Ultimate Spider-Man

Thursday, August 03, 2006

You know I love comics right? And how a lot of them are declining in quality and originality? Well here is my review of Ultimate Spider-Man....Well the current storyline at least!!!....Not sure if I already did that. I did, then it's just a fresh reminder. However, lets recap the Ultimate Marvel universe. Basically, they revamped the original Marvel universe to make bring it up to date with today's world. While everything is relatively the same there a some differences like Captain America being more violent than his 616 (Regular Marvel Universe) counterpart, Bucky being alive and living well into old age, Doctor Doom being a more goatlike creature, Nick Fury looks like Samuel L. Jackson, X-Men being all fucked up...Don't even want to go into that, the Avengers are now known as the Ultimates, Punisher being a wimp (To be honest he only showed up in one comic issue so far), and many other things I don't want to get into.

Now the current storyline is a retelling of the craptacular Clone Saga. Spider-Man finds out he has shitloads of clones yada yada. So far their are two parts already out but bygumm I will review them! The first part was slow like all firsts, it begins with a phone call between a young Peter Parker and Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat of X-Men fame). It's full of goodness that you can only fine on crappy daytime soap operas. Seeing as how they are both currently dating. You see, earlier issues shows that when dating Mary Jane Watson, Peter broke up with her to protect her from bad guys and all that jazz. By dating Kitty, Peter has someone that's already in the superhero business and that she can defend herself. Unlike MJ who is just a teenage girl who runs when fear is near! We fastforward to the mall. Suddenly the Scorpion appears!!! I kind of like this, first showing of the Ultimate version of the Scorpion. Besides shooting toxic crap from a tail he also shoots toxic crap from is wrists! Interesting to note that he just shows up randomly without anything leading up to it. After getting a beatdown from Spider-Man we discover that it's none other than...Peter Parker?!?! That's right, he's a goddamn clone. I get why they made him a clone, what I don't get is why make the clone the Scorpion? Are we going to see the real Scorpion if he ever appears again in the Marvel Universe?

Being freaked out, he goes to the only person that can help: Mr. Fantastic. Leaving the clone with Mr. Fantastic (who is in his twenties I might add) and the Fantastic Four he heads home to Aunt May. At home, he discovers that Mary Jane was kidnapped. OH SNAPS!!! Outside, we discovered that this person climbed up the side of the house. Yay, it's another clone that kidnapped her. Waking up Mary Jane finds out that she is being kept in a giant glass bubble being held captive by the clone of Parker. We find out that this place is at an abandoned Osborn Industries factory. (Cue dramatic music). Looking for Mary Jane, Peter goes into an abandoned warehouse. While searching the warehouse, Peter runs into.....Spider-Woman/Girl? After getting into a fight and losing Peter goes to his old house and discovers Gwen Stacy....Alive. So far this version of the Clone Saga is actually better than the old version...Which was crap. It so far has many many plot twists like the appearance of a Spider-Woman/Girl not quite sure yet. They also brought in Gwen Stacy...Most likely a clone. I do have one disappointment with the Ultimate Version of Gwen...She died in a crappy way which is a disgrace to the character. She died in a less dramatic way and they made her character a whinny little punk ass bitch. However, her appearance in the clone saga was not as surprising since in the original there was a Gwen Stacy clone. So we will have to see how this goes. I give the first two parts a B, hoping that when it concludes it would have a better conclusion and can be bumped to having an A seeing as how I'm only doing the first two parts.

As a side note the Ben Reilly in the Ultimate Universe is an African American with no ties to Peter Parker, this Ben was also responsible for creating the Ultimate version of Carnage.