jakebe | Comic Reviews: Ultimate Spider-Man (Reply)

We’re knee-deep in the War of the Symbiotes storyline, and it still feels like we’re getting the biggest pieces of the puzzle. Bendis is notorious for taking his time with his stories, and by now he’s gotten the balance between exposition and action down pretty well.

Still, there’s a lot of information that we apparently need to be aware of, and even though we’re halfway through the story now it still feels like all of the chess pieces are being put on the board. There are a lot of moving parts to this, and I have to wonder how everything is going to fit together in the last three issues.

Here’s what you need to know. The fathers of Peter Parker and Eddie Brock tried to create a cure for cancer, but instead they made a new parasitic organism that eventually became known as Venom. The organism bonded with Eddie, Spider-Man beat the tar out of him, and no one knows what’s happened to him since then. Months later, Eddie’s back as a shell of his former self. When he gets near Spidey, something strange happens; Peter gets distractingly heavy flashes of pain, and the suit goes crazy trying to get to him. We don’t really know why. Silver Sable and a band of mercenaries are after Eddie, though, but we don’t know why there, either.

In this issue we find that Eddie’s done some time over at Trask Laboratories trying to remove himself from the parasite. We’re not quite sure how he escaped, but he did, which means he and Peter mixed it up again – this time during a class field trip to the museum. Silver Sable ended the fight by abducting Eddie, and delivering him right back to Trask Labs. Spider-Man, meanwhile, barely escaped being shot by the police. There’s a brief interlude before Spidey-Venom III, but by the end of that fight (and the end of the issue), Venom has bonded with Peter Parker.

Like I said, a lot of moving parts. Bendis keeps the action as clean as possible, even though we’re reaching Morrison-style craziness here. My favorite scene is the brief chat between Peter and Mary Jane; he still finds ways to inject the ‘low-rent superhero’ concept into the story, which is just awesome to me. No matter who Peter Parker meets or what his reputation might be, he’s still really this geeky little high-school kid who never has enough money to do what he really wants. Having Spider-Man find little black dots in his blood through the lens of a science-kit microscope is incredibly cool because it’s incredibly grounding. Little touches like that abound, even after 120 issues.

Spider-Man being Venom has been done before, but I’m curious to see where Bendis goes with it. Right now there are no immediate personal issues going on with Peter; he’s back in a stable relationship with Mary Jane; Aunt May is incredibly cool; the finances aren’t great, but they could be worse. The crisis this time isn’t personal, so there’s not much potential for character growth here as far as I can see. And you know what? It’s totally not necessary. It might be fun to see what Peter could do with a little out-of-control power.

Meanwhile, Eddie Brock continues to be one of the most pathetic villains in the Ultimate universe. It’s not that he can’t kick ass, because we all know he can. He frickin’ ate a horse and policeman during that last fight with Spidey! He’s just been surprisingly inert through this whole saga, though. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s been ground down to nothing inside that Venom suit, but it’s curious that beyond the immediate concern of feeding the parasite, Eddie doesn’t really want anything.

There’s one more wild card that I forgot to mention: the Beetle. During all of this he’s hit both the Roxxon corporation and Trask Labs, taking an unknown sample from the former and a piece of Venom’s tongue from the latter. What’s he after? He, like almost everyone else here, isn’t saying. I would say that it’s quite possible he’s the dad of either Peter or Eddie, but that’s a bit too sudsy for me. With so many questions being thrown up – and so many more being added with every issue – I seriously doubt all of them are going to be answered by the time this wraps up.

Rating: 7/10.

When last we left off, the Beetle had facilitated the escape of Eddie Brock/Venom from Trask Laboratories. Eddie, curious about exactly who the Beetle was and why he had cut off his tongue, tried to apprehend him for questioning. Then Spider-Man and Silver Sable’s team showed up and all hell broke loose. The Venom suit, apparently fed up with Eddie’s spinelessness, left him and bonded to Peter Parker – against his will, of course.

In the last issue we learned that whatever Venom is, it has a bit of Parker DNA to it. Peter’s father used some of his own blood in the experiment. This is probably why Venom has such an affinity for Spider-Man, why there were little black dots in Peter’s blood, and why he has such astounding headaches whenever he’s near the parasite. We still don’t understand the exact connection, but hey, it’s something right?

This issue doesn’t have too much in the way of answers; there’s mostly butt-kicking. Soon after Peter becomes Venom, the Ultimates show up to put the threat down. The resulting battle royale, and Spidey’s star-struck reaction, is one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time.

We’re treated to Peter’s internal dialogue while the fight is raging on, and it totally makes the issue. The parasite, we know, is hungry and wants to feed, but Peter is simultaneously thrilled and horrified about what’s happening to him. He loves Iron Man, but he doesn’t want to be known as the guy who accidentally ate Captain America. Who would? He holds his own for a while – tossing around the Ultimates like dolls and taking their best shots without slowing down too much – but Thor ends the fight decisively with, you know, god stuff. I had no idea Thor could throw down like that, by the way. The last time I saw him, he was getting his ass kicked by the Red Hulk.

Anyway, Peter wakes up in his jammies, and Aunt May comes in specifically to berate him about staying out all night. This is a little confusing, but that’s mostly because of my poor memory. Didn’t he tell her about Spider-Man already? I seem to remember that. Or was that in the regular Marvel universe? Or a “What If?” story? Too many realities to keep track of.

Nick Fury leaves Peter an e-mail about meeting as soon as he wakes up, so Peter takes his spare, badly-patched costume and the only web-shooter he could find and heads on over to the mega-whoopus SHIELD helicarrier. A couple of thrilling things here; how awesome is it that Spider-Man has to go to SHIELD headquarters in the most low-rent fashion possible? And how awesome is it that Fury’s e-mail address is oneeyedeagle@ultimates.gov?

What little tidbits we do get about the situation come at the end. Spidey meets Cap, Iron Man and Fury, and learns that they have the Venom suit, but don’t plan on destroying it – they want to test it. What’s worse, is that everyone who knows about it wants it bad enough to fight each other over it. We’re left with the revelation that the Venom parasite just might cause the next world war.

The stakes are certainly high. Trask Labs wants Venom, and does the Beetle. Eddie Brock, once he’s done crying in a dumpster somewhere, will probably want his power back. If the government can find a way to weaponize the discovery, then they most certainly will. It’ll be tremendously difficult for Spider-Man to get what he wants, which is to destroy the Venom parasite once and for all. Of course, if he doesn’t this means chances are it’ll be coming back in one form or another, so I fully expect for this to be a pyrrhic victory at best for Peter.

There are two more issues before the arc is wrapped up here, and we can’t expect everything to be tied up by the time we see USM 128. I fully expect that Venom won’t be in SHIELD custody for long, but I’m not sure it’ll be reunited with Eddie Brock. It’ll be very interesting to see what Eddie’s like without the suit, and what he’ll want now that he’s free of that overriding hunger. Apparently this storyline parallels the Ultimate Spider-Man video game, so if you’ve played it you know how this plays out already. I’m really glad that I’m kept guessing for now, though.

Rating: 7/10.