Reading Marvel’s Ultimate imprint has always been so bittersweet for me. There have been times, especially at the start when the books were interesting, fun, and just what the doctor ordered when regular continuity left me feeling overwhelmed. Being a comic reader is sort of like being a historian, there are a ton of things you have to know about to really understand what’s going on, and you’re never quite sure that you have enough of the background info to fully comprehend what you’re seeing and reading. I loved that at the start those things weren’t really a concern when you were reading the Ultimate comics. Of course that changed. In what seemed like no time there were continuity issues in the Ultimate Universe too, and what’s more the writing and the art weren’t as good as Marvel’s regular continuity; there was no real benefit to reading the imprint. So from time to time I would check in and see if anything interesting was going on, sometimes I was pleasantly surprised, but more often than not I found the books to be underwhelming.

Then came Ultimatum (Or is it Ultimate Ultimatum? Maybe it was called X-Men and The Ultimates Ultimate Ultimatum, I’m not really sure). As small piece of me died the day I finished that story. I will never be capable of loving comics as much as I did before, after finishing Jeph Loeb’s 5 issue mini series. I don’t have the time or the space to get into what I thought was wrong with it, but in a nutshell, if you were to ask an 11 year old to plan a story out, they would have been able to come up with a stronger plot than what we were treated to in Ultimatum. It was a lazy, amateur, hatchet job of a book; I am completely disgusted with Loeb for writing it, and feel strongly that he should have his license to write comics revoked.

In case you haven’t read it I’ll give you the DL on what happened. Magneto wiped out the world in the name of vengeance, a ton of people died, Magneto was one of them, now the earth must rise from the ashes of Magneto’s ultimatum, and we found out that mutants were created in a lab, not through evolution. (Oddly enough it dosn’t sound that bad when it’s summarized in a sentence, you really need to read it for yourself to understand just how bad Ultimatum really was.)

So how does Ultimate Comics Spiderman #1 fit into this whole mess. Spiderman was presumed dead when Manhattan was hit with a tidal wave, but it turns out he’s alive and while well might not be the right word to describe how Peter Parker is doing in the aftermath of Ultimatum, he’s trying to make things work. This is where Brian Michael Bendis and David Lafuente begin the second volume of Ultimate Spiderman’s story.

In an interview with www.comicbookresources.com Bendis told readers that:

I will tell you this, though, there’s a massive status quo change for a Spider-Man title. It’s a status quo you’ve never seen in the Spider-Man comics, TV shows, and movies. It’s one that’s very cool and organic to the character. The series is still very much Peter Parker’s story, but what’s going on here you’ve never seen before. I think people will like what they see.

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man” #1 begins, a few months have passed since the end of “Ultimatum,” and the waters from the tidal wave that Magneto used to drown the city of New York have receded. A story where there were still millions of bodies floating in the water from ‘Ultimatum’ would have been a little unappealing, so ‘Ultimate Comics Spider-Man’ begins on the reopening of New York City. Not to overuse that term, but it’s a ‘brand new day’ and time has passed. A lot of things have happened in Peter Parker’s world in that time and we jump right in. We don’t flashback. We pick up and see where everybody who survived this thing is. Where are they? What choices have they made? Who’s dating who? Who’s gone on to do what? All these things will be answered in the first issue. In fact on just about every page you find something out.

So does Bendis deliver and begin the healing process for the scars left by Jeph Loeb? In many ways I think so. Ultimate Comics Spiderman #1 does everything it’s writer says it will. There’s no doubt that a ton of the lingering questions we were left with in the wake of Ultimatum get addressed. Bendis does a commendable job of setting the second volume of the Ultimate Spiderman story up in such a way that the answers to those questions will keep readers interested in the months to come. The real skill Bendis demonstrates in this issue is an ability to take fans into uncharted waters with Peter Parker and friends without losing the essence of what makes Spiderman work. Clearly this book is going to take the characters in a direction they’ve never gone in before, in any universe, but the spirit of the original character we all know and love is clearly intact.

The other thing that strikes me as being very skillfully done in this book is sad tone that is present. As much as Bendis intended this to be sort of a ‘new day’ type of story, the grief everybody feels is so present in every panel. It hangs over the whole book like a black cloud and really creates the tone that a book of this nature requires. I had to re-read it a few times to really appreciate what BMB was doing, but in the end what I had originally thought was poorly written, choppy dialog turned out to be masterful expression of the unspoken horrors everybody was feeling. It really brought back memories of the fog that surrounded everybody and everything in the days following the Sept.11 attacks on New York.

I don’t really like to get into plot details when I preview comics, I like to let you find them out for yourself, but I will say this the plot is one of the least impressive things about this book. There are tons of seeds being planted, and I want to see how many of them sprout, but if you’re looking for a plot driven comic this isn’t your best bet. It’s more of a thematic introduction to what Spiderman will be like in the upcoming months with plot teasers for upcoming issues thrown in to keep you coming back.

The art in Ultimate Comics Spiderman #1 is average. It has sort of a manga feel to it, which you may or may not like. I found myself pretty indifferent to the whole thing. The coloring created some problems as well. Somehow the color tone seemed inconsistent with the mood of the book. The thing that really makes comic art stand out for me is an artistic ability to tell the story through illustration. I thought that this comic, while not being terrible in this department was lacking something. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t on par with the writing.

All things considered if you’re looking for something interesting to read this week and you are interested in sneaking a peak at the aftermath of the train wreck that was Ultimatum I think you’ll enjoy Ultimate Comics Spiderman #1. I’m hoping that with The Marvels Project#1, Blackest Night #2, and Adventure Comics #1 it won’t be the best comic I read this week, but it certainly won’t be the worst.