USM 063

Really striking cover. I think it’s pretty interesting that so much of the theme of USM is “genetic experimentation is very dangerous.” The rest of the Ultimate line was so much more all over the place. Poorer adaptations, and even when the other books were at their best, they were going to change hands, they didn’t have a single writer at the helm for a remarkably long time like USM. And thus, USM kind of IS the Ultimate Universe to me. And USM takes the same world full of heroes and villains mutated by accidents or genetics and goes “This is actually terrifying.” This world’s Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Venom, Carnage, they’re all these horrible results of humans playing god. I don’t think that’s a theme you’d necessarily look for in a Spider-Man comic, but boy does it play. Well, this month, we open on the truly tragic moment of Aunt May coming home, and, after thinking she’s having a normal night, being the one to find Gwen out in the yard. And thinking to herself, “not again…” And then Peter gets the call at the Bugle, and is so upset he swings home in his normal clothes.

Peter goes inside, and quietly, angrily tears his backpack open, exposing the Spider-Man suit inside, which he buries his face in. He’s shaking with rage. Downstairs, Aunt May is trying to get ahold of Gwen’s terrible mother, but she doesn’t live wherever she was at the only number May had. May blows up at the person on the phone, and we find Peter, MJ and MJ’s Mom in the kitchen with her, trying to calm her down. May stalks out of the room, defeated. MJ’s mom is saying May & Peter can come stay with them, but he’s so out of it he’s barely registering anything she says.

“Sweetie” is so inherently a thing your mom or your grandma calls you, to me. A teenage girl calling her guy that just sounds weird.

Powerful work. Later, Peter sits alone, thinking about what those cops said, imagining various enemies (And Wolverine) as the culprit, until he remembers they mentioned ESU. He’s driven to go look out the window.