Doctor Octopus

• 1. Introduction

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  Doctor Octopus, the Marvel Comics villain known as Doc Ock, began as a name before he was anything else. Stan Lee, who created him with the artist Steve Ditko, later described how the idea arrived. "For some reason, I thought of an octopus," Lee recalled. He wanted to call somebody Octopus and give him "a couple of extra arms just for fun". Then came the hard part. Lee admitted, "I had to figure out how to do that". The answer made its debut in The Amazing Spider-Man #3, dated July 1963. Over the following decades the character became a mad scientist, a crime boss, an occasional ally and even a hero. This documentary asks what kind of man builds himself four metal arms. It asks why he stayed among the deadliest enemies Spider-Man ever faced. And it asks what happens when a villain gets a chance to live the hero's life.

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• 2. A Boy From Schenectady

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  In Schenectady, Otto Octavius grew up as the only child of Torbert Octavius, a construction worker, and Mary Lavinia Octavius, a homemaker. Mary loved and supported her son from the beginning. Torbert was a violent alcoholic who regularly beat both Otto and his wife. At school, Otto's shyness and strong work earned him the label "teacher's pet", and bullies marked him as a target. Torbert believed a man's worth came from dominance and physical strength. He roared at his son to answer the bullies with violence. Mary defended Otto every time. She insisted he was a gifted thinker who would solve problems with his brain, not his fists. She also felt disgust toward men who did common manual labor. Otto resolved never to become like his father, and he threw his effort into education. He regularly scored top marks, and the work earned him a university scholarship at M.I.T. During his freshman year he had not yet chosen a direction. Then Torbert died in a construction accident. Otto attended the funeral for his mother's sake, but he did not mourn. He later said privately that he wished he had seen his father suffer more. Mary remarked that "an early death is a manual laborer's", and she told him she expected better from her son. The remark seemed to spark an obsession with the hard sciences, and Otto declared a major in physical science. The obsession did not show at once. His school friends saw a devoted student who was genuinely interested in his subjects. He graduated near the top of his class, and many scientific firms considered him a catch. An engineering firm hired him first, and there he would begin the work that changed his body.

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• 3. Arms and Harnesses

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  Resistant to radiation, strong and astonishingly precise, the mechanical arms Octavius designed were meant to help with his research into atomic physics. They were controlled through a brain-computer interface and attached to a harness that fit around his body. By then he had become a respected nuclear physicist, an atomic research consultant, an inventor and a lecturer. His expertise in radiation was so exceptional that Mister Fantastic once called on him. The Invisible Woman had suffered complications during her second pregnancy, caused by the cosmic radiation that gave the Fantastic Four their powers. Then came an accidental radiation leak that ended in an explosion. The apparatus fused to Octavius' body. It was later revealed that the radiation, or possibly a latent mutation of his own, had changed his brain. He could now move the arms with his thoughts alone. The tentacles were eventually removed surgically, yet he kept the power to control them telepathically from great distances. The accident also seemed to damage his mind. A later suggestion held that the apparent damage was really his brain rewiring itself to handle four extra limbs. He turned to crime by taking a hospital hostage. He named himself Doctor Octopus after the derogatory nickname his co-workers had given him. Without the harness, he is portly, in poor physical shape and near-sighted. The accident also left his eyes very sensitive to light, so he wears glasses with shaded lenses. With the harness attached, he is physically more than a match for Spider-Man. Each arm can lift several tons, provided at least one arm supports his body. The arms let him cross any terrain and climb walls and ceilings. He can fight Spider-Man with them while his own hands do something delicate, such as stirring coffee or building a machine. Opponents often relax because of his weight and age, and then find a formidable fighter. He has forced Spider-Man, Daredevil and Captain America onto the defensive. Daredevil, a seasoned fighter with superhuman senses, was beaten almost to death. Octavius has owned three harnesses: titanium, adamantium and carbonadium. The first two were destroyed in The Lethal Foes of Spider-Man #1-4, and his current one uses a titanium-steel-niobium alloy. In a series written by Erik Larsen, the adamantium version let him restrain and pummel the Hulk. It also let him tear apart Iron Man's armor so harshly that Tony Stark began to doubt himself. That doubt almost let Stark's persistent trouble with alcohol flare up again. A small jetpack can fit on the harness, and he can whirl the tentacles fast enough to deflect bullets. His body remains merely human, and years of punishment made him ill. He now wears a full-body armor suit, with his normal arms bound to his chest and four more tentacles on the harness. He also commands an army of small octopus-like drones called Octobots. The first model is a little metal ball with eight legs, and the second is a giant robot for attacking huge structures. Spider-Man would one day load some first-generation Octobots with a serum to cure the Spider-Virus that was turning people into Man-Spiders.

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• 4. Spider-Man's Archenemy

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  Mike Conroy, a comics journalist and historian, calls Doc Ock "one of the web-slinger's most persistent, enduring, and dangerous foes". The record supports him. After his debut, Octavius returned in The Amazing Spider-Man #11-12 and again in #31-33. He ranks among Spider-Man's three archenemies, alongside the Green Goblin and Venom. Readers remember him for defeating Spider-Man the first time they fought and for almost marrying Peter's Aunt May. Some writers cast him as the man Peter might have become without a sense of responsibility. His most lasting invention was a team. He founded the Sinister Six, the first supervillain team to oppose Spider-Man, after taking Betty Brant and May Parker hostage. He has led later versions of the group and usually takes offense when anyone else tries to lead. Calling himself the Master Planner, he organized the theft of atomic equipment. Then he stole a formula that Spider-Man needed to cure Aunt May, and Spider-Man tracked his gang to their base. A collapsing building trapped the hero. Later it was revealed that he had escaped with a scuba tank. Next Octavius went after the Defense Department's Nullifier device. He became May Parker's tenant so he could get close enough to use it on Spider-Man. He hoped it would only disable the web-shooters. Instead, the radiation in Spider-Man's blood made the device leave him with amnesia, and Octavius tricked him into helping. Spider-Man's better nature turned him against his partner even without his memory. John Jameson then used the Nullifier to shut down the tentacles. Octavius later learned to activate his arms remotely, and he used them to break out of prison. The battle that followed with Spider-Man ended in the death of Captain George Stacy. He waged a gang war with Hammerhead. He also tried to marry May Parker to gain an island with an atomic plant, which she had unknowingly inherited. His crowning act of evil was the near-fatal beating of the Black Cat, who was then Spider-Man's partner. Spider-Man responded by beating Octavius to within an inch of his life. The trauma left Octavius afraid of Spider-Man and of spiders in general for years, and he needed treatment for acute arachnophobia. To free him from the fear, Spider-Man let Octavius win a fight. Octavius then recruited him to save New York City from an exploding nuclear reactor. Octavius had actually planned to detonate that reactor to kill Spider-Man indirectly. After his out-of-control arms beat Spider-Man seemingly senseless, the hero persuaded him to shut it down so there would be witnesses to his great triumph. Octavius chose to let Spider-Man live, so that the hero would endure the same humiliation he had suffered. Not every team was his own design. During the Secret Wars II storyline, Mephisto's minion Bitterhorn brainwashed him into joining the Legion Accursed. He later formed a version of the Masters of Evil to steal Avengers technology. They fought the Guardians of the Galaxy, who had come from an alternate future timeline, and he escaped only when Gargantua, Puff Adder and Shocker began to sympathize with the Guardians.

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• 5. Mortality and Ambition

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  During the Clone Saga, Doctor Octopus saved Spider-Man from a poison injected by the Vulture. His reason was selfish, because he wanted to be the one to kill him. While Spider-Man healed, Octavius learned his identity. He then let police take him in, expecting his accomplice and lover Stunner to rescue him. Stunner was knocked out, and the insane Spider-Man clone Kaine Parker murdered Octavius. Carolyn Trainer took over the name until her teacher was resurrected by a branch of the mystical ninja cult known as the Hand. The return had a gap. Octavius no longer knew who Spider-Man was. His memories came from a computer chip supplied by Trainer, and the secret had not been recorded when he died. Another rival soon appeared in Luke Carlyle, an arrogant young businessman and con artist. Carlyle pretended to employ Octavius, who was tired of crime and wanted an engineering career. It was a ruse. Carlyle subdued him and stole his technology to build a copy of the harness. In Times Square, Octavius once demanded that Spider-Man unmask before the world in exchange for an ambassador's freedom. Spider-Man pulled off his mask and revealed another mask underneath. During the Civil War storyline, Octavius watched a telecast of Peter Parker revealing himself as Spider-Man. He rampaged through the city in disbelief. He could not accept that a teenager had beaten him so many times. He also raged over the chance he had lost in their second encounter, when he unmasked Parker and assumed he was an impostor. Years of punishment eventually caught up with him. Octavius learned that he was dying, since beneath the tentacles he was fundamentally human. Hoping to leave a lasting legacy, he tried to take control of New York City with his newly made Octobots. He consciously meant to help, but his subconscious turned the city's resources against Spider-Man. He contacted Iron Man to demand a cure for his degenerative condition. When Iron Man sincerely offered the brightest minds in the Marvel Universe, Octavius smugly refused. He preferred to watch Stark admit defeat and beg for mercy over a device Octavius claimed was a bomb. Meanwhile, he had the Sinister Six fight the Avengers Academy for a piece of Hank Pym's technology. They fought the Future Foundation for a piece of Reed Richards' technology, and the Intelligencia for the Zero Cannon, an antigravity weapon. The pieces came together in the Ends of the Earth storyline as the Octavian Lens, a satellite net able to alter the world's climate. Octavius first claimed he wanted to halt the greenhouse effect in exchange for gratitude. Spider-Man, Black Widow and Silver Sable provoked him into revealing his real plan. He meant to scorch much of the population so that no one would outlive his death. Survivors would remember him with fear and awe. Spider-Man stalled him by pointing out that anyone surviving such heat would likely be brain-damaged and unable to remember anything. Spider-Man then defeated him roughly, in retaliation for Silver Sable's death. He told Octavius that he would die alone, forgotten and without a legacy. The name Octavian Lens would return, though, when a later hero used a lens of that name to rescue the West Coast Avengers.

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• 6. The Superior Spider-Man

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  Prison did not stop Octavius. In the months before, Spider-Man had been forced to access the Octobots' hive mind several times. That unwittingly gave Octavius unrestricted access to his mind, and he programmed a lone Octobot to swap their consciousnesses. Octavius now lived in Peter Parker's body with none of Peter's restraints. Peter was trapped in Octavius' failing body. He recruited the Scorpion, Hydro-Man and the Trapster to keep him alive and to capture "Spider-Man". The Trapster's portable life support could give him only 700 minutes. Peter failed to reclaim his body, but he was able to pass his memories and values to his nemesis before apparently dying. In the 2012 storyline "Dying Wish", Octavius felt a sudden surge of empathy for his sworn enemy. He vowed to steer away from villainy and accepted Peter's dying wish that a Spider-Man protect New York. He reasoned that he now had Spider-Man's physical might and good values, along with Doctor Octopus' boundless ambition and scientific mind. He would surpass the Amazing Spider-Man and become the Superior Spider-Man. The new alias appeared in Avenging Spider-Man #15.1, after a cameo in Daredevil vol. 3 #21, both dated December 2012. In 2013 Marvel launched a 33-issue The Superior Spider-Man series about his redemption and his hero career. He redesigned the gear and added carbonadium plating over the neck and skull. He gave the costume talons, split-toed shoes fashioned as jika-tabi and enhanced lenses with a HUD and tracking abilities. Villains moved to claim the place left by the seemingly dead Doctor Octopus and his Sinister Six. The new Spider-Man was more ruthless, and his violence and strange mannerisms tipped off several close friends. Peter's lingering spirit still haunted the shared body and hampered his efforts to leave Peter's values behind. Octavius re-enrolled in college to chase the PhD that Peter had denied himself. He also broke Peter's self-imposed no-kill rule. He tried to wipe all of Peter's memories to destroy the consciousness for good. He deleted only the Daily Bugle memory, then fought Peter inside Spider-Man's mind. He broke Peter's spirit by revealing that Peter had once let a girl named Amy come close to death. Octavius declared victory, but the erasure cost him Spider-Man's memories too. Carlie, Mary Jane and J. Jonah Jameson, Sr. began to question his brutal approach. Peter's consciousness had survived, and the few memories left were the ones that defined him. The Goblin King later learned about the mind swap and attacked everything that mattered to Octavius. In the end, the restored Peter took over to save a child from a runaway train where Octavius had hesitated. Octavius accepted his fundamental inferiority and willingly deleted his own consciousness. The story did not end there. In the run-up to Spider-Verse, a time portal accident sent Octavius to the year 2099. Trying to get home, he reached alternate universes where every Spider-Man was dead. He gathered ruthless Spider-Men into a team, including Spider-Man Noir and Pavitr Prabhakar. He considered himself uniquely qualified to lead them. Then a group led by Peter Parker of Earth-616 arrived. Peter defeated him in a fight and insisted that killing Morlun and the Inheritors was not the answer. Octavius killed the Master Weaver, source of the Inheritors' power to travel the multiverse. Then he tried to attack the multiversal web to escape his fate of being replaced by Peter. Heroes defeated him, and before leaving he sent a time-delayed message to the Anna Maria program, set to activate 100 days after he got home. His memory of the whole adventure was erased.

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• 7. Second Chances

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  After Spider-Verse, a copy of Octavius' consciousness slept for 100 days inside one of the Superior Spider-Man's gauntlets. It later moved into the Living Brain and waited for a chance to retake Parker's body. During the Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy storyline, that copy escaped in an Octobot and found that his body had been grave-robbed. The clones of Kaine and Electro were being studied at New U Technologies. Octavius had his body cloned and perfected, eliminated the copy of Peter Parker's consciousness, and took the clone body. When Jackal insulted Anna Maria Marconi's dwarfism, Octavius attacked his boss. He activated the Carrion virus in all the clones, causing them to decay rapidly. Spider-Man correctly guessed that Octavius would act to protect Anna. Octavius escaped by transmitting his mind into the Proto-Clone, a perfect clone of Peter Parker. In his new body, he met the Hydra soldiers occupying one of his old bases, and Arnim Zola recruited him. He became the Superior Octopus, with Hydra's help and a new uniform. During the 2017 Secret Empire storyline, he led Hydra's Avengers. He demanded that Peter hand Parker Industries back to him. When Peter refused, Hydra agents blew up the London branch. Peter ordered his employees to destroy the company to hurt Hydra, and he turned an EMP against Octavius so his own tentacles attacked him. In the Go Down Swinging arc, the Red Goblin, a Norman Osborn powered by the Carnage symbiote, attacked Spider-Man's family and friends. The Superior Octopus and J. Jonah Jameson helped defend Aunt May, because Octavius still kept some of Peter's memories and sense of responsibility. Peter forgave him and gave him a clean slate. Octavius took the identity Dr. Elliot Tolliver and planned to work at Horizon University. In the second Superior Spider-Man series, launched in 2018, he protected San Francisco. He beat Terrax with a machine that siphoned a fraction of the Power Cosmic, and helping rebuild the city taught him humility. A newly arrived enemy named Spider-Osborn then threatened everyone he cared about. Believing he could not win, Octavius summoned Mephisto. Mephisto offered to restore his original body permanently, without any flaws. Octavius accepted and became Doctor Octopus again. He also lost all memory of Spider-Man's identity, and he left his Superior Spider-Man outfit in the garbage. In the Sinister War storyline, he secretly prepared a sonic transducer to destroy Kindred's centipedes. That plan saved Spider-Man's old foes while knocking them out. During the Devil's Reign storyline, he joined Mayor Wilson Fisk's Thunderbolts unit. There a fiery being named Supernova, once Estrella Lopez, broke free of the trap he had built for her. Anna Maria tricked him into using a brain scanner that reversed a hive mind. It also erased his recent memories, including his time as Superior Spider-Man. As Otto left, Anna told him, "I have a pretty good idea who you are now". Meanwhile, in a Japanese series, Spider-Man: Octo-Girl by Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court, his mind accidentally shared a schoolgirl named Otoha Okutamiya's consciousness after he fell to his death. A new Superior Spider-Man series by Dan Slott arrived in 2023.

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• 8. Many Octopuses

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  In the Marvel 1602 universe, Doctor Octopus is Victor Octavius, an Italian nobleman who turns himself into an octopus-like monster while trying to cure the bubonic plague. In Marvel 2099, he is an Atlantean scientist with tentacles. In the Ultimate Marvel universe, his arms are made from nanotechnology and let him control metal. In Spider-Man: Life Story, an adaptation of the Dying Wish storyline, he swaps bodies with Miles Morales before being convinced to undo the switch. Other characters have borne the name too. Carolyn Trainer became the second Doctor Octopus and rebranded herself as Lady Octopus after Otto's return. Luke Carlyle used a makeshift set of tentacles. In the One World Under Doom storyline, an alternate version named Olivia, a member of the Superior Avengers, is killed by Annihilus. On television, Vernon Chapman voiced the character in Spider-Man (1967). Efrem Zimbalist Jr. gave him a German accent in Spider-Man: The Animated Series and made him Peter Parker's teacher at science camp. Peter MacNicol voiced a timid scientist at Oscorp in The Spectacular Spider-Man, and Tom Kenny voiced the character in Ultimate Spider-Man. Scott Menville voiced a 19-year-old prodigy in Spider-Man (2017), and Hugh Dancy voices Otto in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Film took longer. In an early script for Cannon's aborted Spider-Man film, written by Ted Newsom and John Brancato, Otto became a teacher and mentor to a college-aged Peter. Bob Hoskins and Arnold Schwarzenegger were considered for the role. Director Sam Raimi said Doctor Octopus was meant to appear in Spider-Man (2002), but a third origin "wouldn't do the movie justice". Alfred Molina finally played him in Spider-Man 2 (2004), as the husband and lab partner of Rosie Octavius, played by Donna Murphy. His experiment goes wrong, Rosie dies, and his harness's artificial intelligence begins to influence his mind. With Spider-Man's help, he sacrifices himself by sinking a fusion reactor into the East River. Molina returned in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), digitally de-aged to resemble his 2004 appearance. Kathryn Hahn voiced Dr. Olivia Octavius in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), the head scientist of Alchemax. In video games, he is the final boss of Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six (1992). In Spider-Man (2000), Zimbalist Jr. voiced him, and the Carnage symbiote turns him into Monster-Ock. In 2009, IGN ranked him 28th in its Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time, and in 2014 rated him Spider-Man's greatest enemy. In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the Superior Spider-Man and a comic book-accurate Doctor Octopus appear as prisoners of Spider-Man 2099's Spider-Society.

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