{"id":24143,"date":"2024-12-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=24143"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:40:48","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:40:48","slug":"usm-023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/12\/17\/usm-023\/","title":{"rendered":"USM 023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This issue opens with Spider-Man swinging across town, only to stop, rip off his mask, throw up, and ask himself what he\u2019s going to do while crying. Then we get back to the end of last issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Warren, you say? Norman says this is the worst part and he falls to the floor in pain. Peter nervously comes around the desk to see if he\u2019s still alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No amount of JM DeMatteis armchair psychiatrist drug-addled mumbo jumbo could ever put Peter in a worse position than this. Poor Harry asks what\u2019s with Norman\u2019s robe, and he says he was taking a sauna. \u201cYou and your sauna,\u201d he says as he puts in a tape with an advance copy of a story Dateline is going to air on Norman. This is so Norman can control the narrative of what happened when his plant blew up in USM 4<\/a>. They describe his rise to fame, then seeming death, then reveal he\u2019s alive. It kind of feels like an extremely accelerated version of the OG Norman\u2019s story. Then Norman is interviewed, giving his version of what happened, blaming the explosion on corporate sabotage by Justin Hammer, saying he feels safe coming out of hiding now that Hammer is dead. He says he assumes Otto Octavius had figured out Hammer was responsible for his accident, but he\u2019s had no contact with him. While this is all playing, Peter becomes more and more freaked out before mumbling that he has to go and running out of the room. Norman tells Harry to let him go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So good. No adaptation has ever produced a better Aunt May. Later, Peter sits in his lab, utterly freaked out, and MJ calls. She asks if he\u2019s still grounded and he says he doesn\u2019t think so. He asks if she can come over, and she cannot, and he tries to tell her what\u2019s going on, but then someone knocks on the exterior door. He thinks it\u2019s Harry and walks over to it like a death march, MJ still on the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Who would have seen this coming? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Like Bendis was steady throwing curveballs in this book. Peter\u2019s exposed to the most terrifying thing he\u2019s ever encountered, and we shift to this. It\u2019s so good! Cut to the next day at school, and Peter relating all this to MJ, who is clearly not comfortable with the idea that Gwen came to Peter\u2019s house, and Peter is clearly not picking up on that. He tries to change to subject to talking about Harry & Norman when Gwen jumps on him from behind, calling him her own personal superhero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We remember \u201cDr. Bradley\u201d from the aftermath of the Goblin attack on the school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As much as it\u2019s not really an exaggeration to say Bendis\u2019 dialogue changed the course of mainstream comics, his ability to craft an unbearable cliffhanger might just be his real secret weapon. Waiting on the next issue of this book was torture sometimes! I mean, the Norman thing seems inescapable, the teen drama has just been wound up tight enough to explode, and now whatever this was! It made you think shipping the book twice a month was maybe a good idea, after all\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This issue opens with Spider-Man swinging across town, only to stop, rip off his mask, throw up, and ask himself what he\u2019s going to do while crying. Then we get back to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[498,35,1922,20,16,22,339,21,39,2,1956,1923],"class_list":["post-24143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-art-thibert","tag-aunt-may","tag-brian-michael-bendis","tag-george-stacy","tag-gwen-stacy","tag-harry-osborn","tag-mark-bagley","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-norman-osborn","tag-spider-man","tag-transparency-digital","tag-ultimate-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143","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=24143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24149,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143\/revisions\/24149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}