Superior Spider-Man vol. 2: Otto-Matic

Half of this volume is pretty great.  The first two issues are the tie-in with “War of the Realms” and start off with Otto phasing San Franciscans out of reality while he deals with the frost giants stomping around the city.  Realizing that a surgical strike could end this war real quick, he teams up with the West Coast Avengers (Yay!) to use America Chavez’s powers to do just that. Otto butting heads and rubbing most of the team the wrong way is a lot of fun, but the the best moments belong to Gwenpool.  She allows writer Christos Gage to spell out and have some fun with the rules of crossover tie-in stories, like this one, to excellent comedic effect. These issues are followed up with one where the title character is even grumpier than usual after receiving the key to the city. Is there a reason for that or is he just being extra Otto today?  It’s the former, and Spider-Man joins the story in progress to help the title character process the answer in a way that’s surprisingly heartfelt.

This visit also helps set up the final issues of this volume and series as the Norman Osborn Spider-Man and Spiders-Man finally resurface after ducking out in “Spider-Geddon.”  The former has a score he wants to settle with Otto, and his first step in doing that is to reveal his new identity as Elliot Tolliver to the world.  Then Osborne kidnaps the kid Otto saved back in the first volume and issues him a simple challenge: Kill three innocent people and he’ll let the kid go free.  At a loss for what to do here, Otto is prepared to make a deal with the devil who is all too happy to whack the reset button on these past few years of character development.

The reason seeing Otto revert back to his old self isn’t wholly disappointing is because that’s just the nature of superhero comics.  Getting worked up about something like that is akin to yelling at the sky to stop the rain. No, what’s disappointing is that Gage couldn’t put together a better in-story justification for why it had to happen.  Gage delivers some quality drama from other parts of this arc, but the rationalization for Otto’s reversion honestly feels weak in the sense that everything in his solution could’ve been done if he had thought about it for just a little while longer.  Though the last few pages do a good job of selling what’s been lost here, my real regret is that sales on this title weren’t strong enough to, if not make this change in the character stick, allow this entertaining series to run for a little while longer.