Fortunately for Spider-Man, everyone thinks Peter has just been impersonating the super-hero in a foolhardy attempt to rescue his girl. ("Take your puny hero," the villain sneers as he tosses the passed-out Parker into a policeman. "It's the real Spider-Man I'm after!") Feeling humiliated at the hands of a "mere teenager," Dr. Octopus decides to escalate the conflict by freeing zoo animals onto the city. What follows gives Ditko the chance to render amuck animals and a climactic battle between hero and antagonist in a deserted sculptor's studio filled with giant statues that look like they could've appeared in the Babylon sequence of Intolerance.
Does any of it make sense? Not really. Spider-Man's best villains primarily exist to torment Spider-Man. They're part of the penance he must serve for failing to protect his own family. What Lee and Ditko captured in Spider-Man was the trying ambiguity of "typical" teenhood: the swings from elation to self-loathing, the fear of impending adulthood, the release that comes with stepping up and showing what you can accomplish. If the writer and artist regularly stacked the deck against our hero: well, that's what we wanted to see. Too many other super-guys had it easy.
"Boy," our hero reflects in a telling moment, "when I used to read comic mag adventures of super heroes, I always dreamed of how great it would be if I could become one! . . . It's great alright - for everyone except Spider-Man! Aw nuts!"
Sorry, Peter, but we wouldn't have it any other way.
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