{"id":22774,"date":"2024-09-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=22774"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:42:26","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:42:26","slug":"usm-007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/09\/16\/usm-007\/","title":{"rendered":"USM 007"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I mean, no one would look at this and go \u201cIt\u2019s the Green Goblin!\u201d That feels like a mistake. The Ultimate versions of most characters are recognizable, both here and in Ultimate X-Men. I haven\u2019t talked much about that book here. Truth is\u2026 not as good. There\u2019s a lot of reasons for that. It was still very successful, but it\u2019s not the lighting in a bottle experience this is. For one thing, it was a lot harder to do. Spider-Man is Spider-Man. You update it, you modernize it, you make some changes, but \u201cnerd gets bit by spider and becomes hero, learns great powers comes with great responsibility,\u201d it\u2019s all still there. X-Men is such a different beast. Would you really want, in 2001, to launch with the original 5 X-Men? No Wolverine, no Storm, no Colossus or Nightcrawler? You would not. So, from jump, UXM has a pretty different mission statement. It\u2019s updating the concept of X-Men more than the historical record of X-Men, as it were, and that\u2019s just not going to be as uniquely satisfying as USM. But beyond that, it\u2019s written by Mark Millar and drawn by Adam Kubert, and for me, those are marks against it. Kubert I had liked in the early-to-mid 90s, but by this point, his art had gotten cartoony in a way that looks sketchy and unfinished to me (And still does, even now). And Millar\u2026 is Millar. A huckster and charlatan who\u2019s built a career on work that\u2019s all sizzle and no steak. He loves a shocking reveal more than a good story, which led to poor choices like Wolverine infiltrating the X-Men on behalf of Magneto, but having a change of heart after sleeping with teenage Jean Grey, like, immediately, which is 100% statutory rape and extremely gross. Then Cyclops quit the team just for shock value only to immediately return, and so on in that manner. Shock twist after shock twist with very little of substance between them. I bought 12 issues and bailed. But most people seemed to like it, and it led to Millar also doing the previously mentioned Ultimate version of the Avengers, the Ultimates, rife with its own empty shock value problems. But in that case, he was supported by Bryan Hitch, quickly becoming one of comics\u2019 biggest artists, so that book was destined for massive success. Anyway. All that is to say, this book\u2019s remarkable ability to update Spider-Man without losing the heart of the property was not guaranteed across the line. And, indeed, didn\u2019t really ever happen again, no matter what characters they worked on. At any rate, page one rewinds just a sec for the dialogue from last issue\u2019s final page before plunging ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For a brief, strange moment here in the early days, Spider-Man\u2019s web is sometimes a sickly green. I asked Bendis about this, and he said they were just experimenting with it. It doesn\u2019t last too long, but it\u2019s jarring every time. Maybe they thought green would pop better than gray, which is fair, but\u2026 gray is the way. Ultimate Spider-Man hurriedly makes his first ever web net, hits it hard and bounces right back into the sky, delirious with the thrill of it and also wondering if that monster really just said his name. As Green Goblin doubles back toward the kids, and Harry reiterates it\u2019s after him, our man tries swinging on his web for the first time, and launches himself into his foe\u2019s side, to the amazement of Kong & Flash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our young hero tries to web the Goblin, but it\u2019s only his 3rd time webbing anything, and he accidentally hits the windscreen of a police helicopter. The Goblin turns on said chopper, and Spidey finally gets a web onto his cloak or whatever, and is ripped right off the wall he\u2019s sticking to and flung out in an arc behind the Goblin. Spidey accidentally yoinks the cloak or tarp or whatever off Gobby as he flies off into the distance, but comes raring back just in time to keep Goblin from torching the helicopter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bendis has a real love for 2-page spreads like this that\u2019re gonna make covering his comics a real pain for me.  This is like the 4th one in this issue alone. Well, Spidey dodges, and the Goblin plunges right over the edge of the bridge and way down into the water. Spider-Man turns ot the cops in their helicopters and says he\u2019s going to try to save the Goblin, but the cops tell him he\u2019s under arrest and open fire, which\u2026 is he under arrest or targeted for execution?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The old heads who can\u2019t handle change very well will spend decades complaining that the new style of comics storytelling doesn\u2019t have enough action in it. But this issue and half of last issue presented a pretty thrilling fight sequence. Fights may have become less common, but they could still be pretty great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And so we come to the actual end of this book\u2019s first arc. It\u2019s really off to the races. For all that you could complain that it took a long time for Peter to become Spider-Man, so much track has been laid down, especially in these last 2 issues, with their hints at a larger Ultimate world. Some of which will, uh, not end up making sense, but hey, they were flying by the seat of their pants. They finally print a negative letter this month, accusing them of \u201cbutchering a classic story,\u201d and at least make it sound like this is the first negative response they\u2019ve gotten. Probably not true, but the response was pretty overwhelmingly positive, as far as I could tell online and in my local shops. At this point, I was frequenting a few, having gone to college and not being sure where I should have my pull list. Well, we have some pillars established, time to get into a 2nd story. And Bendis having a background in crime comics, it\u2019s perhaps no surprise that we\u2019re going to see the already teased Ultimate Kingpin next. But first: a detour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mean, no one would look at this and go \u201cIt\u2019s the Green Goblin!\u201d That feels like a mistake. The Ultimate versions of most characters are recognizable, both here and in Ultimate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[498,36,35,1924,1922,12,22,1927,1925,339,21,39,2,1923],"class_list":["post-22774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-art-thibert","tag-aunt-anna","tag-aunt-may","tag-bill-jemas","tag-brian-michael-bendis","tag-flash-thompson","tag-harry-osborn","tag-jung-choi","tag-kong","tag-mark-bagley","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-norman-osborn","tag-spider-man","tag-ultimate-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22784,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22774\/revisions\/22784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}