ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN HITS 100

This September, Ultimate Spider-Man reaches it's 100th issue! Quite a landmark especially in Today's comicbook market. Ultimate Spider-man #1 launched in 2000. The reason for this new re-envisioning of the character was Marvel felt readers were being crushed by the weight of continuity/story history. So, they re-envisioned Spider-Man for new audiences; a book new readers could jump into without knowing decades of previous stories. Then they did it with X-Men... and then the Avengers.... and then Fantastic Four.

Ult Spiderman was pretty good the first 40 issues or so, I'll give them that (but again, it was jus rehasing the originals). But I always wondered why they just didn't put the talent onto the regular Spider-Man title and save IT from low sales? The rest of the Ultimate line, more or less, is garbage. If you're interested, email me and I'll give you some REAL comic recommendations, ok? Anway, the arrival of the "Ultimate Universe" (opposed the "Regular Marvel Universe") has splitthe comic book community to a degree. Which isn't a good thing since the Comic Community is pretty small. Now new readers don't buy the regular stuff. No, they now only buy the Ultimate books (which are only 4-5 titles). In the long run, this is bad for BOTH Universes, in my opinion.

I'm in the group that says the Ultimate stuff is bullshit. The stories are watered down rehashes of the originals AND the fantasitcal has been almost completely removed (um, then why read comics at all??). Also, for me, part of the appeal of Marvel comics was its lush history. I didn't need to know EVERYTHING that happened before. And if something was referenced that happened in an old issue, know what I'd do? I'd go to the comic store and BUY the damn thing! That was another appeal to "collecting" comics - you'd learn all this great history as you collected. It was fun! But no, now today's audiences don't want to learn stuff - they just want to be spoon fed immediately what they need to know with no surprises or mysteries. And with the Ultimate stuff, its grounded to Reality and not imaginative or fantastical . It's like bad television on the WB. Bah!!!! I guess it could've be worse - Marvel could have simply changed ALL their regular books into these. Now that would have been the end of me.

With Ult Spidey hitting #100, I can't help but wonder now what Marvel will do? I mean, for new readers, that's alot of issues and continuity to catch up on! What happens if/when Ult Spidey hits 200? or 300? Plus, like I said, the Ultimate books are rehashes of older Marvel stories. There's only so many you can do before you're just blatently copying the other. I guess they'll just relaunch another Universe, re-rehash stories and further split the comic community.......

Ok, I've stopped and reeled myself in from posting any further. This was SUPPOSED to be a short 4-5 sentence post. Sorry for the incoherent rant.