He is a murderer, yes. But hero stories that start from villain stories don't go "hero" overnight. Darth Vader didn't redeem himself in five seconds. The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver both started as Evil Mutants and are now Avengers. Magneto himself dances back and forth across the line between Well Intentioned Extremist and genuine hero. So while he's still behaving Ock-like, it's going to take time for him to shake the old evil ways and learn the true meaning of being a hero. Being an Avenger is of a necessity going to teach it to him or he's going to get taken down and taken out for real.
Until Ock realizes that he has stolen another person's life, no amount of good will ever redeem him.
Kind of hard to support the person who murdered my childhood hero.
Twice.
You've got a point Skylite, and I think that the main division between people who enjoy the series and people who don't is whether or not they think Otto can ever be a hero.
The problem is, if there was ANY group of people who wouldn't be able to forgive someone who killed and then impersonated Spider-Man, it would be... Spider-Man fans. I don't think Otto can ever be a hero until he sees himself as a villain for what he did to Peter.
Actually, a lot of people might just choose to remember Slott for the good fortune he brought to Pete through stuff like "Big Time" and Spider-Island.Ya know, before he killed the poor guy off. It's funny, actually. Peter was having the best fortune he has had for a while now, and he "suffered" for it harder than ever before. The higher it goes up, the harder it must come down INDEED. Also, Scarlet Spider fans will remember him for curing Kaine of the cellular regeneration, giving him the new powers and the new suit, and giving him an opening to his own series. There's that, at least.
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Good Execution: Terrible Idea
Normally when a big change happens in a comic book universe, I try to go in with an open mind and give it a fair chance. Superior Spider Man made me give up this practise because I knew that no matter how well it was executed, I wouldn't get over what an incredibly terrible idea it was.
I can understand Dan Slott's intention to take Spider-Man's 'Hero With Bad Publicity' status to a meta level, but let's look at the first word in that phrase. Hero. The following is not up for discussion; Otto Octavius is not a hero. I could bring up his decades of villainy or his plan to cull mankind in Ends of the Earth, but I don't even need to step outside of the current series. Otto Octavius kills Peter Parker and then erases his ghostly remains so that he can never take back his own body.
If I took that last sentence and gave it to hundreds of Spider-Man fans 1 year ago, I can guarantee you that none of them would describe Otto as a 'Hero'. He stole a real hero's identity, trapped him in a dying body, and now that he's dead, is impersonating him to his friends and family.
What's really sad about this is that Dan Slott isn't a bad writer by any means - the first few issues are genuinely entertaining and interesting. The artwork is great and I got a few laughs along the way. But I just can't get past the fact that there is no Spider-Man in this Spider-Man series - just Dr Octopus, who isn't even one of Spider-Man's more interesting villains. The series could have even still worked if it had just been tweaked a bit, but the moment Doc Ock killed Peter, he was beyond ever being a 'Hero', and thus I have no more interest in what he does.
I'm sure Dan Slott will ride the coat-tails of 'No Such Thing As Bad Publicity' and enjoy writing a best-selling series, but his legacy will always be that his Magnum Opus was one of the most negatively-received Spider-Man stories ever written, and considering the reception to One More Day, that really is an accomplishment. Thanks for trying something new Dan, but I'll check Wikipedia every few months until the change is reversed and the series becomes readable again.