Issue #15 – Spider-Verse Epilogue

Spider-Verse is officially -sort of- over with this epilogue supposedly capping off the major plot threads while setting things up for what will happen with the characters in the future. This article will cover the issue itself and I’ll do another post where I write about the series as a whole. I’d like to read the whole thing in order over a short time before I do that as there are undoubtedly things I have forgotten. Stay tuned for that, I’ll get that written as soon as I can.On the Panel – Amazing Spider-Man

The final hurdle for Peter Parker and his army of Spider-Men and women is none other than The Superior Spider-Man. Doc Ock has figured out that Peter Parker will one day reclaim his body and he’s not going to let that happen without a fight.

Seems like a great way to end things on the surface but the execution left a lot to be desired. The best thing about Ock is that he’s intelligent and shrewd but this doesn’t really come across here. His casual severing of some of the lines on the Great Web feels somewhat out of character for him. Ock has always been quick to anger and therefore become sloppy when he is enraged but he does always have a plan of some sort. Here he seems to be a 1 dimensional thuggish villain who needs to be punched until he stops.

A much better way to handle this would be for Peter to reason with him and appeal to his better nature. One of the cornerstones of Superior Spider-Man was that Otto had become a better man after being inspired by Peter Parker to be worthy of the name Spider-Man. Otto put his own stamp on it but generally he was doing good and had managed to live by his own code of ethics.

After all that good work giving Ock that depth and establishing his potential to be a hero it seems a shame that he would revert back to this level of villainy. I get that he doesn’t want to die and that he’s a desperate man doing what he can to stay alive but that’s not how it came across here. There was a moment where Peter tells him that he has a lesson to learn and he will voluntarily return Peter’s body to him one day but framing it in the middle of a beatdown lessened the effectiveness. It seems that Ock only gave in because he had been physically beaten rather than realising the right thing to do. It could have been a great conflict with the themes of death and acceptance underpinning it instead of a superficial villain beatdown. I did like the hint that there’s some sort of contingency plan in place that will no doubt become important very soon and it was clever to tie it up with Superior Spider-Man #19 where the first hint of all this was dropped.

Another problem the issue has is the portrayal of Karn though that’s more of a problem with the series as a whole. Given his importance to the overall narrative he never received the focus that he really needed or deserved to have to make the story work. He feels more like a plot device than a fully formed character in his own right which makes the reveal less effective than it could have been. He was a cool character and had lots of potential but there was so much other stuff going on that he never lived up to it.

I really liked how the issue handled the individual epilogues of the other characters. Much of the focus was given to Mayday Parker since she suffered the most personal tragedy during the arc. I like that she got to return to her reality to find her mother and brother alive and well. Also the fact that they gain an Uncle Ben who finally gets to be a grandfather is a really touching moment. Her declaration that she will be Spider-Woman instead of Spider-Girl is a little cheesy but I appreciated the sentiment. I wonder if we’ll see her again.

We also get a hint at the upcoming Secret Wars with the mention of realities being destroyed and the problems that obviously causes. I thought that Spider-UK took the total destruction of his home reality a little too well and moved onto the next thing a bit too easily. That’s a level of loss that nobody can imagine and he shrugs it off so casually.

I liked the handoff to the other writers with Spider-Gwen and Spider-Man 2099 as they returned to their own times/realities and their own books by extension. The moment they shared as they went through the portals was great.

Peter’s return to his own reality was a nice cap to the arc with him stopping a simple mugging. After all the cosmic crazyness it was a nice change of pace to see him doing something more low key. As Peter put it there is no small stuff as far as he’s concerned so it was a great character moment for him.