One could assume this arc was called “Dumped” to make people seeing that name 3 months in advance in solicits assume MJ was dumping Peter. Maintains some surprise, at least, I guess. Not the best ever drawing of MJ there! Also, I think?, her first cover appearance ever. That meaningless distinction makes ASM 51 fetch a much higher price among collectors, but probably not the case here. To open this issue, MJ is in a bathroom stall at school, and Liz is checking on her. She’s been in there for 2 hours and got detention. She is weeping about Peter breaking up with her. Liz realizes she can’t do anything and leaves.
Cut to MJ & Liz at the mall, where Bendis… recycles a whole bunch of dialogue from page 6 of USM 1. Teens talking about Senior Skip Day, and Liz telling MJ some gossip. Word for word! Maybe the idea was to show how different things are in the same situation now? Maybe he just assumed no one would remember. And I don’t honestly know if I did in 2005, but I’ve seen this stuff a lot closer together this time through, so I did. This time, though, MJ cuts Liz off in her gossip and says she’s leaving.
Mark Raxton! Boy, it sure would be a shame if he turned into some kinda Molten Man! I don’t think he does, tho. I dunno, my memory is clearly spotty. Mark keeps being charming as MJ ignores him entirely, thinking she sees Peter, but it’s a girl with similar hair (And what a terrible choice on her part). But then Mark gets her attention again, and continues to be charming, and it seems to work a little. Flash then comes to hustle him out of there for basketball practice, and Mark charmingly invites the girls to come see his band tomorrow, and Liz accepts before MJ can object. Liz is very excited, and MJ, being a character in a Bendis comic, says “oy” in response.
Now that’s a lampshade. Bendis inexplicably got into the Distillers in this period. First, in Ultimate X-Men, he introduced Ultimate Dazzler as an even more blatant stand-in for the Distillers’ Brody Dalle at a time when she 100% should have been Beyonce, and now this singer lady is another one. Jeez, B, chill. The Distillers were a band that were just a shameless carbon copy of Rancid, right down to the showy bass player being audibly way more talented than everyone else, and then Dalle did the biggest power move anyone could to combat that comparison and married Tim from Rancid, however briefly. I never knew Bendis to listen to any other contemporary punk band. I sure don’t claim to be an expert on his musical tastes, but he did share what he was into on his forum, so I don’t feel totally off-base on this, either. Also, it’s 2005, the rapidly dwindling number of kids into something resembling rock music are into Modest Mouse or Linkin Park or something, punk is for older people like me who liked it in the 90s or earlier. Bendis’ decision that nothing was cooler to the youth than a punk band fronted by Fauxdy Dalle didn’t feel very hip in either Ultimate title. Is this a music blog now?
Bendis continues to stretch credulity by having Mark give a big speech about this guy, Will Eisner, who invented the graphic novel, and how Mark would like to do something that influential. And, look, I’m a comics nerd, I love will Eisner, too, but it’s 2005, and teenage punk Mark Raxton having a near religious devotion to Will Eisner plays so much like Bendis talking, not Mark. This is not top tier USM. Then Mark asks MJ what she wants to do. She says she wanted to go into acting, but she hates every movie and TV show she’s ever seen (A common opinion of most Bendis characters for some reason?), and what she thinks the world really needs is more teachers, and that’s what she wants to be. And she’s never told anyone that. So Mark wants to know why she told him.
So, like, reading the Hobgoblin arc, on an omniscient reader level, yes, MJ’s behavior was stupid. But on a “normal human teenager thrust into a very weird situation” level, it made sense. It felt real. And this little speech feels like, “No, see, she was stupid and she knows it,” and I don’t think that plays for me. I think MJ wanting to better herself is cool and all, but trying to blindly do whatever Peter says next time isn’t what I would call bettering herself. He was acting like a class-A jerk the whole time. I dunno, man, this is not my favorite moment in USM. But! If memory serves… and it so often doesn’t… Next issue kicks off the title’s rise back to greatness after these post-Carnage doldrums, and so I am excited.