This month gets rolling with a sequence outlining Silver Sable’s origin formatted like a storybook. Shot from Bags’ pencils and colored in a sort of watercolor treatment, it’s very convincing as it tells the story of an angry young girl named Silver who grew into an angry young woman at least in part due to her absent father. Then, one day, she was informed he was dying.
This feels like the Ultimate line doing what it does best. It’s the Silver Sable character with her familiar mission, but without her being royalty and without the ludicrous conceit that her hunting an ever-dwindling population of escaped Nazis is the primary source of income for her entire country. Streamlined and “grounded,” but still familiar. And when I say “the Ultimate line,” I mean USM, since the other books never really did this very well. Man, you should see things like Ultimate Mr. Sinister over in X-Men. A debacle.
In a 2-page spread, Peter learns he’s in some kinda high tech shackles with his webshooters removed while Roxxon tries to get him to explain why he’s invested in protecting his company, but Peter doesn’t even know who he is, let alone what he’s talking about, and is understandably becoming more agitated by the minute about being kidnapped. Roxxon shows him footage of him fighting Killer Shrike and Omega Red, forcing him to say he just happened to be in the area. Peter also points out this is no way to reward someone you think is protecting your company. So, Roxxon, not believing him, has Sabel run his fingerprints, and that sets off a ping at the Triskelion.
This leads to a storybook of Donald Roxxon’s life, the latest in a long line of rich Roxxons, who never tried hard in life because he didn’t have to, and now finds himself in charge of a massive corporation with powerful enemies, and even his own board against him. Back in the present, being an awful, entitled rich person, Roxxon panics and wants Sable to kill and disappear the kid who he thought was saving his business, and she is obviously not doing that. While they’re arguing about this, Peter breaks loose, and he’s already gone by the time there’s a huge explosion.
89 issues deep, the boys have finally decided to take a crack at Ultimate Vulture. Of course, Ultimate Adrian Toomes was in the PS2 game, so bringing him back in a sequel would make sense. But since this is obviously ignoring said PS2 game, it just feels weirder. It almost makes you wonder if Bendis was planning this as a sequel to the game, and then decided rather last minute (Or maybe was convinced by editorial) not to saddle the comic with a connection to the game. Which is probably the right move. But the whole thing feels very strange. This one wraps up next time.