Thursday, September 18, 2008

Self-Betrayal (or: How i read Ult Spider-Man, vol 20)

I read Ultimates 1. And i haaaaaated it. Loathed it. Detested aaaaaaall of it.
It was everything about comics that i dont like.

Now, anyone who knows me know that i do not like whiny whiny whiny Spider-Man. In the Marvel U, 98% have it worse off than Peter Parker. And really, i think his powers are lame. I am strong! I can stick to things! Big deal.

So if you put these two things together, my stomach rolls in dislike.
However...
If you know me and my taste for comics, you also know:
1 - i love a particular set of heroines
2 - i am a sucker for Brian Bendis.

Currently i am caught up with all the things that i want to read, and i had heard thru the twitterverse that there was an Amazing Friends arc in Ultimate Spider-Man. Having been unable to get a Firestar fix elsewhere, i decided to hunt this down.
It wasnt hard. The local comic store had it.
And it was really fun (tho of course he had to spew the responsibility thing, but he was actually having fun, and not being a mopey boring whiner).
I was sad Firestar (now Liz, not Anjelica) wasnt in it and kicking butt, but now i might have to try and follow her. And sadly, i might have to track back into the clone saga and find out what the deal is with codename Jessica Drew.
I dug the art as well, which was a huge help.

But i still feel dirty.

2 comments:

Dan said...

I've gone on record more than once stating that Ult. Spider-Man is the best Spidey book out there.

Part of it is Bendis (he writes a kick-ass Spidey, unfortunately I think he sometimes tries to write everyone a little bit too much "like Spidey"). Part of it is the art (first by Mark Bagley and now, after an almost-seamless transition, Stuart Immonen). But, most of it comes from getting a book without 40+ years of crap to deal with. I like Pete in high school, because I kind of like whiny Spider-Man, but I also realize that once you get out of high school, whining that much is really lame.

This has become a lot longer than I had intended. Cutting to the chase: Ult. Spider-Man is good and you shouldn't feel dirty for reading a good book. But, like you, I would have liked if it was Anjelica.

Robyn said...

That's very true. The lack of history is a great tool. I always felt the Ult. U was kind of like a cheat... but for this book it works well.
I also liked that he actually told people who he was, that he thought that keeping his ID a secret was important, but not to a fanatical degree.