Life begins at 40 in Ultimate Spider-Man #1

Like costumed heroes? Confidentially, we in the comic mag business refer to them as “Long Underwear Characters.” And, as you know, they’re a dime a dozen. But, we think you may find our Spiderman just a bit … different! Ultimate Spider-Man #1 is written by Jonathan Hickman, drawn by Marco Checchetto, colored by Matthew Wilson and lettered by Cory Petit.

Sean Dillon: Hello, everyone, and welcome to ComicsXF’s coverage of Jonathan Hickman’s Ultimate Spider-Man. A comic that most assuredly will last for more than five issues before Jon gets bored and does something other than Frontier. I’m Sean Dillon, and I’m joined by Scott Redmond! Say hi, Scott.

Scott Redmond: Hello! Happy to be here, bringing things full circle, since it was a random reprint of the first original Ultimate Spider-Man that brought me back to comics as an adult.

Sean: For me, one of the first comics that kicked off my time within the game in the first place was the “Ultimate Venom” hardcover. As for this take on the material, I quite liked this first issue. It’s a more melancholic affair compared to the conspiracy thriller/coming-of-age story the original opening issue of Ultimate Spider-Man was. This air of melancholy is aided superbly by Marco Checchetto’s art, which conveys the world in small movements and slight facial twitches. Just firing on all cylinders. How about you?

Scott: I liked this far more than I assumed I would. Mostly because while I very much enjoy Hickman, the miniseries that kicked things off felt a bit too much. So I wasn’t sure what we would get. The melancholic tone you mentioned definitely worked, and honestly made me feel the passage of time since it’s closer to present me as much as original Ult Peter was to me at the time. Aging is fun!

Sean: It certainly is.

I want to study that kid – not kill him!

Sean: There’s something quite charmingly sad about this take on an older Spider-Man. Usually with this kind of status quo, there’s a degree of relief to the married-with-children Spider-Man. Be it Renew Your Vows or MC2, the married status quo results in fun stories. Here, however, there’s a sense of dread and distance to the Parker family, even as it’s clearly a loving environment. But there’s nevertheless an absence to it. Something feels … wrong.

Scott: I appreciate that Hickman looked at doing an Ultimate line and took the chance to give us married Parkers over young Parker. To your point, it would have been so easy to go the route of something being amiss with their marriage among that sadness. Making their marriage (at least for now) still a rock, and the amiss being the very relatable “something is missing inside me” was intriguing. Even if so far the kids and the overall family life does feel a bit artificial.

Sean: Which I think is part of Hickman’s approach to the material. The sense of lack results in a world that feels at once familiar and alien to most comics readers. Take the scene at the Daily Bugle for example. We have the bustling newsroom with Betty and Robbie and Jonah screaming “PARKER!” But he’s not doing it to Peter, but Ben, as in Uncle Ben. (More on that in a bit.) It’s a world that feels like it should be familiar, but it’s nevertheless alien because of the absence.

This is a world that should have a Spider-Man in it, but the lack of one results in even the happy “Ben’s alive” outcome feeling hollow and off.

Scott: That’s a great point. A lot of those path-not-taken sort of vibes, with changes that should be minor in some respects but make bigger waves. The Ben/Peter vibes really stood out to me because we always think Ben as so warm and such, but he was firmer and hardened in ways. Granted, a lot of what we know comes from Peter’s perspective on Earth-616 since Ben’s been dead. Who knows what ripples were created with all the tinkering done to the timeline?

Sean: Speaking of which, we’ve got a funeral to attend. A lot of people died because of Tony Stark wanting to change the world to something more utopian. “That world full of superheroes who always end up hunky-dory.” His attempt, for those who didn’t read the Ultimates special, resulted in New York getting blasted with a laser! And people died. Like Aunt May and the adult Osborns.

In many regards, this feels like an inversion of what typically happens with Spider-Man comics, where the Uncle Ben figure is taken out and supplanted with a corrupted father figure. Here, both Aunt May and the typical player of the corrupt father figure role are removed. As a result, we get a clearer picture of the man instead of his ghost. (Again, we’ll get to that.)

At the funeral, however, we’re introduced to a new player: Harry Osborn.

Scott: Killing Aunt May is one of the most kicking-in-the-door and making-a-dramatic-statement things you can do with Spider-Man. The main universe has been trying to kill her to little effect for decades now. Again speaks to that idea of ripping the familiar away while peppering in that which should feel familiar. 

A Harry and Peter who have no relation to one another at all is one of those ripples and things that feel odd right off the bat. Yet, the possibilities it opens are vast with both suffering the same tragedy. Seems pretty clear (though who can say for sure with Hickman) they’ll end up crossing paths in ways beyond their normal selves pretty soon.

Tony’s insistence about wanting to “fix” what the Maker messed with reminds me of some of the better everything-changes time travel stories, where someone will ask why the character who remembers the way the world “should be” has the right to mess up the lives of those in this world. While his intent might be good, Tony’s actions will have further repercussions. Seeing those worked out with Peter and others in his orbit is already creating some interesting dynamics, for sure.

And the third daughter is truth.

Sean: Among them is, of course, the Bugle. Owned by Wilson Fisk, who does not take kindly to this lefty approach the paper is taking about the whole Tony Stark terrorist attack. Asking too many questions, being too nosy. On an artistic level, I love how Fisk is introduced to the reader, not as the imposing figure the page turn gives us (which is likewise great), but rather as a shadow looming over the table, the absence of the man as much a presence as his actual appearance.

Scott: That shadow and the way Robbie keeps glancing over in fear while talking to Ben sure sold the reveal. Of course, if we’re going to do a beat about the rich/corporate hand behind journalism in a Spider-Man book, Fisk is the perfect one to turn to. Man just exudes the worst parts of capitalism and the power system every moment of every day. It also turns the Bugle from the sort of safe space we associate it with into something more sinister, which hurts but is intriguing at the same time. Love that type of story beat.

Sean: Tying things back to the original Bendis Ultimate Spider-Man, it’s notable that the Kingpin was the big bad at the heart of the run (before being unceremoniously discarded, causing a wound in the run that it never healed from). More than Norman Osborn, he was the lurking figure out to destroy Peter Parker on a philosophical level. He pushed Peter to the point of breaking, such that he literally owned the Spider-Man IP and used it to torment the kid who rushed into things without thinking things through.

Him overtaking the Bugle is as much a statement as Aunt May’s death. It appears to be a signifier of one of that run’s core interests: exploring the unexploded bombs of the Bendis era. Mainly, Peter’s political anger at the unjust nature of the systems that run the world. From the Ultimates crossover where Peter is press-ganged into joining the Sinister Six to overthrow the government to all of Ultimate Knights to Roxxon’s inexplicable connection to everything wrong with the world, to say nothing of the numerous rants about the unjust nature of the world. And boy howdy does Hickman love a good system exploration.

Scott: Setting this up to conceptually be a companion of sorts or answer to that original run is intriguing on all the fronts you mentioned. So much of our superpower fantasy style musings or questions often are born of the idea of what if you gained powers as a younger person or were born with those powers. How original teen Ultimate Peter dealt with stuff was through the lens of a (adult-man-written) teenager. Dealing with all the stuff the world threw at him alongside all that typical teenage hormonal societal worries. 

How one would handle the world’s issues vastly changes as we age, naturally. Pretty sure most of us would answer that “what would you do with powers” question in the here and now way different than back in the days of our youth. Hickman’s choice of a closer to middle-age Peter becoming the hero rather than a youthful Peter opens far more doors than the surface-level excitement of an actual ongoing married life dynamic.

Sean: Of course, Peter’s not the only one dealing with the political implications of the world. We also have Ben and Jonah, who quit the Bugle. In many regards, what we see of Ben already paints an extremely interesting picture. His grief at the loss of Aunt May is palpable, but not loud. Rather, it’s akin to a quiet winter storm (befitting of the seasonal melancholy). He’s someone who wants to be talked straight to rather than have a question beaten around the bush.

But moreover, he’s a lot like Peter in that both of them will blow up their lives for a principle they hold true to themselves. Much like Ben does here, Peter often finds himself looking at the wreckage of his life and deciding to do the same thing all over again, but better. They’re people who don’t know when to quit. It’s as noble a pursuit as it is a foolish one.

Spyder! Spyder!

Scott: While this Peter hasn’t quite blown up his life yet, he most definitely lit a fuse here. The idea that Peter knows that something is “missing” but can’t speak to what, including not actually speaking to MJ till now, is way too relatable. Unlike most of us who have to figure out what job or thing will fill that hole, Peter’s solution comes from Tony Stark, who escaped to the future. Six months in the future to be precise (Hickman loves him some time travel shenanigans, that’s for sure). Hoping to spark that age of heroes mentioned previously, he’s sent Peter the spider that was destined to make him more than he currently is. 

One of the threadlines with Spider-Man always comes back to the idea that he’s destined to be a hero, but generally the inciting incident is a surprise/out of his control. Again, Hickman flips that and we see a Peter given the choice to dramatically change his life and embrace being a hero. 

Sean: At the same time though, it’s worth looking at what’s happening here from the grand scheme of things. Tony Stark isn’t the hero of the Ultimate Universe. We’ve seen how his story turns out in the pages of Ultimate Invasion. He grows up and becomes Kang the Conqueror. Furthermore, there’s the religious language and physical framing he’s using to convince Peter to become Spider-Man.

When the book was announced, it was a bit unclear as to why Jonathan Hickman of all people was doing a Spider-Man comic. The character isn’t in his typical wheelhouse of amoral Great Men who break the world for the cause of their own egomania. And it is here, at last, that the nature of the book and Hickman’s interest becomes clear:

Peter Parker has just sold his soul to the devil to become Spider-Man.

And everyone unwittingly egged him on in doing so. Ben tells Peter to wake up from the haze caused by the absence Peter feels in his life. To actively choose to become something more than he currently is. MJ likewise has long since clocked that Peter walks around with a cloud over his head and isn’t satisfied with his life (even if he still very much still loves her). She tells him to go get ‘em, Tiger. And you can feel that this midlife crisis is going to go so horribly wrong.

Even Peter and Tony don’t seem fully aware of what’s happening here. Tony’s sales pitch to Peter is that “You were supposed to protect the innocent, save lives and inspire the citizens of this world to be their best selves. And instead, all of that was taken from you.” And yet, as anyone who has read a Spider-Man comic will tell you, no one looks at Spider-Man that way. He’s a menace who makes things worse. Everyone hates his guts and sees him as, at best, a freak who should not be trusted with the keys to the car. And that’s not even getting into the Norman Osborn of it all.

Scott: Tony giving Peter the telephone game, Cliff’s Notes version of things. Leaving out all the suffering, losses and the dreaded Parker luck that we’ve witnessed for decades. 

I 100% wondered about the whys of Hickman taking this rather than carrying on writing Ultimate Tony in an Ultimate book (though I won’t turn down a Deniz Camp Ultimates book). Putting it all in the context you did surely makes it all the more clear why. Digging deeper just shows more and more where the cracks are and how far these characters have to fall. We’ve seen it before, just over with the X-stuff before he bounced. In fact, Hickman builds characters up as high as possible before ripping them down. For Spider-Man (and many of his fans), Peter with the wife and kids and a solid job is the highest one can go for a juicy rip-down. 

One of the little hooks surely will be that six months mentioned. A lot can happen, or go wrong, in six months’ time. Thrusting oneself out into the world with newly gained superpowers in your 40s, with delusions of grandeur to boot, sure fits that recipe for disaster that’s brewing. 

One More Day

• J. Jonah Jameson is an interesting figure. Though he’s introduced as the shouting man we know and love, his defining scene in the issue is a quiet moment of him tying Peter’s tie and asking him to look after Ben in his moment of grief.
• Ultimate Matt Murdock becoming a priest is the most obvious thing that could happen to the bastard. Though one wonders how he became blind if the Maker prevented the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from happening.
• While May is very much the “adorable troglodyte” most writers do when writing kid characters, Richard is very much fucked up in the same way Peter was before he was bitten as a kid by a radioactive spider. One wonders if that’ll develop into something before one or both of them die.
• Matthew Wilson’s colors aid in the sense of melancholic dread that is apt for both the funeral aspects of the comic as well as the January nature of it all.
• Oh look, a Green Goblin has attacked. I’m sure he’s not anyone we’ve met in this issue.
• So the eyepatch guy behind Fisk is Bullseye, right?
• Odds this ends in divorce: 1 in 50.

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