Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Vol. 5 by Brian Michael Bendis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects Issues 28-33 of Ultimate Comics Spider-man and is set one year after the previous volume as Miles Morales has been out of action for a year following the death of his mother in the previous volume. Meanwhile, some teenagers who have received amazing powers as result of illegal experiment are being unleashed on the city.

The story is generally good, but it's not without problems. The biggest is in the "Spider-man No More" storyline. Miles is incredibly surly to everyone who is even gently trying to get him back into the Superhero game or in general. While aging the character a year is a good thing, I think that this year of not being Spider-man almost makes him seem too passive and even what gets him back into being Spider-man is less a de, cision and more something he's pushed into. I also think there are far too many people hassling him about it at once. It's repetitive and what's worse, we don't really get to see Miles thought process because we're just hearing everyone trying to push.

However, once we get past that, and to Jessica Drew's plot, there's a lot to like as we meet young people with superpowers. We learn their back stories and they're interesting people who don't react in ways that are typical of comic books. And then everything is set up for all sorts of awesomeness to break forth in Issue 33, which it does.

SO, while this book is probably the weakest of the five volumes, once the main storyline really gets started, it really is another solid read.



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