Alright, we’re back, and it’s time for our 2nd arc. From now on, Bendis is the sole writer. Marvel came to him with USM, and Bill Jemas had the major beats hammered out more or less in an outline that was eventually printed in a collection, but that ended with #7. Now it’s the Bendis & Bagley Show for… a lot longer than you might expect. They begin their reign with a beloved classic:
Ladies & gentlemen, Ultimate Shocker. His being a loser is a well Bendis will return to more than once, including in the Ultimate Spider-Man video game he will eventually write. Which is… sort of in continuity. My goodness, do I have to replay that game for this blog? Well, anyway, that’s Kong telling Flash he was in Brooklyn when Spider-Man beat up Shocker, and he could’ve gotten the money “the paper” is offering for Spidey pictures. Flash ridicules him for not having a camera and being scared when Green Goblin attacked, but Kong is adamant that someone’s gonna make that money. And Peter overhears all of this, so guess what, later he’s in an alley getting automatic camera photos of himself. My comic is interrupted here by a bound-in plastic bag with a trading card advertising new Marvel trading cards. Not even a real card, just a card-shaped ad. Annoying. Kinda nice that comics don’t really sell ads like this anymore. Peter thinks if someone’s gonna make money off Spider-Man, why not him? So, later, he’s at the Daily Bugle for an appointment with a “Joe Robertson.”
JJJ flicking through the photos will be reproduced in the 2002 movie, the Spectacular Spider-Man TV show, and probably a bunch of other places. It’s just great. That’s Betty Brant, Associate Book Editor, having a very bad time working on the Bugle’s website. Let me tell you, I can relate. JJJ says they paid for her to go to a class for this, but she says it was a one-day class. As people begin complaining the site won’t load, she gets angrier, until Peter sees the problem. He fixes it while talking about recursive loops and page renders. This is the farthest thing from 20th Century comics’ traditional “Uh, you know, science” speak you could possibly have. It’s real. Maybe 98% real. I remember being SHOCKED by this at the time. Bendis went to the trouble of asking someone how to write a real web development problem. Specifically, the guy who ran the site that hosted Bendis and other comics folks’ forums at the time, Justin from World Famous Comics (Credited in issue 9’s letter column). Think about all that “cyberspace” crap in the mid-90s. Shocked, I say.
And with THAT instant classic moment, yet another problem with modernizing Spider-Man is easily solved. Peter Parker, 15-year old action news photographer, is pretty deranged. Peter Parker, 15-year old intern web admin is a whole other thing. And it keeps him at the paper for all the breaking news things he can do there, and it keeps the best supporting cast in comics on the table. Simple, but so smart. It’s pretty jarring page turn from that to a sequence that’s fully digitally painted like the covers, where Spider-Man swings through the night, hears trouble, and is confronted by Uncle Ben’s killer. The burglar shoots him in the chest, but the bullet passes through him and hits Uncle Ben.
The next day, we see Peter not able to think about school at all, and then at work, he uses the info on the burglar’s driver’s license to look him up. He finds a picture of him getting arrested in a story about a club that was a front for organized crime being broken up. This leads our man to the owner of that club, Wilson Fisk, and soon, Peter has the Bugle’s info on the Kingpin.
And we’re off. This month’s mail remains mostly positive, although there’s a letter rightly calling out everything wrong with Ultimate Green Goblin. But even that letter says everything else is fantastic. And he’s right!