I Can See For – Ah, Screw It: Ultimate Spider-Man #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. For example, Miles Morales is apparently Spider-Man now. And by the way, the spoilers start IMMEDIATELY.

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If you’re anything like me, the first thing you did after seeing the last page of Ultimate Spider-Man #1 is hit Google and see if spiders can, in fact, camoflage into their backgrounds. I did this even though I am petrified of spiders. Petrified to the point that season three of Buffy The Vampire Slayer is my favorite; not because of the plot, characters or theme, but because it was the first season without that everfucking scuttling tarantula in the opening credits.

Turns out, as I suspected, that any Web site touting the camoflagability of spiders will, by nature, include large, full-color close-up photographs of spiders in order to prove that some spiders can, in fact, blend into their surroundings. Which proves two things:

1. Brian Michael Bendis has done his spider research for this new iteration of Spider-Man, and:
2. If you are an arachnophobe, Brian Michael Bendis is a Goddamned douchebag.

And douchebag Bendis might be, including one or two terrible visual storytelling instincts, but what he is is a good and patient writer. This is a highly-publicized first-issue of Spider-Man – a first issue that is the one bullet in Marvel’s publicity arsenal this month against DC’s New 52 – that doesn’t have Spider-Man in costume except on the cover.

And one could argue that Marvel and Bendis are squandering an opportunity to drop curious readers who swung into a comic store to check out the new Spider-Man (Swung. GET IT?) a sequence, a page or even a panel that showed, I dunno, fucking SPIDER-MAN in it… but with that said, there’s a lot of good character work going on here, and some clever storytelling that sets up that we aren’t just getting the same Spider-Man with a different costume and potentially gimmicky skintone hexcode notation for the colorist.

This issue is all setup, just like Bendis’s original Ultimate Spider-Man ten years ago, but it is damn solid foundation. Sure, we don’t have Spider-Man in costume, but we have the groundwork set that this ain’t the same spider that bit Peter Parker, which means we don’t have the same power set, which made me damn interested to see what other abilities Miles is gonna manifest (I’m hoping one is the instinct to eat his mother. Because I likes me some Spider-Man, but I LOVES me some zombies. Plus, she seemed kinda whiny).

We’re shown a protagonist who, knowingly or unknowingly, imprints most strongly on his master criminal uncle. Meaning I’m already looking forward either to a story where Miles ultimately rejects and apprehends him with a huge amount of internal conflict and pathos, or a story where Miles’s uncle is shot, so Miles agrees to kill the man behind the shooting, then flees to Italy before returning to take over the family business and ultimately lose his soul. Only with spiders. Which for some reason creep me out less than John Cazale. Yes, I have been drinking. Moving on now.

Art-wise, I’m not familiar with Sara Pichelli’s work prior to this book – she apparently did some issues of the previous Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man book, but like many fanboys when it came to Ultimate Spider-Man, for me the artists were Bagley, Immomen and not-Bagley-and-not-Immomen – but I’m enjoying what I’m seeing here. The art is clean, the faces expressive, the shading interesting, and it reminds me of Bagley without feeling derivative, which is a good place to be after that guy’s record 100+ issue run on Ultimate Spider-Man. And unlike not-Bagley-and-not-Immomen artist David Lafuente who started right after Immomen, I’m relieved that the pencils aren’t manga-style, because every time I see tentacle porn-style art it makes me feel like I should be jerking off, which ain’t right when you’re reading Spider-Man. Again: been drinking. Again: moving on.

At the end of the day, we have some good-looking art and solid character development with forward-thinking plot markers that should lead to some interesting stories… once Bendis gets done with the setup. And if the first six issues of the original Ultimate Spider-Man are any lesson, it’s well worth waiting for the punchline (And please God, let the punchline be Miles eating his screechy, one-dimensional mommy). Check it out.