If it's anyone's fault, it's the publishers themselves. It is they who telegraph their stories and stunts months in advance, and are always available for the CNN or EW interview.

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As I have mentioned before, one of my greatest frustrations is having the covers of the fourth issue of a series out there for promotion before the first issue has even hit the stands. I find this tremendously restricting, in terms of what I can put on the covers. What might once have been a dramatic, enticing image, when the promotions did not appear until the house ads the month the issue shipped, become huge SPOILERS.

One example, the JURASSIC PARK series I did a while back for IDW. The first issue ended with a "reveal" of the precise nature/species of dinosaur that was causing all the fuss. Once upon a time, this would have meant said critters could have been all over the covers of issues 2 thru 4 -- but if I had done that, the promotions for the fourth issue would have spoiled the reveal before the first issue was available for reading. (One "reviewer" managed to spoil the reveal anyway, apparently being too dumb to understand that telling the story is not a "review".)

The reason for these months-in-advance promotions are, of course, so that the Shops can judge which books are going to be "hot" and order accordingly -- the manufacturers thus pandering to the retailers, something which happens in virtually no other form of commerce.

I saw an attempted rape scene in Amazing Spider-Man #700. Doc Ock did not go through with his intentions as he was distracted by reports of Peter's escape. How such a scene is going to be avoided by the storyline in upcoming issues, I have no idea, given Doc's already established interest in following through on that idea. Perhaps Peter's inherent "goodness" that he seems to have unwittingly downloaded will "auto-correct" this defect in Doc's character the next time he attempts it, much the same way Claremont retrofit an "anti-rape" device into Mesmero's control of Jean Grey when X-Men #111 was adapted in Classic X-Men #17.

In any case, aside from the immense amount of time it will take to tell the story in modern terms, I see no real difference in the overall story from any other "villain mind-switch" done previously, and therefore no reason for readers to be up in arms. It's "Kraven's Last Stand" done sideways, with a body-switch twist. It's regrettable that they're stunt-cancelling the title over this (that alone makes the photo of Stan feeding the comic into his office shredder a joy to behold) and unfortunate that they ended the issue with Peter's "death" rather than some nod to his eventual return, but when you're power-stretching a storyline to fit across literally dozens of issues as is done these days, story beats have to come farther and farther apart.

Overall, I found the story entertaining enough, and the interest Doc shows in MJ to be disturbing, especially since he, possessing Peter's memories, has "already" been there any number of times, and is looking now to pursue the relationship under this new identity...

Slott's done excellent work at DC and my appreciation of his basic storytelling strengths is strong. I stopped following him once he became one of the hydra-headed writing team putting out crossover blips rather than stories on the Spider-titles. I could see revisiting his writing via the new "Superior Spider-Man" title, but the MJ thing is going to have to be dealt with in a satifactory manner or it will squick readers, specifically myself, into dropping the title. If Slott goes ahead with a NuPeter/MJ romance, the entire story is going to become about sexually assaulting MJ and her eventually carving Otto's heart out of his chest with a rusty pairs of scissors and feeding it to him. Which is not what I read comics for...