{"id":22766,"date":"2024-09-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=22766"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:42:26","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:42:26","slug":"usm-006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/09\/13\/usm-006\/","title":{"rendered":"USM 006"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alright. We\u2019ve finished the 21st Century version of the origin. What next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gotta have a Bugle and a J. Jonah, of course! Bendis actually worked for a newspaper before (And, as I recall, during the beginning of) his comics career, so who better to handle this? Everyone looks somewhat younger, especially Ben Urich, who\u2019s the guy with the longer hair and goatee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I think it\u2019s pretty commendable how different the cast of this book is compared to the mainline titles, visually, for someone who drew the real versions for so long. You know? Bags seems pretty locked in by this issue, and while his teenage cast is hard to compare to the older Marvel U versions, these guys are instantly recognizable as different people from the Marvel U JJJ and Robbie and so on. I don\u2019t know how many artists would\u2019ve bothered to come up with a different look for Jonah. And, I mean, it obviously reads as Jonah, also, but if you compare this to a Bagley JJJ from the mainline titles, it\u2019s so clearly a different person. I just think that\u2019s cool. One more consecutive page, because Bendis teed it up and it\u2019s important\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter\u2019s mind is racing as he tests hanging from the web, wondering if he can make it more or less elastic, wondering how long it lasts, wondering if he could sell the formula. Aunt May calls down ot warn him he should go to bed because he has school tomorrow, so we cut to him asleep in class. Jolted awake by his teacher, he destroys another desk. Which, I mean, that\u2019s pushing it, to me. I don\u2019t think people would necessarily think of Peter getting bitten by a spider immediately when a Spider-Man shows up\u2026 but he got bit by a spider in a fancy science lab, then started accidentally smashing desks and Flash\u2019s hand and being great at basketball and all that. It could start to be too much. All he\u2019s got going for him is, who\u2019d believe he was Spider-Man? Anyway, as his teacher says if he doesn\u2019t shape up, she\u2019ll have to talk to the basketball coach, Peter says he quit this morning. Walking out of class, MJ says that\u2019s good for him, but Kong is upset. The friendship he\u2019d been showing Peter seems to go out the window over this news. But then everyone sees Harry walking down the hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Harry\u2019s acting pretty weird, huh? Suddenly, explosions start ripping through the school. As the kids start scrambling to get out, Harry says he knows what this is. As Kong drags Harry outside, he keeps saying \u201cHe\u2019s come for me. Then there\u2019s another explosion and\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s the very same Bagley Spider-Man I referenced back in the tangent during the ASM V2. #7<\/a> post. As I showed there, this drawing is going to be everywhere, drawn by many different people, as the years roll on. It\u2019s too bad the eyes are approaching John Byrne too-far-apart levels, but now that he\u2019s in his final form, as it were, it\u2019s worth noting this is not the Marvel U Spider-Man, either. He\u2019s slighter, visibly shorter, even bent up like that. His head, hands and feet are bigger. He\u2019s a teenager. Bags\u2019 2 Spider-Men are very different people. I just feel that\u2019s worthy of respect. From there, we flashback 2 minutes to see how Peter got here. He ran into the bathroom to change, when he suddenly realized Spider-Man can\u2019t be inside the school. It\u2019s bad enough they all saw him get bitten, he thinks, that would be too much. So, in the heat of the moment, he had to sneak out a window, leap down to the ground and scurry off into some bushes to become Spider-Man there. He thought he doesn\u2019t know how Captain America does it. All the references to the larger Ultimate U getting peppered into this book were, of course, extremely exciting to those of us reading at the time. Couldn\u2019t wait to see more. So, then we get back to the present, and Spider-Man enters the school he just snuck out of. Stalking through the smoke and sprinklers, he sees a figure, and it\u2019s revealed to be\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026probably the biggest mistake in the history of this series, to be blunt. For all its success, and for all that this title would continue to be one of Marvel\u2019s very best books for basically its entire duration\u2026 Hulk-with-horns Green Goblin was and is a big swing and a miss. I understand the impulse, of course. A lot easier to get to than \u201cI\u2019ll then design a glider and costume and weapons and so on.\u201d But it\u2019s the first thing in Ultimate Spider-Man that\u2019s an obvious downgrade. And, without getting too far ahead of myself, try as they might to refine it, they never really made this design work. And when it\u2019s the guy everyone knows is Spider-Man\u2019s most important villain, well\u2026 that\u2019s a real shame. And, like, where\u2019s he get the wrist wraps or the weird jeweled belt? We saw him put this tarp or whatever over his head in an alley last issue, but\u2026 what\u2019s the deal, really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The other thing is, his powers are hard to buy especially on this new, \u201cmore realistic\u201d stage. He did more or less what happened to Peter, only with human DNA instead of spider, and it made him a Hulk who can fly and shoot fireballs? Not that Spider-Man makes any kind of scientific sense, but this is pushing it way further to me. Well, anyway, it\u2019s too late. They battle through the high school, Spidey still trying to figure out the whole quipping thing, but as he tries to get some distance between them, the Goblin tackles him right through a wall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Also only his head being green is really weird, but they at least fixed that later. Well. We\u2019re gearing up for the actual end of the first storyline in issue 7! That\u2019s a long one to start. The letter page is still full of raves, and they print a lot of one-sentence responses just to get as many in as possible. I must say, dear reader, I\u2019m paying very close attention to these letters. By now, I was a devoted member of Bendis\u2019 online community, and I keep expecting to see names I recognize. Maybe even my own. I don\u2019t remember if I ever officially wrote something for print, but I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if I did. I guess we\u2019ll see!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alright. We\u2019ve finished the 21st Century version of the origin. What next? Gotta have a Bugle and a J. Jonah, of course! Bendis actually worked for a newspaper before (And, as I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864,1],"tags":[498,35,113,1924,1922,12,40,22,13,26,1927,1925,339,21,39,2,1923],"class_list":["post-22766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","category-uncategorized","tag-art-thibert","tag-aunt-may","tag-ben-urich","tag-bill-jemas","tag-brian-michael-bendis","tag-flash-thompson","tag-green-goblin","tag-harry-osborn","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-joe-robertson","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":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22772,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22766\/revisions\/22772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}