Requiem: Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #200 Review

I really enjoy the Miles Morales version of Spider-Man in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, but I am always gonna have a soft spot for Peter Parker. Which, for a superhero comic fan, is about as controversial a statement as decrying Nazis, or perhaps coming down on the negative side of human trafficking, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Not only was the Ultimate version of Peter a pretty solid modernization of the character, while still keeping his core values and characterization, but it allowed we readers to see something we don’t normally get to see: the actual conclusion of the character’s story.

Sure, we get nods toward final stories with Marvel’s The End periodic series of books (and some of those are damn good) and in a few DC Elseworlds stories, but they’re never really final in a satisfying way. Because yeah, they’re endings, but then they, you know, end. And part of why any comics fan loves these stories is that they are ongoing. So while we sometimes see a beloved character go down, we don’t see the aftermath in a serious, ongoing way. But we got that with the death of Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man almost three years ago, with the Death of Peter Parker, which was a really spectacular story. I recently reread the issue with Peter’s public memorial, and when the little girl asked Aunt May if she was Spider-Man’s mommy, and if she needed a hug? Jesus, if I could get my hands on whatever motherfucker was cutting onions in a room that dusty…

But that story concluded, and we moved on to Miles Morales, as comics do… but in real life, when someone gets killed, people don’t just yank up stakes and start paying attention to a new person, unless your name is Michael Peterson and you don’t mind explaining your weird behavior to members of the law enforcement community. In real life, those losses stick around for a while… and that brings us to Ultimate Spider-Man #200, which is a long reminiscence of Peter’s life, and shows how some of the regulars from the original series are doing. And while there isn’t any action and no current storylines are really affected, it’s damn nice to check in with Aunt May, Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane and some of the other former regulars on this title.

Unless you hate Brian Michael Bendis’s “guys sitting around a table talking” issues. Because then you’ll hate this.

It has been two years since Peter Parker was killed fighting The Green Goblin, and while Aunt May is trying to move on (evidenced by her house being up for sale), she has decided to hold a small memorial for Peter at the house for his close friends (and Miles and Ganke, because one evicts a comic’s current main character at one’s peril). So we see Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, Kitty Pryde, Johnny Storm, and a wide cross section of Peter’s cast of supporting characters (and Miles and his fat buddy, because possession of a comic is nine-tenths of the law) reconnect, eat like pigs and talk about Peter. And the suddenly…

Actually, that’s pretty much it.

This is a quintessential “Bendis has dudes talk” issue, which will drive some people absolutely nuts. Throw on top of things that this is a comic that spends its time with characters no longer salient to current goings-on in the Marvel Universe, right after a major, status quo-changing event, and some people are gonna decry this as a colossal waste of time. So just know going in that, if the issues where Spider-Man gave Wolverine shit in The New Avengers sent you screaming to the Internet to voice your displeasure, just skip this issue and save yourself the needless agitation.

But I am not one of those people. I like it when Bendis lets himself go off on an extended dialogue tear that’s focused on character, and we get plenty of that here. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Iceman and the Human Torch shoot the shit like this, and even seeing Kong catch up with Kitty brought back some good memories. And while I, in no way, believe that Ganke’s little Lego ploy to get into Gwen’s pants would work as well as it wound up working, at least it was a nice surprise.

What worked best for me was the feeling of a reunion that you don’t often get from a superhero comics. Anyone more than a year or two out of high school knows what it’s like to go home again and see old friends you used to see all the time, and what it’s like is alternately weird, uncomfortable and sometimes heartbreaking and terrifying. Seeing Kitty fumble around trying to talk to former-flame Kong rung true for a reunion after a couple of years, but Bendis made a clever move by showing just we readers Mary Jane with a new guy. We spent so much time with MJ over the years, with the assumption that she and Peter belonged together, it was kind of a gutpunch to see her with another guy. But that only applies to the reader, which allows Bendis to give us the emotional impact without having to waste story time showing everyone else having to deal with it. And the overall effect makes the whole experience ring true.

And being one of those retrospective, “final look” issues – particularly one by Bendis – we get a series of double-paged epic pose spreads of action as described by different characters, all by different artists. They all look cool enough, which is what they’re there to do – but Bendis does get a little overly cute in using a couple of them to riff on both Superman and the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon, a show for which I am not the intended audience, as I am older than 15 and do not require amphetamines to manage any deficit of attention. It’s the one sequence that kinda pulled me out of the proceedings.

But in general, I dug this Ultimate Spider-Man #200. It was the kind of superhero comic you don’t get very often, where you get to not only say goodbye to a legendary character, but you get to see how that loss affects the minor supporting characters over time. It’s not gonna be for everybody, but if you had any kind of love for the Ultimate Universe version of Peter Parker, there’s a lot to like. And with Ultimate Spider-Man getting renumbered to #1 with the next issue (for the fourth time in 14 years; can we stop this renumbering shit now, Marvel? I have longboxes with two or three first issue of the same comic in them, for Christ’s sake!), it might be the final time we see some of these characters, so consider giving it a shot, even if Bendis having people talk turns you into the worst form of troll. You know who you are.