Doctor Octopus has managed to keep himself alive within the confines of the Living Brain, and he’s done so right under Peter Parker’s nose. In Amazing Spider-Man #18, his journey to take over Parker’s body once more comes to a head.
Spoilers from here on out.
For those who have been following the book, you know that Otto has resided in the Living Brain since the events of Spider-Verse. It’s there that his love of Anna Maria Marconi has only grown, and he’s been biding his time ever since, waiting for a moment to present itself where he can return to the land of the living.
That seems to finally surface in the form of Aiden Blain, Marconi’s current boyfriend, but Otto soon realizes that he can’t enter his brain due to the constraints of the original design. He based his process on Parker’s brainwaves, and so it will only work in that circumstance. At this point, he travels to New York with Marconi to Parker’s New York headquarters and proceeds to lose it when Parker attempts to fix him, commenting on Otto’s inefficiencies all the while. This gets under Otto’s skin understandably, and he causes the Living Brain to go postal, initiating a self-destruct sequence.
The Living Brain explodes, but not before Otto is able to hop back into an Octobot and the next logical step is to hunt down his biological brain. To do that, he will seek out the help of the New U, leading him right into the events of Dead No More. By Matthew Mueller
Amazing Spider-Man #18 is in stores now