In my final dream this morning, a dream which has since become rather fuzzy, Doctor Octopus was engaged in one of his nefarious schemes, only it seemed something larger than what Doc Ock would normally do, almost on a grand Doctor Doom scale of criminal plot.

I vaguely recall that it had something to do with scooping up Manhattan and shrinking the island down so that he could make a souvenir for himself, much like Braniac did with the bottled city of Kandor. The details are fading away, but in the dream I was a witness to this actually happening.

But then the dream took on a meta-level, and I found myself sitting next to Len Wein while the two of us calmly debated whether or not this was something Doc Ock would actually do. Len felt that this action was not characteristic of this particular super-villain, and was way beyond him, while I was taking the position that Doc Ock could have pulled it off. I was quoting scenes from early issues of Spider-Man to defend my position (which in the light of day does not seem defensible).

What was the weirdest thing to me about the dream what that it was as if the villainy was both happening and not happening. I don’t think that if Manhattan was really being stolen that two guys would be calmly discussing the event as if they were Siskel and Ebert reviewing a movie.

I woke in the midst of this bantering with Len, but because I didn’t immediately scribble down the dream, much of it has evaporated.