Spider-Man: Octo-Girl Vol. 1 | Review

Spider-Man: Octo-Girl Vol. 1
Writer: Hideyuki Furuhashi
Artist: Betten Court
Viz Media, $11.99
Rated T+ for Older Teen

In 2013, comics writer Dan Slott penned a story in which a dying Doctor Octopus swapped bodies with his arch-enemy Spider-Man Freaky Friday style, with the long-time villain unexpectedly embarking on a quest to become an even better superhero than Spidey ever was. It spun off into a series entitled The Superior Spider-Man, which initially ran about 30 issues, but the concept proved popular enough that the idea would be resurrected a few more times since.

Japanese writer Hideyuki Furuhashi was a fan. In an afterword to the first volume of his new series Spider-Man: Octo-Girl, he explains that the story transformed his thinking on the Doc Ock character and led to him devouring about a decade’s worth of Spider-Man comics, during which time he became still more enamored with the villain.

Octo-Girl, Furuhashi’s latest collaboration with artist Betten Court (following their work on My Hero Academia: Vigilantes), is the writer’s attempt to share his vision of the villain and, quite surprisingly given its origins as a Japanese manga story, it’s actually a rather faithful sequel to the previous Doc Ock-in-Spidey’s-body stories. Readers need not have read any old Marvel comics to make sense of Octo-Girl though; everything you need to get and enjoy the story is between the covers of the first volume.

Doctor Octopus is, of course, a genius, having invented the iconic set of four mechanical arms he wears, and, like so many villains, he has his sights set on eventually ruling the world. Now, yes, wanting to rule the world certainly sounds bad, but isn’t it also something of a heroic ambition? After all, actually doing so would involve tackling and solving all of the world’s problems—and doing so with the confidence that the would-be conqueror can address them better than anyone else. Put that way, isn’t wanting to rule the world actually kind of…noble?

That’s the basic case for Doctor Octopus, anyway. It’s just too bad his own personal vices—his stubbornness, his quickness to anger, his reliance on violence and, of course, his personal hatred of Spider-Man—get in the way of him doing good.

In Octo-Girl, Doc Ock gets an unexpected new lease on life after his latest high-altitude battle with Spider-Man. When the hero has his metal tentacles all webbed up and is about to capture him, the doctor disconnects his extra arms and goes plunging towards his death. His plan is to once again transfer his consciousness before he hits the pavement, a sort of pre-planned escape hatch for his mind for when his body seems doomed. The situation will eventually turn out to not be so dire, however, as Spidey naturally makes every effort to catch his falling enemy, ultimately saving his life…or at least his body’s life, Doc Ock’s mind having already vacated it.

The doctor wakes up in a very unexpected body, however: That of 14-year-old Japanese schoolgirl Otoha Okutamiya, all the way over in Tokyo. After the expected difficulties in adjusting, including using his spare set of tentacles on Otoha’s many school bullies and giving her his signature haircut so her long hair isn’t always in his eyes, he and Otoha reach a sort of detente regarding who gets to be in the driver’s seat of her body when.

The situation seems fairly easy to reverse—Doctor Octopus is a super-genius, after all—but there are complications, including the presence of Sakura Spider (a Japanese spider-girl previously seen in the Deadpool: Samurai manga), an unexpected local villain, and Doc Ock’s own back-up body The Superior Octopus awakening and attempting to stop him.

Meanwhile, Otoha, who has a habit of seeing the good in everyone, realizes the villain currently inhabiting her body isn’t all bad, and her presence gradually starts to steer him in a more heroic direction, including saving an imperiled cat and rescuing a kidnapped classmate.

Despite the title, this is very much a Doctor Octopus story rather than a Spider-Man one, although the wallcrawler is, of course, involved. It’s also a really—surprisingly!—good Doctor Octopus story, a character study made possible by the extremely weird circumstances and his exposure to new people with vastly different worldviews than his own.

It’s always fun to see American superhero characters visually translated into the designs and storytelling style of manga, and Octo-Girl is no exception (in addition to Doc Ock and Spidey, who are more or less present throughout the proceedings, artist Court gets to draw a small sample of the Marvel heroes in an opening splash page). That’s certainly the case here, given that readers may already be familiar with Court’s work from the aforementioned Vigilantes manga.

Unlike the previous Spider-Man manga Fake Red, Octo-Girl isn’t a standalone, done-in-one graphic novel, but the first volume of a series, and thus ends with a cliffhanger…and no easy answers regarding how Doc Ock and his new host Otoha will be able to straighten everything out and get their tangled lives back to normal.

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens next in future volumes and to follow the villain’s journey back into heroics at Otaha’s urging. Something about getting new bodies just seems to have that effect on Doctor Octopus.

Filed under: Manga, Reviews