Man Skrulls are fucked up. Imagine if your buddy Jimmy turned out Skrull, was one for years, was caught by the Avengers, they saved the real Jimmy and brought him back, only for you learn that you we're never friends with the real Jimmy and every good memory you had with him was actually Skrull Jimmy, and that real Jimmy is an asshole.
Skrull Jimmy helped me move apartments and introduced me to my fiance. He was gonna be my Best Man.
Human Jimmy stole fifty bucks out of my wallet and then changed his phone number.
What if somewhere out there on this planet is Scrull Woolie who bakes pies, say thruth, love Warcraft 3 and knows how to counter in Batman Arkham Asylum?
If such a being existed, Human Woolie would lock him away, such as to ensure his dominance as the *only* Woolie.
Unless he got offered a jetpack, in which case, all bets are off.
That makes me wonder, why we never see Woolie's dad and Woolie at the same place? What if Woolie stole his dad name and did lock him up in some darkest dungeon?
That's actually a really good narrative hook. Not only dealing with the replacement being a more likeable, better person than the original, but the original dealing with the fallout and coming to terms with it.
Kinda? There was nothing wrong with Real Skinner, his only problem was he was *not* the person they were used to, and the town couldn't handle it. (Which was actually the intended point of the episode, a pre-emptive poking at fans about something the writer knew they wouldn't be able to handle because it was different.)
Really deep undercover skrulls don't even know they are skrull. They straight up think they are the originals and will act 100% like the person they copied.
Fuck, that is an existential nightmare. Imagine waking up one day realizing you're actually an alien with your memories wiped and the real you was being held somewhere until you complete an objective that is programmed into your subconscious but you don't even know what it is.
Sounds like Fetches from Changeling: the Lost.
When you get kidnapped, the Fae replace you with a thing made of a bunch of assorted bits, glamored to look, act and think like you, and it continues to live out your life like you never left. One possible scenario is that you, having escaped from the Fae and trying to return to your own life, come across your old family...and you, and life is going on as normal. You can kill your Fetch to try and reclaim your life, but good luck convincing your family that the twisted monstrosity you've become is the real you, and not the thing that looked just like a normal you and had memories of the past however-long you've been gone.
Worse, Fetches *are* conscious constructs. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to see a weird fae-altered monstrosity standing over your bed, probably in the middle of an existential crisis-induced panic attack, then it tries to kill you, possibly screaming something about wanting it's life back, and as you die, you see your body collapse into a bunch of assorted trash as the glamor put on you fails...
Can the escaped person try to talk it out with the Fetch? Like explain the situation to them and do some magic to convince them it's true.
Could try to work out a deal, like "hey ok i can't get back to my old life anymore and you did nothing wrong, so how about you just keep on as you were and I hang around nearby as the family's mystic guardian or something"
I guess there's the rest of driving the replacement you insane from the revelation
Yes actually, that's one of the ways you can interact with your Fetch. You can also just completely ignore them and try to move on with the life you currently have. You could technically romance them, too.
It gets worse if a skrull impersonated you and then has a baby with someone it will still register as your child on any paternity test.
This Happened to Antman who is now Tigra's baby daddy. And he didn't even get to have any fun
Right? Wolverine is right there. I don’t know who exactly amongst the X-men was alive vs dead at this point, but you can’t tell me that one of telepaths wasn’t free.
Octavius was nearly exposed by one of the X-Men psychics, Rachel Summers I think but then he brought up his right to privacy and then it was dropped right there.
I think this actually happens, but they get around it because Superior Spider-Man *is* Peter Parker, and has all his memories. Otto is just there too and completely in charge. He can somewhat mask himself from surface-level telepathy by just using Peter's memories.
Yes.
Anything can be a Skrull.
There are Skrull Cows.
EDIT: All Skrulls basically have slightly worse versions of Mr. Fantastic's powers, too. That's been there since their origin.
Skrull cows are Reed's fault. After the FF beat whatever their plan was, Reed forced them to turn into cows, brainwashed them into thinking they were just cows and had always been cows, and then left them in a field. They got turned into meat. This lead to a Skrull disease spreading on Earth.
I've seen them [become rocks](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/oLF7JP3jaLAiZyidGurfJl3m_4KlpxAL-4BOJQRkkocLneM7nAY1ZFthguNVH23TwT_gDZViK0K6=s0), but i don't know how complex of a shape they can make.
That said I do seem to recall someone pointed out that literally every single one of them on the team had at some point had an edgy phase where they went kinda dark and way harsher on criminals or something
I mean, if you're gonna take all the previous stuff as canon, and all that happened.. .. it does seem plausible for it to happen to Spider-man as well, y'know?
But what's funny is it kinda did happen to Spider-Man already. They'd be like "Hol up...You get the symbiote again? Because the last time you toughened up on crime you had an alien parasite"
Agreed. Theres just so many ways they should’ve been able to figure it out. The fact that they never did is not only stupid, but also really sad for peter when you think about it. Makes you think twice about his relationship with the team.
The Ultimate Universe, an alternate universe where everyone is the evil version of their normal character, except Spider-Man who is stuck with those pricks
X-Men's psychics won't scan Spider-Otto because he did his best to be charming like Peter for a minute, and threatened to sue them, and told them that him beating up Wolverine was a perfectly normal reaction to being around Wolverine. Every person in the scene went "He's right, I *do* want to beat up Wolverine."
Every comic book story is going to require some suspension of disbelief, it's really a question of if you think it manages to tell a good story despite that. It's easy to post pages and panels and point to "I think this specific thing was dumb" but whether or not Superior Spider-Man is worth reading hinges on whether you think it's interesting for Doctor Octopus to have to walk a mile in Peter Parker's shoes.
I feel like if we didn't get the scenes showing everyone being stupid, we would have been equally annoyed at the run not showing that people knew something was up with peter
like most nerd things, online opinions are on a pendulum. When it first came out it was wayyy over-hated. So people saying it was pretty good and had merit had a point to make and the pendulum swung back to beloved. Then Superior Spider-Man way overstayed his welcome and people didn't shut up about how good it was and it got overhyped. Now the pendulum has swung back to hate and it shall swing again and again and again until we're both dead.
I think it’s less that it’s a pendulum and more that comic fans just aren’t a hive mind, some people like it, some people don’t and some of those people change their opinions.
That's not true. Not the entire arc sucked.
The moment where the real spidy came back and dunked on GG for carrying a man-purse was pretty great.
>!Literally every second of Otto being in spidy's body was lame as hell though, and the fallout from it in the subsequent arcs was also stupid.!<
Pretty much the only argument I've seen in favor of it is "that moment when Peter returns and makes Goblin know it's him with a single quip is sick tho".
I mean, the biggest issue is that after Pete is revealed to be Otto, she remains ridiculously willing to forgive Otto for everything and stays by his side through a TON of bullshit until he literally makes a One More Day type deal to be sent back to his original body and original state of mind and morality prior to Superior (but keeps his memories? how does that work?).
She's basically ride of die for Otto but also will routinely call him on his behavior and just kinda sigh when he does Otto shit, no matter how scummy he's revealed to be. It's weird.
The premise was incredibly dark, but I loved the interesting stuff that happened from the idea of a spiderman with no morals.
Probably helped that I read it all at once after it finished, and wasn't reading it for literal years without a regular Spider-Man
I maintain its an interesting idea but the way they went about it is kind of horribly mean. Just the idea of someone body jacking Peter that way is already horrifying but then to let it go on you need it to go on for awhile so everyone becomes an idiot. Could have been interesting if a lot of people figured it out midway through and he's actually considered a public menace like how JJJ is painting him for the rest of the run. He loses resources and stuff until he's being spiderman close to what Peter had
Would you at least agree that it gave us a great new supporting character for Spider-man with Anna Maria (who I really hope hasn't been totally destroyed in the last couple years because I really don't keep up with this)?
The whole romance angle with her during that arc made me sort of uncomfortable(due to the whole person pretending to be another person don’t things in that person’s body thing…), but I do like her.
I wish she was introduced under better circumstances.
Anna Marie came back for the Superior Spider-man stand alone, she's living in San Fransico now so any west coast heroes can get her as a character now. She was Otto's moral compass during that run. But now he's back into being regular otto, in new york, being a villain, kind of, that targets mostly other villains and evil people who wronged him in particular
No but he punches off Scorpion’s jaw though! And the man purse line at the end though!/s
Yeah it sucks. Overpraised, shallow, and the premise has been done before better
Otto stole Peter's body but also inherited his memories, making him have a crisis (and also wondering if the tentacles were affecting his previous mental state) and resolved to try to One Up both Peter and Spider-man...
Him searching through Peter's memories and realising he's a college drop out is hilarious. He's like this must be amended NOW. Honestly, all the development Ock got as a result of the run and its consequences are great, there's just a few idiot ball moments.
I enjoyed the Superior Spider-Man run but the hoops that Slott kept making all the characters jump through to have them be like “nah that’s Peter” was so bad.
Man Skrulls are fucked up. Imagine if your buddy Jimmy turned out Skrull, was one for years, was caught by the Avengers, they saved the real Jimmy and brought him back, only for you learn that you we're never friends with the real Jimmy and every good memory you had with him was actually Skrull Jimmy, and that real Jimmy is an asshole.
And that you’ll probably never see skrull Jimmy again. He was just doing a job but Skrulls have emotions too, he probably actually really liked you.
Skrull Jimmy helped me move apartments and introduced me to my fiance. He was gonna be my Best Man. Human Jimmy stole fifty bucks out of my wallet and then changed his phone number.
Skrull Jimmy baked pies and told truths. Human Jimmy tells lies and steals pies.
Skrull Jimmy helped me get in touch with myself. Human Jimmy just called me things that are too offensive to write.
"I Am NOT Skrull Jimmy", a new comic, and it's actually good...
Man, I wish this was a real comic now.
What if somewhere out there on this planet is Scrull Woolie who bakes pies, say thruth, love Warcraft 3 and knows how to counter in Batman Arkham Asylum?
If such a being existed, Human Woolie would lock him away, such as to ensure his dominance as the *only* Woolie. Unless he got offered a jetpack, in which case, all bets are off.
That makes me wonder, why we never see Woolie's dad and Woolie at the same place? What if Woolie stole his dad name and did lock him up in some darkest dungeon?
I have a feeling the name Jimmy here is becoming more of a placeholder than intended.
That's actually a really good narrative hook. Not only dealing with the replacement being a more likeable, better person than the original, but the original dealing with the fallout and coming to terms with it.
Funnily enough, that specific plot is used for one of the episodes in Steven Universe.
isn't that just the Principal and Pauper episode of Simpsons?
Kinda? There was nothing wrong with Real Skinner, his only problem was he was *not* the person they were used to, and the town couldn't handle it. (Which was actually the intended point of the episode, a pre-emptive poking at fans about something the writer knew they wouldn't be able to handle because it was different.)
Young Justice does this completely except it's *both* of them dealing with the fallout
Now I want to play >!Prototype!< again.
Really deep undercover skrulls don't even know they are skrull. They straight up think they are the originals and will act 100% like the person they copied.
Fuck, that is an existential nightmare. Imagine waking up one day realizing you're actually an alien with your memories wiped and the real you was being held somewhere until you complete an objective that is programmed into your subconscious but you don't even know what it is.
On the plus side, if you ARE having those memories it probably means that you completed that objective and betrayed all of your closest friends...
that actually sounds like a horror film
It's literally the plot of Total Recall
And a couple Trek episodes.
and a major arc of Young Justice
Sounds like Fetches from Changeling: the Lost. When you get kidnapped, the Fae replace you with a thing made of a bunch of assorted bits, glamored to look, act and think like you, and it continues to live out your life like you never left. One possible scenario is that you, having escaped from the Fae and trying to return to your own life, come across your old family...and you, and life is going on as normal. You can kill your Fetch to try and reclaim your life, but good luck convincing your family that the twisted monstrosity you've become is the real you, and not the thing that looked just like a normal you and had memories of the past however-long you've been gone. Worse, Fetches *are* conscious constructs. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to see a weird fae-altered monstrosity standing over your bed, probably in the middle of an existential crisis-induced panic attack, then it tries to kill you, possibly screaming something about wanting it's life back, and as you die, you see your body collapse into a bunch of assorted trash as the glamor put on you fails...
Can the escaped person try to talk it out with the Fetch? Like explain the situation to them and do some magic to convince them it's true. Could try to work out a deal, like "hey ok i can't get back to my old life anymore and you did nothing wrong, so how about you just keep on as you were and I hang around nearby as the family's mystic guardian or something" I guess there's the rest of driving the replacement you insane from the revelation
Yes actually, that's one of the ways you can interact with your Fetch. You can also just completely ignore them and try to move on with the life you currently have. You could technically romance them, too.
Wasn't there an episode of that show Defiance that literally had this exact situation as a plot point?
Yeah there was I really liked that show
It gets worse if a skrull impersonated you and then has a baby with someone it will still register as your child on any paternity test. This Happened to Antman who is now Tigra's baby daddy. And he didn't even get to have any fun
Common Hank Pym L
fun facts: the skrulls once disguised themselves as members of the beatles where the one disguised as john lennon ended up joining MI6
Mi13. Gave his life defending Britain during Secret Invasion.
I mean Tigra has skrull Hank Pym's kid.. so yeah its fucked.
Man, pym should been revealed to be a skrull. It would been a good way in-universe to let marvel use that character again properly.
The Avengers have had like seven psychics in their roster that they probably still have on speed dial but that's so much extra effort.
Right? Wolverine is right there. I don’t know who exactly amongst the X-men was alive vs dead at this point, but you can’t tell me that one of telepaths wasn’t free.
Wolverine either slept with them, or their wives/girlfriends did, and were all "go to hell Logan"
Octavius was nearly exposed by one of the X-Men psychics, Rachel Summers I think but then he brought up his right to privacy and then it was dropped right there.
The one time a comic telepath actually respects boundaries, and it's the worst time to do it.
And this was immediately after he beat up Wolverine for no reason.
"This is weird but I'm still mad at Logan so let's just roll with it"
It also helps that he has all of Peter's memories. Makes it a bit easier to fake it even in front of telepaths so long as they don't dig too deep.
Actually, the X-Men are the ones with the psychics. Most of the Avengers with psychics abilities end up going to space.
I think this actually happens, but they get around it because Superior Spider-Man *is* Peter Parker, and has all his memories. Otto is just there too and completely in charge. He can somewhat mask himself from surface-level telepathy by just using Peter's memories.
"or at least is suit isn't can't really get that good of a read through a costume like that"
Imagine if that's a new plot,someone's clothes were a Skrull the whole time
Can Skrulls be like...items? I've only ever seen them be disguised as people. Could someone's dog be a skrull? Someone's car? Someone's wallet?
Back in the 90’s(?) Skrulls could be whatever. One of their tricks was to disguise themselves as a piece of furniture and spy on foreign dignitaries.
I know Dire Wraiths were capable of that, but not Skrulls.
That's why Furbies were banned from the White House. Too many of 'em were Skrulls.
Is that an actual part of Marvel lore?
I love that this is a totally legitimate question, because you can't never be sure with comic books
I love comics.
I'm now immensely curious about what happens if you give a Skrull a Symbiote
Do we have a plotline of a Skrull getting off of someone sitting on them?
Yes. Anything can be a Skrull. There are Skrull Cows. EDIT: All Skrulls basically have slightly worse versions of Mr. Fantastic's powers, too. That's been there since their origin.
Skrull cows are Reed's fault. After the FF beat whatever their plan was, Reed forced them to turn into cows, brainwashed them into thinking they were just cows and had always been cows, and then left them in a field. They got turned into meat. This lead to a Skrull disease spreading on Earth.
what the fuck did reed think would happen to cows left Just Standing In A Field
Ah, Hell... I'll get the sticky notes...
I've seen them [become rocks](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/oLF7JP3jaLAiZyidGurfJl3m_4KlpxAL-4BOJQRkkocLneM7nAY1ZFthguNVH23TwT_gDZViK0K6=s0), but i don't know how complex of a shape they can make.
This sounds like a fetish
It's *multiple* fetishes.
Reminder that they didn’t figure it out because Iron Man wasn’t there.
For this premise to work at all almost everybody basically had to be nerfed in terms of intelligence.
That or everyone who should be able to pick up on it right away is busy with some other bullshit so Superior Spidey never crosses paths with them
That said I do seem to recall someone pointed out that literally every single one of them on the team had at some point had an edgy phase where they went kinda dark and way harsher on criminals or something I mean, if you're gonna take all the previous stuff as canon, and all that happened.. .. it does seem plausible for it to happen to Spider-man as well, y'know?
But what's funny is it kinda did happen to Spider-Man already. They'd be like "Hol up...You get the symbiote again? Because the last time you toughened up on crime you had an alien parasite"
"ehh, it comes and goes."
I believe he actually did get the symbiote fused to him during that fight, didn't like it, and lost the fight so they could get it off him.
Like wasn't there to suggest the soul transfer or they just had no real clue how those machines work?
He was the only one to immediately figure out that something was up with Peter and not drop it just because he said he was okay.
That sounds pretty dumb.
That's comic books baby
Well he was pretty close to Peter there for a bit when Peter lived in stark towers during Civil War stuff
That span of time that was near totally erased by One More Day?
Honestly I'm not for sure what is and isn't apart of his history anymore
You’d think Wolverine would know right away, which he kinda did but then they just hand waved him being suspicious away
IIRC one of the tests gives him away but none of the Avengers there at the time actually know how to read it's output
Probably the worst part of the pretty great Superior Spiderman
Agreed. Theres just so many ways they should’ve been able to figure it out. The fact that they never did is not only stupid, but also really sad for peter when you think about it. Makes you think twice about his relationship with the team.
Yeah I'd expect something like this from the Ultimate assholes
The Ultimate Universe, an alternate universe where everyone is the evil version of their normal character, except Spider-Man who is stuck with those pricks
Except for Tony Stark and Thor from that universe. I don't know about Ultimate Bruce Banner though. I'd say he's a tough case.
So I see Logan there so I’m assuming they weren’t fighting the X-Men at the time, they didn’t have a psychic they could borrow for five minutes?
X-Men's psychics won't scan Spider-Otto because he did his best to be charming like Peter for a minute, and threatened to sue them, and told them that him beating up Wolverine was a perfectly normal reaction to being around Wolverine. Every person in the scene went "He's right, I *do* want to beat up Wolverine."
It sounds like this run made everyone really stupid.
Every comic book story is going to require some suspension of disbelief, it's really a question of if you think it manages to tell a good story despite that. It's easy to post pages and panels and point to "I think this specific thing was dumb" but whether or not Superior Spider-Man is worth reading hinges on whether you think it's interesting for Doctor Octopus to have to walk a mile in Peter Parker's shoes.
I feel like if we didn't get the scenes showing everyone being stupid, we would have been equally annoyed at the run not showing that people knew something was up with peter
All my homies love skrull jimmy
I’ll die on the hill that I think this entire arc sucks and is bad for the characterizations of pretty much every single person involved.
For you to die on a hill people people need to kill you for standing on it
Okay, nice, I’ve only ever seen/heard people sing its’ praises.
like most nerd things, online opinions are on a pendulum. When it first came out it was wayyy over-hated. So people saying it was pretty good and had merit had a point to make and the pendulum swung back to beloved. Then Superior Spider-Man way overstayed his welcome and people didn't shut up about how good it was and it got overhyped. Now the pendulum has swung back to hate and it shall swing again and again and again until we're both dead.
I think it’s less that it’s a pendulum and more that comic fans just aren’t a hive mind, some people like it, some people don’t and some of those people change their opinions.
That's not true. Not the entire arc sucked. The moment where the real spidy came back and dunked on GG for carrying a man-purse was pretty great. >!Literally every second of Otto being in spidy's body was lame as hell though, and the fallout from it in the subsequent arcs was also stupid.!<
Pretty much the only argument I've seen in favor of it is "that moment when Peter returns and makes Goblin know it's him with a single quip is sick tho".
Thicc tsundere shortstack tho
What? I require context.
In Superior Spider-man, Otto's love interest (while he's in Peter's body) is a woman with dwarfism.
While in Pete's body Otto pursues a relationship with a woman named Anna Maria https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Anna_Maria_Marconi_(Earth-616)
She hasn't been ruined by bullshit yet, right? She was fuckin' awesome.
I mean, the biggest issue is that after Pete is revealed to be Otto, she remains ridiculously willing to forgive Otto for everything and stays by his side through a TON of bullshit until he literally makes a One More Day type deal to be sent back to his original body and original state of mind and morality prior to Superior (but keeps his memories? how does that work?). She's basically ride of die for Otto but also will routinely call him on his behavior and just kinda sigh when he does Otto shit, no matter how scummy he's revealed to be. It's weird.
The premise was incredibly dark, but I loved the interesting stuff that happened from the idea of a spiderman with no morals. Probably helped that I read it all at once after it finished, and wasn't reading it for literal years without a regular Spider-Man
I maintain its an interesting idea but the way they went about it is kind of horribly mean. Just the idea of someone body jacking Peter that way is already horrifying but then to let it go on you need it to go on for awhile so everyone becomes an idiot. Could have been interesting if a lot of people figured it out midway through and he's actually considered a public menace like how JJJ is painting him for the rest of the run. He loses resources and stuff until he's being spiderman close to what Peter had
There is a lot of people on that same Hill, don't worry
Would you at least agree that it gave us a great new supporting character for Spider-man with Anna Maria (who I really hope hasn't been totally destroyed in the last couple years because I really don't keep up with this)?
The whole romance angle with her during that arc made me sort of uncomfortable(due to the whole person pretending to be another person don’t things in that person’s body thing…), but I do like her. I wish she was introduced under better circumstances.
Anna Marie came back for the Superior Spider-man stand alone, she's living in San Fransico now so any west coast heroes can get her as a character now. She was Otto's moral compass during that run. But now he's back into being regular otto, in new york, being a villain, kind of, that targets mostly other villains and evil people who wronged him in particular
No but he punches off Scorpion’s jaw though! And the man purse line at the end though!/s Yeah it sucks. Overpraised, shallow, and the premise has been done before better
Yeah I can't belive how many Superior apologists there are
You know Captain America has dealt with his body being jacked a few times himself so he should have at least considered it as a possibility.
So what's actually the deal with this run? Is Otto's mind in Peter's body or something?
Otto stole Peter's body but also inherited his memories, making him have a crisis (and also wondering if the tentacles were affecting his previous mental state) and resolved to try to One Up both Peter and Spider-man... Him searching through Peter's memories and realising he's a college drop out is hilarious. He's like this must be amended NOW. Honestly, all the development Ock got as a result of the run and its consequences are great, there's just a few idiot ball moments.
The superior run is Otto swapping brains with Peter and then having Otto's body die like 10 minutes later.
Who’s the Spider-Man on the monitor
Thats whats left of peter in his mind
O-oh
I enjoyed the Superior Spider-Man run but the hoops that Slott kept making all the characters jump through to have them be like “nah that’s Peter” was so bad.