Ultimate Spider-Man #75 Review

Archive

Reviewer: Kevin S. Mahoney
Story Title: Hobgoblin: Part 4

Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciled by: Mark Bagley
Inked by: Scott Hanna
Colored by: J.D. Smith
Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Ultimate Spider-Man has become a tough book to love. On the one hand, it’s easier to get into it than almost any Marvel book. The updates Bendis has given both supporting cast and the few Spidey bad guys that have been featured in this series are great. The cheese has been removed, and yet the core of the villain (or friend) remains. The soap opera element of a still young Peter Parker has never rung false. The art never failed to exceed the industry standard, with routinely excellent pencils, inks, and colors from the very stable art team of Bagley, Hanna, and Smith.

On the other hand, there are issues that are complete wastes of time due to Bendis’ strange notion of pacing. The accusation of padding stories (presumably to create uniformly long trade paperbacks, a more lucrative print format than single comics issues) has hung around this series for a while, and if it is in fact happening, it has happened again this month. The plot didn’t move forward here, it inched forward. There is basically zero Spidey action; it’s all about Peter, MJ, and Harry. And that isn’t necessarily bad, except the first half of this issues consisted of them not talking to each other! So a reader paid for thirty or so pages of story and really only got thirteen or so. It would have been one thing if those “empty” pages had built up a lot of suspense for the eventual collision of the characters. But the two reveals here don’t even come close to justifying the empty space found in this issue. The second surprise was a decent last issue shocker, but that only gets the reader excited for the next issue, where (presumably) something will actually HAPPEN! The first reveal was simply acknowledging the elephant in the room, and it was not only a letdown, it raised more questions than it answered. “Cellar door” indeed!

It’s a shame really. The book has some of the best raw talent going, and you can see it shining just outside the horrifically slow plot in this issue. The level of detail in Bagley’s pencils is beyond great: fanboys who look for extras in backgrounds and such are never disappointed. This issue had a visual reference to AVP and a quick nod to every Spidey goblin in continuity if you looked carefully. The subtle color matching of various aspects of Harry Osborne and Mister Shaw was probably the coolest clue you couldn’t initially notice, and that’s a credit to J.D. Smith. And Bendis scripts teenage dialogue so well that you care about these characters instantly, and can relate to them just as quickly. All that potential was squandered this issue.