Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One #4

Aug 3

Aug 3 Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One #4

Otto Octavius has just escaped captivity from a military base and confronting a lone soldier muses how his former self would have shied away from taking a life and how his new self has no such concerns. After killing the soldier, his mechanical arms warn him that there is something on his back. Otto can feel the signal it is giving off and uses his mechanical arms to pluck it off. He realizes that Spider-Man has planted the device on him while he made his escape and is angered that the web-slinger turned out to be a fool who is wasting his potential.

Back at the scene of his escape, Spider-Man pulls himself off the floor after being soundly defeated by Octavius. He is furious and tells the general on the scene that he can track Octavius. The general, however, tells Spider-Man to stop and points out the damage done in this room and expresses his concern over the damage caused by a public battle. That's when one of the scientists tells the web-slinger that the amount of radiation in Otto’s body they don’t expect him to live longer than two days and suggest that they just wait for him to die. However, Spider-Man refuses to just stand by and let someone die, not even Otto Octavius.

By this time, Otto has collapsed in an alley where a concerned passerby checks to see if he is okay. The man is holding a newspaper and when Otto sees that he is being called Doctor Octopus in the press he becomes even more furious than ever. As he crushes the life out of the good samaritan, Otto decides to allow them this conceit since he has been reborn and decides to take the name Doctor Octopus and make it his own. After the man has been crushed to death, Otto then takes his overcoat and flees into the night.

Meanwhile, Mary Anders has returned to her job at a nearby nuclear power plant where everyone is on edge because their employers have ordered a full diagnostic in order to ensure to the public that their plant is safe in light of the accident involving Otto Octavius. That’s when one of the alarms begins going off warning them that the core temperature is starting to rise. The story soon hits the news and Otto, walking past an electronics store with a number of televisions on display, overhears the reports that the reactor could reach critical mass and enter a meltdown. Hearing this, Otto decides that he is going to help the radiation in the core escape. He then begins having another fantasy about the world around him getting annihilated in a nuclear blast. However, when he imagines a nearby infant in a stroller being among those being destroyed Otto becomes physically ill and runs from the scene. He is almost run over by a taxi cab but his mechanical arms smash the vehicle before it can strike him. When people start chastizing Otto for crossing the street while the don’t walk sign was up, Otto decides that the they are all weak for following signs and lashes out at them.

Retreating to an abandoned building, Otto begins examining the inner workings of Spider-Man’s spider-tracer and figures he’ll learn everything about the web-slinger soon enough. Deciding to do some shopping, Otto meets with the criminal inventor known as the Tinkerer. Examining the spider-tracer, the Tinkerer is certain that he can replicate its technology. When asked, an increasingly ill Doctor Octopus explains his hatred of Spider-Man is due to the fact that the web-slinger is nothing more than a fool squandering his potential. With their transaction complete, Otto is told that his order will be ready in three days. Going outside, the radiation poisoning in his system causes Otto to begin hallucinating again. In it, he is being chased by a horde of radiation burned corpses. Suddenly, a massive mechanical octopus — his personification of radiation he has begun calling mother — appears in the sky and reaches out to him with one of its arms. He reaches back and upon touching it, the hallucination is over and Otto believes that he has been cured. Having arrived outside of the nuclear power plant, Doctor Octopus vows to his “mother” that he’ll free her from her prison. Days later, Doctor Octopus is watching the news at his hideout and is pleased to see that protestors from Green People have begun protesting the nuclear power plant, deeming it unsafe. Otto is gleeful that his plan is coming together as he has boxes of Tinkerer made spider-tracers that have been painted to look like Green People buttons.