Ultimate Comics All-New Spider-man #25 Review

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This issue is mostly Identity Crisises in a Nutshell

Hello all,

Now, I’ve only recently gotten into American Comics this year due to…well, I don’t remember. I think it was learning that Doc Ock stole Peter’s body in Superior Spider-man.  But the important thing is I decided to give this reviewing thing a shot and I’ll start with the one from the series I’ve fallen in love with in the Ultimate Marvel Universe and based this fanfic off of.

In this quick review of Ultimate Comics All-New Spider-Man, which will simply be Ultimate Spider-Man from here on to save time, we cover Issue #25.

In this issue we have the aftermath of Cloak, Dagger, and Bombshell’s little tussle that ended up wrecking Gwen Stacy’s workplace. Now, this is New York post-ultimatum  so that sort of thing is nothing new, but the issue that presents itself here is that there are conflicting opinions amongst the majority.

Gwen Stacy feels that Miles needs to take on the mantle of Spider-Man once more. She feels betrayed since she and May Parker opened their hearts to him and passed the mantle of Spider-Man to Miles personally. She knows a bit of what he’s going through since her father, and her technically, both died because of Spider-Man’s enemies.

May feels differently in the fact that he should decide for himself the path he takes. In addition, she has always been vocal about not letting little children (which Miles counts as in her eyes) fight against the types of enemies heroes do. She witnessed her nephew die in front of her eyes facing off against six superpowered enemies with a bullet in his gut. It’s natural that she wouldn’t want the cycle to repeat.

Katie Bishop, Mile’s girlfriend, knows something is off since he’s broody. There’s a bit of humor in the issue in that she thinks Miles and Ganke had a fight about Ganke having a crush on him. The fact that this is the second time it has been brought up and by his girlfriend this tiime only serves to amuse me as so far Ganke has only showed extreme interest in Legos and getting Miles in the black and red spandex…okay, that’s too easy. I’m not going to crack a joke about that.

Ganke points out that he’s saved so many people because he acted, but Miles doesn’t want to be pushed by everyone to get into the role of the webslinger again. The issue Miles has is that he’s lost his mother. It’s understandable as his greatest fear was that being Spider-Man would endanger his loved ones.

He was completely right.

His father was crippled when Venom came to his door based on a lousy reporter making a guess that labeled his father as Spider-Man. His doting uncle became an abusive asshole who tried to push him into crime and threatened to out him to his parents. His mother was shot because Venom went after his father again (and she plugged the symbiote with several rounds to save her son), and the police have a hard-on for trying to shoot at anyone in a costume or with powers post-ultimatum, despite he was a 13-year old runt at the time.

He feels the weight of a mantle that wasn’t originally his and the deaths of his loved ones on his shoulders.

We then skip back to Dagger and Cloak’s transformation and how they escaped. Naturally, they don’t exactly feel comfortable about what they’ve become, the literal physical manifestations of light and darkness. Given that in the earlier volumes Tandy had issues with mutants, its rather karmic but they still didn’t deserve to be turned into human guinea pigs and had their deaths faked.

Eventually the one who drives Miles to act is Jessica Drew, Spider-Woman, and clone of Peter Parker.

She admits she’s got some identity issues that come from cloning, but she’s doing what she can to be her own woman.  She and Miles are the result of people fucking with the natural order in an attempt to recreate Captain America and got it right to an extent. She points out that SHIELD won’t do a damn thing since they’re in deep and it’s for reasons like that Spider-Man is needed, so that what happens to them doesn’t happen to others.

So that innocent people don’t suffer at the hands of Roxxon’s tampering.

Jessica doesn’t force him to do anything, not after she brought up his mother the first time they met after the time skip. She doesn’t try to force him into the mask like the others do, not by slapping him like Gwen or calling him a coward like Ganke. Out of everyone else, she comes off as the most sincere.

The result?

He’s Back

Overall this issue was…drama-heavy. I’m an action junkie, I need action, but this tugged at my heartstrings and the angst was understandable. The art was lovely and without a doubt that last page is beautiful.

My Rating is a 4/5.