The Amazing Spider-Man #700
The Amazing Spider-Man #700 closed out a continuous fifty-year publishing run of Marvel's flagship title, ending the series that had introduced more cornerstone Spider-Man lore than any other comic in the character's history. Writer Dan Slott used the milestone issue to engineer one of the most structurally audacious status-quo shifts in superhero comics: Peter Parker dies in the decaying body of Doctor Octopus while Otto Octavius, now inhabiting Peter's healthy frame, assumes the mantle of Spider-Man — rebranding himself the 'Superior Spider-Man' and launching an entirely new ongoing series. The issue's narrative engine — that Peter's final act is to flood Otto's mind with the full weight of his own memories and moral code, transmitting the 'great power, great responsibility' ethos into his greatest enemy — is a remarkably thematic capstone to five decades of Spider-Man storytelling. Its cultural shockwave was immediate and intense: spoilers leaked twelve days before the December 26, 2012 release, triggering a polarized fan response that made mainstream news and demonstrated, perhaps more vividly than any comic of its era, how deeply readers had invested in Peter Parker as an irreplaceable protagonist.
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The Superior Spider-Man concept originated with Dan Slott when he first came aboard the Amazing Spider-Man writing team, though editor Stephen Wacker confirmed in a CNN interview that the idea evolved considerably and was not originally slated for the 700th issue — it was the convergence of the story's scale with the series' 50th anniversary that convinced Marvel to anchor the change to that landmark number. Editor-in-chief Axel Alonso was initially skeptical of the premise during Marvel's editorial retreats, and his pointed challenges to the story's logic pushed Slott and Wacker to strengthen the narrative foundation. The 'Dying Wish' arc — spanning issues #698–700 — had been building since plot threads introduced as far back as Amazing Spider-Man #600, when Doctor Octopus was revealed to be terminally ill; Slott carefully seeded the mechanism of the mind-swap (the golden Octobot) across multiple intervening storylines including 'Ends of the Earth.' The issue's ending leaked online on December 14, 2012 — four days before retailers even received their copies — prompting Slott to publicly ask readers to experience the story in full context, while simultaneously having to report credible threats made against him via social media to law enforcement.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated December 2012 (release date December 26, 2012); the final issue of The Amazing Spider-Man's continuous run, closing a publication history that stretched back to March 1963.
- Primary creative team: writer Dan Slott, penciler Humberto Ramos, inker Victor Olazaba, colorist Edgar Delgado, letterer VC's Chris Eliopoulos; backup stories written by J. M. DeMatteis and Jennifer Van Meter, with art by Giuseppe Camuncoli (with Sal Buscema inks) and Stephanie Buscema respectively.
- Marks the first appearance of the Superior Spider-Man — Doctor Otto Octavius operating in Peter Parker's body under that self-declared identity — directly launching the companion series The Superior Spider-Man #1 (January 2013).
- Concludes the three-part 'Dying Wish' arc (#698–700): Peter Parker, trapped in Octavius's dying body, ultimately fails to reclaim his own but succeeds in transmitting the full archive of his memories and moral experience into Otto's mind before dying, compelling Octavius to embrace the Spider-Man role as a hero.
- Features an oversized format with a 'Peter's afterlife' sequence in which he encounters deceased figures from the series' history including Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacy, Captain George Stacy, and his parents Richard and Mary Parker.
- The issue included a letters column with responses written by Stan Lee, a full gallery of all 700 Amazing Spider-Man covers, and preview pages for The Superior Spider-Man, Venom, Scarlet Spider, Avenging Spider-Man, and Morbius the Living Vampire.
- One variant cover — a 1:200 retailer incentive — used previously unpublished artwork Steve Ditko had originally drawn as an alternate cover for Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), making it the first time that image appeared on a published cover exactly 50 years after it was created.
- The Superior Spider-Man series that followed ran for 33 issues (plus two additional issues #32–33) and was later adapted into the second season of the Marvel's Spider-Man animated series; Otto Octavius as the Superior Spider-Man also appeared in the 2023 film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Key issues in The Amazing Spider-Man
Other variants of The Amazing Spider-Man #700 (12)
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