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One

Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One (Marvel Comics), by Zeb Wells and Kaare Andrews

Why’d I Wait?: I remember picking the first issue of this miniseries up off the rack the week it was released, flipping through it, and standing there looking at it in my hand for long seconds, trying to decide whether or not to put it back on the shelf or add it to my weekly haul. I liked at least 95% of Wells’ previous output, some of it quite a bit. I loved Andrews’ art, and bought several issues of Incredible Hulk just for the cover art he provided for it (There’s a dream trade for you, a collection of Andrews’ various Marvel covers). But what I saw in the flip-through (all Otto Octavius, no Spider-Man) didn’t exactly win me over, and I figured I’d check it out in a few months in trade.

Why Now?: Those few months—and a few more—have passed, and it’s in trade. I actually forgot about my interest in the series altogether until I was at the library recently and saw it sitting there.

Well?: Well, it’s an exceptionally poorly named series. I understand giving Spidey top-billing, as he’s the hero and all, but he actually has very little to do with the story, only popping in during the closing chapters.

What I didn’t understand was the subtitle, “Year One.”

I guess I’ve always just assumed that phrase was something DC owned, if not in a legal sense, at least in a cultural sense, not unlike “Crisis” or “Imaginary Story” (Similarly, I’d be stunned to see a DC story with the words “What If?” in the title). Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One kicked off the formulation, being followed by a Year Two and Year Three, and just about every DC hero has had a Year One miniseries or story, it was even the theme for a round of lat -90s annuals, wherein every single DCU monthly had a “Year One” annual.

And the story doesn’t even adhere to that formulation anyway. This isn’t the first year in the relationship between the two title characters, it’s the first, I don’t know, 30 years of Octavius’ life, starting with him as a little boy and working gradually up to his first few battles with Spidey.

All that said, it’s a pretty great story. Wells follows Sam Raimi’s lead and plays Octavius as a sort of tragic figure, a brilliant scientist beset by unfortunate circumstances that eventually turn him into a sympathetic monster. Wells goes further though, in amping up the tragedy—abusive father, very weird relationship with his mother—and in drawing a parallels to Spider-Man.

Peter Parker and Otto Octavius aren’t just two guys who have alter egos named after eight-legged animals; they were both bespectacled little nerds with a yen for science who suffered the slings and arrows of their peers in school.

Wells further ties Octavius into the Marvel Universe as a whole, with his origin relying greatly on radiation, that Cold War weapon that also helped birth the Hulk and X-Men, and he searches for and finds some very nice symbolism in art history with the Da Vincini’s Vitruvian Man. Sure, it’s a character study in extremely broad, often theatrically grand strokes, but the melodrama all works as a sort of science fiction opera plot. If you read one Doctor Octopus story in your life, this is probably the one to read.

Andrews does not disappoint either. He can be somewhat chameleonic in his style, and here his work regularly calls to mind that of Sam Kieth and Tim Sale (particularly the bits dealing with Otto’s childhood, and a few panels of the grown Spidey in action).

He brings some of Well’s weirder scenes to quirky life, like the lover’s embrace/sexual harassment as seen through an X-Ray machine, and he even makes the sight of a fat guy in a tight suit with robot tentacles look pretty cool—not an easy task, to be sure.

Andrews draws some of the best Doc Ock tentacles I’ve ever seen, and the scenes of the villain in his cage, his tentacles unconsciously coiling and uncoiling like those of a real octopus in an aquarium, are simply beautiful.

Would I Travel Back In Time To Buy It Off The Rack?: Knowing what I now know, I might have gone ahead and taken that first issue home with me, but I’m glad I didn’t. At $2.99 a pop, this five-issue miniseries would run you about $15 if you bought it in single-issue installments. But the advertisement-free, easier to store and read trade collection only costs $13.99.