Ultimate Fallout #1

Brian Michael Bendis

Mark Bagley

Andy Lanning

Justin Ponsor

This sort of read like a What If? comic and not so much like an alternate Ultimate universe comic and that's kind of good. I have a lot of bad things to say about Brian Bendis, but he does do fairly well on Spider-Man because I think he knows how to write teenagers (maybe because he writes like one.) There were some boring moments here, too much time was spent seeing different characters reactions to Spider-Man's death- Flash Thompson, Kitty Pryde, and Jonah could've been given panels, not pages.

Jonny Storm erupting with flaming anger was a little silly but teenagers do silly stuff. Bagley's pencils certainly don't jump off the page but I admire his work ethic and the fact that he did draw Ultimate Spider-Man for so long lends to his appropriateness here. I will say that there was a potent mystery contained within Nick Fury's deer in the headlights expression when Mary Jane accuses him of doing the deed. Regardless of what it means for future plot, it had a nice "don't trust the government" message.

The stand out moment of this comic is a piece of dialogue at the funeral that went something like this...

little girl: Were you Spider-Man's mommy?

Aunt May: No, I was his aunt.

Little girl: But you made him breakfast like a mommy?

Aunt May: Yes Sweetie, I did.

It was an odd piece of dialogue but it felt believable and satisfying to see Aunt May empowered as the maternal figure in Spider-Man's life. The little girl (drawn with subtle burn marks) expresses that Spider-Man saved her from a fire and then her and May hug it out. It was good stuff.

Where this comic kind of failed and succeeded was with something that I felt was lurking behind the scenes and should have been brought out into the light- that underneath all the jokes and hovering above all the pain, Spider-Man is one of the most honest, caring, and optimistic characters in the Marvel Universe. However, unlike DC's Superman, Spider-man is way more relatable because he lacks Clarks squeaky clean image. What makes him an even greater hero is that Peter Parker puts in work without recieving much appreciation- and he doesn't really care. Spider-Man never sucks the dicks of the government or the media- hell sometimes he gets paid to tarnish his own name! But he always tries to do what's right, even if that makes some people think that he's a monster. Some part of him must know that there will always be people who believe in him. At the very least, this comic book demonstrated that those people do exist.

6.4