Ultimate Spider-Man #89 Review

Archive

Reviewer: Chris Delloiacono
Story Title: Silver Sable: Part 4

Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciled by: Mark Bagley
Inked by: Scott Hanna
Colored by: Justin Ponsor
Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Publisher: Marvel Comics

First things first, where has the originality gone in Marvel’s covers? Most especially with regards to the monthly stench of mediocre similarity that’s seen on Ultimate Spider-Man. To be honest, it’s like the artists, editors, and everyone else involved could care less what is on the cover of these books. At $2.50 a pop, a little effort creating a cover would be appreciated.

For three months now we’ve gotten variations on the exact same riff. Silver Sable has featured prominently on each of those covers, brandishing a knife so ridiculously big that Rambo would be jealous, and menacing Spider-Man. Issue #87’s cover saw Sable coming at Spider-Man, who was mostly off panel. Issue #88 saw Spider-Man with the upper hand. Now, this month, we get Sable hovering over Spider-Man. These covers only further point out just how little happens from issue to issue in Ultimate Spider-Man. All involved should be ashamed!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Mark Bagley’s work. I’ve been a big fan for years. These covers are not anywhere near what he’s capable of. It’s a real shame!

As to the inside, well it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Brian Bendis Ultimate Spider-Man tale. Nothing much happens, a lot of time is wasted, and things are dragging along at a pace that makes paint drying look like a rave.

The current arc concerns Silver Sable who has been hired by the owner of Roxxon to see why he’s always in the right place at the right time to save the company from superhumans. As Bendis tends to do with so many of the Ultimate characters, Sable is a bit of a blundering dunce. The issue features flashbacks to Sable’s reasons for what she does, as well as to Spider-Man’s, not to mention the reasons behind the Roxxon owner, Donald’s actions. Pretty pictures, but other than Sable’s past, a big waste of space.

Spider-Man’s capture by Silver Sable and the Wild Pack took three issues to occur. The fourth part features the interrogation. And in the end, it’s all leading to the unveiling of a classic Spidey villain in the Ultimate-verse. That’s it, folks. I have no clue why this has taken so long. A writer that wasn’t doing his best Stephen King impersonation of longwindedness could have fit these four issues into one, and still have a good eight pages left to finish the story.

Sadly, it’s not the case here.

All that said, the faults with Ultimate Spider-Man have nothing to do with Mark Bagley. Covers aside, Bagley is still at the top of his game. There aren’t too many artists that draw a better looking Spider-Man and can capture the web antics like Mark Bagley. I’m sure hoping that Bagley will move on to better things in the near future. I’d love to see him on a book with some life between the pages.