Ultimate Spider-Man #72

February 5, 2005

Quick Rating: Good
Title: Hobgoblin Part One

Harry Osborn is back… this can’t be good for Peter Parker

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: J.D. Smith
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Cover Art: Mark Bagley & Richard Isanove
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the three two-issue stories that just wrapped up, but this issue of Ultimate Spider-Man felt really, really slow to me. Fresh from his horrifying encounter with Doctor Strange, a new horror enters Spider-Man’s life… the return of his former best friend, Harry Osborn, son of the Green Goblin.

The book starts by recapping the events from the very first issue of the title, where Peter Parker got his powers in the first place, then goes on to reveal some other events that went on that day that neither Pete nor the reader were aware of – events that are coming back to bite us now. Peter is still jittery, pushing away his girlfriend after having the fear of losing her instilled last issue, and having the son of his worst enemy, who also happens to know his secret identity, return to his life at just this moment makes for a devastating blow.

Brian Michael Bendis’s characterization and dialogue are as good as ever, and the added scenes don’t feel like a cop-out, wedged in to create tension now, like a lot of sudden reveal flashbacks do. It’s also nice to see that the quick stories that just wrapped up did not happen in a vacuum – although the Dr. Strange story isn’t specifically referenced, anyone who read the last two issues knows exactly where Pete’s sudden attitude shift comes from, and sympathizes even as you want to yell at his to wise up.

The problem, like I said, is the pacing. Quite often, the six-issue arcs of this title feel padded, and it’s a bad sign when I get that sensation from the first issue in the arc. This felt like half an issue, not a full one, and that disturbs me quite a bit.

Mark Bagley remains the king of Spider-Man artwork. Although there’s not a lot of action in this issue, the brief fight scene is handled well, and it’s interesting to note how much the characters have evolved visually since the beginning of the series, even if it’s just as simple as removing a pair of glasses and changing a character’s posture.

A good issue, as Ultimate Spider-Man always serves up. But one that felt like there should have been more here, a problem this title suffers from far too frequently.

Rating: 7/10

Ultimate Spider-Man #71

January 21, 2005

Quick Rating: Great
Title: Strange Part Two

With Spider-Man trapped in his own nightmares, only Dr. Strange can save him.

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: J.D. Smith
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Cover Art: Mark Bagley
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Last issue, Peter took Mary Jane on their long-planned fancy date… or so he thought. It turned out that he was trapped in a nightmare state created by a demon luring in the young Dr. Strange. Now, trapped in his own worst fears, Spider-Man is out of the picture, and Strange has to save him, in order to save the world.

It was a good move of Bendis to take time out for three two-issue “guest star” arcs, and this is easily the strongest of the three. Peter himself doesn’t really do much in this issue, but the tour of his nightmares casts a lot of light on the character. Strange, meanwhile, is a revelation. We’re so used to seeing the mainstream Marvel Dr. Strange, the cool, experienced sorcerer ready for any situation. This is totally different – it’s that experienced sorcerer’s son, and he’s still learning the ropes. When’s the last time you had to watch Dr. Strange look up a spell?

Also, unlike those other two arcs, this is one that looks like it’s going to have a lasting impact on the title. Peter is hurt this issue, scarred deeply in his soul, and it’s not a wound that will quickly heal.

Bagley, Hanna and Smith really outdo themselves with the artwork on this issue. I’m not sure exactly how they do it, but at one point the artwork in the nightmare sequences does a total shift to a bizarre, dreamlike state unlike anything else we’ve ever seen this title. It sets the darkness apart, and it works perfectly.

The short arcs were a welcome respite from the long – sometimes overly-long – series that usually dominate this title, but now that we’re charged up, I think we can handle a longer story again. Next issue: the Hobgoblin.

This should be interesting.

Rating: 9/10

Ultimate Spider-Man #70

December 16, 2004

Quick Rating: Very Good
Title: Strange

Peter gets a night out with Mary Jane after a hard day on the job.

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: J.D. Smith
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Cover Art: Mark Bagley
Publisher: Marvel

This issue starts out simply enough, with Peter Parker sitting down for a well-deserved dinner with Mary Jane, but the dinner quickly takes a back seat to his story of a long day in the webs. He helped out the Ultimates only to get nothing to show for it, then wound up stumbling into a confrontation with Dr. Strange that wound up being a lot weirder than it seemed.

This is the first appearance (to my knowledge) of Dr. Strange outside of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, and unlike some of the characters who appeared in that series, this issue seems to harken back to it, although not to such a degree that people who didn’t read it will be lost. In fact, the issue gives us a perfect recap of Strange’s origin, which fans of the main Marvel Universe will find familiar, but with a clever twist.

The ending of this book is a clever twist too. Just as we’re getting to the end of what seems like a relatively quiet done-in-one issue, we get blown out of the water by a last-second surprise. With these three guest-star story arcs, Bendis has finally gotten away from drawn-out, overly padded stories and is telling quick arcs with either a lot of action, a lot of character development, or both.

Bagley has gotten to branch out with this arc, doing as good a job with the Ultimates as he does regularly with Spidey, and pulling out some nice mystical visuals for the scenes with Dr. Strange. Some of the early pages are a little awkward, as the flashback begins with Bendis’s semi-regular trick of having wordless panels with a running commentary down the side of the page, then he switches to more conventional storytelling a few pages in, and the flow is disrupted.

Overall, a good issue. I’ve really enjoyed the last couple of months of Ultimate Spider-Man. I just hope the creators can keep up the momentum once the book goes back to longer story arcs.

Rating: 8/10

Ultimate Spider-Man #69

November 19, 2004

Quick Rating: Great
Title: Meet Me

Spider-Man’s got a new mission – help the Human Torch.

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: J.D. Smith & Chris Sotomayor
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Cover Art: Mark Bagley
Publisher: Marvel Comics

The conclusion of Spider-Man’s first encounter with the Human Torch may stand to go down as one of the best issues of this title ever. Brian Michael Bendis pulls a very clever reversal on one of the earliest meetings between the characters in the regular Marvel universe. (Anyone else remember how the Torch helped an unwitting Peter Parker bounce back from getting his butt handed to him by Dr. Octopus? Remember that.)

Last issue, Johnny Storm tried his hand at being a normal high school student, even joining Pete and MJ on a double date with Liz Allen. But things fell apart when he accidentally caught a flame from their beach bonfire. This issue picks up a few seconds later. Liz is panicking, Peter is confused and Johnny is crestfallen.

The Spider-Man/Torch dynamic is one of the all-time great friendships in the Marvel universe, and this issue goes a long way towards establishing that here as well. The book is basically a very strong character study, mostly of the Torch, but also of Peter in that he finds a way to make a difference that doesn’t involve putting his life on the line for a change. Bendis, as always, succeeds with strong characters, snappy dialogue and funny moments that help to lighten up the more serious bits.

Mark Bagley, as always, is in great form with the artwork. He and the colorists, Smith and Sotomayor, give a really strong look to the Torch. The character has come a long way, visually, from the days where he would flame on into a form with no face, no detail and bizarre pinstripes that appeared out of nowhere. There’s a little action in this issue, but it’s mostly talking heads, and Bagley still manages to keep the book strong and keep the story flowing.

Next up, Pete meets Dr. Strange – hopefully, though, this friendship will come back around again, because it’s one that always has a lot of storytelling potential.

Rating: 9/10

Ultimate Origins #1

June 3, 2008

Quick Rating: Average
Title: Ultimate Origins Part One
Rating: T+

How is everything in the Ultimate Universe tied together?

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Art: Butch Guice
Colors: Justin Ponsor
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Bill Rosemann
Cover Art: Gabriele Dell’otto & Dean White
Publisher: Marvel Comics

For a long time, we’ve been teased with the promise that “everything” in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe is connected. In the many years since that universe launched, though, it’s felt less and less relevant, and now that most of the books in that line are stagnating, it doesn’t seem to matter at all. I mention this simply because now, as Ultimate Origins launches, the general malaise the Ultimate Universe is experiencing makes this book feel just as pointless.

Beginning in World War II, we see how several of the characters who would become cornerstones of the Ultimate Universe were tied together and, ultimately, how their experiences would birth the origins of the likes of Captain America, SHIELD, and even mutantkind. There’s not really anything wrong with it, but it’s simply not exciting. There’s nothing here that gets me interested or excited in the Ultimate line again.

Butch Guice’s artwork helps, at least. He does a great action scene, especially the war scenes that open up the issue. And Gabriele Dell’otto’s cover isn’t bad either.

This book feels like a victim of bad timing. If it had been released years ago, when the Ultimate comics still had the heat, it may have been something interesting. As it stands, it feels like an attempt to reignite the Ultimate Universe. The problem is, this isn’t a book that works to reignite things. The creators should have put the excitement back in the rest of the line, then hit us with this series. Then it may have felt like it meant something.

Rating: 5/10

Ultimate Spider-Man #67

November 8, 2004

Quick Rating: Very Good
Title: Jump the Shark

Trapped in each other’s bodies, Spider-Man and Wolverine have to find a way to get things back to normal.

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: J.D. Smith
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Cover Art: Mark Bagley & Richard Isanove
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Last issue (that was all of two weeks ago, looks like things are back to normal there) Peter Parker and Wolverine woke up to find they had woken up in each other’s bodies. Peter, in Logan’s body, winds up facing off against a group of police trying to put down the “mutant menace.” Wolverine, as Peter, is exasperated at the mess he’s gotten into.

As both characters are totally unused to each other’s powers, we get a lot of funny bits here as the two of them attempt to get by with unfamiliar means. (The scene with Wolverine trying to swing on a web is particularly good). The resolution, on the other hand, seems to come up a little quick. On the other hand, in a title where the resolutions usually seem to happen two to three issues after it should, it is something of a refreshing change of pace.

Mark Bagley really gets a chance to show off here. A lot of the characterization is handled by assigning our two leads facial expressions or postures that belong to the other. It’s remarkable to see Wolverine doing Peter’s slumped over, depressed posture, or to see Peter with an irritated snarl. Someone familiar with these two characters could easily figure out what happened just by looking at the pages with no dialogue at all.

After a couple of seriously bleak months for Ultimate Spider-Man, this two-issue arc was a much-needed change of pace. Bendis and Bagley gave us what we needed – a lighthearted, amusing, but ultimately inconsequential storyline.

Rating: 8/10

Ultimate Spider-Man #66

October 8, 2004

Quick Rating: Very Good
Title: Even We Don’t Believe This

Spider-Man meets Wolverine in the strangest team-up ever!

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: J.D. Smith
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Cover Art: Mark Bagley & Richard Isanove
Publisher: Marvel Comics

This is something I never thought I would see in Ultimate Spider-Man – a really, really funny issue. If you like your heroes dark and brooding – well… you shouldn’t be reading a Spider-Man title in the first place, but you especially shouldn’t read this issue.

Peter Parker and Wolverine each wake up one day to find a pretty amazing surprise. And to say any more would be spoiling it. Thank you, Brian Michael Bendis, for making it so nigh-impossible to be conversant regarding this issue without blowing it for people.

All I really can say is that the book, the first part of a purported two-parter, had me in stitches. It pokes fun at the conventions of both of these characters without trashing either one, and that’s not very easy to do. I feel better about the Wha Huh? one-shot Bendis has coming out in a few months time.

Bagley’s art is great as always. He’s been doing a fantastic Spider-Man for over a decade between this title and his lengthy run on Amazing Spider-Man, and here he gets to have some fun with Wolverine as well. As if that wasn’t enough, we get a quick gag at the beginning starring Bendis and Bagley themselves.

Is this the greatest issue of Ultimate Spider-Man ever written? No. But it’s a a very good one, a very lighthearted one, and I’m not even concerned about how the situation presented herein resolves itself. You know it will.

Rating: 8/10

Ultimate Spider-Man #65

September 5, 2004

Quick Rating: Very Good
Title: Detention

Peter Parker and the gang are thrown into detention… what landed them there?

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: J.D. Smith
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Cover Art: Mark Bagley
Publisher: Marvel Comics

In the aftermath of Gwen Stacy’s death, Peter Parker and several of his classmates – both friends and enemies – have been tossed in detention. The reason they’re there and how they handle their punishment combine to make one of the best issues of Ultimate Spider-Man since the infamous Aunt May in therapy issue.

In truth, this is a, extremely fitting, effective memorial to Gwen. We see exactly how her death has impacted her classmates, both in the obvious ways (Peter), and the utterly unexpected ways (you’ll know it when you see it). What’s more, it becomes a launching pad to understand more about what makes some of the satellite characters tick – Flash Thompson and Kong each get some serious development in this issue. Bendis even works in a little action just at the end, and again, it’s not gratuitous action, but action that shows how Peter has been affected and changed by events of the last few issues.

Mark Bagley does a very good job with the artwork, especially since so much of the issue takes place in a tiny little detention all, with characters sitting in their desks and talking to each other. Each character has his or her own look, and there is a lot of real, genuine emotion in their faces. He even manages to play with the layout a bit so that each page isn’t just a standard, boring grid.

This is, in short, one of the best issues of Ultimate Spider-Man in a very long time. I’m very relieved to learn that the next several issues will be a series of one or two-issue stories, though – the longer arcs, frequently dragging on longer than the story demands – have hurt the book quite a bit since the 50th issue, perhaps even earlier. Bendis seems to be pulling back and getting a bit more into the character side of things, which is where he really shines. I hope he manages to keep it up.

Rating: 8/10

Ultimate Spider-Man #64

August 20, 2004

Quick Rating: Good
Title: Carnage Part 5

Confronted with the creature that killed Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker must fight for his own life.

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: J.D. Smith
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Cover Art: Mark Bagley & Richard Isanove
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Is this the end of this story arc? In five issues? It certainly seems like the end… and as far as endings go, at least for this series, it’s slightly disappointing.

Gwen Stacy is dead and the creature that killed her – a mixture of DNA from Spider-Man, Curt Conners and the experimental cancer dip that Richard Parker was developing – is confronting the wall-crawler at his home in Queens. An enraged Peter sends Conners to safety and faces the monster himself.

Bendis chooses an unusual sequence for this issue – the first half of the book is the first half of the fight, then he jumps ahead in time and we see the conclusion of the fight in flashback. Is this for dramatic effect? Is it to call Peter’s recollection of events into question? It’s not confusing from a storytelling standpoint but it is sort of confusing as to why it was structured this way.

The book does end logically, but it doesn’t tie up any loose ends. Far from it – nearly every page of this issue screams of dangling plot threads that are being left flapping in the breeze to allow a return to this storyline in the future – which would be fine if it wasn’t quite so obvious. The ending of this issue is, at this point, something of a cliché — the sort of thing that again makes logical sense, but has been done so many times (particularly in the Spider-Man titles) as to have lost all meaning. Kind of like killing off Jean Gray in an X-Men comic.

Mark Bagley’s artwork is a saving grace this issue. He does an excellent fight scene, with great poses and facial expressions and some really dynamic angles. None of this is made easier by the fact that our hero is not in costume for the battle and that the villain is really an amorphous blob that just chooses to take humanoid form when it’s convenient.

Based solely on his origin, I actually find this incarnation of Carnage far more interesting than his mainstream Marvel Universe counterpart, and I feel confident that much more will be done with him (it?) in the future. For his debut storyline, though, I feel like more could have been done. Most of this storyline, as pained as I was to read it, was really well done, so it’s a shame that this conclusion is kind of a letdown.

Rating: 7/10

Ultimate Spider-Man #63

August 6, 2004

Quick Rating: Great
Title: Carnage Part Four

Peter Parker comes home… to face the unthinkable.

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: J.D. Smith
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Cover Art: Mark Bagley & Richard Isanove
Publisher: Marvel Comics

I hate Brian Michael Bendis. I do. And the reason I hate him is that he makes it so hard to hate him when he makes a comic that drives me this bonkers, but it does it so well. Last issue, the creature that Curt Conners was creating using Spider-Man’s DNA went on a tear, slaughtering innocent people in a grotesque, vampiric fashion, and finally striking close to someone Peter loves.

This issue is almost entirely aftermath – Peter and the other characters finding out what has happened, the requisite police investigation scene, the required slow, silent pondering of the universe, the obligatory heart-to-heart among those struck by the tragedy. Nothing terribly groundbreaking. But it is all done so well. Without ever really breaking far from the formula, Bendis shows a whole range of emotions – grief, rage, guilt, and he does it all perfectly in character. We get some more details in this issue as well, as Peter learns the truth about the creature that’s causing all of this sorrow… and the truth has a little tweak that I haven’t heard anyone theorize.

Mark Bagley, as good an artist as he always is, gets bonus points for handling such a delicate issue. If anyone ever doubts his incredible talent as an artist, they need only look at the single, wordless page in this issue where Peter rips open his bag, revealing his costume, tears appearing heavy in his eyes. Sometimes I criticize Bendis for being over-wordy, but he reminds us here that sometimes he knows when to step back and allow the art to tell the story all by itself.

Again, I’m still furious over the direction this storyline has taken… but that’s okay. In fact, that’s really a good thing. The fact that I can get furious over a storyline like this is a solid reminder of how well-done this comic book is, and a testament to the creative team and this issue in particular. Love it or hate it, this is as good as Ultimate Spider-Man has ever been, and that’s saying a lot.

Rating: 9/10