Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14 – “Doctor Octopus”! A brand new storyline for your reading pleasure. And I do mean “pleasure” wink wink. In the previous story arc, Peter Parker learns about Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of New York City, and aims to take him down. After a couple of failures, Parker finally smartens up and pulls off a successful heist. He steals incriminating security footage of Fisk murdering an associate and sends it to the Daily Bugle, where Parker has a job in IT. Last we see, Fisk is hiding out on some remote island. He’s out of the picture. For now.

The storyline ended with Parker revealing to MJ his secret identity. They almost kiss. And then Aunt May is the hanky-panky police, but all is well with the world.

But not for long! Parker’s world is going to get rocked again! Let’s read all about it.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #14 [December, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Doctor Octopus”

Yeah, see? Doc Ock is gonna start beefin’ now. I saw the second Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movie in the theater and I haven’t seen it since! There’s something about a bridge, right?

Parker and Friends are sitting in class and their teacher has a fun assignment for them! They all get to do an oral report, in character, as a superhero! They can make one up, they can “use one of the real ones that seem to be popping up all over Madison Avenue”, but they have to describe who they are, what they do, and how they came to be! That doesn’t sound very educational at all.

The kids can do whatever they want. Wear costumes, bring props, get bit by spiders, break into office buildings, beat up bad guys, climb the walls, shoot lasers from their eyes, turn invisible, accidentally get your uncle killed, etc.

It’s not required, porky, but knock yourself out if you can cram yourself into one.

Kong’s wearing a Slipknot shirt, the dopest of bands for children in 2001! The teacher warns him that his stupid ass is close to flunking, so take this not-at-all-hard assignment seriously. Parker keeps shooting dopey grins at Mary Jane “A Redhead That Even Dick Grayson Can’t Bone” Watson.

Elsewhere, at a lab that is probably not Osborn Labs because Norman Osborn destroyed it being a goblin, two scientists are typing things into computers and talking about Ashley Judd and Molly Ringwald while a man lies unconscious on a hospital bed next to them. The scientists are taking care of him, presumably running tests on him as well.

One of them tells the other to check “Doctor Octopus’ bedpan”. This causes Otto Octavius to stir. His eyes are completely wrapped in bandages.

He’s not happy. His mutterings are getting louder. “Mmff — why did you call me Doctor Octopus? My name — my name is Otto. Why did you call me that?”

The two scientists just stare at him, mouths agape, eyes as large as dinner plates but still three times smaller than, say, your average anime character. This time Doc Ock bellows: “WHY DID YOU CALL ME DOCTOR OCTOPUS?!!!?” And, naturally, the reveal is that ol’ Otto has a large metal plate affixed to his torso, complete with metal arms. Now that I think about it, we haven’t seen him at all since the Osborn Labs disaster, correct?

Well, he’s better now!

Just a giant diaper overflowing with “presents”.

Blissfully unaware that YET ANOTHER new enemy is gonna rock his world pretty soon, Peter Parker and his braindead peers attend the school pep rally. MJ and some other girl, I forget her name, let me look it up…Liz…are talking about how totally bogus and gnarly and gag-me-with-a-spoon these pep rallies are. Kong, meanwhile, is bitching about the superhero presentation assignment. “What does it have to do with anything?” he complains, and I have to concur with King Kong over here for once.

Everyone else agrees that this assignment sucks eggs, but Parker doesn’t speak up. Some other kids get mad at Flash Thompson for flapping his gums about mutant horniness, especially Liz, whose uncle from Washington is missing. I’m not sure what this has to do with horny mutants, but I think Liz yelled at everyone to shut the fuck up about Spider-Man in a previous issue somewhere? She sounds touchy.

Flash has an excuse to show up to school as “Flash but with a visible erection”.

Kong starts thinking, which is never a good activity for him. “All these superheroes and mutants and stuff…what if it was like in Ghostbusters when it was like — a sign. Like some bad news was coming…what if that’s why all these people keep popping up?” And then MJ chides him for working in Ghostbusters to make a point, but Kong’s got the right idea here! Something fishy is going on. There may even be a superhero among them! Right in their very group! Nerding around.

Hey, Kong’s just saying to do something. Keep an eye out and all. Parker, irked, finally speaks up; he compares Kong’s rhetoric to Nazi Germany and purging the land of Jews. “Well, yo, the Jews never had big, red laser beams shooting out of their eyes. I think,” Kong responds, quite seriously I might add. He’s fucking unnerved, this guy. This 400-pound, bald, muscle-bound teenager is quivering. He whispers to Parker that there’s something odd in the air, the tension, that they’re in trouble, that it just feels weird that there are all these superpowered mofos hanging around town. That’s all. If anyone would understand, it’s Peter Parker the Normal Kid Without Powers!

It’s at this point that some blonde punk chick butts into their conversation. She’s leaning against the brick wall, alone, and wearing a studded halter top thing with leather pants. No one says a word while she speaks. “How do you think the dinosaurs felt just before the meteor hit? I mean — they were just, like, standing around and all of a sudden it’s like: oh @#!!$, we’re extinct.”

Good thing that life doesn’t really have to be about doing something that another person can’t. Personally, I can’t do shit!

She goes on about how this situation is similar. Humans are extinct, they just don’t know it yet. They can’t fly around, they can’t walk on walls, they’re not as evolved. The difference between humans and dinosaurs is that the humans are aware, so they can try to do something about it before it’s too late, right? And what are “powers” anyway? Kong’s a strong muthefucka, but does that make him superpowered compared to everyone else? Really makes you think, huh?

This leads into her theory: everyone has a super power. Can you play guitar? Super power. Are you good at football? Super power. Math? Power. Whatever you can do well, that’s your power, man. So do what you’re good at, fuck the mutants. Bing bang boom. Done and done. Nothing to worry about.

Everyone else around her is just staring at her amused. She introduces herself as Gwen Stacy, this is her first day at Spider-Man High School, and she walks away given’ the boys something to look at yaknowwhatimsaying? Parker’s practically drooling all over his own little penis as I type this. Gwen looks 28 years old.

Back at wherever the hell Doc Ock is holed up recovering, a group of doctors/scientists and gun-toting tactical unit types are standing around his bed. Doc Ock’s eyes are still bandaged. “Ughh…Hello? Hello?” he asks, obviously somewhat aware of a whole room of people cramping his style at the moment. “Where am I? What’s going on?”

So this Doctor Pym guy, he asks Ock if he remembers what happened and how he got here. Ock says he doesn’t even know what “here” is, and he can’t see, and also he feels nauseous, and also he has metal tentacles! Wait, no, he doesn’t say that, he doesn’t even know that yet, heh heh. Pym tells him that Ock suffered severe optic nerve damage and now bright lights are a problem. He’s not blind, though, not like that Daredevil loser!

Pym asks again what he remembers, and it’s nothing. It’s nothing, ok, a whole lotta nothing. Stop padding out my issue of Ultimate Spider-Man #14, Doctor Pym. He finally tells him that a very serious accident at Osborn Industries has left him in a coma.

Space aliens? Communism? Lakes in Cameroon that burp up giant, village-killing bubbles of carbon dioxide? A lot of stuff, actually. This list just keeps going on.

Ock tries to grapple with this fact, understanding that Norman Osborn fucked everyone over with his stupid “inject me with my own DNA” experiments, and then he realizes he has some shiny new apparati attached to his person. “…aah! Oh my God!! What is this? What is this??!!” he shrieks while the other doctors and scientists shoot each other guilt-ridden shifty-eyes. Ock bellows for the second time in ten pages. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!!!”

Octopus Man is livid, sir.

Pep rally time! The outdoor event is replete with teenage boners as the student body stares at, well, the student bodies! Particularly of the cheerleading squad. Parker and MJ, sitting side-by-side on the bleachers, slowly creep their hands toward one another. It takes about 40 panels, but they finally meet in the middle and start holding hands amidst shouts of “Let’s go seniors, let’s go!!” The peppiest of cheers.

Pym continues giving Ock the great news! The explosion at Osborn Labs, the one caused by some goblin asshole, it was a cool explosion! Doc Ock has these metal arms that he wears sometimes for his more delicate experiments (?), and the cool explosion caused these metal arms to fuse to his skin (??). The doctors and scientists have been monitoring Ock’s recovery and have determined that Ock’s metal arms have locked into his central nervous system and now he can control them (???).

Just imagine how many pickle jars you’ll be able to open now, sir!

Ock’s barely listening to this. He asks where he is, but he’s told that’s classified information at the moment. So then Ock demands to have his eye-bandages removed, and they others like “the optic nerve damage, sir, your eyes are too sensitive”, but Ock screams at them like a big scary, squelchy octopus, and they have no choice but to give in to his octopus demands.

A lo’ and behold, Ock continues to freak out. Pym finds all sorts of silver linings in these dark cloud times, though! “We hope the scientist in you will be able to find the exciting possibilities that this accident has brought into our lives.” They all look forward to working together. Octopus Man is less than cheerful about these circumstances. “So what you’re saying is — that I was found like this — and then left like this…to see what would happen?” he snarls, eyes all fucked up and scarred and shit. The other doctors look at each like “BRrRrrrTT”.

Ock continues with ferocious intensity. “That is what you’re saying, yes? You could have gotten these arms off me but you decided not to? Who the @#$$! are you?? Who?” This is when some Stan Lee-lookin’ dude chimes in to tell Ock that they’re part of a government agency, and that’s all they can say, and that anger is normal, and feel your feelings! Let your freak flag fly! At this point, Ock is tired of hearing any of them yap, and he picks up that Stan Lee-lookin’ dude with one of his metal arms and pushes him straight against a wall, impaling the sucka. Understandably, the rest of them are a bit startled!

We end at La Casa de Kong, where he’s lounging in a bean bag chair with a Maxim magazine draped across his NOFX shirt. He’s thinking hard again; what have we said about thinking? You’re gonna break your shitty little brain.

We are treated to a montage of flashback panels showing all manner of events from the last thirteen issues: Parker freaking out at school and breaking his desk, a mysterious and puny wrestler defeating Crusher Hogan, that nerd kid getting bit by the spider, and Spider-Man himself leaping in to save the day at the school during Norman Osborn’s goblin fuckery.

Kong rubs a couple of brain cells together and a lightbulb goes off in his head: “Whoa…”

Final Thoughts

The school dumbass figures it out first!

I don’t know why Otto Octavius is so upset. Just think of the possibilities that having metal arms can bring a person! Reaching higher places. Bending stuff. I’m sure there’s more.