2. Everything Dan Slott Said About Superior Spider-Man
Besides having the superhuman ability to write a buttload of comics in a very short space of time - along with an encyclopedic knowledge of comic book history - Dan Slott is blessed with one of the most convincing poker faces known to man. Having cut his teeth with such ruses as insisting that the post-House of M Scarlet Witch who joined the Mighty Avengers during his tenure as writer was the real deal (actually it was Loki in disguise), Slott dove head first into pants-on-fire territory when he initiated the Superior Spider-Man storyline. The shocking twist that a dying Doctor Octopus had switched brains with Peter Parker wasn't enough for fans. That sadist Slott had to tell them all that this change was permanent. Backing up a little bit, though, when the Superior title was announced, months before the story was set up in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, the writer told fans that this "new" Spidey was going to be a totally new character we had never seen before under the mask. That's bare faced lie number one. Then he wound people up more by tweeting about Miguel O'Hara, better known as the Spider-Man of 2099, implying that it was him who would take the role of this superior wallcrawler. Of course, it turned out that was a misdirect too, as Miguel did turn up in the pages of Superior, albeit as a different Spidey. Not content with all that, he also reacted to fans' fury at the Doc Ock reveal by telling them they would have to "warm up" to this new status quo, since he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. "Anytime soon" ended up being about a year, when the remnant of Peter Parker left behind in Ock's brain took control and everything went back to normal. Except originally Slott wrote that Peter would only retain a certain amount of his memories, having had the rest replaced with his enemy's, leading to speculation that we'd be dealing with an amnesiac Amazing Spider-Man. Obviously, that also turned out to not be the case. Because you cannot trust a damn thing Dan Slott says, writes, tweets, or puts on his Instagram.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
