Given the Clone Saga spanned more than two years of real-world time across at least 5 regular titles and a good number of special one-shots and mini-series. And not every single issue in this period was all about clones. They also managed to bring in a good number of side stories that tangentially overlapped with the whole clone story or largely existed on their own - I'm looking at you Planet of the Symbiotes.
One of the more memorable yet almost nonsensical stories during the Clone Saga period was Web of Death, where Peter manages to get poisoned by one of Vulture's birds. The virus is potentially fatal and works quite quickly and the burden of trying to find a cure for him falls on...Doctor Octopus? And mind you this was post Revenge of the Sinister Six Doctor Octopus, who was pretty badass and preferred to wear white suits. He was rather distinguished and was generally intelligent in terms of how he'd deal with Spider-Man and other challenges in his way.
What you read above is an excerpt for Doctor Octopus's logic for saving Spider-Man - that keeping him live was important since he was the morally perfect counter to himself. And so he endeavors to cure Spider-Man, but not without first confirming his identity then taking him to his lair together with the impossible woman Stunner. Peter eventually wakes up and challenges Doctor Octopus first (he was generally in his violent "The Spider" period), but then eventually lets him attempt to cure him.
Fast-forward to the end, he dies in police custody because of the enigmatic Kaine. It was a terrible death and one that he probably didn't deserve despite his last statements about wanting to continue his dance with Spider-Man once the police arrived, but such is the comic book life, I suppose.
At least Doctor Octopus got a somewhat better death after the events of Ends of the Earth leading into The Superior Spider-Man story.
Comments
Post a Comment