“Superior” Spider-Man #1

Spoilers warning: this article contains spoilers for Superior Spider-Man.

If I wanted a dark, edgy, action Spider-Man I’d go back to buying Venom…that said, lets look at this a little bit.

Otto is, seemingly, fully in control of Parker’s body; he’s even finally giving back in to his relationship with MJ (finally). As we see Otto pulling out more stops than Peter usually we did we get a glimpse at what a Spider-Man that had bought Batman comics would do in terms of preparation. He’s taking cues from Tony Stark with the over the top, paparazzi, press filled take down. We also see something that more like Peter-Sense than Spidey-Sense: Otto stops his retreat to save a police officer. This crops up again before Otto can kill a man: Parker is a Force-ghost who stops Otto’s arm! This ghost has a moment where he notes that he is thinking about taking back control; so there’s one ace up the sleeve to bring Peter back, what others do they have?

Given the hype of this issue I thought there would be a lot more “meat” to it; but instead it reads like a normal, plodding and sparse number one issue, introducing us once again to characters. In that respect, it’s a great jumping on point to Marvel Now!