MYTHCOMICS: DOCTOR OCTOPUS--NEGATIVE EXPOSURE (2003-04)

 

In DUELING DUALITIES PT 3 I suggested one reason for the lack of strong mythicity in the SPIDER-MAN feature was its investment in soap-opera narrative from its very beginnings. This set a pattern in which both the original creators and every raconteur who followed tended to concentrate upon the dramatic potentiality more than the other three. The example set by Lee and Ditko has never to my knowledge been equaled, but even the later creators' best efforts excel in terms of emotional drama. But it's always been possible to meld the dramatic and mythopoeic potentialities, and indeed both Lee and Ditko often did so-- just not often in collaboration with one another.

A number of Spider-Man villains boast cool designs-- the Lizard, Electro-- but seem rather monotonous in terms of both potentialities. Yet I've always thought Doctor Octopus possessed untapped possibilities, though even Frank Miller defaulted to casting Octopus as yet another mad scientist. Until recently, as far as I knew, the 2004 movie SPIDER MAN 2 was the only work that substantially built up the character of Otto Octavius. However, slightly before that movie debuted in theatres, artist Staz Johnson and writer Brian K Vaughan (of Y THE LAST MAN fame) collaborated on a more nuanced version of the eight-limbed evildoer. To be sure, despite the new angle on the villain, this is still a SPIDER-MAN tale. However, unlike most such stories, Vaughan's story is narrated by a new character: BUGLE staff photographer Jeffrey Haight (whose name, Vaughan informs us, is pronounced like "hate.")

Even though Peter Parker as of this 2003 tale is still in college (as he has been for the previous forty years), few SPIDER-MAN writers have paid any attention to the hero's avocation of photography. Vaughan seems to be the first to note that the discipline has its own aesthetic history, and the character of Haight is deeply enmeshed in that history. He's invested in becoming known as an artist, though at the same time he wants a key validation from the commercial newspaper he works for: the honor of the front page. Haight is deeply offended that a college-boy stringer like Parker so often earns that honor, even though Parker has no knowledge of, or interest in, photographic art. Haight's desire for validation becomes the hub of his Faustian hubris.

But, in order for Haight to be tempted, his tempter must become an aesthete who talks Haight's language. I doubt if any depiction of Doctor Octopus before this showed him having a deep appreciation of the arts. Yet, to make the story work, Vaughan's multi-armed menace starts out the story by raiding a museum with a Da Vinci, including a painting in which a human subject is represented as having "eight limbs" like the Doctor. Parker in his superhero guise shows up to battle Ock, but so does Haight, who thinks he's got a scoop, being the only photographer on the scene. But after Spidey takes down the villain and sends him back to prison, Haight's aspirations for front-page glory are dashed. Once more, Peter Parker's photos win the day. 

  But though Haight "but slenderly knows himself," Vaughan's aesthetically minded super-villain recognizes Haight as an "artist manque," and realizes that he can manipulate such a man. So Octopus invites Haight to his prison cell, pretending to be a fan of the photographer's unjustly neglected work-- though in truth Ock knows enough about photography to consider Haight's photos "vile."

   Haight's also a perfect patsy because he's got a cop-girlfriend who can get the photographer a look at Octopus's mechanical arms, held in a vault shielded from the criminal's mental influence. Haight, after getting scooped in two more Spider-adventures (each involving one of the classic Ditko villains, Vulture and Mysterio), is foolish enough to set free the arms, and the price of Haight's cooperation is that he wants a chance to film an ultimate battle between Ock and Spidey at a mutually agreed-upon site. (Haight frequently expresses an indifference to Spider-Man's being killed, presumably because he suspects the hero of helping Parker get the best photos.) And so Haight sells his soul for a mess of photographic pottage, and he's just barely capable of comprehending that his act of betrayal puts his girlfriend in peril.      
       

However, once Haight's ego-dream is about to come true, he finally begins to sense that he's allied himself to a murderer who can justify any action on the basis of his superiority to common humanity. And so, after Octopus exposes Haight's villainy to the wall-crawler, the photographer finally gives the mad scientist "negative exposure." 

Haight's eleventh-hour conversion gives the web-slinger the chance to defeat Ock once again. Yet even here, Haight still wants to make a bargain, this time with the man who saved his life. He promises to confess his crime to the authorities, if Spidey will deliver his photos to the Bugle. And then there's one last irony before the closing curtain-- or maybe two ironies, from two jailbirds. Or three, if I should find it ironic that it took forty years for the comics-version of Spidey's best villain to rise to the level of epistemological myth.