Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Vol. 1: The World According to Peter Parker

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (2009) (Collected Editions)

by Brian Michael Bendis, David Lafuente (Artist)

Almost ten years ago, Ultimate Spider-Man launched the Ultimate line, a reinvention of the Marvel Universe that defied the odds and every expectation. Today, it happens This new chapter in the life of the teenaged webslinger picks up in the aftermath of Ultimatum and completely redefines the status quo of Spider-Man for the next generation! With a new supporting cast, new villians, and maybe even a new Spider-Man, this new chapter will keep you guessing . Collects Ultimate Spider-Man #1-6.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Spider Man, Comic Book, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

A comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics. For over eight years Bendis’s books have consistently sat in the top five best sellers on the nationwide comic and graphic novel sales charts.

Though he started as a writer and artist of independent noir fiction series, he shot to stardom as a writer of Marvel Comics' superhero books, particularly Ultimate Spider-Man.

Bendis first entered the comic world with the "Jinx" line of crime comics in 1995. This line has spawned the graphic novels Goldfish, Fire, Jinx, Torso (with Marc Andreyko), and Total Sell Out. Bendis is writing the film version of Jinx for Universal Pictures with Oscar-winner Charlize Theron attached to star and produce.

Bendis’s other projects include the Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Award-nominated Powers (with Michael Avon Oeming) originally from Image Comics, now published by Marvel's new creator-owned imprint Icon Comics, and the Hollywood tell-all Fortune and Glory from Oni Press, both of which received an "A" from Entertainment Weekly.

Bendis is one of the premiere architects of Marvel's "Ultimate" line: comics specifically created for the new generation of comic readers. He has written every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man since its best-selling launch, and has also written for Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, as well as every issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six.

Brian is currently helming a renaissance for Marvel’s AVENGERS franchise by writing both New Avengers and Mighty Avengers along with the successful ‘event’ projects House Of M, Secret War, and this summer’s Secret Invasion.

He has also previously done work on Daredevil, Alias, and The Pulse.

Reviews

[Daniella Diogo]

in the mood after watching spiderman no way home

[Subham]

This was so good omg!

So we see what happened after ultimatum and some stuff doesn't make sense but it is what it is and we see Pete fighting against Mysterio here mostly and we see what that villain did to Kingpin and his brutality and I love how he doesn't hold back, just one crazy plan after another and challenging Pete like no one has so far. And then his home life is even crazier with what Aunt may has done with Ice man and Human Torch and whatever Kitty is upto and wow its "Spidey and his amazing friends".. Its an insane volume with so many changes from last time, new cast, new challenges, new status quo, old villains with new motives and plans and all around new!

So yeah it makes for a great read and for someone is a great introduction to USM and trust me you will love it after reading this haha! Plus the art is okayish I guess, a step down from previous ones but it work and so yeah do read it for sure! I highly recommend it!!

[Anne]

3.5 stars, but I'm rounding up because I have a geek-crush on Bendis. It really should have been a 5 star book for me, because I love Ultimate Spider-Man. In the end, though, there were a few too many things that I just didn't like. First thing, not crazy about some of the art. It was a little over-the-top and...well, cartooney in spots. I probably could've overlooked the art, but I'm still scratching my head over the Gwen/MJ switch. What happened? Did I miss something? I'm guessing this huge chunk (six months, a year?) is missing so that the writers will have a chance to go back and tell the Between This and That story. Felt kinda rip-offish, for some reason.
Don't get me wrong, I still had a great time reading this! Just prepare yourself for a lot of WTF? moments.

[Tiag⊗ the Mutant]

For a series that is gonna end with the death of the main character, this was a pretty juvenil first volume, feels kinda off, not really a fan of the art style or the cheap teenage soap opera. I'm dropping this and jumping straight into the Miles Morales run.

[Sesana]

Comparing this volume to the Ultimate Spider-Man from before Ultimatum and you'll get your heart broken. Set six months later, Peter is totally not at all dead (what a cheap trick) and Peter is now suddenly dating Gwen. Ok... There's a lot of sudden changes, apparently for the sake of having sudden changes. (MJ to Gwen, Daily Bugle to fast food, nearly empty house to very full one) I just don't know where Bendis is going with any of this stuff. I assume that we'll get explanations and full story at some point, but sooner would be better. Dialog is still good enough, it's just that the plotting confuses me.

[Jess Hayes]

I definitely regret not waiting to start this until Vol 2 was actually here, because now it's ended the way it has and I just need to know what's going to happen next!

This was a really fun read - I haven't read any of the books from the Ultimatum Arc, so I'm glad I got to Ultimate X: Origins before starting this one or I'd have been a little confused as to what was going on.

I love the dynamic between Peter and Johnny in general, so I'm excited that he's in this series, I'm looking forward to see how the new loving situation at the Parker house is going to go now that there's so many people live there - here's hoping Vol 2 shows up tomorrow!

[Anya]

Maybe this was a bad place to start for Spider-Man comics, but I don't understand all the glowing reviews. Besides the story problems, the silly details in the artwork were distracting. From the bendy/curvy/skinny limbs to all the girls having the same face, it was quite a mess. Was it really necessary for every girl, except Mary Jane, in Peter Parker's high school to have black nail polish and eyebrow piercings? I know this is a reboot and there will be some retcon-ing going on, but how is this volume 1, with the first page covering more than a year?

[Shannon Appelcline]

The World According to Peter Parker (1-6). Six months after Ultimatum, Bendis offers us a soft-boot of the series that's pretty cool: Johnny Storm and Bobby Drake come to live with Peter and May! It's a status quo that's utterly unlike anything else in the Marvel or Ultimate universe, past or present. Then we get the continuing threat of Mysterio, who comes across quite cool. Overall, a great start to a new run, too bad it would be short-lived [5/5].

[zxvasdf]

Bendis takes on another Ultimate Spiderman. It's a remix of the original story line, and though many might not like it, it poses interesting possibilities.

Aunt May finds out who Spiderman really is early on, and Peter Parker juggles one too many female interests. What more, this is in the wake of a water related disaster, and a lot of children are dispossessed. Mutants aren't well received in this climate. Aunt May has an interesting solution to this. A new superhero makes an appearance, and a re-imagined Mysterio becomes obsessed with Spiderman's demise.

I'm not too sure I like Peter Parker's look, but... I'm keeping an open mind, especially if the writer is Bendis. It'll grow on ya.

[Jacob A. Mirallegro]

I went into this with very low expectations, it was better than I expected but still not that good. The time jump could've been handled better although I think the status quo shift in making everybody like Spider-Man was good. Gwen Stacy feels the most out of character and a lot of the stuff with her/relationship drama feels very half baked and dull. Lafuente's art is not that good, I think some of the action scenes are fine but for the most part I'm not a fan.
Maybe a 2.5

[Matthew Ward]

2.75 stars. The story is still interesting and I’m interested in the characters here, especially the big bad and Peter’s girlfriend issues. I just don’t dig this new art on this book at all. I’m not sure how long it lasts, but if it finished the run with this art, I sure hope I can at least get used to this.

[Tabs]

Not a great spider-man entry. A disjointed and confusing story with stilted dialogue and incredibly confusingly drawn action sequences. I didn't care for the art style much either.

Disappointing.

[Adhitia Adrian]

Seriously this is a bad start for me. Teen story combine with cartoonized artwork is really make me mad. This is crazy.

[Dan]

They need to stop retelling Spiderman. ugh the teen drama gets old. I really didn't like the way this was drawn either. Spiderman looked like a bobble head with the overly round head.

[Jorge Figueroa]

¿Qué diablos? ¿no había pasado esto hace mucho números? ¿por qué otra vez?

Necesito leer todo Ultimate Spider-man desde el principio

[Niki]

This art is absolutely disgusting. Shame on you David Lefuente!

[Jaime T]

surprisingly fun and enjoyable read! high school spider-man who juggles crime fighting with all his friendships (Gwen, MJ, Johnny Storm, Kitty Pryde, and Bobby Drake) is always fun to read. and those crossovers are just craze. mysterio is pretty interesting but kinda generic so far. art style is okay on some pages and really good on others. overall, not a bad start to a series!

[Joella]

So I thought this book was part of the 2013 YALSA The Hub Reading Challenge…but I don’t think it was. It turns out that this one said “Ultimate Spider-man” on the cover and “Ultimate Comics” on the spine. Yeah, how confusing can it get, right? There is another Ultimate Comics Spider-man, v. 1 that was one of YALSA’s best. I also could have looked at the publishers date to realize that I had the wrong book for YALSA’s reading challenge…those books are mostly published within the last year. I just didn’t pay that close of attention when putting this book on hold from the library. But it was still good. So you still get a review…aren’t you lucky? And, it just goes to show that I need to pay close attention when trying to figure out exactly what comic is what. Because their names are VERY similar! Anyway, about that review!

There was a wave that destroyed New York City. Spider-Man went into search for survivors. And now he is a hero and everyone likes having this superhero around. But there are more mysteries now that the survivors have started to group together. Some are trying to take advantage of the vulnerable world. Others are helping Spider-Man. No one is certain what will happen next.

Spider-Man is trying to keep his identity secret. Before the wave many people suspected what high school he went to. A few even suspected what student at that high school he was. Now people are grateful for Spider-Man. And when police show up at a crime scene Spider-Man tries to explain himself (and tell them how he didn’t actually do all the bad things it might look like he did when they first see him amidst the crime) and the police believe him. Spider-Man isn’t sure what unnerves him more, that the police and everyone else trust him completely or that there is more than one mysterious character that keep track of Spider-Man. One seems to be good, while the other not so much.

And to top it all off, life at home just got even more complicated. MJ broke up with him recently. Now he has another girlfriend, Gwen…who also happens to live with him and his grandma. And the Fantastic Four’s Flame is also living there. And Bobby the “mutant” who has ice powers. Peter Parker is concerned that with two recognizable superheroes around people will suspect that he is Spider-Man. So Johnny (the Flame) and Bobby get secret identities as Peter’s cousins.

Life is sure complicated when the most famous superheros turn out to be in high school. And, life is a wee bit more complicated when you have to save the world in-between class and your after school job at a burger joint.

I was very happy with this particular graphic novel. I enjoyed the fact that various superheroes were in high school together. I liked the idea of seeing how this group of teenagers could start to work together and for their own superhero clan. And I can see how Peter Parker is a bit confused not only at what is going on at home but also in trying to figure out who in the world these mysterious super people are (villain? hero? why are they interested in him?).

And let me mention the illustrations. They are brilliant. I totally can see the “high school teenager” elements in some of my favorite comic book superheroes. I liked that. Plus the proportions of the girls didn’t seem as completely off as some of the manga I have read. I liked that.

This is a great start to a series that I’m sure will be enjoyed over and over again. Well done.

[Eric]

Ultimatum has come and gone and now Ultimate Spider-Man has been relaunched and rebooted. Not rebooted in starting from scratch, but mixing up the formula. Which is too bad, because I really liked the formula, even if it had gotten a but tired in some places. But here is the new format, and now Aunt May's house is a boarding house for lost teen heroes. We've got Iceman, the Human Torch, Gwen Stacy, and Spider-Man all under the same rough. Meanwhile, Mary-Jane and Kitty Pride are off doing their things as well.
This volume is heavy on the teen drama, a little bit more than normal. I didn't read the Ultimatum: Requiem story, so I don't know if MJ dumped Peter in that or in an untold story, but it just seems stupid. Having them break up just to get Peter and Gwen together is a dumb decision and just messes up Mary-Jane as a character. Also, Bendis' style for Kitty is very on-off and in this volume, it's off. I'm not the biggest Kitty fan, but he's written the girl as the most moody/whinny mutant in town.
The new version of Mysterio is cool, though he's a very angry man and the classic Mysterio has a little bit more style, but the new take is interesting. The glowing head vs the bubble is probably a good choice.
The art is fun and I think I may enjoy it more than Immonen's but it verges on the manga a bit too much. Overall, this story is still fun, but loses the focus and Spider-centric story I tend to like.

[Mike]

This reboot of Ultimate Spider-Man is a little more serious, dramatic - and still a great read. Bendis knows how to make even the most inconsequential moments into something worth paying attention to, whether it's manning the register at a burger joint, getting a new roommate or negotiating the maze that is teenage love.

Gotta hand it to Bendis and the artists - somehow they take a laughingstock C-list villain like Mysterio and make him look and act like a real threat. He's finally standing on solid ground, actually menacing instead of just being a tool.

I'm a lifer when it comes to Bendis' writing, and I respect the hell out of his efforts to improve his craft. When he's got the time to put into his scripts, they are multi-layered, well-plotted. Incredibly clear and natural dialogue, and makes for fun and exciting stories. On the Bendis-O-Meter, this arc gets a 7/10. I'm not reading this wide-eyed like some of his past works, but this is solid foundation for this reboot run and is a pleasure to read.

[Sean Brennan]

Aunt May's home now turns into a halfway house for troubled 'superhero' teenagers! So, So!

[Kris Ritchie]

not a fan of the new art

[Josh Brown]

Mysterio rocks, but the change in art style gave me whiplash, the amazing friends stuff has always not lived up to core Spider-Man quality, and come on Pete, it's 2009 at this point, get a haircut.

[Andy Connell]

Gwen?! Really?!

[Cyril]

Poor art, poor story, very disappointing
2.4 stars

[Braulio Valenzuela]

No me gusta ni el tono, ni las cosas que están pasando después de Ultimatum ni la adaptación de Mysterio.

[Courtney]

This was my first Spider-Man comic and I loved it.

[José Ignacio]

That was… something

Rating is closer to a 2.5 Stars.

It really sucks that after how masterfully executed the last couple volumes of Ultimate Spidey were, ESPECIALLY after the Clone Saga, we get… this… it’s not terrible (especially not by Bendis' standards, not by a long shot), but it’s not what the other volumes made me expect.

I get that Bendis didn’t wanna play ball and has gone on record stating that Loeb "drowned" his book (i.e. he probably thought Ultimatum was a terrible idea and thought it sucked just as much as everyone else did) but man it really feels that by this point he just doesn’t care.

So the book kicks off with a 6 month time skip from the end of the last volume (and Ultimatum) and you just get thrust into this new status quo, where Peter & MJ and Kitty & Kenny all broke up and Peter is now with Gwen, a prospect that is kinda gross due to their relationship previously being treated more like them being siblings, something which is addressed in the book itself by just being shrugged off by characters, and it all feels unearned and forced.

Sure, there are advantages to being thrust into a new status quo out of the gate but I feel like the cons outweigh those pros, it’s all just disorienting and it feels like it’s different just for the sake of it rather than it being a natural development of the story. Characters feel out of character and just completely different most of the time and you don’t get to know why until bit later in the book.

I will say that at least it continues with Bendis' trademark high school drama stuff but it’s that disconnect that kind of brings it down, I will say that I at least like how he handles the post-Ultimatum rule of mutants being illegal and there’s some fun reveals with that and Peter himself does have some cool moments, but nothing that feels like before.

Mysterio is a great addition, though the mystery of the character in the story is more for the characters themselves rather than the audience because… the audience already know it’s gonna be Quinten Beck, we just need to know his motivation/what exactly is the deal with this particular version of the character.

David Lafuente's art isn't bad, it is bold a new and a very different style from Bagley and Immonen, but I don’t hate it. Sure, there’s parts where the very anime/manga inspired style can look a bit off at times, especially with characters' faces and it is a much more harsh change than it was going from Bagley to Immonen, but it’s a fine enough art style and I don’t hate it.

Overall, kind of a downgrade in a lot of respects but not awful.

[Henry Blackwood]

I felt like the last couple of arcs on the ultimate spidey run fizzled out a little bit. I think they were solid up until the ultimatum banger but that event has changed the game a lot. I watched a video on it last night so I could fill the gaps in with what I was reading in the last trade, and say what you will about the event - as ballsy as it is, it does one thing well and that’s I guess fire up that ultimate universe by a lot.
So many characters are dead and the landscape for mutants in this ultimate universe now has gotten much worse since the event. I like that, it makes this ‘new’ run feel fresh again. It feels like that 6 months break in the book has given a lot of change and progression in the characters that couldn’t be made as smoothly with the story format of the last run.
So, I like that they dropped the shock value of Gwen being peters new girlfriend (also, ultimate Spider-Man is a Mack daddy), I like that Kitty was doing her thang as a shrouded superhero and that it seems like she’ll get some time in the sun to highlight the interesting stuff happening with the mutants right now. I also think Mysterio was terrific in this and a perfect little pick me up since I saw far from home not too long ago.
Call me weird but I find the relationship factor with Peter some of the most interesting subplot of the whole series. It’s not even a triangle anymore! It’s a love cube. I know I shouldn’t be interested in it because I know he’s just going to go back to MJ in a few trades even though she just leaves all the fucking time and if i was Pete i wouldn’t be having it anymore - how many times do you need to break up with someone before you realise it’s a mistake to leave? But whatever, I still find it interesting to see him with Gwen. And it’s weird! Because Bendis has written all 3 relationships and I almost feel like Gwen/Peter or Peter/Kitty has been better than Peter/MJ for the ultimate universe which is a sentence I never thought I’d say.

I don’t know how I feel about the house of ice and fire right now though hahaha because I haven’t liked Johnny or Bobby much, historically ever haha, but I’m still very much down on the rest.

[Ian]

A relaunch of the Ultimate Spider-Man line, set six months after New York was devastated in 'Ultimatum'. Spider-Man has become a people's hero but Peter Parker's life remains complicated and gets worse when Iceman and the Human Torch turn up on his doorstep seeking refuge.

Bendis has long-since proved that he can write Spider-Man well and that's still the case here. However, too much of this relaunch feels geared towards drawing in a tween audience, with little regard for more established readers (I've been enjoying Spidey adventures since the 1980s). What this means is that suddenly we have all these teenage heroes suddenly and literally under one roof in a way that feels horribly contrived.

Lafuente's artwork doesn't help matters either, with his style making Peter look too young. Sure this is him at sixteen, rather than the older Peter Parker I'm used to, but the artwork makes him look more like twelve than sixteen and he's tiny in comparison with just about every other character, which feels very weird. On the other hand we have MJ (poor MJ, side-lined in favour of Gwen Stacy again), who is drawn like she's actually in her 20s.
None of this is helped by the abundance of low-slung waistlines and the fact that just about every girl at Peter's high school now has a pierced eyebrow.

So whilst there's some definite potential here, the YA approach to storytelling and art style spoiled it for me.

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