Superior Spider-Man 19 Review
Also known as the issue where Otto fucked up one too many times!
After reviewing the last chapter of Battle of the Atom today, I was in a bad mood. But this, Superior Spider-Man #19, pulled me right up out of it. Read on and find out how.
The story begins with Carlie and Wraith harassing a money guy who caters to villains to get a paper trail on unveiling Otto as Spider-Man. Before he snuffed it Peter managed to tell her they swapped bodies while in Otto’s and she’s one of the few people competent enough to follow up on a lead like that apparently. The Avengers have no excuse.
Meanwhile, at Alchemax, Superior Spider-Man decked Spider-Man 2099 right when they needed him the most. Ty Stone has sabotaged the time door and is going to blow the place in a literal time bomb. Otto thinks he can fix it but there’s one thing missing, an equation from Peter Parker that he did on his first day at the job. He spends eight minutes trying to find it, but it is gone and he has no way of retrieving it.
Eventually the smarter people retreat while Miguel tries to do the noble thing and sacrifice himself and Stone so that Alchemax doesn’t come to fruition. Even though it would mean that the future would be completely rewritten. But, Ty manages to coax him into escaping by wagering that his friends and family wouldn’t be safe in the new timeline, and it ultimately ends with him saving them both.
So, with his time stabilized, the boss of Alchemax in the future destroys the machine and strands him in the past. This is stupid because he’s right next to his ancestor and can sterilize him or something, but Miguel has more of a heart than Otto and they know it. Ty Stone is untouchable unless he’s willing to erase his friends and family from the future. The bad guys wins, all according to the history books.
Nine hours later the little douche bag is celebrating when we learn that Miguel O’Hara is his new personal assistant to keep tabs on him and Jameson is willing to keep the feds off of the former owner of Horizon’s back as long as he doesn’t do anything. The moment he’s gone though, he and a few others bring Otto back into the timeline and says they’re even for all the good Peter has done and they never want to see him again.
Otto goes over the missing calls and shows he has wrecked Peter’s life further after costing him his job. He abandoned Aunt May for a dinner and missed Anna Marie, although he has the excuse of being dead for those, but MJ calls it quits completely on dealing with him. Meanwhile the former owner of Horizon heads for greener pastures overseas and leaves behind the other two staff members, one who opted out while the other betrayed his trust to an extent and he was short on it after the betrayal of Ty and Otto. Otto, however, was never one to waste a resource at hand (except deleting Peter’s memories without a damn back up) and offers her a job.
As the issue ends, Carlie and Wraith have found their paper trail on Otto. His actions and changes have drawn attention and have put a bull’s eye on his back now. This is one of the many breaking points Otto has had coming and the Goblin Nation arc bring more after the next filler.
It is important to note this is a sobering experience for him as it cost him his life once again. Instead of retreating because he deleted Parker’s memories like the rest, he tried to prove himself better and paid the price for it, only to be brought back at the mercy of his former boss. Who he thought he was better than. His ego will never let him live that down, that he was inferior to Peter Parker and only brought back by mercy earned by him.
I loved Otto going in, but his ego is too much to stand for so long and needs some sobering and this goes a long way in doing so. On top of that we got Spider-Man 2099 in the present. Perfect issue: 5 out of 5.
Edit: It also seemed like I missed the bottom panels on the double spread, which seems to be a foreshadowing of Ghost Peter returning. It’s an asspull, but whatever.
Battle of the Atom Part 8 (Uncanny X-Men #13) Review
I prefer Jimmy Hudson to Raze already.
Okay, so issue #8 of Battle of the Atom is out now and so is my review. I’m not going to lie, this issue could have been better, but you’re going to have to read to find out.
It begins with Cyclops’ team getting ready to march, only to realize that Young Bobby and Hank are gone with Psylocke. They didn’t even waste panels showing that they already lost the two they were supposed to protect, which probably would have made it better to keep them at the base with the other students they left behind. After that they get a tower dropped on them, so bad opening move for our heroes.
Raze, the abomination of Wolverine and Mystique, was imitating Psylocke and captured the two. With their prizes in hand, they leave Ice Hulk to hold off Cyclops’ team, who were saved by Wiccan. Cyclops has Magik and her future-brother teleport inside, while Phoenix Quentin melts the ice giant, only for the Russian siblings to find Molly and Deadpool waiting inside. There’s some bad blood between the pairs, with Molly disillusioned and vengeful towards the X-Men and Deadpool referencing that Magik unleashes something bad onto the world.
Ultimately it ends when Magik teleports Deadpool outside about a hundred feet up and lets him fall while she stabs Molly in the back with her Soulsword. That’s how quickly a fight with a teleporter is supposed to end. We then go back to Cyclops’ team, who have encountered Teen Xavier. Wiccan offers them some magical protection while Magneto claims his helmet can protect him (which it didn’t on Utopia from Jean), but Xavier just has Krakoa eat them all, which is the third time on Cyclops’ end.
Xavier (and somehow the unmelted Ice Hulk) reports in as Deadpool hits the ground and apparently dies and they decide to flip the switch to send the O5 back. Magik arrives to stop them, only to be telekinetically restrained by Xorna Jean while the other team tries to escape Krakoa and are hurting it from the inside. Yeah, apparently whatever Magik does makes everyone hate her because they all try to kill her, between Raze offering to gut her and Xorna Jean trying to make her kill herself like she did in their timeline. Eventually she teleports herself out while Future Colossus shanks Xavier with his Soulsword.
Here’s the stupid part though, they try to send the O5 X-Men back but they won’t go. Testing the machine with Raze indicates that it won’t work for just them, with old Hank stating that in theory they caused so much mayhem with the time stream they can’t go back through the time cube as Cyclops’ team arrived.
This issue just single-handedly rendered the entire event, issues that could have been spent on progressing the individual series’ stories, meaningless. Bad enough they have Molly playing for the bad guys, they wasted my time if there was no real threat of them going back. The 616 universe can’t be sustained if you take important characters from the past like that, look at what happened when Wolverine killed Hank Pym in Age of Ultron!
I could handle the plot holes when it came to things like psychic protection and the stupidity of certain characters, but this was too damn much. The heroes didn’t even win or make it in time, it’s a fucking cop-out that the O5 remain! They have made it that, short of sending clones of the O5 into the past or Magik teleporting them back to that time period or Eva Bell when she learns what she’s doing, the O5 are freaking immortal because if one snuffs it the timeline will snap.
They’re going to have to retcon or asspull an excuse to explain away this. The one who pinned this story was an idiot and so were the dunderheads that wasted the X-Men’s fifth year publication like this. Smooth move Marvel.
This gets a 2 out of 5, don’t waste your money on it.
Twilit Dreams Circle 