What Happened To Everyone Who Became Spider-Man?

2. Otto Octavius

Superior Spider Man
Marvel Comics/J. Scott Campbell

First Appearance As Spider-Man: The Amazing Spider-Man #698

Doctor Octopus is Spider-Man's greatest adversary (sorry, Norman), and he proved it to the world during Dan Slott's stint on the comic in the early 2010s.

Dying from cancer, Doc Ock hatched a plan to swap his body with Peter's, effectively leaving his adversary to die. The procedure is a success. Peter is killed, and Otto is free to exploit his old rival's gifts for his own personal gain.

Or so he thought.

During the process, Peter appeals to Ock not to ruin his own legacy. Octavius is then bombarded with all the memories of his longtime rival's life, and it forces him to reconsider his plans. From then on in, he decides that he'll continue to be Spider-Man, and not just any Spider-Man either. Using his superior intellect and ruthlessness, Otto vows to become a Superior Spider-Man, with the resulting fallout leading to one of the more enjoyable stints in the wall-crawler's recent history.

Of course, with Marvel being Marvel, it wasn't to last. Peter soon managed to find a way to take back control of his body, leaving Otto to seek refuge elsewhere. He dabbles in villainy again as the Superior Octopus, but reverts back to being the Superior Spider-Man all over again, having stolen the body of one of the many cloned Peter Parkers out there.

Again, though, this wasn't to last. Following some more dreaded hijinks from Mephisto, Otto is restored to his old body and becomes Doc Ock once again, conveniently without the knowledge of Peter's true identity.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.