Why I Think Ultimate Spider-Man is the Best Thing Marvel’s Done in Years

Marvel earned its nickname as the ‘House of Ideas’ through years of amazing storytelling. Marvel created characters and tales that engrossed readers for decades, redefining what superheroes meant and how their stories are told. However, it soon became apparent that the nature of superhero universes means that the status quo is always paramount, and many of the significant twists and changes that once made Marvel stories so great were undone (or “retconned”), routinely returning characters and stories to more “new reader friendly” full-circle turns. Marvel’s modern-day conquest of the comics sales charts arguably made them complacent, leading to a line of books that play it safe. Playing it safe was never why Marvel was so great, which is one of the many reasons that Ultimate Spider-Man is the best Marvel book in years.

On the one hand, one can look at Ultimate Spider-Man as another safe choice — delivering the older, married, version of Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Mary Jane that fans have been wanting back for years — but the book is so much more than a retread of what came before. Writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Marco Checchetto are doing brilliant work, taking familiar concepts and taking them to the next level. Ultimate Spider-Man is exactly the kind of book Marvel should be putting out, and I can prove it.

Ultimate Spider-Man Truly Exemplifies the Best Parts of Spider-Man & Marvel

Marvel’s new Ultimate Universe has been revolutionary, and Ultimate Spider-Man has led the charge. The new Ultimate Universe is a completely different kind of world than 616 reality; on this world, the Maker (the evil Reed Richards of the old 1610 Ultimate Universe) has spent years creating a world in his own image, doing his best to stop the rise of the superheroes. The Maker’s Earth is controlled by the Council, a group of villains — and a few who were heroes in the 616 universe like Colossus and Magik — who each control their own territories. The North American Union was controlled by Howard Stark and Obadiah Stane, but after their deaths, it was split between Henry Dugarry, Captain Britain of the European Union, and the Hulk, the leader of the Children of the Eternal Light.

New York City is the property of the Kingpin, along with corporations like Roxxon and Oscorp. This is the world of Ultimate Spider-Man, and these changes to the status quo are a huge part of why the book is about so much more than a married Spider-Man and his family. A middle-aged Peter Parker is given the chance to gain his superpowers from a young Tony Stark (a bit of a clever nod to how important Stark has become to Spider-Man in the MCU), who is rebelling against the Maker and trying to create his own army of heroe to free the world. Peter is thrown into a fight against evil and ruthless people who have created an entire world system to stop people like him. He finds an ally in Harry Osborn, who has been creating his own superpowered suit of Green Goblin armor with Doctor Octopus for his own purposes. Uncle Ben is alive in this universe and worked with Peter and J. Jonah Jameson at The Daily Bugle, which is owned by Kingpin. However, Ben and Jonah break ranks and form their own Internet news site – partly funded by Harry and his wife Gwen Stacy – and begin investigating the power structures of Manhattan and the North American Union. Peter and Mary Jane are married with two children, Richard and May, with Mary Jane having achieved major success working in the PR industry.

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Just look at that setup: There’s so much familiarity there, especially for someone like me who has been reading Spider-Man comics for over thirty years. However, the ways that Hickman has changed so much of the fundamentals of Spider-Man and his world is what makes the whole thing work. Spider-Man has spent years in the doldrums of a status quo that wouldn’t allow him to be anything else other than the kind of long-suffering character that hearkens back to the ’60s and ’70s. This new status quo is going in a completely different way, but also still manages to make Spider-Man a hard luck hero. Hickman’s Ultimate Spider-Man isn’t nearly as good a fighter as he should be, and is often out of his depth being a superhero. He’s constantly having new things thrown at him that he has to learn to deal with, and the main way he learns to deal with it is by getting his butt kicked and then figuring out how to win. The book manages to give me what I want from Spider-Man — an older, more successful, and happy version of the character — while also keeping the core of Spider-Man also being just as unlucky as anyone in the real world, and dealing with the same mundane issues we all do.

Ultimate Spider-Man finds a way to make the old new again. We’re definitely going to get a symbiote saga, but instead of an alien being, the new symbiote is a nanite suit and customized AI system that can even shapeshift into Peter if it needs to, and is currently (SPOILER) attached to Peter’s son Richard. That’s a huge change and is giong to make this new symbiote sage quite different; it’s brilliantly inventive, taking something we’ve seen so many (too many) times before and tweaking it, while also following the same basic ideas of the original story. This is the key to Ultimate Spider-Man, and it’s why the book has jumped to the top of the pack at Marvel.

Ultimate Spider-Man Is Exactly the Kind of Book the House of Ideas Should Be Putting Out

Reading Marvel comics nowadays often feels more like a chore for me than anything else. Marvel’s editorial staff is all about putting the toys back on the shelf after every revolutionary idea or reboot, and that gets boring. Marvel never did that in the past; characters developed, their lives changed, and the next set of creators would work with what they had. Marvel seems to actually not like any new ideas, or at least only like them until sales start to go down. This doesn’t fit the Marvel I grew up reading, and, frankly, it can be kind of depressing.

Ultimate Spider-Man excites me (and the vast majority of comic readers, judging from its sales) because it introduces new ideas for a character that is over 60 years old. These ideas still play off what came before, with familiar characters in familiar places, but they also make sure that I can’t guess what is coming next. This is another problem with modern Marvel: I can always guess how things are going to turn out. Ultimate Spider-Man doesn’t do that. I have no idea what is coming next at any given time, and even when I do, (Symbiote Saga), the new ideas are enough to make it work in exciting new ways. It can be hard to find another comic that achieves that, and the fact that it’s a Spider-Man comic –long being the safest and most predictable comic Marvel puts out – is icing on the cake. Ultimate Spider-Man should be the blueprint for every Marvel comic going forward.

Ultimate Spider-Man #14 is on sale now wherever comics are sold.