DeadFor over a decade now, Brian Michael Bendis has been treating us with stories of Peter Parker from Earth-1610 and earlier this year he decided to end it. The Death of Spider-Man was a great event, doing something I didn’t think Marvel would do: Kill off one of their best characters (Ok, I did kinda think they would eventually). But after the death comes the mourning period, and let me tell you it is amazing.
Taking place pretty soon after Peter’s heroic death, everyone is taking things pretty hard. This issue shows each of the principle characters from the series dealing with the death of their friend/family member in their own way. Some lashed out, some blamed themselves and some blamed others. There is one instance with Flash Thompson that I found pretty funny amidst the very emotional reactions of everyone else.
That is something that this issue does extremely well: emotion. Not just the characters’ emotions but the readers’, as well. There were a couple of moments in the issue that I actually found myself choking up a bit. Bendis manages to take the clichés of the mourning issue and still deliver an emotionally powerful story, even with most people knowing what was coming next.
That being said, I would’ve liked to see a bit more of some of the characters reactions. There is a part early one where Mary Jane blames Nick Fury and Fury is kind of shocked. He then orders some guys and leaves. I wanted to see more of his reaction to this, as well as the death in general. Johnny could have used a little more, as well. He just kind of screams and the issue moves right along. Bendis will probably come back to this in the later issues, but I felt like some of the characters could have used a bit more than they got.
With Peter’s death, his identity as Spider-Man has been made public. Now that people know who he is, the opens up all kinds of possibilities. There are the random people who Spider-Man saved coming to May with their condolences, the reaction of everyone living her to the people, and the villains. Now that villains no longer have an arch-nemesis (well, for a while anyway), what are they going to do? At that point they were less focused on committing crimes and more focused on revenge. With the focus of their vengeance six feet under, what is left for them?
The art is awesome, of course. Mark Bagley is continuing as the artist for the rest of the mini-series before he hands it over to Sara Pichelli for the new series. That’s kind of all I have to say on the art. If you liked the art from the last few issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, it’s more of that.
The thing that interests me most about this issue is not so much the issue the itself as it is what comes after it. Like I said above, I thought some of the characters could have used a little more and I am really looking forward to who else shows up. If thecover for issue two is any indication (that’s it to the left), things are going to be getting way more insane. All that being said, this was still a strong first issue. It delivered an emotional, if clichéd, story. I am really looking to forward to rest of this series and seeing where it goes from here.
Final Score: 4.5/5
Add comment