Another reason the Vampire Doc Ock being in this book irritates me is Harris isn’t drawing him on the covers. So you put him in the new look in a flashback story so as to be consistent with the new presentation or whatever, and then you put a totally different suit on the covers. 0/10. This issue opens with Haight flashing back to “about a year ago,” the first time he photographed Ock. He’s still in the vampire suit, of course, tearing through a National Guard unit. Haight felt that Ock had made himself something other than human. In the present (That is, the past that we’re focused on in this series), Ock is working Haight’s ego, and taking jabs at “whoever gets the front page” of the Bugle to stir up some spite in him. It’s not hard.
Haight leaves, suitably manipulated, and that guy who brings Ock the books comes by so we can see Ock belittle Haight and his photos once he’s gone. He seems to have taken note of the dedication to the cop lady in the book, and he says Haight is just the catalyst. Out in the world, Cop Lady Officer Kefkin is walking with Haight, and incredulous that he actually went to see Doc Ock. Haight, suitably manipulated, tells her Ock likes his work and he’s not such a bad guy.
I feel like this story would work better if Haight wasn’t, like, 1 step away from Nick Katzenberg. Remember that guy? And he seems like he’s ready to take that step, even. Like if it was some cool dude Peter was accidentally and unknowingly screwing over all the time, we wouldn’t know who to root for. This guy just sucks. Well, he gets down there, and the place really is crawling with zombies, and there’s no zombies in the Marvel U (Well, not yet), so you can guess what that means in a Spider-Man comic…
John Romita, Jr.’s Peter Parker would be so jealous of Mysterio’s bags. Also I’m pretty sure Peter has turned in photos of Mysterio. If memory serves, they’ve fought 5 times before this, wherever this is (The last of their fights before Gwen died was ASM 67 & 68, and I’m assuming this is pretty early in Peter’s college career since he’s still a teenager, so maybe just 4 times). Spider-Man shows up and they get to scrappin, and Haight gets to snappin.
Vaughan’s Spider-Man calls people morons a lot. Doesn’t feel right. He handily defeats Mysterio. All these fights that would’ve gone on a whole issue or even 2 in the 60s being reduced to 4 pages kind of takes the danger out of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery.
Well, next we find Haight back at Riker’s…
So, Ock knew Kefkin worked the lockup at One Police Plaza due to Haight’s rather wordy dedication to her, but how does he knows his arms are there? Why are his arms there, for that matter, they’re way too dangerous to be there. Vaughan’s premise that Ock is a master manipulator doesn’t really fly for me. He’s a loner who hates other people too much to be a manipulator. Seems like he’d think that was beneath him and a waste of time. He just kills anyone in his way, and he only works with goons he hired to do everything he says without question. You need people skills to manipulate people. Nobody who routinely calls people “dolts” is really on that track.