ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN SUPER SPECIAL #1

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Tuesday, June 25, 2002

It's the end of Peter Parker's first full year as a superhero, and he's doing what any high school kid his age would do: he's wondering whether to ditch the part-time job or to keep it and make it into a career. Understandable, as it's been a tough week. So far, he's saved a vampire from Blade in the belief that a mugging was about to take place, and he's kept Elektra from killing a genocidal dictator in the belief that the usual kind of assassination was about to take place. Instead of wallowing in doubt, he decides to get some advice from more experienced heads - and who can advise a young superhero better than other superheroes?

If SPIDER-MAN #1 had been written in 2002 instead of 1963, perhaps it would have looked like this - but back then the Marvel Universe wasn't nearly a big enough place for Spidey to visit other heroes and get their opinions on his career; and while he was introspective back then, it would be ages before he'd become this introspective. And yet, perhaps better than any of the other installments of the ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN series, this one captures the heart of the original series best. The "real world" Spider-Man almost never considered whether he was too young to do what he did - he simply lived by the credo of "With great power comes great responsibility" and got on with it. But there were times when he faltered, and those times made him the most human of all the superheroes we'd been introduced to up to that time. In the same way, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN SUPER SPECIAL #1 reiterates the humanity of this superhuman character and reminds us why he does what he does, despite any doubts he may have along the way.

Without launching into the usual "Bendis can do no wrong" speech that many reviewers use when discussing the great BMB, let me just say that Bendis' script for this issue is one of the strongest, most thoughtful pieces he's ever done. He works with the adolescent Peter Parker at least as well as Stan Lee did, and better than most writers can work with the adult version. What's even more impressive is his inexcusable and yet incredibly imaginative reworkings of other characters in the Ultimate Marvel pantheon: when Peter comes to them for advice and a job offer, much as he did nearly forty years ago, the Fantastic Four admit that they're almost broke - and most heartrending of all, Johnny Storm seeks out Peter's company afterwards because he has no friends whatsoever. Reed tells him that they also can't hire him because they're a family, but there's a big difference between being part of a "family" in 1963 and being part of one in 2002. Bendis has put his finger on this difference, and many, many more.

The only distraction from an otherwise superb script is the ever-changing artwork. I understand that this book is an "event" and that as such it deserves to be drawn by the best talent out there, but it's hard to deny how downright jarring the shifts in the conflicting styles really are. Some artists in this volume (Dan Brereton, Scott Morse, Sean Phillips, and Mark Bagley among them) were obviously born to draw SPIDER-MAN. Others...not so much. The easiest thing to do is to read this book for the story first, then go back and appreciate each set of pages for what it is: an artist's homage to the hero who arguably we identify with more than any other Marvel hero because he's the most human. Taken one at a time, these pieces are electric, eclectic, and thoroughly engrossing, much like the script which inspired them.

As far back as the '60s, a comic book title including the words "Super Special" was a sure sign that the comic in question was anything but. It's good to know that, finally, comic books have matured to the point that a book can live up to that sort of hyperbole.

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