Even though people were happy to see that Peter wasn't completely dead, Ghost-Peter's presence had a tendency to irritate the fandom due to being ineffectual. However, when he was "killed", people were more than ready to grieve for the character. This being said, his post-resurrection self is widely considered to be better as a character.
The series end with Carlie, literally, getting Put on the Bus. She leaves New York, still not completely cured of the Goblin Formula. Messages from Slott around the time of the story seemed to indicate there's also no plans to bring her back.
Anvilicious: The moral of the story is that the classic, ideal hero is preferable to a morally-grey or unstable asshole like Otto or the many other Anti-Hero characters who've populated comic books.
The Reveal from the end of Issue 1 - that Peter Parker is along for the ride but unable to do anything other than stop Doctor Octopus crossing certain moral lines - received praise for how unexpected it was, but also received plenty of hate for being a fairly obvious twist people could see coming, and coming in the first issue.
How often Ghost-Peter actually appeared. Some like it while others just want him to shut up. Then there's the matter of Otto removing Peter from his mind, which basically made people on both sides more vocal about their stance on the series.
Fans of the comic are divided on whether the story was better as a Redemption Quest or if it is better as a story with a Villain Protagonist, as the former is pretty much dropped for the latter.
Fans are conflicted over the way that the final confrontation between Peter and Otto was handled, with one group seeing it as a genuinely moving Redemption Equals Death moment and the logical progression for the storyline, another group seeing it as an Anti-Climax that goes against what the story was building up to since the end of the "Superior Venom" arc, and another group is just relieved that Peter's back and the arc is nearly over.
Was much of the dark content in the series meant to get people into the story by means of shock value, or to develop Otto as a character? It depends on what part of the Spider-Man fandom you ask.
Catharsis Factor: While this is somewhat cancelled by the ensuing murder, SpOck successfully outsmarting Massacre by freeing the hostages he relied on as his back-up, then promptly Curb-Stomping him is greatly satisfying, giving the killing spree we saw the man commit.
Death of the Author: Dan Slott claimed that Issue 9 was supposed to come across as a Shoot the Dog moment with Otto erasing Peter in order to no longer be held back by Peter's limitations. However, the response to the event is widely seen as a Kick the Dog moment.
Draco in Leather Pants: There are fans who legitimately argue that Otto was a better Spider-Man than Peter. His more immoral actions gets written off as the ends justifying the means.
Otto successfully performs brain surgery on a young girl who was affected by his global warming scheme and receiving her stuffed doll as a thank you. When Otto tells her he can't accept such a thing, the doctors tell him that she has already replaced it with a Spider-Man doll.
When stranded in the year 2099, Otto has a holographic avatar of Anna Maria guiding him as a reminder of what he left back home.
Otto: "Call me 'Otto'. I have never heard her speak that name. It would be... motivating."
Like You Would Really Do It: When Peter Parker, who's shown as a "ghost" through the first nine issues is erased from Otto's consciousness, only to return when Otto tries remembering Peter's past. Plenty of people knew that he'd come Back from the Dead in time to make money off of The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
After Disney purchased Star Wars, fans noticed how Ghost-Peter resembled the Force Ghosts seen in that series thanks to simply coloring Ghost-Peter a pale blue. Cue jokes about how Peter Parker was strong in the Force, and that Superior Spider-Man was the first crossover between the the Marvel and Star Wars universes.
Why doesn't Spider-Man just kill X?Explanation Spidey has a no-kill policy like Batman does, and with Otto's distinct lack of any such policy similarities were drawn.
Misaimed Fandom: Despite how Otto's actions are very clearly not meant to be taken as the actions of an ideal hero and the fact that he by all accounts killed Peter Parker for the position, a not-insignificant amount of people do regard him as the Superior Spider-Man in spite of the story arguing the opposite. Otto is pompous, arrogant, petty, and an all-around unpleasant person. He brutalizes petty criminals who pose little threat to either him or the public simply because they've wounded his pride, and he was willing to get Flash killed and steal his symbiote because he was worried about being exposed, something he criticizes Peter for doing in issue 9. His arrogance in doing so leads to him going so far as to apparently put jaywalkers in the hospital, and even threatens to hurt Mary Jane if she tells anyone about the symbiote. And all of this is to say nothing of his blackmailing of public officials and massive breaches of privacy caused by the Spider-Drones. Part of this is likely owed to his ruthless efficiency seeming superficially cool.
Moral Event Horizon: There are a number of potential crossings for the title character. When (or if) this trope occurs in the story depends on the reader.
For starters, there are fans who will point to how Otto stole Peter Parker's life in the first place and his plan in Ends of the Earth as evidence he'd crossed it long ago and no-one should be surprised at his actions as Spider-Man. Ends of the Earth is a particular sore point, as it was Otto's last appearance before the Dying Wish arc, and featured him trying to kill most of the life on Earth. In addition, the entire Kill and Replace gambit that he had carried out immediately before becoming a superhero doesn't really leave him in a sympathetic light.
Issue 9 is a big example, because he ends up (temporarily) erasing Peter's existence entirely instead of simply trying to subdue it, and gloating about how he's finally free.
In Superior Spider-Man Annual, he decides to torture Blackout to study him in a Mengele-like fashion after Blackout had previously kidnapped and was planning to torture and murder Aunt May. He rips out his teeth and fingernails - which aren't presented as a heroic actions in the slightest.
Stealing the Venom symbiote from Flash Thompson simply because he thought he could make better use of it.
Massacre murdering Doctor Kafka.
My Real Daddy: It's somewhat common to find fans who do not enjoy Slott's SpOck in Superior, but rather enjoy Yost's in Avenging/Superior Team-Up. Likewise the dialogue of a number of issues including the closing ones were by Christos Gage, including the famous "Manpurse" line.
Nausea Fuel: The torture scene in the first Annual involves Otto hanging Blackout up on hooks and tearing out his teeth and fingernails.
Nightmare Fuel: A lot of the scenes where Otto murders criminals, beats them to a pulp, or otherwise harms them can be pretty disturbingly gruesome. One particularly horrific case is when he tears out Blackout's teeth and nails in the first annual issue.
No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Intended by Dan Slott. Since it's the best selling comic of 2012, it worked to say the least.
A Spider-Man villain thinking he has killed the hero and then donning his costume to prove he's a superior Spider-Man than the hero was done in Kraven's Last Hunt, albeit in a far smaller run of issues and to much less controversy and divisive response.
Likewise, Otto's fellow supervillain Mac Gargan, at this time in possession of the Venom-symbiote, posed as a more brutal version of Spider-Man during the Dark Reign-event as part of the Dark Avengers. So Spidey's villains taking over his hero identity seems to be a common plot point, although Superior Spider-Man may be the most well-known take on it.
Underground comics artist, Peter S. Bagge wrote a non-canon one-shot called The Megalomaniacal Spider-Man (2002) which was a Deconstructive Parody of Ditko's supposedly Randian-inspired Peter. It has Peter abandon altruism and become a businessman who markets Spider-Man and makes over-the-top speeches much like Otto's Superior Spider-Man.
Replacement Scrappy: The "Superior" version of Spider-Man became this before the first issue was released. Word of God claims that this is deliberate. Dan Slott wants to take Spider-Man's Hero with Bad Publicity element to a meta level. It says quite a bit about the character's status as this when more people were celebrating his death than mourning it.
Some people warmed up to SpOck as a character, mostly due to readers looking past all the backlash his comic caused, and enjoying the hilarity of Otto Octavius as Spider-Man.
A substantial amount of people actually want Otto to stay Spider-Man, or at least a part of the Spider Family.
On the other end of the spectrum, a large section of the fanbase is now rooting for anyone who's against SpOck. Anyone. Yes, that includes the GoblinKing. Solicits for the "Run, Goblin, Run!" arc make it seem like this is the point, and by the time SpOck started using the Venom suit, some people pretty much stopped supporting the character in favor of his enemies.
Carlie Cooper was back to being this again, thanks to being the only supporting cast member to deduce Otto's impersonation, ahead of characters who had known Peter for much, much longer. She also earned herself some bonus fan hatred for blaming Peter for the time she turned into a giant spider-monster, claiming it wouldn't have happened if she hadn't known him. Since nearly every person in Manhattan became a spider-monster whether they knew Peter Parker or not, the logic was deemed rather flawed. Although, to be fair, Carlie was only able to deduce this was because Peter flat-out told her ahead of time when he was in Otto's original body, and even then it took her a while to actually confirm this.
There are those who feel that Otto became Dan Slott's Superboy Prime. After Issue 25, where Otto with the Venom Symbiote is being shown to effortlessly manhandle the Avengers (including Thor), this is cemented even further.
Mary Jane's new boyfriend Pedro Oliveira isn't particularly well-liked in the eyes of fans, and not because of any major thing he does but rather how he further diminishes Mary Jane's character by seemingly having her settle for a "safer" version of Peter. His name really doesn't help note Pedro is Spanish for Peter. Tellingly, he pretty much disappears off the face of the Earth only a short amount of time after his debut in this story.
Otto masturbated in Peter's body. Ghost-Peter is understandably grossed out by this.
Otto continuing Peter's relationship with Mary Jane in the early issues instantly grossed out many readers, who point out that Otto's actions are tantamount to sexual assault or rape by deception since Mary Jane is unaware of what happened to Peter.
Doc-Ock was once in love with Aunt May, and it's canon he still has feelings for her. He's now posing as her nephew, the one she raised as if he was her son.
Take That, Scrappy!: There are a number of "What the Hell, Hero?" speeches towards Octavius throughout the story - a number of which are cited by critics as reasons that Octavius isn't a good replacement. Otto had enough people hating him that plenty were overjoyed when the Goblin King started to make his life a living hell.
The Spider-Island arc seemed to be the first step in reuniting Mary Jane and Peter Parker, but this was thrown out the window once Otto took over.
Some feel that the ending was wrapped up much too quickly, and that Peter didn't really have to deal with the repercussions of Otto's actions.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: As far as the source material goes, a number of fans stopped reading due to the direction that the character took. This stance was cemented with some by the first annual, or even earlier with Issue 9. Several of these people also claim that the series relied too much on shock value to boost sales instead of telling a satisfying story.
Unexpected Character: Boomerang's Sinister Six included the Living Brain, which Spider-Man fought exactly twice, once in the 1960s, and again in the 1980s.
Octavius tends to fall into this. Given that he had stated that he wanted to kill over 6 billion people and that he hijacked his archnemesis's body while leaving him to die painfully, it's hard to give the character any sympathy, even when he states that he wants to do good.
The entire premise of the story is based upon Otto's foiled actions in the Ends of the Earth arc - specifically, his plan to burn billions of people alive and leave a fraction of humanity around to suffer. However, when talking about the character post Heel–Face Turn, creator Dan Slott claimed that Otto was always an "egoistical annoying shit" who was just like Hawkeye after he became good. This raised a red flag with Douglas Ernst, who pointed out that Otto explicitly said he wanted to be worse than Adolf Hitler during the previous arc he was in and dismissing that simply as "being annoying", and that comparing a Misanthrope Supreme (even one that tries to be heroic) to a character who had previously committed minor crimes before turning good is concerning. (Ernst initially included images of human remains from Dachau to further his point, which didn't go too well with Jewish writer Dan Slott - though he since removed them at the request of a reader, albeit months after the initial post.)
A great deal of focus and attention is put on the fact Otto was a bullied outsider, not unlike Peter, which contributed to his turn to villainy. The thing is, putting aside the fact that Peter (and in fact, most victims of bullying) don't use this as an excuse to hurt others, but that Otto had previously been depicted as only being rejected by others because he was an Insufferable Genius who treated others terribly, so it's hard for readers to sympathise with this view of him. Similarly, Otto is treated as someone who just wants someone to love him, the story repeatedly demonstrates him as being an utter creep, and to many, it comes off as him being held up as an upstanding guy whenever he demonstrates merely the barest of basic decency, and this is without getting into how the 2018 run's writer Christos Gage applauded Otto's character for not being attracted to women for their looks, which is demonstratively not true (as he happily degraded MJ when they were "dating", and generally dismissed her as little more than a pretty face), but Otto's interest in women who aren't "supermodels" tends to be routed in him taking advantage of their self-esteem. Essentially, Otto in both runs is bizarrely pushed as a sympathetic Incel, with no sense of irony or awareness.
Vindicated by History: To some degree. In the years since this series — and Dan Slott's run in general — ended and after the kind of things that followed it, many readers have reappraised Superior and come to the conclusion that while, yes, it has it's fair share of issues, it also has some of Slott's best writing and makes a lot of really bold moves that are at least interesting, actual attempts at progressing the narrative of Spider-Man, and no thinly-veiled jabs at the fanbase, out-of-touch editors Running the Asylum, or lame attempts at No Such Thing as Bad Publicity as the subsequent runs usually were. A great deal of the series has come to be seen as something of an underrated gem, with truly intriguing takes on the concept of a more morally-ambiguous/horror-leaning Spider-Man, compelling explorations of a supervillain trying and failing to be a hero, and a number of genuinely cool arcs that gave Spidey direly needed pushes past the boundaries he had been boxed in since One More Day. On the whole, Superior Spider-Man has had it's reputation with the Marvel fandom evolve from "worst Spidey story in years" to "an interesting concept that could've been done better in some respects", which says quite a lot.
Win Back the Crowd: Predictably, Peter's return incited this with many fans, especially with Otto admitting that Peter was a better Superhero than he would ever be.
As mentioned above, while the first issue of the comic was generally well-received, it was also criticized by some for immediately setting up Ghost-Peter, the plot thread that would eventually get to undoing Peter's Comic Book Death.
is often cited as the best moment of the run.
