Regular-size 75th issue extravaganza! It’s almost impressive when a comic doesn’t get more expensive for a big number, for as infrequent as it is (My meager joke is, of course, a reference to the similarly regular ASM 250). This one starts by returning to the flashback to 2 days ago, to Harry being shown his dad’s… workshop or something…
What’s, like, going on here? Ultimate Green Goblin is, for my money, the biggest mistake in USM. It’s just too wrong. All the major villains are recognizable in their Ultimate incarnation. Even lesser enemies like Shocker and Gladiator read as themselves. And the biggest villain is the Hulk with horns. And it seems like either Bendis didn’t know how to fix it, or didn’t recognize it as a mistake. But this little spread seemed some kind of weird concession to fans. “Look, there’s Green Goblin masks and equipment in here. For some reason. He’s never used them and never will, but they’re here. Who knows why?” Why does he seem to have built a Goblin suit, like the Thing suit Ben Grimm sometimes had when he lost his powers? None of it makes much sense to me. Well, seeing the Oz, Harry freaked out and ran out of there, yelling “He killed my mother!,” making Shaw “Cellar Door” him again and tell his unconscious form to sleep it off. Harry woke up back in his grandpa’s place, no memory of what they did, Shaw saying they went for a ride in the car and he fell asleep. He said they need to find his dad, and Peter Parker will know where he is, because he’s Spider-Man.
Shaw went on to say he’s invisible to SHIELD and wants to keep it that way, but Harry can go ask Peter where his dad is. That his Dad doesn’t deserve to die like this. And that Harry had to go ask Peter. Then we’re in what’s now billed as “last night,” the end of last issue, wherein Aunt May will, under no circumstances, let Peter go back to Manhattan at 8pm on a school night. He gets very mad, and she says if he wants to talk about it, she’s there, but those Osborns are bad people, and he can’t get sucked into their world. Next day at school, Peter storms into school, ignoring a passing MJ, as Liz says he really IS mad at her. He continues to ignore her through class.
Peter says yes, in a way, and MJ says she knows all about it. That Harry told her. That she knows he would only have killed Norman in self-defense, that it wasn’t on purpose. Peter, obviously, doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
That evening, Shaw is berating Harry for not going to school, really tipping his hand that he doesn’t care about Harry at all, when…
Shaw said he was invisible to SHIELD, but maybe not this invisible. But then how did Harry go out in that car?
Too much for me. “Everything you know is wrong!” is a dodgy premise for me, always. It can work, sure, but often it feels forced and doesn’t play. This doesn’t play. Also, while it started pretty strong, this arc is really dragging. It took way too long to get to this point. Just not working for me.