Fancy Meeting You Here: A (Very) Late Review of Ultimate Spider-Man #3

 written by Jonathan Hickman

drawn by Marco Checchetto 

colored by Matt Wilson

I was tempted to review this alongside the next issue given that I got them both quite late, but given that this is Marco Checchetto's last issue before he is spelled by a different artist, and given that the first mini-arc of this  new storyline kind of ends at this point I thought it merited a review all on its own.

So Peter Parker has finally adopted a definitive look for his new crime fighting guise, courtesy of his daughter May, and continues his crusade. Meanwhile, J. Jonah Jameson and Ben Parker roll up their sleeves and get to work transforming the hellhole they have acquired for their new office into an actual news operation, and the mysterious man in green armor antagonizing Wilson Fisk may have actually met his match in a rather deadly assailant who gets his target every time...unless Spider-Man has something to say about it. 

Familiar faces from old Spider-Man stories pop up again, but as is the case with everything that's come before so far in this title much has been changed. Best friends are now strangers, and what was once a hand-sewn costume is now a proprietary piece of tech.

I'll lay off the hyperbole; this book isn't the second coming of Jesus or the absolute best Spider-Man story I've ever read in all my life, but it is engaging and fun, and it does have me intrigued to see where Hickman and his rotating team of artists are going with this story.

Truth be told, since I jumped on this Ultimate Universe revival last year I have found myself questioning some of Hickman's changes to the Ultimate Marvel universe as random or arbitrary, but so far these creative choices have worked to the betterment of this particular book, so I'm not really inclined to complain. 

I'd also like to add that I really enjoyed Checchetto's work here. He really does have a distinct and attractive style, and at a time when veterans like John Romita Jr have turned into caricatures of themselves and notorious tracers like Greg Land are still getting work, that's a very good thing.  

The first-three issue mini arc ends on an intriguing but largely upbeat note, and while we're clearly a way to go from the first story arc properly wrapping up I have to pat both Hickman and Checchetto on the back for launching a credible new entry in the Spider-Man mythos.

8.5/10 

How Much Longer, Marvel? A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man #42 to 44

written by Zeb  Wells

penciled by John Romita, Jr.

inked by Scott Hanna

colored by Marcio Menyz

I'll cut to the chase: what has been billed as the next big "event" in Zeb Wells' current run on The Amazing Spider-Man ended without any significant change to the current status quo, without any cheap deaths or any meaningful moments of character growth for  Peter Parker or, for that matter, anyone in his supporting cast. "Gang War" plays out in the course of these three issues, with several criminal gangs going head to head, in particular the gangs of Tombstone, the Kingpin, the Rose, the Beetle and Madame Masque. Inevitably, one of them manages to come out on top. Whoop-dee-doo.   

I don't know what it was about this particular story that Marvel thought would be so compelling. It's not like "Kraven's Last Hunt" or "Coming Home" or any of the fun Marvel stories that put Peter Parker through such a wringer that, even though the status quo remained by and large unaltered by the end of those stories, Peter himself emerged from them a changed man.  This simply doesn't play out that way.

Even sadder is the artwork on display here, if one can even call it that. John Romita Jr. has been drawing comic books for the better part of five decades now, including some of the most important comic books ever published by Marvel, so to be honest it borders on depressing to see him tarnish his legacy illustrating a book so emphatically mediocre, especially one which is characterized with mean-spirited storytelling directed at one of JR Jr's very favorite Marvel characters. It honestly feels like he's been phoning it in for these issues, which I don't even consider worth reviewing individually.

I want to love this book again, honestly. I'm glad that the novelty of having Ed McGuinness rotate with JR Jr has yet to wear out for me, apart from the fact that McGuinness is apparently tasked with illustrating the one story thread of Wells' that I actually find compelling: the question of if or when Norman Osborn will go back to being evil.  Were it not for this, I would most likely have completely given up on this series months ago and just waited for a new creative team to come along. 

4/10

The Best Thing Out of Marvel Since Avengers: Endgame: A Review of X-Men 97

 written by Beau De Mayo

There was a time, from around 2016 to 2019, when Marvel Studios could do no wrong. This was Phase 3, in which all of the narrative seeds that had been planted since 2008's Iron Man were finally starting to bear fruit. It all culminated, of course, with Avengers: Endgame. 

Unfortunately, since then, Marvel Studios has arguably lost its way. Sure, there have been a few hits since then, including the monumental success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, but by and large, and especially with the introduction of the Disney Plus line of shows, Marvel has seen the quality of its brand diluted severely. The haters have already started dancing on Marvel's grave, while the faithful have mourned a brand they once loved. 

With the recent ten-episode revival series X-Men 97, however, Marvel has given fans reason to celebrate once more. 

A continuation of the popular animated series X-Men that ran from 1992 to 1997, X-Men 97  achieves the extraordinary by not only living up to the mythos established by the original series but by virtually all account surpassing it.

The series picks up where it left off, the mutants assembled by the telepathic philantrophist and teacher Charles Xavier strive to protect a world that hates and fears them. Led by Cyclops and his now pregnant wife Jean Grey, the X-men, whose member roster includes Storm, Bishop, Gambit, Morph, Jubilee, Beast and Wolverine, now have to grapple with Xavier's apparent death, and worse, with the dictates  of his last will and testament, which bequeaths complete control of his estate and School for Gifted Youngsters to none other than their sworn enemy, Magneto. That's not the only problem they're facing of course; anti-mutant sentiment is still quite high, and there are forces waiting in the shadows to exploit that bigotry to bring about the X-men's ultimate extinction, including a foe they have never faced before.

As a matter of disclosure, I never watched more than a few episodes of the original series, and there's a specific reason why: while I genuinely enjoyed things like the writing and voice acting, I found the animation uniformly terrible. Back in the 1990s, the gold standard for animated series based on comic books was Batman: the Animated Series, and while the adventures of Marvel's merry mutants actually managed to hold its own on the writing and voice acting front despite the considerable challenge of telling a team based story rather than that of a solo superhero like Batman, Paul Dini's clean, crisp designs brought to life by a crack team of animators from all around the world was simply too much to match for the X-Men's considerably less talented bunch.

For this series, however, no expense has been spared, and Disney has hired some of the very best hands in the business to bring these characters back to life.

Not only that, but Beau deMayo's writing is, dare I say, the best I've ever seen outside of the comic books, better than anything that has been featured in any of the movies that have featured these characters.   He gets what made Chris Claremont's run, with its mix of social commentary and soap opera, so memorable, and even infuses it with other memorable influences like Grant Morrison's "E for Extinction" storyline. 

This really is just topnotch entertainment, and fortunately, Disney knows they have a good thing going and have renewed it for another season. 

10/10

Growing Pains: A Review of Ultimate Spider-Man #2

 written by Jonathan Hickman

drawn by Marco Checchetto

colored by Matt Wilson

This was a review I actually started months ago, right after I had read the comic, but life just caught up with me in a major way and before I knew it, two months had passed and two more issues had come out, but I will persevere anyway and publish this review.

So in this issue, thirty-five year old Peter Parker, having only just learned that it was his destiny to fight crime with super powers, and having only just acquired said super powers, heads out in an attempt to fulfill this destiny that Tony Stark told him about in the last issue. Things do not go nearly as well as Peter had hoped, and he finds himself on the verge of calling it quits, when he finds support from the most unexpected of places.

While  it's certainly not the most marketable point, I find it deeply fascinating that  a key facet of Hickman and Checchetto's alternate take on the Spider-Man mythos is something that has never been done before, i.e. what if Spider-Man was motivated by something other than guilt?

It's early days so we'll wonder if his conviction will be as strong enough for Peter to stay the course, but Hickman and Checchetto are well and truly making a case for this new iteration of the character. This issue truly had me looking forward to more.  

8.5/10 

The Face of Hope: A Review of Ultimate Spider-Man #1

 written by Jonathan Hickman

drawn by Marco Checchetto

colored by Matt Wilson

No other comic book announcement in 2023 had me as excited as the promise that Peter Parker would be getting back together with Mary Jane Watson, and that his adventures would be written by no less than Jonathan Hickman. Although all this was set to take place in the "alternate" reality of the Ultimate Marvel Universe and not the regular 616 universe, at least it was happening somewhere.  Besides, Miles Morales was born in the Ultimate Universe, and he's pretty much here to stay, with two hit animated movies, one of which won an Academy Award.

Anyway, this new iteration of Peter Parker spins off (hehe) directly from the events of Ultimate Invasion, in which the Maker, aka Evil Reed Richards, basically "cancels" superheroes in this world, Earth 6160, by removing, as much as possible, the events that "created" them. In Peter's case, the Maker captured the radioactive spider that was supposed to give Peter Parker his powers at the age of fifteen,  but Tony Stark, having learned what the Maker did, has taken it on himself to restore superheroes to the world.

And what a world it is. Because Peter didn't get bitten by the spider as a kid, he didn't become Spider-Man, didn't become a TV star, and didn't ignore a burglar running past him.  As a result, his Uncle Ben is very much alive, and serving as an editor at the Daily Bugle under publisher J. Jonah Jameson.  Peter works there too, in an undisclosed but apparently much more stable capacity than as a freelance photographer. More importantly, though, Peter is happily married to Mary Jane Watson, and they have two beautiful kids together.

It's not all roses, though; a cataclysmic attack on New York, which was actually evil Reed and his buddies, has left thousands dead, including Peter's Aunt May. In the wake of this chaos, the Bugle's board of directors decides that the paper's reportage is getting a little too uncomfortably close to the truth their shady benefactors want to conceal.  Jameson gets his walking papers when he refuses to compromise. The job is then offered to Ben Parker by the Bugle's secret benefactor: Wilson Fisk himself. Ben walks away to join Jonah on his new crusade of guerilla journalism, but Peter confesses to his Uncle that he doesn't have the luxury of doing the same thing.

That doesn't mean, though, that Peter isn't facing his own internal conflict; upon receiving a mysterious package with a message from the last person he'd expect to hear from Peter learns the truth about who he was meant to be, and is confronted with the question: does he want his destiny back?

I have to say; it was genuinely refreshing to see Peter as a functioning adult with what appears to be a stable job, a family and a nice place to live. We readers have, quite frankly never seen him have it all together like this and it's almost like reading a long-form "What If?" story in which the premise is "what if Peter actually had his life together before getting bitten by the radioactive spider?"  

Of course, there are some contrivances here that are a little eye-rolling. It's been written time and again that Peter has a genius-level intellect to rival those of Reed Richards and Tony Stark, so the idea that, at 35, he'd be working a desk job at the Daily Bugle rather than as a scientist in some think-tank or even in an academic setting feels like a bit of a stretch, though I'm willing to wait to see Hickman expand on what Peter does at the Bugle before passing final judgment. Also, I'm really not sure how time works here; in Earth 6160, Peter is notably older than Tony Stark, whom he literally refers to as "kid." I imagine there will be quite a few changes to navigate. One amusing similarity between the universes, though, is that here, as in Earth-616, Matt Murdock is a priest, not a lawyer. 

We never really knew exactly what Uncle Ben did before he died; all that's been explicitly said is that he was a working class joe. More, it seems, has been written about what Peter's parents (who were spies) did for a living than Uncle Ben, and as a result, dropping him into a job at the Bugle works, after a fashion. I still hope to see the likes of Joe Robertson and Ben Urich pop up, though. 

The issue does a good job of setting up just how different Peter's status quo is from that of his 616 counterpart. so it's worth the extra time it takes to do so.  While I would have preferred to have Peter power up and suit up before the issue ended, I can certainly respect Hickman's decision to leave that reveal as a tease for the next issue.  

It's a treat to see Marco Checchetto's work here, though the real fun lies ahead as he draws a really good Spider-Man. I only hope that he draws complete story arcs at a time. For all my complaints about what Zeb Wells is doing over on The Amazing Spider-Man, one thing that team has gotten spot on is how its artist rotation is by story arc and not by the number of issues. I would love to see Hickman and Checchetto do complete stories for this book.

I remain cautiously optimistic for this book.

8.5/10

Rebuilding a Universe: A (Late) Review of Ultimate Invasion #2, 3, and 4

 written by Jonathan Hickman

penciled by Bryan Hitch

inked by Andrew Currie

colored by Alex Sinclair

"Ultimate Invasion" wrapped a couple of months ago, but I wanted to weigh in nonetheless, along with some comments on how it was shipped.

So the man who ended the Ultimate Marvel Universe (Jonathan Hickman) teamed up with one of its creators (Bryan Hitch), to bring it all back, and in a very interesting fashion, too.  Essentially, this miniseries consisting of four pricey, extra-sized issues tells the story of how the Maker (aka evil Reed Richards) re-molds a new version of the Ultimate Universe (Earth 6160 and not the Earth 1610 he had come from) to his liking, removing superheroes from the equation by preventing them from ever becoming super in the first place and trying instead to create an ideal world, one that he, with the aid of several select super-powered individuals, can control.  Of course, experiments aimed at controlling people never really work out, and when Howard Stark and his son Anthony discover the horrible truth about the world that the Maker has refashioned, all hell breaks loose.  

I'll readily admit that I had stopped buying the Ultimate line of Marvel Comics even before Mark Millar left in 2007. As a result, by the time Jonathan Hickman came along and erased the line from existence, with the exception of the emergence of Miles Morales, I knew next to nothing about the Ultimate Marvel Universe, so I knew little about the Maker, who was basically evil Reed Richards.

I'd like to credit Hickman for not leaning heavily into nostalgia with this story; rather than giving readers straight up reboots of the Ultimates from the Millar/Hitch glory days, he moves his story forward rather than looking back. The Maker has made a new world, one without the heroes he knows, and the landscape is strikingly different.  

My problem with this story, however, is that Hickman's chosen protagonist, Howard Stark, is not a particularly compelling one. He doesn't have any of Tony Stark's pathos, and basically serves little purpose other than to be the reader's window into this strange, new world.  Sure, he's got a lot of clever dialogue to spout out, and he even has a friend to avenge before the third issue, but at the end of the day Howard Stark is basically just a swapped out Tony Stark, who in this world, and I am not joking here, feels more like young Bruce Wayne, possibly because of the lack of facial hair. 

 Without an especially compelling hereo on whom to anchor the story, it becomes that much easier to remember what these oversized, overpriced issues are really about: setting up a new Ultimate Universe. Does Marvel at least do a good job of that?

Well, I can't say for sure because I missed the crucial epilogue to the series, which, annoyingly was apparently down to Marvel undershipping the series overseas, something I found genuinely annoying.  The seeds for the new Ultimate Universe are planted throughout this series but apparently a lot of the major payoffs occur in the epilogue. 

The good news, though, is that Bryan Hitch brings his A-game to the book.  There is actually a very brief reference to the first few pages of the Ultimates #2, which is about as close as the book gets to nostalgia-baiting, but other than that Hitch marshals his considerable talent to elevate what would otherwise not be a particularly remarkable story. 

In the end, this miniseries was basically just a mechanism to kick start a new iteration of the Ultimate Universe, and as an unfortunate result it doesn't feel especially compelling as a story in its own right. 

7/10

Are We Really Supposed to Care? A Review of The "Amazing" Spider-Man #40-41

 written by Zeb Wells

penciled by John Romita Jr.

inked by Scott Hanna

colored by Marcio Menyz

So the much-hyped "Gang War" crossover storyline continues in the pages of what is still (unfortunately) the flagship book featuring Marvel's favorite wall-crawler. Things heat up as Richard Fisk, aka the Rose, makes his move to take down Janice Lincoln, aka the Beetle, while Janice's dad Lonnie, aka Tombstone, who has made a surprising recovery from his life-threatening injuries, makes moves of his own to protect his territory from incursions from rival gangs, with no less than Spider-Man and She-Hulk to back him up. The superheroes, of course, are helping Tombstone because he's basically the least of several evils, especially when the Rose's dad Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin himself, approaches Tombstone with a threat he can't afford to ignore.

Marvel has promised a major status quo shift with the end of this crossover, quite stupidly promising to make Spider-Man's life even more miserable, as if that's some kind of come-on for readers, many of whom, quite frankly, have gotten sick and tired of the grossly contrived train of misery that Peter has been riding for the last couple of years under this "creative" team's watch.

I get that Marvel wants to build up to Spider-Man's 1000th issue by setting up something auspicious, which would go some way towards explaining the constant need to kick his legs out from under him, but if I'm honest it's gotten truly monotonous at this point, and the ultimate cruelty of imposing "Paul" on readers just when they were so close to seeing Peter and MJ get back together again has quite frankly cast a pall over Zeb Wells' entire run.

Nor does "Gang War" read particularly well on its own merit because like the more truly obnoxious crossover events it requires readers to check out tie-in titles to have a truly coherent idea of what's going on, and for the record, I was never a fan of that approach. Even Civil War, for all its flaws, had the sense to keep all of the important stuff in the main miniseries.

Much as I'd love to praise John Romita Jr.'s work here, which, quite frankly, is actually pretty good, I really can't shake the feeling that it's wasted on Wells and his delusions of grandeur.  Like I said previously, gang wars in this title actually had more weight when they had Kingpin fighting Mexican werewolves.

5/10