Big finish. It’s very Ultimate Spider-Man that this story isn’t over when Doc Ock is defeated. The Peter Parker story is more important. A core reason this was the best Spider-Man comic on the market for its entire run. But look, something really important happens this issue! Look at those cover credits. Scott Hanna has taken over inking USM. And to be perfectly honest, it looks like it may have been an emergency, because…
..these pages look a little rough.
Look at those eyes! You can see it all happening and you can’t even see half her face! Bags is so good at this sort of thing. And Hanna’s looking better with every page.
Rough. Well, now Peter has to go upstairs and lie about having fallen asleep in front of the computer, and then lie about having had his tooth knocked out during “battleball” in the gym at school, and May says he’s not going to school because he’s going to the dentist. Then we cut to him asleep on his bed as MJ approaches. She tries to wake him gently, but he seems to come up out of a nightmare and freak out a little.
They turn on the news so Peter can see Ock is in SHIELD custody, one of the guys who found him in the cargo hold is telling people he was dressed like a women, and Avi Arad says they have a lot of footage from the fight for his movie, which makes Peter very unhappy.
And the kids are alright! Another great scene. We go from there to a Stark Industries facility where Nick Fury is having Doc Ock unloaded from a truck, heavily bound and heavily sedated. He’s here so Nick can admit he made a mistake leaving Ock’s arms intact. He thought studying them and Ock’s connection to them was worth the risk, but now he doesn’t. So he’s brought Otto here all drugged up to bear witness.
Fourth months later, the Spider-Man movie has had the biggest box office opening in history, and a news report tells us all about what a phenomenon it is as a very unhappy Spider-Man looks down at a charity screening of it. And then…
Twisting the knife. Hey, look at that next issue blurb. Things are about to get weird. But not yet, because it’s time to go back to the regular books. This issue saw print the same month as USM 58, ASM 508 & 509, TAC 14, MKSM 2, FF513, Secret War 2, DD 60 and Pulse 3. This blog is really covering a high volume of material these days. And it’s gonna stay that way for… well, basically forever. 21st Century Marvel is truly upon us now. Well, on to a block that makes a really, truly major status quo change… eventually…But starts with something incredibly, incredibly stupid.