{"id":31174,"date":"2026-02-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=31174"},"modified":"2024-04-23T18:36:50","modified_gmt":"2024-04-23T22:36:50","slug":"usm-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2026\/02\/01\/usm-100\/","title":{"rendered":"USM 100"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

100th issue spectacular! Extra pages! Extra madness! A whole extra cover of Spider-Men on the back!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been drawing pages like this my whole life, I feel compelled to note. During school or a boring meeting as an adult, I\u2019d just fill a page with Spider-Men. He\u2019s fun to draw, you can draw him in a million poses, it\u2019s a good time. A better time than the Parkers are having.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the chaos, here, I think maybe you\u2019re not supposed to wonder about Richard knowing who Gwen is. Meanwhile, as the ruins of Oscorp, the Kaine one has MJ in a contraption, and is yammering about how she\u2019s about to transform into something that can protect itself, and they can be together again, when he gets a swift kick in the face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The more the merrier! What\u2019s the count now, 5 Peters? Speedrunning the clone saga AND doing \u201cPeter\u2019s parents come back,\u201d Bendis is just daring any bad story to come at him. At this rate you almost expect Gwen & Norman\u2019s kids to show up. Back at the house, Richard wants to explain. He begins to explain the suit, but Peter knows about it. And he knows Peter knows about it, but he didn\u2019t know Peter knew it was meant to cure cancer. Around a flashback to the first Venom fight, Richard reiterates that Trask turning into a weapon was very much against his wishes, but he couldn\u2019t fight a corporation, and when Trask offered him & Brock Sr. jobs, Richard took one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ultimate Richard being a slightly older regular Peter is a nice touch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pretty convincing reason he\u2019s alive! Is it real? Is anything real anymore? Back at Oscorp, MJ is watching the 2 clones beat the blue hell out of each other, until the one in the black suit seemingly dies, which does not make her feel any better. At the house, Richard explains that with his life in ruins and everyone thinking he was dead, the last thing he felt he could do was raise Peter. He says he always thought he would come back for Peter, but then in the flashback, we see him get approached by Henry Peter Gyrich, government stooge and longtime foe of the Avengers and X-Men in the regular books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He IS taking awhile to get there. Then we see Gyrich showing Richard footage of the Venom fight in USM 33, and Richard learning Peter is Spider-Man and Fury is grooming him for his program. THEN we see Richard catching May outside her job at some point in the past. She\u2019s horrified and tries to run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

THEN we see Richard spying on Peter & MJ in the wake of Gwen\u2019s death and the Carnage debacle. He\u2019s happy for his son, and then Gyrich drags him away, saying he can never reveal himself to Peter because he would be revealing himself to Nick Fury. And also that they now have all of Curt Connors\u2019 Carnage research. So now we\u2019re finally getting to him cloning Gwen, but before he can talk about it\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But if they cloned Gwen AFTER the Carnage debacle\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Absolute. Chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

AND Ultimate Aunt May\u2019s first heart attack? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

AND whatever that means!? This is the craziest story ever. Even having already read it and everything, it\u2019s intense and insane. Woof! This is followed by a text page by editor Ralph Macchio, mostly fluff, but pointing out that the record for the longest run on a Marvel comic by the same writer\/artist team is Stan Lee & Jack Kirby\u2019s 102 issues of Fantastic Four, so Bendis & Bags are about to make history. Then there\u2019s a gallery of previously unseen Bags pencils, like this unused cover\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2026and this unused opening splash. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These are followed by 2 unused covers, with a note that confirms my suspicion that Bags just churned out \u201cHeroic shot of Spider-Man\u201d images for awhile under Jemas, making so many they didn\u2019t even use them all. Light work for him. Then these spreads collaging character designs from the early days to this very storyline\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is followed by a recap of the whole series so far, billed as \u201cUltimate Spider-Man Saga.\u201d This references a bunch of books they did in the 90s giving their much longer running series the same treatment across 4 and 5 and 6 issues. I bought the first issue of Spider-Man Saga, and it told me a whole lot about the early days I didn\u2019t know at the time, but for some reason, I didn\u2019t get the rest. The books concludes with a 2-page letter col addressing the news that Bagley\u2019s last issue will be 110. People are understandably sad to see him go. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

100th issue spectacular! Extra pages! Extra madness! A whole extra cover of Spider-Men on the back! I\u2019ve been drawing pages like this my whole life, I feel compelled to note. During school…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[35,1922,288,16,716,72,2179,2262,339,21,254,247,2130,2,1710,663,1923],"class_list":["post-31174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","tag-aunt-may","tag-brian-michael-bendis","tag-fantastic-four","tag-gwen-stacy","tag-henry-peter-gyrich","tag-human-torch","tag-john-dell","tag-justin-ponsor","tag-mark-bagley","tag-mary-jane-watson","tag-nick-fury","tag-reed-richards","tag-richard-isanove","tag-spider-man","tag-sue-storm","tag-the-thing","tag-ultimate-spider-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31174","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=31174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31175,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31174\/revisions\/31175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}