ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #34

By: Arnold T. Blumberg
Review Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2003

I cried when they introduced the black suit. OK, not a girly kind of cry - although my mother still likes to taunt me with the memory - but a wistful tear was indeed shed when I first beheld the solid black costume that Spidey would soon don in place of the legendary red-and-blues. This was in the pages of the late, lamented MARVEL AGE, and although their sneak peek showed red eyes where white ones would actually appear, it was pretty much the same - just a black Spider-Man shaped suit. How could they do it?

Ah, naive youth. Of course the whole thing was orchestrated - or at least retroactively orchestrated when the suit failed to have enormous appeal, hard to say which - as part of a story arc in which the suit, obtained on the Secret Wars planet, would turn out to be an alien symbiote that was draining Peter Parker's life force. Eventually Reed Richards of the FF separated Parker from the black suit, but it later joined with Eddie Brock, becoming one of the Marvel icons of the '90s, that slavering psychopath known as...Venom.

Now I have to admit there is definitely a sort of thrill associated with reading the ULTIMATE books as a long-time Marvelite. Whenever a familiar name or event crops up, there's anticipation in the knowledge that this will be a new spin on an old idea - how will they reinterpret our favorite characters and stories? What will be the new "take?" Well, with a man like Brian Michael Bendis handling the reinterpretation, I never have a moment of doubt - it may not replace the original, but it will certainly be as brilliant. And here we are - only about ten years after he made such a big black splash in the core Spider-titles - ready to meet Venom once again. The black suit is back, baby!

This time around, Bendis has actually trumped the classic tale with an origin for the black suit that seems far more logical, and if possible, even creepier than before. Built as a possible cure for cancer by the fathers of Peter Parker and Eddie Brock (uh-oh), the suit is a bioengineering marvel that is supposed to render medical aid by adhering to a patient and, well, giving him what he needs. But when Peter decides to redeem his dad by investigating the suit and making it work, he gets...yeah, more than he bargained for. The final page gives us our first glimpse of Spidey in his midnight outfit in quite a while, and although there is no change in the minimalist design, there's something a bit more dramatic and foreboding in its debut here. Maybe it's just the nostalgia kicking into over-drive.


So when will the new Venom rear his toothy head? Probably any issue now, but why rush things when we're having so much fun?