This month… well, it’s a weird one, and our artist is John Totleben. He first got famous inking Stephen Bissette on the run of Swamp Thing that was also Alan Moore’s first big hit in the American market. Since then, he was a penciler and inker well respected for his gifts, but his output was badly hampered when he developed a lifelong eye disease. He was still able to see to draw, but from what I understand, just barely, so it took some time to do anything. He’s not had any work out in a long time. Very sad. Bendis tells a pretty funny story about meeting him when Bendis was just a kid going to conventions and trying to get his work seen by pros. So it’s cool of him to bring Totleben along on the Ultimate rollercoaster all these years later. Some weird coloring choices on this cover, with the white on the figure of the Lizard.
You can maybe justify infodumping Daredevil on the credits page since he’s pretty well known, but introducing the Ultimate version of Man-Thing like that seems crazy. “Yeah, yeah, Ted Sallis drank some goop and now he’s a muck man, we all know the story.” But look at that Man-Thing! Gorgeous detail. We begin with a couple guys robbing a lady and running off. The leader has a plan to escape into the sewer, but the other one’s afraid of the stories of monsters down there. As the first guy is making fun of him for it, he’s yoinked down into the darkness, and his now former partner sees a scary, reptilian eye looking up at him. Over the last panel of that, we have the beginning of a letter from Curt Connors to his wife, who is suddenly Marsha in the Ultimate world.
We get into his origin, how he was working on his usual lizard DNA project, but his funding was cut, and despite the university wanting to keep him on, his project was being shut down. He didn’t take it well.
The story then becomes that young lady telling the news how it happened. How the others left, but she stayed, thinking Curt would calm down. Instead, he injected the serum into himself, and as you’d expect, his arm grew back, but then things got weird and the young lady passed out. The news people ask her if she thinks Connors is the sewer monster, which upsets her. Peter Parker is watching this, and tells Aunt May he’s going to go ride his bike.
Look at that awesome Spider-Man. Totleben being more of a horror guy and more of “mature audiences” guy, you could be forgiven for assuming he wouldn’t have a line on superheroes, but he was all pro. So, as our hero’s letter narrates, he empathized with the story of Curt Connors, thought it could’ve easily been him turning into a monster, too, and wanted to try to help. After checking out the Connors’ place, Spidey found himself in the sewer, and guess what?
So good.
Just crushing it. They fight for 2 pages, Spider-Man begging Dr. Connors to just talk to him, saying he just wants to help, but the Lizard is not interested. As they break up and square off again, well, we haven’t see the other guy on the cover yet and we’re running out of comic, so…
After restoring Curt, Man-Thing kind of merged into the water and vanished, leaving Spider-Man to walk a very confused scientist out of the sewer.
Man-Thing is always a hard sell. He can’t talk, his powers are weird and specific. He made more sense in comics made by dudes on mind-altering drugs in the 70s. But it’s always interesting to see somebody give it a shot. I guess that was easier than trying to have 15-year old Peter Parker quickly reverse engineer 5 years of work and create a Lizard antidote. Always been a bit absurd how easily Spider-Man can just whip up a batch of “No Lizard Juice” any time he has to. Well, with that, we leave the Ultimate Universe for a little while. Next post, we’re back to regular continuity, and going forward, it’s 2 blocks of regular Spidey, then 1 block of Ultimate Spidey. It should provide a nice change of pace every few months. This block, we see Howard Mackie’s time on the books to its close. Well, eventually. But first, something completely different. Like… pretty different!