Ranorak said:
As a person interested in comics but by no means the money to collect them all,
I got really interested in this story line,
Any chance someone can mention what issue this arc supposedly starts in?
or what books to pick up?
I feel this might be a good point to get into The Amazing / Superior Spider-man now.
The arc starts at issue 698. Ignore issue #699.1 (not #699 itself because that's a different thing and actually is part of the story) as it's a prelude to an upcoming Morbius comic series.
My opinion is that this is terrible because Ock himself is an unlikable character to begin with (he was meant to be, so huzzah there) who attempted to mass murder 99.92% of the planet and now because he's suddenly had Peter's memories play through his head for maybe 10 seconds (literally) he's a good guy now and I'm meant to like him? No, he's still a complete asshole and the follow up in Avenging Spider-Man confirmed that. He's a colossal shitbag.
I've read pretty much every Spider-Man comic as well though and I have to say that the statement's regarding his deaths are an exaggeration. Yes, he's died before, but only in ways like in "The Other" (which was mentioned, the cocoon thing) where it was obvious that he wasn't dead because it was part of the story line (I don't think that part 4 or so out of a 12 part story is going to end early just to fuck with us).
I've read Slott's entire run as well and I agree that it's good, not the best thing I've ever read but I've had fun and that the story isn't too poorly written until the end where I felt it became fairly contrived and some of the dialogue from the start of the arc turned out to be a Red Herring (The stuff where Peter is wondering why he's willing to take the help of the villains in the break out and how he's meant to be the hero, etc). The biggest problem is that, especially in the follow up in Avenging Spider-Man #15.1, Ock still comes across as a monster who is treating others like garbage and using people. It's in character, but the character is someone who I want incarcerated and tortured, something which is rarely a desirable trait in these sorts of books, especially Spider-Man books.
Finally, with regards to continuity, yes, this will indeed be wiped out because it's a fucking horrible idea. But people say "It'll be retconned out, why do you care?" To which I say "Major retcons are stains that can't wash out". You listed off a few stupid things which have been retconned out, whilst true in a sense they still happened, The clone saga was a gigantic turd that ultimately amounted to nothing but it's still a big part of the character's history and character. It's like if you're watching a movie where a character is driving on an empty road to work, then suddenly gets beamed up into a UFO and anally probed before being sent back in time to the exact moment he was kidnapped with his memory wiped, only to have this never followed up on in the Movie. It ultimately does not affect the rest of the movie at all but as a whole it fucks things up from a story perspective, in the movie someone would go "why the fuck is this here?", in comics people just say "it's comics, deal with it or you're an idiot". Retcons are to be avoided unless absolutely necessary, not just thrown out there randomly, it's stupid crap like this that causes people to talk about how death in comics is meaningless, well this isn't helping! Avoiding major retcons such as what will come from this would over time maybe repair this reputation, make it so people will take it more seriously, get more involved, but if people just want to throw them around for no reason then that won't happen.
TheSchaef said:
Bob makes a point in the end: in the end, it's a geek fantasy where the stories we like are just as implausible as the ones we don't.
See also: The Incredible Hulk, who for the sake of the plot, can now suddenly control his rage without any explanation. Which doesn't matter, cause that shot was AWESOME [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDajL441mZc].
In the context of the movie it's kinda clear that he's managing to keep himself calm (thought people around him aren't sure and think he'll be set off by anything) from things that would anger others, him losing his shit on the Helicarrier is easily explained by extreme stress and panic/anxiety. It's also been shown in his own film (because yay for shared continuity) that Bruce can "guide" the Hulk's rage in a most basic way, sure the Hulk is still a complete idiot, but he's going to attack what he perceives as a threat (and when panicking he's going to lash out at most things, like people are known to do) or an important target. If Banner can control his emotions/anger well enough for this situation (people in real life are known to do this as well, except the Rage Monster part) then he could easily focus all his anger before transforming on the situation at hand and the Hulk, though stupid, is more than capable of differentiating allies (as he has in the past).
This is not a plot hole in any way.
