Ok, what’s the deal? Everyone and their grandma seems to know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. SHIELD knows it, the Fantastic Four knows it, Wolverine almost knows exactly who Spider-Man is, The Green Goblin knows, Doctor Octopus seems to know, and I’m sure the Ultimates can find out through SHIELD files.
Spider-Man isn’t Daredevil. Everyone in the world isn’t suppose to know his secret identity. Oh well, I suppose it is a bit more realistic and might lead to some interesting problems. After all the F.B.I. could probably find out the secret identity of any hero that spent most of his time in one place. I imagine SHIELD has even greater resources.
I actually didn’t mind Green Goblin knowing his identity. Throwing SHIELD, FF, and everyone else seems to be a bit of an overkill to me.
And you forgot Mary Jane. (God willing, Bendis won’t have the Goblin kill her in this arc.)
I-like-it-and-I-don’t. I like it to the extent that it’s true: in today’s information age, how in the heck does someone keep their identity secret? I thought the FF’s means of discovery in UMTU was hysterical, mostly because Peter took for granted that his identity was “secret.”
Wolverine, I guess, is unavoidable with his sense of smell. Again, it was funny how Bendis had Logan “out” Peter in public.
The Doc Ock thing…I don’t get, particularly since it was supposed to be a “shock ending,” and my response was more like “…oh.”
So…on the one hand, I’m curious as to where Bendis takes all this; it might be character development to show how careless young Peter is. On the other hand, it’s getting redundant.
I’m ok with it. ANYthing that distinguishes the Earth-Ultimate Spidey from the Earth-1 Spider-man is fine by me. I remember what happened in Legion when, after the Chu Sting storyline, the writers got stuck regurgitating old stories (or unregurgitaiting: "See? We fooled you! Projectra’s really a snake! We fooled you!). There was a rumor going around on the Usenet during the first few Ultimate Spidey issues that the burglar would snuff Aunt May instead. Obviously it didn’t happen, but BOY I wanted it to happen.
I thought that Bendis’s take on the Torch showed more interest in and sympathy towards the character than…geeze…anyone since Stan Lee.
And I’m still waiting for and hoping for the inevitable issue that’ll show brick wall dividing the cover in half, a construction worker about to be squished by a falling girder and on each side of the wall we see a Spider-Man swinging forward to save the guy. Caption? SPIDER-MAN OF TWO WORLDS
Well I wouldn’t be ok with ANYthing but I’m ok with all the changes they’ve made so far. I’m just worried that his identity will become an open secret like Matt Murdock. Of course now they’re actually dealing with the fact that everyone really knows Murdock is DD in the series.
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Well I’m glad they killed Uncle Ben instead of May. At least this time we got a chance to get to know Ben before he was whacked.
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Yeah, it was a bit sad when he said he no longer hand any friends. I also like out Peter is having anxiety over feelings of being in over his head.
Heh heh, let’s just leave the Silver Age back in the Silver Age. Though I suppose a part of me misses those stories even though I wasn’t alive when they were printed. Like the first issue of Eighty Page Giant where Superboy is turned into a girl when he makes some sexist comments about a female aliens driving skills. He learns a valuable lesson when people assume he is incapable of doing things simply because he is a girl. Hmmm…that’s rather progressive for 1960 I guess.
But most things that distinguish the two are good. I point you to the post-Crisis Superman where a huge chunk of Byrne’s run was doing the “See! Here’s a silver-age story that I’m redoing! But it’s different! See!?” and the horror that the Post Reboot, Post Waid Legion became (before the current team who’s finally giving us something new. Ten years later. I was getting SO tired of looking at a storyline and thinking “Wonderful! Now the Legion is redoing LoSH #274(?) with an updated retelling of Dr. Mayaville. Wheeee!” :rolleyes: )
I like ULTIMATE enough that I want it to continue to have it’s own voice rather than regurgitate the Earth-1 Spider-Man’s adventures. (And so far, Bendis hasn’t! And good for him! The only thing he needs to work on is to give the Earth-Ultimate Spider-man some NEW bad-guys)
Regarding the open secret, I dunno. I’m ok with it. The primary reason that the Earth-1 Peter was so psychotic about his identity was that the Earth-1 May was so damned frail that even the merest hint of stress would put her in the hospital for 6 issues. Earth-Ultimate Peter’s May is much MUCH tougher. Peter doesn’t want her to find out, but only because she’d make him quit. He’s not afraid that she’ll die if she finds out, so yeah…I think he is less protective of his ID.
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I’d still rather they’d whacked May, but I agree. Bendis gave Ben far more of a personality than 30 years of the Earth-1 Spidey ever did.
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The “Super-Sister” story. I think that was even earlier than 1960: maybe '55 or so and it was pretty advanced for it’s time.
But all kidding aside, I really do want to see a meeting between the Earth-1 and Earth-Ultimate Spider-Man. Not yet, Earth-Ultimate needs more development and fleshing out before the first cross-over, but at some point, I think it’d be an interesting idea.
Actually, what I’d really like to see (and I NEVER will) would be to see Crisis on Three Worlds with an Earth-1, Earth-Ultimate, Earth-Spider-Girl team-up.
I certainly understand your feelings on the subject. During the 90’s I thought Spider-Man hit an all time low during the Clone thing. When that was going on I prayed that they’d scrap everything and start Spider-Man all over. I think the only storyline I really liked from that decade was the Cosmic Spidey one. The 90’s was the reason I stopped buying comic books.
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I look forward to new villains but for now I’m happy with his versions of classic villains. I loved how they built up the fight between Spidey and Kraven for 4 issues only to have Spidey kick his butt without breaking a sweat.
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Heretic. You wait right there while I go get my stake and kindling.
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They may have used a story printed earlier. Actually the Eighty Page Giant is from 1964 not 1960.
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You’re sick. Sick, sick, sick, sick. You’re as bad as the Trek fans who want all the captains to go on a mission. It just isn’t natural.
Like I said, just wait right there while I go get my stake and kindling…
Marc
I’m in the same boat at least regarding Spidey. I’d been collecting Spidey for decades and had a complete set back to like issue 30some (34? 35?). Anyway, The Clone Wars got me to actually quit buying Spidey and John (“EVERYTHING MUST BE FROZEN EXACTLY AS IT WAS WHEN I WAS 17! EVERYTHING!” Byrne’s crap after the clone thing just made it worse. (Especially that crappy, forgotten Chapter One crap). I posted a LONG rant about it somewhere (a newsgroup, maybe?) at the time.
JMS and Bendis have a feel for the character that I haven’t seen since geez…at least DeMatthis and DeMatttis’s Spidey wasn’t quite correct to me (his stuff was great, but it just wasn’t Spidey)
And what’s nice is that both of 'em are moving the character forward: May and Peter’s heart-to-heart was wonderful, and I’m fascinated by May’s letter-writing campaign. And I wanna see what happens with the MJ subplot!
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Die, Aunt May, DIE!
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Ok: I see where the confusion came from: I meant the reprinted story was from like 56 or so.
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C’mon. You’re saying you don’t think that seeing Bendis and JMS collaborate doesn’t get you salivating? That the idea of Earth-U Spidey envying his popular, big, strong, semi-famous counterpart and Earth-1 Spidey envying the youth, innocence and (percieved) llacking in adult responsiblities counterpart doesn’t interest you? That you can’t imagine a cover showing the Earth-U Avengers gathered around Earth-U’s Dr. Strange’s crystal ball looking at the Earth-1 Avengers doesn’t get your juices going. Just a little?
Word. As a matter of fact, I think this might be a good time to create a new thread without hijacking this one further. Ok men, follow me back to the thread list!
Why don’t you just add Spider-Man 2099 and Spider-Man 3099 in the group while you’re at it. And both Spider-Women. And the Black Widow just for kicks.
Seriously though, I thought the Spider-Man 2099 line was strong until they started making the hologram some whacked out computer program. Then it just started falling into one unoriginal idea after the other.
Ultimate Spidey is a lot of fun and a great read. Bendis isn’t afraid to let the artist doing the communication instead of filling every panel with thought bubbles or commentary. It can add depth, but it can also bog down a story. And sometimes I just dig silent communication.
I have faith that Bendis knows what he’s doing. He hasn’t let me down yet.
I’ll also raise my hand for the Ultimate Spidey/Silver Age Spidey meeting. But, dammit, they gotta do this thing RIGHT…
…meaning Bendis writes and John Romita SR draws.
Seriously, though…I always dug the rare instances where the Silver Age Superman hung out with the one from the Golden Age. It always seemed like one man looking into a mirror, getting a chance to see where his life was meant to take him. Given how much crap the original Spidey put up with, and the Ultimate Spidey WILL put up with, this might be a nice meeting for young Peter.
I seem to remember a few years ago in the comics, just after
Aunt May had a stroke and just before she died, she and Peter
were sight-seeing on top of the Empire State Building.
She turns to him and asks what its like to crawl up walls and swing from building to building.
I don’t think it will happen. My theory is that Aunt May, Wolverine, and maybe a few others will live through the end of this universe. In the next universe Aunt May will be one of the elders of the galaxy like Galactus or something.
“Gracious me, I do believe I must consume that planet to survive.”
Res is technically correct, but I’ll never accept it. It was part of Byrne and Mackie’s “Return everything to like when Byrne was 17” idiocy.
The story was from Amazing Spider-Man 400.
It was pretty much shown in Amazing Spider-Man 200 that Aunt May figured things out, and DeMatthis’s explaination in 400 made perfect sense.
Then it got Byrned. :rolleyes:
I heard a rumor (unconfirmed, so take it for what it’s worth) that when JMS came onto Spidey he badly wanted to have it turn out that the May who was running around was a robot or clone or something. Marvel allegedly nixed saying the only thing worse than the Byrne/Mackie ressurection would to have yet another “everything you know is wrong!” storyline.
All that said, JMS is doing some cool things with May.
Something like that (sorta) happened during Marvel’s “Assistant Editors Month” waaaaaaaaaaaaay back when. I forgot which issue of what tile it was, but one of the Spider-titles had Galactuc coming to Earth, running across Aunt May, then Galactus deciding to spare Earth and giving her powers to become his next herald. Aunt May ends up as a gold-plated cosmic-powered starlight-flying force known as … Golden Oldie!
The story ends with
Peter waking up and realizing it was a dream, then the writer waking up and realizing it was a dream, then editor Jim Sallicrup(?) waking up and realizing it was a dream, then all the Spidey-readers out there waking up and realizing it was a dream…
The “Super-Sister” story. I think that was even earlier than 1960: maybe '55 or so and it was pretty advanced for it’s time.