Ultimate Spider-Man: Superstars

[cyberghostface]

#66...













The car crashes over him.



#67...







Logan breaks Spider-Man out of jail.









#68...

Johnny Storm is attending Midtown High as a way to lay low. There Liz Allan falls for him and Mary Jane is able to get the two together.















#69...

Johnny apologizes and runs off. Later...



Mary Jane suggests to Peter that she try to help Johnny as Spider-Man.





There's a fire in a nearby building.









#70...

Peter and MJ are on their date.









Peter and Ben Urich are set to interview Strange for the Bugle but Wong tells them that he is not available. Peter's spider-sense goes off and goes to investigate.







#71...

Spider-Man is stuck in a nightmare state while Wong and Strange try to get him out of it.

Comments

[donnblake]

Hmm. So was Doctor Strange Jr. trying to balance fame, fortunes, personal enlightenment, his father issues, and the fate of the cosmos one of those neat ideas that popped up in the Ultimates line but never really went anywhere?

[trooper924]

If I remember correctly, Strange was one of the casualties in Ultimatum. So, the second one.

[scorntx]

Continuing the running theme of Bendis writing Jean Grey as a terrible person, with little-to-no sense of ethics.
"Oh hey I'll just swap Wolverine's mind with someone else and there'll be no consequence whatsoever."
(Yes, I know the story was mandated by someone else and Bendis didn't like it. But Jean's still a terrible person in it.)

Also, Kitty's kind of a terrible person as well.
Peter does kind of have a point. Mutants are thoughtless and insensitive. Not like those wonderful, perfect and peaceful Inhumans!
(BUY INHUMAN COMICS!!!)

-"She thinks she might be a mutant. She thought she lit you on fire"-
Okay, that is actually kind of clever, for Bendis.

And wow, MJ dressed up all fancy and adult-like. I remember a teenaged me being... er, well... I remember that.
(Well, okay, not MJ but actually Nightmare pretending to be MJ. Stupid sexy Nightmare)
Also, speaking as someone who isn't into men, Peter actually looks pretty good too.
Kinda like... I dunno, Romita-esque?

[mrstatham]

They weren't pushing Inhumans at all at the time. So your point is moot.

[silverhammerman]

Ugh, that last joke in the Wolverine story still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It doesn't make Wolverine look like a lovable scamp, or a rascal, or even a charming sleaze, it makes him look like a skeevy creep. I mean, maybe looking at from in the culture of today makes the awfulness of that joke more noticeable, but honestly, how did Bendis ever think that crap would land?

Making Jean Grey a complete dumpster fire of a person is also a pretty questionable choice, though I do think it would have been pretty great if in every interaction they had after this, Spider-Man had just outright hated the X-Men on a personal level.

Bendis' overhaul to Doctor Strange has always been weird to me. I happen to think the traditional origin story is quite good, and making Doctor Strange a junior with a bunch of tedious daddy issues is a massive step down. I suppose it would be fine if the character had ever gone anywhere, but as with a lot of the concepts Bendis introduced, it simply didn't.

The Johnny Storm story is pretty cool though. Spider-Man advising other characters from the position of the more experience hero is always fun.

[cyberghostface]

It probably would have blown up in today's outrage culture but even then I think Wolverine is supposed to come off as asshole (like when he's rude to Aunt May or leering at the cheerleaders) as opposed to being likable. Ultimate Wolverine was generally a prick.

[silverhammerman]

You're definitely right about Ultimate Wolverine, but I still feel like the joke goes too far. It basically ruins the character for me, and I don't think that was the intent (unless maybe Bendis was making a point about Millar's version of the character) and fails as a joke. Then again, I am pretty uptight, so ymmv.

As you say though, this joke would never get made in 2016, and I think it's one of the more subtle details from the stories you've been posting which dates the series.

[silicondream]

I think Bendis probably was making a point about Millar's version of the character--and he made the same point in some of Peter's interactions with the Ultimates. Millar tended to write the same sort of soap-opera emotional drama for the Ultimate characters as the 616 versions have always had, despite the fact that it's a lot harder to care about that stuff when half the characters are murderous rapey psychopaths of one flavor or another. Everyone ends up looking bizarrely callous and self-involved, and Peter, with his more 616ish morality and personality, calls them out on that.

[onsokumaru]

Yes, that's the same Wolverine who tried to kill Cyclops beause he stood between him and Jean.

[silicondream]

Peter's parting line is one of my favorite X-Men summaries ever. "The world fears and hates us. Because we're @#$*@!#^@#^(."

[seisachtheia]

That Peter spends the whole end of the issue swearing redeemed a lot of that issue for me

[onsokumaru]

To be fair, it's more a telepath problem than a mutant problem.
Telepaths, especially when Bendis writes them, are rude creeps with a 1984 mentality.

[silicondream]

Yeah, it's not actually accurate. It's just funny.

I'd say it's an Ultimate problem, mostly.

[lieut_kettch]

Geez, teenaged Jean can be a dick, no matter what universe she's in.

[angelophile]

Ah yes, pedophile Wolverine. Because COMEDY.

[cyberghostface]

She's not prepubescent...?

[mrstatham]

MJ and Peter were both under eighteen. So.. Yeah. He kind-of/absolutely is.

[cyberghostface]

Pedophilia is a mental illness where the subject has a primary sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Unless he's going after nine year olds he's not a pedo.

[mrstatham]

Whatever you say. He's a much older man perving on a girl who is not a legal adult, even if he is in Peter's body in doing so.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah he's being a pervert and would be a rapist if he actually did anything. Not arguing that.

[angelophile]

Okay. Ephebophilic.