OK, so Amazing Spider-Man 700 and Avenging Spider-Man 15.1 are officially out today and now fair game for discussion, so let's talk about this so we can watch Jesse's head explode live on Disqus.
Spoiler space ahead for those who are still waiting to read it or don't care...
So the big final twist in the story is that Peter DOESN'T find a way to reverse the brain swap with Dr. Octopus, and in fact Peter dies in Ock's body after delivering one final speech about power and responsibility, leaving Otto Octavius as the Superior Spider-Man. Now honestly, I don't think anyone is buying that this shift to the status quo is going to last past 12 issues or so, or that they won't start up Amazing Spider-Man again with 701 at some point, but I just kept waiting for the shift back to the status quo at the end of the issue and it just never came. That's a pretty cool storyline twist in that Peter's "death" made sense within the context of the story and wasn't just a big twist ending like Cap getting executed or the other "shock" deaths. Now, obviously this is a pretty easy one to un-twist when they need to: Just say that they never swapped brains and just THOUGHT they did, so Peter was somehow convinced he's Octavius and his subconscious is buried under the Ock persona or something like that. Or that the machine over-wrote their memories and brain patterns, but didn't actually switch minds. Something like that.
Anyway, I liked the issues, and I'm intrigued to see where Octo-Spider goes, so thumbs up from here.
Spoiler space ahead for those who are still waiting to read it or don't care...
So the big final twist in the story is that Peter DOESN'T find a way to reverse the brain swap with Dr. Octopus, and in fact Peter dies in Ock's body after delivering one final speech about power and responsibility, leaving Otto Octavius as the Superior Spider-Man. Now honestly, I don't think anyone is buying that this shift to the status quo is going to last past 12 issues or so, or that they won't start up Amazing Spider-Man again with 701 at some point, but I just kept waiting for the shift back to the status quo at the end of the issue and it just never came. That's a pretty cool storyline twist in that Peter's "death" made sense within the context of the story and wasn't just a big twist ending like Cap getting executed or the other "shock" deaths. Now, obviously this is a pretty easy one to un-twist when they need to: Just say that they never swapped brains and just THOUGHT they did, so Peter was somehow convinced he's Octavius and his subconscious is buried under the Ock persona or something like that. Or that the machine over-wrote their memories and brain patterns, but didn't actually switch minds. Something like that.
Anyway, I liked the issues, and I'm intrigued to see where Octo-Spider goes, so thumbs up from here.