Superior Spider-Man Team-Up #12
As New York is under siege by the Goblin Nation, Otto Octavius reflects back on his last encounter with Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin.
His thoughts go back further to his budding relationship with Mary Alice Anders. It was going well and at one point, Otto proposed to her. However, his jealous mother, Mary Octavius, forced Otto to break it off. breaking his heart.[1]
His recollection snaps ahead to the time that he was working with the Green Goblin to destroy Spider-Man. At the time, Norman Osborn had led the world to believe he was dead and so the pair had been working in secret.[2] Having heard about Otto’s doomed romance with Mary Alice, Osborn tracked her down and infected her with a deadly virus so that Otto could understand the loss of a loved one like he has.[3] Enraged by this, Doctor Octopus attacked the Goblin. Wanting to kill his one-time ally, Doctor Octopus began pounding on the wound on Norman’s chest, which was still healing at the time. However, before he could kill Osborn, Mary Alice woke up and asked what he was doing. This allowed Osborn to escape while his back was turned. Otto was forced to retreat himself when he spotted Spider-Man heading his way.
Not long after this, Otto went on a crime spree, stealing the materials needed to try and cure Mary Alice. This put him in conflict with Spider-Man, who only stopped fighting him long enough for Otto to try to attempt his cure. When he failed to cure her, Otto then surrendered to the police. By the time Otto got out of prison, Mary Alice had died. He would have given anything to change places with her. He then decided to focus his rage on destroying the Green Goblin.
Otto went back to Osborn’s mansion in Europe intent on getting revenge. However, when he arrived, Norman Osborn was already long gone. Communicating through the mansion’s PA system, Osborn tells Otto that he did this in order to put them on the same level by giving him a similar loss. Fighting through the mansion’s defenses, Otto finds Norman’s butler and the Octo-Goblin suit they built. Norman tries to goad Otto into killing the butler. However, Octavius refuses to be manipulated. Discarding the Octo-Goblin suit, Doctor Octopus vows to beat the Green Goblin at his own game by beating Spider-Man using his own methods, not those of the Green Goblin, and prove himself the superior enemy.
And so, over the convening years, Doctor Octopus worked while keeping track of the Goblin’s activities. As the Green Goblin went after Spider-Man with more and more personal attacks in an effort to mess with the wall-crawler’s mind, Octavius created new deadly weapons, trying to defeat Spider-Man with each new deadly scientific discovery. However, despite all of their attempts, neither Doctor Octopus nor the Green Goblin could succeed in defeating Spider-Man.
Ultimately, Otto’s time was running out and he eventually took over Spider-Man’s life. This gave Otto a second chance at life.[4] However, the more things changed the more they stayed the same. In his old life, Otto Octavius romanced Mary Alice Anders, only to have his mother forbid they get married, and she eventually died at the hands of the Green Goblin. In his new life, posing as Peter Parker, Otto found love from Anna Maria Marconi. However, this was met with resistance from Parker’s Aunt May who was worried about Anna Maria being a little person and what that could mean if she and “Peter” had children.[5] Now, the Green Goblin — now calling himself the Goblin King — has Anna Maria as his prisoner.[5] Fearing that history would repeat itself again, Otto Octavius decided to trade places with Anna Maria Marconi, sacrificing himself to bring back Peter Parker.
Now that Peter Parker has reclaimed his life, he recently relived Otto’s life and having seen all of this himself has given him a keen insight into what made Doctor Octopus tick. He thinks about how, before giving Peter his body back, Otto was able to create a cure for the Goblin Formula, effectively using science to kill the Green Goblin. Peter finds it ironic that Otto finally became the superior version of Spider-Man he strived to be by finally learning to follow his heart. Still, Peter Parker is glad he is back, even though he has been gone for a while he was gone and there are going to be consequences to what Otto did to his life. However, for now, Peter Parker is just happy that when he looks in the mirror he sees the Amazing Spider-Man looking back at him.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus, Goblin King/Green Goblin, Mary Alice Anders, Spider-Man (Parker), Anna Maria Marconi
Continuity Notes
For more on Mary Alice Anders and Otto’s relationship with Otto Octavius see Spider-Man Unlimited #3. The primary flashback in this story mostly takes place during the events of that story. Per the Sliding Timescale of Earth-616, that portion of the story takes place about five years prior to the present day.
The world at large believed Norman Osborn died in Amazing Spider-Man #122. However, he survived and went into hiding for years. See Spider-Man: The Osborn Journal #1 for all the gory details.
So a few things about this scene here:
Norman wants Otto to feel the same loss that he died when his wife, Emily Osborn, died. Norman believes his wife died a year after the birth of their son Harry, but as we’ll learn in Amazing Spider-Man #700, Emily faked her death in order to get away from her crazy husband.
This story ties into Spider-Man Unlimited #3 where Doctor Octopus tries to find a cure. In that story, the virus she is infected with is identified as AIDS. That should be considered topical because when Spider-Man Unlimited was published in 1993 when the AIDS virus was very deadly. Since then modern advancements in medicine have made the virus manageable and it is not the death sentence it used to be, hence why it’s not named here.
Otto was suffering from a degenerative disorder since Amazing Spider-Man #600. To cheat death, he stole Peter Parker’s body in Amazing Spider-Man #698-700.
Aunt May expressed her concerns about “Peter” having kids with Anna Maria in Superior Spider-Man #23.
For more on the Goblin Nation war see Superior Spider-Man #27-31.
