The Superior Spider-Man – The Stop Button

Superior Spider Man 13

It’s weird how Slott let Gage handle the script on this arc. It’s got some of the biggest changes to Superior since it started–a new page in Otto’s relationship with Jonah, a secret base (and lab) for Spider-Man–one would’ve thought Slott would want to be more hands on with it all.

The issue’s pretty good, with some nice moves for the Lizard. Hopefully he sticks around, even though he wouldn’t really be good with Otto.

Sadly, even though the issue moves well, there’s nothing memorable. The villains each have their own problems, but who cares? They were never interesting in the first place. Just the Green Goblin movie version–visually speaking–of familiar (and not familiar) characters.

The stuff with Otto and the main villain is a little tired though. Besides Otto revealing himself in the Spider Slayer’s finale moments… it’s the same as the previous showdowns.

Superior Spider Man 11

Giuseppe Camuncoli and John Dell make Otto look so positively condescending it’s wonderful. He only has a couple scenes outside his Spider-Man adventures, one with Anna and then one with his boss. I didn’t pay attention to the credits so I didn’t realize it was Christos Gage scripting from a Slott story; a lot more makes sense now.

Gage spends a lot of time writing maniacal Otto narration, which is always fun, and also goes far in establishing the revised ground situation since Ghost Peter is gone. Also gone are Peter’s supporting cast members. This issue–save Jameson–is just Otto.

Except, of course, the villains. There are lots of them and they’re really dumb looking. It feels very early nineties once the Spider Slayer gets his armor on.

As usual, the best stuff is Otto’s personal journey. The action is simply the cost of getting that peculiar story.