Ultimate Spiderman has never been my favorite Ultimate Title, but I think recently it's been really bad. I think the Hollywood arc is where things got bad. It was 6 issues and the only interesting things that ever happened where the part about Gwen Stacy. I'm serious. I didn't find anything intersting about the Doc Ock story line. He didn't even have any plan, any motive, he just broke out of prison, went rampage, defeated Spiderman, kid-napped him for no obvious reasons and was defeated at last. Rather boring, I think. No clever plans, no hidden motives, just a popular villain doing villain-stuff to mess up the hero's life.
Then came Carnage. I really loved that arc, at first. The reason is: I loves the way Dr. Conners was portrayed. He'd been doing bad stuff, but he did it because he was out of options, and he even felt bad about it. His interactions with Peter wer also quite enjoyable, because it somehow highlighted who Peter really is, what he wants to do with his life.
Then Bendis killed of Gwen Stacy. I still don't know why he did it, but I tend to believe the rumor that it just occured to him to be a good idea, at that time. I personally think it was a very bad move, because Gwen was one of the most interesting characters in Ultimate Spiderman recently, one of the characters that made reading the book worthwhile. Without her, the high-school cast just seems to be less interesting to read about.
The carnage arc finally ended with an imnious "Spiderman no more!" scene. Some interesting character development could have come out of this for Peter. It somehow didn't. Next issue (the really badly timed Wolverine-special, which woud have been fun to read anytime else) had Peter completely forgotten about Gwen and everything. The FF-crossover was okay, although there was still no real pay-off for Gwen's death. People just went on with their lives, as if she hadn't just died. The Strange-team-up seemed quite boring to me, again. Two issues of Peter living out a nightmare. Okay, we find outthat Peter starts to become afraid everyone around him might suffer from hom being spiderman, and the last scene with him and MJ are the result of this fear, but that's not really enough to fill up 44 pages, I think. Then of course, I'm also mighty pissed off from the horribly bad scene with the Ultimates. Bendis doesn't seem to have a clue what the Ultimates are suppossed to be.
(for those who don't understand what I mean, the Ultimates are part of the military, not some superpowered guys going out in costumes. The whole team would never go out without military back-up. Reread the Hulk-episode in Ultimates 5. That's the way the ultimates tackle a villain. Cap or Hawkeye alone, possibly with a small cadre of SHIELD military personal as back-up, that would have been a lot more in character, but not this.)
Just this morning, when I thought about it, I wondered if Bendis might be on the point, where he's run out of ideas. Killing of Gwen looks to me like the desperate try to do anything, because you can't think of any good plot anymore. He hasn't even told us the story of "how gwen stacy died and what this meant to peter parker and aunt may", so far he has only gained a short episode of shock value, lost a very good character and had to bog his stories down, because he had top accationally show how depressed Peter has become.
Or, perhaps bendis is really writing to many different books at the same time, and he doen't have the time to think properly about Ultimate Spiderman anymore. Either way, the book has been going downhill for quite some time, an I think its time someone admits it.
Ricky
*prepared to be flamed for what he just wrote*
Then came Carnage. I really loved that arc, at first. The reason is: I loves the way Dr. Conners was portrayed. He'd been doing bad stuff, but he did it because he was out of options, and he even felt bad about it. His interactions with Peter wer also quite enjoyable, because it somehow highlighted who Peter really is, what he wants to do with his life.
Then Bendis killed of Gwen Stacy. I still don't know why he did it, but I tend to believe the rumor that it just occured to him to be a good idea, at that time. I personally think it was a very bad move, because Gwen was one of the most interesting characters in Ultimate Spiderman recently, one of the characters that made reading the book worthwhile. Without her, the high-school cast just seems to be less interesting to read about.
The carnage arc finally ended with an imnious "Spiderman no more!" scene. Some interesting character development could have come out of this for Peter. It somehow didn't. Next issue (the really badly timed Wolverine-special, which woud have been fun to read anytime else) had Peter completely forgotten about Gwen and everything. The FF-crossover was okay, although there was still no real pay-off for Gwen's death. People just went on with their lives, as if she hadn't just died. The Strange-team-up seemed quite boring to me, again. Two issues of Peter living out a nightmare. Okay, we find outthat Peter starts to become afraid everyone around him might suffer from hom being spiderman, and the last scene with him and MJ are the result of this fear, but that's not really enough to fill up 44 pages, I think. Then of course, I'm also mighty pissed off from the horribly bad scene with the Ultimates. Bendis doesn't seem to have a clue what the Ultimates are suppossed to be.
(for those who don't understand what I mean, the Ultimates are part of the military, not some superpowered guys going out in costumes. The whole team would never go out without military back-up. Reread the Hulk-episode in Ultimates 5. That's the way the ultimates tackle a villain. Cap or Hawkeye alone, possibly with a small cadre of SHIELD military personal as back-up, that would have been a lot more in character, but not this.)
Just this morning, when I thought about it, I wondered if Bendis might be on the point, where he's run out of ideas. Killing of Gwen looks to me like the desperate try to do anything, because you can't think of any good plot anymore. He hasn't even told us the story of "how gwen stacy died and what this meant to peter parker and aunt may", so far he has only gained a short episode of shock value, lost a very good character and had to bog his stories down, because he had top accationally show how depressed Peter has become.
Or, perhaps bendis is really writing to many different books at the same time, and he doen't have the time to think properly about Ultimate Spiderman anymore. Either way, the book has been going downhill for quite some time, an I think its time someone admits it.
Ricky
*prepared to be flamed for what he just wrote*