Why Peter Parker's Return Is Actually Good For Comics

In April, after more than a year's absence, Peter Parker will make his triumphant return to comics and his own body. Killed off in December 2012 in the name of shaking up the status quo, the last year has seen long-time villain Otto Octavius masquerading as Peter. Here's a quick primer for the unfamiliar. For the landmark 700th issue of the Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel printed a story designed to relaunch the book. Doctor Otto Octavius, Doc Ock, frail and dying, swaps bodies with Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-man. Pete desperately tries to switch back but fails, and he dies in Ock's body. As Peter dies, Octavius has a change of heart. Having been exposed to all of Peter's memories and experiences, he vows to the dying Peter to take to heart his motto of "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility." He promises to be a better Spider-Man than Peter ever was, a Superior Spider-Man. The following month, the book was relaunched as Superior Spider-Man #1. It takes half an issue for Ock to cloud great power and great responsibility into "Might Makes Right." The decision to kill a major character is always met with controversy, but Marvel's announcement that they would not only be killing off Parker, but replacing him with one of his greatest enemies was a shocking one to the comics community. Amazing and Superior Spider-Man writer Dan Slott was met with several death threats as the publishing date for Amazing Spider-Man #700 came and went. Comics are forever looking for new ways to "shake the (Marvel/DC) universe to its core!" and make it so "things will never be the same!" following the latest story arc. Unfortunately, both writers and fans have been at this a long time. Fans no longer buy the old tried and true "kill a main character to create buzz" stunt. In recent years, Johnny Storm, Steve Rodgers, and Bruce Wayne (among others) all did relatively shorts stints among the dearly departed. Even Peter Parker himself died twice in a short amount of time in the middle of the last decade. Both deaths (in the crossover arc, The Other, and a forgettable story in Spectacular Spider-man) were resolved by the end of the story arc. Knowing all of that, it's easy to see what led Marvel here. Something more dramatic, ground less frequently trod, something that could seem more permanent. Dan Slott said several times in interviews and both he and Marvel editor Stephen Wacker stated in the letters section of Superior Spider-man that this change was the new status quo for Spider-man going forward and Otto was here to stay. Beyond that, the idea was that it would allow them to tell new and exciting stories that they couldn't have told otherwise. Which brings me to one of the glaring problems here: When did it become necessary to mishandle, disrespect, and destroy an existing character in order to do something original? In the 1960s, Stan Lee wanted to tell a new and exciting story where the main character was a teenager with superpowers, but not a sidekick. What did he do? Did he reboot Captain America as a troubled teen? No. He created his own new character.

Spider-Man in particular has proved over the last ten years that you can shake up the status quo of a character pretty severely without doing them the disservice that Spider-Man was handed in ASM #700. In the last decade, Spider-Man has had his secret identity outed, made a deal with the devil to erase his marriage (though we can debate the level of disservice that this move did to the character, that's not why we're here today), joined the Avengers, become a reputable scientist, saw his archenemy become the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D. stand-in H.A.M.M.E.R., and J. Jonah Jameson become mayor of New York. The basics of a character will bend a long way before they break. Rather than truly do something original, however, the decision was made to take a character who has served as the universe's punching bag for years, a character created to give the little guy someone to relate to, a guy always looking up to the "big-time" super heroes, to take that guy and use him to send the message that your reward for trying your best to help people is to have a psychopath murder you, get away with it, and be rewarded with your life. Peter Parker was given no funeral, no grand send off. No one even knew that he had died. And Otto Octavius, mass murderer and super villain, fresh off a scheme to kill nearly everyone in the world, walked away scot-free with a new lease on life. Let me be clear, regardless of the quality of the stories that followed (I'm not here to review Superior Spider-Man), this is the path that was taken to get there. If decades of incredible Superman stories had followed an origin story where he gained his powers by secretly murdering an innocent, that would cheapen those stories. What Marvel ignored on their path to good story telling is that the means are just as important as the ends. A good story teller tells stories that are tailored to their characters. To completely destroy and reconstruct a character to shoe-horn them into the story that you want to tell is lazy and it damages the character. If you want to tell a story about the effects that having superpowers can have on a marriage, you do not give Batman superpowers and a wife to do it. Right next door in the Ultimate Universe, Marvel accomplished the very thing they struck out on here. In 2011, Peter Parker was killed off with a fitting sacrifice, saving his loved ones. He was replaced with legacy character Miles Morales, and the results have been strong, so strong in fact that rumors keep surfacing that Miles will someday make his way to the Marvel Universe proper. When they are looking for inspiration for future shake ups, they should look here.

Superhero Comics are constantly walking a fine line between superhero fun and 'darker and edgier.' Superior Spider-man ran the character clear past that line. If even the light hearted characters are driven to the depths of dark and edgy, where does that set the line for the Daredevils and Batmans of the world? Peter Parker brings the Spider-man books back over on the right side of that line, and lowers the dark and edgy standard for the books that should be playing in that sand box. While it's likely that Parker's return, which according to Slott was planned before the first issue of Superior Spider-Man hit the shelves, is only designed to coincide with the release of Amazing Spider-Man 2 in theaters, the relaunch of Amazing Spider-man provides the Spider-Man creative team with a fresh start. New readers can easily jump on to the book without having to figure out the confusing body-swap mess. Superior Spider-man can become another forgotten chapter in the long Spider-Man legacy with all of the other sensational ideas to drum up new sales, like growing extra limbs, gaining cosmic powers, or being replaced by a clone. 'That time Doc Ock brain-swapped Spidey' even sounds like it came from the 90s. Seriously, what editor hears 'body-swap' and says, "I'd like to hear more."