Anderson Waelchli

Guys if you haven’t read the new run of ultimate spider-man, you’re missing out. Basically a great spider-man story is getting told by talented people right now and it’s very fun to keep up with.

Back in the early 2000’s Marvel launched an entire separate universe from their main one that had been running since dino times or whatever. No long history to acknowledge or years of continuity to keep up with, marvel was able to give talented people the reigns to a whole fresh world of famous characters. Independent comic writer brian michael bendis was handed the keys to spider-man and he wrote an excellent story of growth and loss. The ultimates was okay except they made henry pym a wifebeater, they didn’t do ultimate daredevil any justice and ultimate fantastic 4 was pretty mid for the most of its run. ULTIMATE SPIDER MAN WAS SO FIRE THOUGH, bendis and mark bagley ran a superb set of issues, and ultimate spider man is still well regarded to this day. Shit is so fire and I read it all this summer, it is excellently written and I only got bored maybe in two out of the 160 original issues. Overall an excellent comic with a reputation that precedes it these days.

Now in our 2024 world of superhero fatigue and almost superhero fatigue fatigue there is something moderately fresh coming out of marvel. A new launch of their ultimate imprint has been created. A whole new universe, created by The Maker, an evil version of Reed Richards that came from the original ultimate universe from the 2000’s. What the maker has done is create a world without superheros that he can control and observe along with his council (which so far has just been serving as random-ish villians). So in this world right now there are four ongoing books, Ultimate Black Panther, X-men, Spider-Man, and The Ultimates. Ultimate Spider-Man is the headliner of these and was the first of the four to launch this year, however I have been greatly enjoying ultimate x-men and the ultimates and strongly recommend them both. The basic plot is that a teenage Tony Stark has learned that the maker has prevented all of these superheros from existing and has started an initiative to rebuild the world of heroes. This means sending Peter Parker a spider 20 years after it should have bit him.

This naturally leads to a different dynamic than in most spider-man media. Our main character is married with two kids, and just figuring out how to be Spider-Man at the same time. Jonathan Hickman writes the book and Marco Checchetto draws, both are top folks at marvel, Hickman just finished spearheading the latest like 5 year arc of X-Men for marvel, and go read the chip zdarsky/marco checchetto daredevil run cause that shit is really good. Hickman the characters feel real and Chechetto makes them look real and interesting while provide satisfying, powerful, and fun action. Needless to say, ultimate spider-man has been in good hands this year and it totally shows. The first 8 issues have been nothing but heat in my opinion. The first six tell an excellent origin story and starts to build Peter’s side of this world. These next issues have started to place him in the larger universe as events that happen in the ultimates crash into USM. The ultimate universe runs in real time each month, so when Iron Lad shows up in USM 7 in July, it connects with events in The Ultimates.

People fucking love this new Ultimate Spider-Man, all I see online is love for this book and I certainly think it is well deserved, I love it too. I think that people may just be hyping it up because the current Amazing Spider-Man run is bad, however the hype is totally deserved. I’ve seen some complaints online revolve around issue 4 specifically, which consists entirely of a dinner between this world’s Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson, Harry Osborn, and Gwen Stacy. Issue 5 then focuses entirely on Harry which would make sense to disappoint people as they would like Spider-Man in their Spider-Man book. However, both these issues do an excellent job at continuing to build this huge world these characters exist in. That is one of the strongest things about this universe, it is being built so well and each issue is full of exciting directions the story, world, and characters could go into. Payoffs will be huge. I found issue 5 to be a little more engaging on a second read than 4, but I think both are excellent and while maybe not entirely necessary for the story told in the first six issues, it adds a ton and is also important as the series goes on.

Overall Ultimate Spider-Man has come through the door killing, it’s selling well, people love it, critics love it, maybe you’ll even love it if you read this far. I find this new universe to be full of excitement and potential and I cannot recommend it enough. I have purchased every issue of the series so far (true) and uploaded my collection online (lie) you can read them all for free at this link.

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