Villain Profile: Doctor Octopus

Okay, so we’ve covered two of Spider-Man’s Big Three. The twisted alien parasite bonded to various foes and friends, Venom. And the insane industrialist, father figure turned girlfriend murder Norman Osborn aka Green Goblin. They have dogged Spider-Man for decades now, but they are actually more recent foes. Today we’re going to talk about the oldest villain of this trio, the original greatest foe of Spider-Man, Doctor Otto Octavius, aka Doc Ock. Let’ get to it.

Looks good, but didn't play out as well as I'd hoped.

Otto Octavius grew up in a home where his parents were… diametrically opposed on their parenting techniques. Torbert Octavius, a blue-collar factory worker with anger management issues, tried to whip his ‘wussy’ son into shape. Side note, I swear to whatever cosmic being that may or may not watch over creation that I will find a villain that didn’t have an abusive parent. Torbert was a big believer in the might makes right, eye for an eye tooth for a tooth philosophies. He would smack Otto around while screaming at Otto to do the same to his tormentors. Mary Octavius, on the other hand, did her best to protect her sweet little Otto, insisting that he’d use his brain to solve his problems. You know those moms that aren’t technically abusive but do massive psychological harm by babying their kids and doting on them, and never let them develop emotionally? Yeah, that’s Mary Octavius.

Spurred on by his mother and hellbent on not being his father, Otto excelled in school and even earned a university scholarship. He also developed an intense hatred for anyone that he deemed less intelligent then himself. Which is, in fact, most people. Interestingly enough, Otto did owe his dad for something. Torbert was killed in an industrial accident during Otto’s freshmen year. This death led to Otto’s obsession in the physical sciences, and engineering. He became a brilliant mind in the field of nuclear science. He became a highly-respected scientist, research consultant, lecturer and inventor. His biggest claim to fame was a harness. Said harness allowed him to control four robotic arms via a brain-computer interface. These arms were resistant to radiation, capable of moving incredibly heavy loads, and incredibly precise movements.

His success in his various fields increased his already large ego to near titanic proportions. Imagine the Hindenburg. That’s Otto’s ego in a nutshell, enormous, full of hot air and all it’ll take is a spark to make it go up in flames. But more on that in a sec. Otto’s personal life took a turn for the best, when he met a woman named Mary Alice. She was a fellow researcher, so she’s comparable to him in intellect, and the two had good chemistry. Despite the latter’s general… terrible attitude. I’m going to harp on this a lot, but seriously, he’s a donkey’s backside. He and Mary Alice got engaged, but it didn’t end well. You see, Mary Octavius was the sort of mother that felt that no woman was ever going to be good enough for her perfect baby boy. Otto, being a major mama’s boy, broke up with Mary Alice. A few weeks later, he was infuriated to learn that his mother was secretly dating a librarian. Same mindset as Mary’s had been, ‘why are you seeing someone beneath you’ sort of thing. The two got into an incredibly heated argument, which ended with his mother having a major heart attack. So… no girlfriend, and his overbearing mother is dead… not a great week for Otto.

Following the loss of both major women in his life, Otto’s personal life took a nosedive. Where he used to at least tolerate the ‘lesser’ minds he worked with, now everyone was an insect not worth his notice. Said colleagues took to calling him Doctor Octopus behind his back to belittle him. He knew about this little taunt, obviously, but he barely cared.

All it took was one bad day to turn a worm into an Octopus.
Feels like a lateral move if I'm being honest.

Things took a turn for the worst during an experiment. There was a minor radiation leak that led to a massive explosion. Said explosion caused his harness to fuse with Otto’s spine and torso. Upon waking up in the hospital, he flipped out and took the hospital hostage. Our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was swinging by, and stepped in. Despite being an overweight, nearly blind scientist, Doc Ock’s tentacles proved to be a physical match for Spider-Man. He actually defenestrated Spider-Man, and caused ol Spidey to consider retiring from hero work. But, he rallied after chatting with the Human Torch and gave Otto what-for.

Not one to be deterred, Otto Octavius is one of Spider-Man’s persistent foes. He’s engaged Spider-Man in combat countless times, both alone, and with is pet project, the Sinister Six. He’s very proud of founding that group, and has been known to take serious offense to anyone else using the name. Kind of shocked that the super anti-social Ock is continually allying himself with others. He actually has a very long time partnership, something akin to a friendship, with the Vulture. Cephalopod and bird of prey, how strange. Doctor Octopus, despite his numerous failures, is actually credited with being the one to beat Spider-Man. But I’ll get back to that whenever I cover the Superior Spider-Man.

Doctor Otto Octavius is one of the most intelligent men in the Marvel Universe. He’s got a Ph. D. in nuclear science, and is a gifted engineer and inventor. He’s an expert in the field of radiation, one of the best examples of this is when Mr. Fantastic sought his help when his wife the Invisible Woman was having radiation complications during pregnancy. Cosmic rays really mess with things. He’s developed several amazingly advanced pieces of technology like his tentacle harness, his legion of Octo-bots, and various upgrades for some of his villainous allies. Despite his… personality, he’s proven to be a very charismatic leader and cunning strategist with his various incarnations of the Sinister Six. He uses this group to perform his more elaborate schemes, and the group at large is typically instrumental in his closest attempts at finally finishing off Spider-Man.

Just an unsettling look.

His most iconic feature is his special harness. Said harness allows him to mentally control four robotic tentacles. These arms are incredibly strong which allow him to lift several tons but dexterous enough to perform delicate tasks like wiring machinery or stirring tea. He’s fought incredibly strong, and agile foes like Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Captain America. The arms are able to easily lift his body weight, and allow him to scale walls. Upgraded versions of the tentacles also possess retractable tools that help Otto in his schemes. Over the years, he’s gotten so good at multitasking that he can perform a complex task like constructing one of his machines while two of his tentacles fight his opponents in the background. Experimentation, constant use, and sudden brain mutations have allowed Otto to control these arms at a distance as well.

His tentacles could also be seen as his greatest weakness. Well, his reliance on them is his weakness. His arms are super, in terms of strength, speed, dexterity and so on. Otto, on the other hand, is an older, overweight, nerdy, and so nearsighted that he’s basically blind scientist. If you can just get passed the four metal arms, he’s cake. But, those arms are pretty hard to avoid.  He also has the ability to control a legion of flying Octo-bots with his thoughts. Because why not?

Like Green Goblin and Venom, Otto has appeared in some form or another in nearly every Spider-Man franchise to date. Even in series that he didn’t appear physically, there have been homages. Like in Amazing Spider-Man 2 where we see his tentacles/harness, and Vulture’s wings in a Oscorp vault. Granted, he WOULD have appeared if they’d gotten the third movie and/or the Sinister Six movie, but… the Amazing Spider-Man series didn’t really play out as they’d hoped. Given his prolific nature, I’ll only cover the series I know reasonably well. Just know that if it’s a Spider-Man series, and it lasts long enough, he’s in it.

Five costume changes to just get to an upgraded version
of his look from the 90s cartoon. Just saying.

He appeared in The Spectacular Spider-Man. For the first seven episodes, he’s largely a background character, being a friend of Adrian Toomes that erroneously advised Toomes to show CEO Norman Osborn his flight harness, (Osborn stole the design) and the scientist behind the creation of Sandman and Rhino. He and boss Norman Osborn are secretly working for ‘The Big Man,’ aka Tombstone, aka L. Thompson Lincoln, to create supervillains to keep Spider-Man busy. The thought process is that if Spider-Man is busy battling super criminals, he is too busy to notice the petty crimes of Tombstone’s other goons. He’s an incredibly weak, spineless man. This changes in “Reaction” when, while cleaning out the machines that he used to make the villains, he gets stuck in the pod. Green Goblin, Norman’s alter ego, had locked him in the pod and powered it up. Otto fights hard to break the door open, but it’s too late. He shrieks, “No this isn’t right. No, not right. I’ve been good!” as he’s hit by an intense radiation. The radiation fuses the tentacles to his back. Afterwards, he’s done being good. He sets out to steal an experimental battery pack to power his arms indefinitely. Peter and Otto throw down, with Spider-Man coming out on top. He returns in “Group Therapy” where he forms the Sinister Six with Electro, Vulture, Sandman, Rhino, and Shocker. The group is able to overpower Spider-Man, once, but he escapes. In “Intervention,” they’re actually defeated by, not Spider-Man, but the evil alien Symbiote that controlled him while Peter slept. The Symbiote is more violent and less concerned with collateral damage, so it’s able to overpower the villainous group with relative ease. He returns in “Shear Strength” “Accomplices” and “Gangland.” Not many episodes, but hey, the show only had 26 in total, so those six plus the four or five pre-Ock episodes, that’s nearly half the series. Good on yeah, Ock.

He is the most recurring villain in Ultimate Spider-Man. In this version, he’s got rather long scraggly hair, his harness also works like an artificial lung, and he’s completely paralyzed from the neck down. So he’s more reliant on his arms than ever. He and Norman Osborn are behind most of the villains that attack Spider-Man in season one. In the season 1 finale, he, fed up with being Norman’s lapdog, injects him with a chemical cocktail that turns Norman Osborn into the Goblin. From then on, he’s a free agent. He appears pretty regularly in seasons 2 and 3, creating the Sinister Six, recreating the Goblin whenever he’s cured, and even goes so far to team with Loki in a failed Asgard invasion. Obviously, none of these schemes really panned out. In season 4, he teams with HYDRA and gets a nanobot upgrade. He goes from looking gross to looking like straight nightmare fuel. He looks like a casket with a creepy Bane from Dark Knight Rises mask on. He keeps dogging for the rest of the series, but thankfully gets another upgrade that makes him look less terrifying. He’s also voiced by Tom Kenny, so if you ever want to hear what Spongebob would sound like as a supervillain, there you go.

Pretty intimidating for a fat scientist,
isn't he?

He is the main antagonist of Spider-Man 2 in the Sam Raimi film trilogy. He’s portrayed by Alfred Molina. He’s initially a good scientist, married man, and a mentor to a youngish Peter Parker. Otto runs an experiment for Oscorp, directed by Harry Osborn. The experiment, using tritium to make a mini-sun, goes well until a radiation spike. The spike draws in all metallic objects in the room, causing a window to shatter and kill Otto’s wife via shattered glass. Peter, who’d been invited to observe, changes into costume and is able to shut the experiment down. While he disables the machinery, Otto is hit with electricity that fries a chip that kept the AI of his artificial arms from messing with his brain. He’s taken to an OR, where they try to remove the arms, but the arms flip out and murder the doctors. Otto initially tries to commit suicide upon walking, but the arms’ AI convince him to try to rebuild the machine. He battles Peter several times in his bid to rebuild his work, and ultimately kidnaps Mary Jane in a bid to kill Spider-Man. Honestly, while I like Alfred Molina, I do not care for this interpretation of Otto Octavius. He’s not a sympathetic character, he’s not one to recite poetry, or give advice about love. He’s a narcissist, confident in his intelligence, super prideful, and just a colossal Delusional Idiotic Callous Killer. I’m not supposed to like him. I can’t like him. I at best feel sorry that he uses his supreme intellect so selfishly. I also hate that in this version the tentacles are the actual bad guys. They might influence his actions, but they don’t dominate them. You know what motivation Otto would need to rebuild his machine in the comics? That Spider-Man interrupted the experiment. No other reason needed.

Doc Ock is one of Spider-Man’s longest running, and dangerous foes. He’s supremely intelligent, incredibly dangerous, and oddly charismatic. They’ve made a bit of a thing about how his tentacles are superpowerful, but he himself is as normal as your average research scientist. So, not really super at all, really. Of Spider-Man’s Big Three, he’s the most similar to Spider-Man when you think about it. Both are incredibly intelligent men with a form of super strength, they’re both themed after an eight-legged invertebrate, dressed mainly in primary colors, and have inspired a surprising number of their fellows to follow them. Spider-Man has the Avengers, and Doc Ock has the Sinister Six. He’s also one of the most visually distinctive villains in comics. How many slightly overweight, multiarmed villains dressed in green and yellow, can you think of? Honestly, I’ve been trying to think if he’s got an equivalent counterpart in DC comics, but all that I can think of is a minor gangster that Killer Croc killed that went by the Squid. Otherwise, Doc Ock is really the only cephalopod themed villain I can think of. He’s the sinister schemer, the malevolent mechanist, the darkly dreaming Doc Ock. Next time, Voltron season 2 V-Logs. Have a good one.

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