Eight Is Enough

If there's been one good thing that's come out of the new Spider-Man status-quo, it's the revamp of Dr. Octopus. I am all in favour of the current post-'Gauntlet' Octopus, from the emaciated body to the eight semi-sentient robotic arms and the 'on-death's-door-come-to-Jesus' moment we get explaining it all. Too, Ock finally seems to be assuming his rightful spot as the apex of the Spider-Man rogues gallery...Osborn not withstanding.

Then, hasn't that always been where the 'Master Planner' deserves to be? I've always felt that Octopus is Spider-Man's true arch-enemy...a fractured mirror take on Peter Parker. He's a better opposite number, in the symbolic sense. Octavius is old where Parker is young. His exposure to radiation weakened him, where it made 'Puny Parker' into Spider-Man. He turns his intelligence to crime, where Spider-Man uses his for justice. Etcetera and so on and so forth.

Granted, you can make the some of the same comparisons with Norman Osborn, but with Octopus you get the symmetry of the animal totem (two apex-predators with eight legs and high intelligence), as well as the 'there but for the grace of God' tagline. If Peter had never been bitten by that spider, would he too have grown into an increasingly bitter, continually taunted, yet still hopeful minor scientist? Possibly.

The sympathy factor is a strong one there as well. I think that the most interesting Spider-Man villains are the ones that he in some way, however minor, sympathizes with even as he fights to take them down. The Lizard, Rhino, Harry Osborn when he's off his meds (if you insist that the Green Goblin be Spider-Man's main baddie, why oh why give us the father when the son is so much more interesting? But that's another topic...), these are all characters that Spider-Man feels some stirring in his soul for. Octopus is no different. He's a reflection of Spider-Man, both as a hero and as a regular man.

Too, any villain the hero can team-up with on a semi-regular basis makes for better arch-enemy play than a guy he literally despises, IMO. There's just enough common ground between Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus to make them at once desperate foes and hesitant friends, should the occasion warrant. They don't like each other, but they understand each other. And that makes their conflict more nuanced than the usual punch-up.

Just my two cents.