Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man

[cyberghostface]

So here we are, the big finish to Peter Parker's tenure on 'Ultimate Spider-Man' (but not my last post in the series, there's one more). For this arc Bendis was reunited with original artist Mark Bagley. This was a pretty big event for Marvel right down to the ominous previews (which were just 'Death of Spider-Man' leading people to wonder if 616's days were numbered) to the multiple variant covers to the last issue being in a polybag. (I always found the last bit to be kind of funny; they said it was to prevent spoilers but then they went to the press with the ending a day before its release.)

#156 opens with Norman Osborn alive in prison. The last time we saw him Carol Danvers blew his head off but apparently he has a healing factor. Of course, he escapes.

A little bit of context: 'Death of Spider-Man' was a semi-crossover (more of an overlap) with the 'Ultimates vs Ultimate Avengers' miniseries at the time. You don't really need to know what happened beyond both teams are fighting each other at the time.

#157...

Peter tells May and Gwen to leave because they're in danger.



Norman is pissed at the "we" assertion. He throws Otto out the window.

#158...

Spidey wakes up in rubble.

He sees the Sinister Six heading for his home.








Both Johnny and Norman are knocked out.






#159...

The fight continues.














#160...

During the fight the Human Torch wakes up and tries to blast Norman but since they're both fire-based it just makes the latter stronger.

Comments

[scorntx]

This storyline... hoo boy, this storyline.
It really comes out of nowhere, almost like the people in charge just came into Bendis' office one afternoon and were all "hey, Brian, can you kill Spidey? K'thnx, bye."
(Personal aside, I remember thinking right up until the finale issue that they weren't gonna kill Peter. It was just going to be a metaphorical death, like Spider-Man as an identity dies or something.)

And Norman's resurrection really does have that "****! What do I do?" feel to it.
He got his head blown open! He died. In a largely satisfactory way!
And of course the escape is just...
It's asinine.
It is.
The man's a psychopath who's escaped from their jail-cell before, who's come back from being dead, so they just... stick him in a regular cell again. They don't even try to drug him to the gills or anything!
It's like they were hoping he'd escape.
And look, he escapes!
(And kills Doc Sampson. Because lest we forget, this is the Ultimate Universe, where minor characters die a lot.)
This really is where Norman stopped being a remotely interesting villain.

Shame you left out the scene of Cap being a JERK! to Peter, because it's a nice exploration of why Steve's so unfair on Peter.
If this storyline hadn't happened, would Peter have told him about Uncle Ben? About his parents? About Gwen?
Would Steve have realised he was wrong?
... suppose we'll never know.
And it does set up the scene of Peter taking a bullet for Steve.

Johnny taking out Norman was pretty satisfying, though.
But it does make his Final Form change all the more inexplicable.
If Normy's fuelled by fire, why didn't he go all One Winged Angel the first time Johnny was doing his thing?
(On an aside, which I brought up waaaay back when, the constant evolution of Norman's powers and appearances was a nice touch. Guess Bagley and Bendis worked on that together, because none of the other artists did anything similar.)

The Aunt May pulling out a gun thing is both awesome and kind of hilarious (and since the Symbiote War arc established she had a gun, perfectly within character without coming out of nowhere).
Plus, y'know, she's a little old lady. Being scary-awesome is what old people in fiction do.

And the ending is pretty sad (even if marred by the Not Quite Dead shot of Norman). And also so Peter.
Badly wounded, he goes rushing to fight five people he'd have difficulty with one-on-one rather than seeking help, because dammit, that's who he is, and this time it gets him killed.
...
Only he got better, making all that poignancy utterly pointless.

[aperturedreams]

And then even the him getting better became utterly pointless, because now he doesn't exist anymore

[thehood]

Did they make it clear it was him? Because it could have been the Scorpion clone.

[scorntx]

It was pretty unambiguous that it was the One True Peter.

[cyberghostface]

They made it pretty clear it was the real Peter. Also the Scorpion clone had the tail permanently fused with his spine.

[silverhammerman]

I never really connected with Ultimate Spider-Man, but I think this storyline generally managed to be satisfying and the best possible version of what it was trying to be. The Human Torch and Iceman kinda get jobbed out in the big fight, but I still always like seeing a big "Spidey takes on all comers" fight. And it does manage to land emotionally, I think, even just from these pages.

But then Bendis brought both Peter and Norman back (in the latter case for like, the fourth time) and kinda ruined it. I've never really understood why Bendis did that sort of thing in USM, it's like he was writing in a finite style where stories could actually have endings, but then he'd just nakedly walk back on them and deflate the whole thing. I wonder where he'd have gone with that stuff if USM hadn't finally been rolled into the 616.

[hot_pie]

I'm so confused. Peter is dead, there is a kid named Miles, but then I saw Miles jibber-jabbing with another spidey around the "Doom is God" storyline I think. I have no idea where to pick up a storyline, what to get, and why should I?

Note: I'm am a collector since the late 70s, stopped somewhere around the 90s when everyone was obsessed with pouches and crosshatching the crap out of everything, and have tried to get back to the Marvel world.

[philippos42]

The Spider-Man books went into alternate realities for a while with Spider-Verse and Web Warriors. You may have seen an issue where Miles was talking to a different world's Peter Parker. "Ultimate Universe" Peter was dead, but "616" Peter (the one in Amazing Spider-Man) wasn't.

After the "Doom is God" stuff, they ended the Ultimate Universe, merged Miles and a handful of other Ultimate characters into the main timeline, and now Miles is an Avenger Champion and Peter (not this Peter, an older one) runs some kind of microelectronics business and is also Spider-Man.

[aperturedreams]

It was probably just the main universe's Peter Parker because the two hung out during Secret Wars

[hot_pie]

Thanks~!

[janegray]

So Ultimate!Peter, Mary Jane, May, Gwen and Johnny Storm are all dead now?

[cyberghostface]

Well Reed is rebuilding the multiverse and Bendis has been vague on his Tumblr as to what happened to the people in the UU so who knows...

[coldfury]

Basically, the first thing you need to wrap your head around is that there were two universes that mattered: The regular marvel universe, and the 'Ultimate' Marvel universe.

At one point, they started labeling their universes and as a thumb of the nose at DC's naming scheme the name Marvel Universe was '616' and the Ultimate was '1610'.

These posts have been concerning 'Ultimate Spider-Man', the Spider-Man of Earth-1610. He was an attempt to modernize Spider-Man, a back to basics approach. It was largely successful, but as you can see at it wore on it developed the same problems as the Marvel Universe, and recently Marvel decided to end the 'Ultimate' line.

As the Ultimate line wore on, Peter ended up dying, as you saw above, and was succeeded by Miles. Before the Ultimate line folded, Peter did end up returning, but not with much point. Shortly afterward, Marvel ran an event called 'Secret Wars' which destroyed *all* universes. Miles and his supporting cast were one of the few survivors of the Ultimate universe and were folded into the main universe, thanks to the events of the Secret Wars event. So the Peter you see Miles hanging around with now is the main, 616 Peter.

As a side note, after Peter-1610 died, at one point Peter-616 found his way to the Ultimate Earth and met Miles, in a mini series called Spider-Men.

Miles and Peter also met up in a Spider-line crossover 'Spider-verse', where the Spider-men of the multi-verse came together to fight a multiversal enemy.

[obsidianwolf]

The 616 as the main marvel universe thing goes back to IIRC Moore's run on Captain Brittain, He didn't like the idea that the main universe would have a special number like 1 or prime and he was constantly feuding wiht marvel editorial so he picked a generic number that just happened to be an archaic interpretation of the number of the beast. So he got to say the Marvel universe was just another alternate reality in the multiverse and the devil at the same time.

It became very popular as a fan nickname for the MU and eventually marvel adapted the numbering scheme for all their alternate realities. It is so entrenched that even after supposedly shifting to Earth Prime or something post secret wars it still shows up as the actual designation for the main marvel u a lot.

[hot_pie]

Thank you!!

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I liked this, honestly. It feels like the best way Spider-Man could go out, lead-ups and whatnot aside.

Incidentally, cyberghostface, I'd love it if you did keep this going with Miles' book.

[cyberghostface]

I've thought about it. I'll see what I can do.

[shadowpsykie]

I'm NOT CRYING! YOU"RE CRYING!