Teenage Wasteland: The Ultimate Legacy of Ultimate Spider-Man

Ultimate Spider-Man, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley, ran for 160 issues from September 2000 to June 2011, of which Bagley illustrated 116 (plus change) of those issues, with a few interim artists and relaunches lumped in-between. It was a fascinating, widely beloved comic of its time that was practically the face of “Nu Marvel” and Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada under his regime, remaining well-regarded even today. Both one of the first “reboots” of a character attempted in the modern era, and not at all as much of a controversial gamble as revisionists would lead you to think, USM (as it has become known) explored Peter Parker in his formative high school years, along with his cast of friends and villains updated and refurbished for the new millennium. Extremely decompressed, the greater story spanned about two years’ comic book time over eleven real years and launched the eponymous Ultimate Universe, to become one of Marvel Comics’ preeminent series. It was a fan favorite, a top seller, and won numerous awards. And it had almost nothing in common with the youth of the day it was supposedly created to appeal to, nor has it had any real permanent legacy beyond being fondly remembered and kind of/sort of leading to Bendis’ creation of Peter’s successor, Miles Morales. That is all, of course, besides one important lasting influence that the series left on Spider-Man, one which may not have changed him for the better at all.

Peter Parker, fifteen-year-old high school nerd, is bitten by a genetically-altered spider concocted by Norman Osborn at his research facility where Peter’s class takes a field trip. Given the proportionate abilities of a spider, Peter vows to use his powers in service of his fellow man when his beloved hippie uncle, Ben, is murdered, leaving him only in the care of his mid-forties aged working aunt, May. Peter becomes Spider-Man, and has a series of misadventures both in costume and in his daily high school life, which perhaps presents even more drama. Over the course of ten years’ worth of stories, Peter meets 21st century updates of his classic rogues gallery, with such hall-of-famers as the Green Goblin (now a Hulk-like monster), Doc Ock (now a scientist deformed by the accident which creates Osborn), and The Kingpin (still a fat guy, but now with hands inexplicably drawn larger than watermelons). He attends Midtown High and romances Mary “Brainy Janey” Watson (don’t ask) and/or Gwen “Bad Girl” Stacy (really don’t ask), and contends with bullies such as Flash “Bowlcut” Thompson and characters created just for the series such as Kenny “Harlan” Kong (that nickname I didn’t make up), a character whose name Bendis never actually did manage to keep straight. Through it all, Peter does the best he can and barely seems to age a day (in fact, issue 73 literally says issue 1 happened nine months prior), until he is unceremoniously killed in the agonizingly long and very subtle “Death of Spider-Man” saga that culminated in the final issue, number 160. This was done to make way for Bendis’ new original character who took the mantle, Miles Morales, but we’ll be focusing just on the OG series for the purposes of this article. Shame about poor Peter though!

Ultimate Spider-Man, in its prime, seemed to truly resonate with readers at large, and especially long-time readers who were very much atuned to Bendis’ stylings. Coming from an indie comic background, Bendis’ writing was very specifically unique and different, with less in the way of action and more in the way of long conversational dialogue pieces that one would be more likely to find in the crime reporting where Bendis started his career than in the good old Marvel Bullpen. The first twelve issues in particular are a thing of beauty, after which the series at some point became too mired in decompression and/or debatably went on for far too long. It touched on something deeply affecting and was embraced and rewarded by fandom as a result. But that “something” that was touched on was never in any way the voice of the Millennial/Gen Y generation, which was supposedly the readership base Bendis, Quesada, and Marvel president Bill Jemas were trying to ensnare with the Ultimate initiative.

Often anachronistic in terms of pop culture references, the comic seemed at times to be painfully obviously written by a 40-year-old man trying to evoke the millennial voice- or dollars- if he was, in fact, even trying to speak to said generation at all. After the passage of time, one can now feel confident that Ultimate Spider-Man was really about the Generation X voice, which Bendis definitely had a knack for capturing, and was embraced so widely and afar within comicdom because that was the median age of the readers who actually bought the comics. And, why not? What 40-year-old WOULDN’T want to read about a modern teenager who reflects his own prior generation, thinking to himself, “Yes, this is how it should be”? Now, I am not suggesting for one minute that anyone under forty DIDN’T read the series or was turned off by it. But if that’s the case, how did it also strike a chord with a generation it wasn’t really talking about, nor having any insight into?

The sales, of which USM greatly contributed to for the bookstore boom of the trade paperback market, objectively showed that some people under Bendis’ age were tuning in. Clearly USM had younger fans, myself included, and it wasn’t as if Bendis himself was some decrepit old hippie at the time (Uncle Ben, however, was, replete with ponytail to prove it). What accounts for these young readers, of which there were presumably many? First of all, I don’t think something necessarily has to be “of” a generation to be embraced. These things are cyclical; just as the ’80’s came back in a big bad way in the prior decade, now we are seeing a resurgence of all things ’90’s (You can almost imagine executives setting their watch and deciding when it’s time to get dangerous with Darkwing Duck again). The Breakfast Club will always be popular, just as more niche things (like, I don’t know, the Garbage Pail Kids?) will always have a place in pop culture, in terms of nostalgia. Some things are universal, and when you’re dealing with teenagers in high school, even on the printed page, it’s going to be hard not to relate in some way, especially when it has nice contemporary pop cultural trappings to draw you in. Even if it doesn’t, a book like “The Catcher in The Rye” will always have an eternal pull because it speaks to the universality of the teenage angst experience.

But there’s also the wave of something hitting the cultural zeitgeist and enough people getting caught up in it, if it’s artistically well done enough, that they can overlook whether it’s actually culturally relevant or not, assuming they even care. Let’s face it; even if Bendis had completely missed the mark, a high school Spider-Man comic written by a middle-aged man was still geared toward young people in the Aughts more than practically every other comic book on the stands, especially with whatever continuity-laden nonsense was going on at the time at good ol’ D-diddly-C. If we were not swept up in all these high school shenanigans written by Bendis, then we were absolutely deluged with idiosyncratic voices of the Generation X comic writers, which amounted to the things that seemed to interest them. For example, Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s insistence on pushing the crime genre, and the noir genre in particular past the point possibly anyone could take it, almost completely overpowered the Batman line of books. The writers of the last decade, like all of us, seemed to be heavily influenced by the comics of their own youth that they had grown up on. Again- these things are cyclical!

To give a small example: When I was in high school, I found a certain affinity for “teen romance” movies that were created about ten years behind me, because they were made at a time when I was growing up. Off the top of my head, Empire Records in particular struck a deep chord with me and remains one of my favorites to this day. So what if the actors were 10-20 years removed from me? They were still young when the movie was made, so there was more for me to relate to there than, say, the septuagenarian antics in an average episode of Law & Order. The same goes for the music and comics I liked; even if the work was not specifically about “youth being youth” in the strictest sense, to know it was created by people going through my current life experience made it relatable in some fashion, even if we were missed each other by a couple decades. Third Eye Blind will always be there for a 17-year-old no matter what era they listen to it in; if it holds any appeal past that specific age, well, I couldn’t tell you, other than that *I* still dig it, and still hope that you will step off that ledge my friend and cut ties with all the lies that you are living in.

Perhaps I’m damning it with faint praise to say USM offered kind of a comforting, homogenized experience made appealing to the eye by clean Bagley art and peppered with amusing surface pop culture zingers, which were Bendis’ forte. “Carson Daly sent me,” yeah yeah, close enough, thank you for making the effort Brian, back to the Kingpin story. There was also, with USM in particular, something very non-offensive about it. I’m not saying it was fluff or talked down to the reader in any way, but I don’t think even the comics’ most ardent fans would call it “cutting edge” by any means. It took Peter and Mary Jane over a hundred issues to even talk about- gasp- sex (Aunt May assuming they were getting it on and offering Peter “protection” notwithstanding); and even then, they decided, in true “after-school special” fashion, that they weren’t ready yet. I kind of assumed they were getting it on in-between the panels- see the suggestive cutaway in #41, for instance- but that’s semantics.

It was standard superhero fare done right and made “cool,” the kind of thing readers probably got in the ’60’s from the old Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four comics; or what ’90’s boom comics, with their broad appeal and inherent simplicity, should’ve been like instead of the excesses of creators concerned more with making a buck for themselves than good storytelling. It was quality work, month after month, never missing a shipping date and often double shipping, and that kind of dependability cannot be downplayed. It was always there in your comic stack the first Wednesday of the month come rain or shine, and you knew what you were getting. Most fans happened to like this, so we could forgive when an occasional story went on too long, or if Aunt May made one too many visits to the therapist for the entire issue instead of the plot moving forward. Something was there that made the book eminently “chill” (for you older readers, this is a synonym for “cool”) and collectible, be it the serialized nature that took it back to the vintage soap opera roots of Lee/Ditko, or the sleek design format, with the vertical color-bars on every cover telling you when an Ultimate comic had arrived. It was at once both the faux-hipster Dawson’s Creek and the indie slice-of-life book of mainstream comics. The best thing it can claim is that even now, most readers will still say, “Boy, I sure liked that there Ultimate Spider-Man!”

But where does that leave it now, and what has its influence been? Regardless of if it was the voice of a generation hence, how can I claim it’s had no lasting legacy when it’s seemingly been adapted to media in two different movie series, and about five different cartoons? Well, besides the basic high school framework and trappings, I don’t think that it’s had that much influence at all, frankly. Bendis’ specific voice, which again was very readable and enjoyable at his best, has not really been adapted in any way in any of those projects. Neither was the extremely decompressed episodic nature of the series, nor really any specific plot points, or the more sublime humor. The Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon bore little resemblance to its namesake beyond a few designs and surface details.

As for the movies, the Raimi series was actually already underway when USM was created, so contrary to popular legend, it was not inspired directly by that comic at all (more on that in a minute). Nobody liked the Andrew Garfield series, so let’s skip that, but please, if you can see USM anywhere in that filmic duo, you win a No-Prize. The Homecoming movie kind of emulates the feel, a bit, but I can’t think of one single thing they took from the USM comic off the top of my head, other than “Peter is younger than he’s ever been before; let’s shoot for 15.” These newer projects, instead, seem to speak to the Generation Z/Homeland Generation, or children who are the offspring of Generation X by this point (!). With the cartoons that’s understandable, but bear in mind the mass production nature of these things means that once someone thinks they’ve hit upon a trend, for better or worse it’s exposed to an entire generation’s childhood, and becomes a part of it even if just by sheer consumption.

Part of the reason I so enjoyed the Sam Raimi Spidey trilogy, and this is no knock on Bendis, is that he didn’t try to make it anything other than what he thought Spider-Man should be. Raimi is a man from the Baby Boomer era, born in the 1950’s, and yet his Spider-Man seems at once more timeless and less self-conscious than Bendis’ version. Why? Because it isn’t ashamed of itself. It’s a pure, unadulterated love letter to the Steve Ditko era, with Peter unabashedly an old-school nerd and the stories so delightfully hokey. The charming irreverence bordering on camp is what I would argue made the films universally appealing at the time they came out, especially to children; and that was due to Raimi doing it his own way rather than trying to chase a trend or what he perceived as popular, because he knew that was a fool’s errand.

If you think I’m wrong about Bendis, tell me he wouldn’t have been more at home with an USM book set in the ‘80s. It would’ve been more or less the same, but most likely with Duran Duran references thrown in instead of that damnable Carson Daly. Bagley might not have enjoyed drawing ‘80s fashion, but again that was the crisp, superficial outer sheen I described the series as having that made it an overall attractive package and gave it the “illusion” of being contemporary. And let’s face it, often times Bagley’s teenagers looked and dressed like no teenagers who have lived, ever. His enduring, bizarre butt-part hairstyle that Peter sported for the entire run is not hair I have seen on any real living teenager, then or now, with the possible exception of Long Duck Dong. He only finally threw in the towel and gave Peter a more Bieberish hairdo in the final arc, “The Death of Spider-Man,” which may have been a not-too-subtle indicator of how the artist really felt about changing it up.

As for Homecoming, I have never felt older in my life than when I saw it and just absolutely could not relate in any way to the kids on screen, in a movie made by the 40-year-old men of today to boot. So it’s not for me to say if “HC” struck any chord with Gen Z; that’s for some younger turk to write about while I sit here ready to yell at my lawn any day now. But I think it’s safe to say that yes, if Homecoming was absolutely divested of any vestige of the Millennial Generation (perhaps a middle finger to the supposed whiff of the Garfield movies and their goal of reaching the Twilight-going crowd), it was absolutely devoid of any of Bendis’ quirky, ironic Gen X stylings.

The same applies for all the modern Marvel adaptations that take the basic framework from stories made in the Aughts; the Civil War or Avengers films, for instance, have none of Mark Millar’s fascinating commentary on the military industrial complex and the War on Terror, which I actually kind of dug and thought no one has gotten into in Marvel Comics other than him. Somebody in comics had to talk about the world post-9/11, and it sure wasn’t going to be J.M. Straczynski talking about Dr. Doom crying at Ground Zero. That voice struck a chord in 2006, but is it needed- or wanted- in a 2016 movie meant to appeal to a broad audience that includes children? I don’t know. But it made Civil War the movie feel false to call a true adaptation of Millar’s work, as it never wanted to get into his specific interests that really defined the work as the comic that the movies sprung from. The same goes for Ultimate Spidey.

Now, what did USM do right for Spider-Man, lest you think I’m a “hater” as Bendis would be wont to say (Actually, no, he would never say that, probably something about the Shocker repeated back ten times instead)? Bendis’ eccentricities aside, it was not badly written, and Bagley’s art was always a joy until he kind of started phoning it in a bit to reach the 103 consecutive-issue record, but even that may be explained away by the varying quality of inkers he was paired with. It re-introduced Spider-man to a whole new generation, regardless of whether it spoke in any real way to that generation or not, and made inroads to the bookstore market with all the trade paperbacks that were both individually accessible and part of a greater whole. Reaganomics or Communism Marvel-style, you decide! It was a true precursor to the “Walking Dead” collection format, and I can’t fault them there; Vol. 6 may have been part of a series, but it was also a standalone “Venom” origin arc. Who doesn’t want that, something both unique and inclusive? And as much as I undersell it, yes, it was probably an influence on the way other writers tried to write their comics. “Invincible” at Image leaps to mind as an immediate example. The way every other Marvel comic soon glommed onto the decompressed format is another “gift” that speaks to the emulation of Bendis.

But in terms of its influence on Spider-Man? Oof, there’s a whole different story (Bendis would absolutely have said “Oof,” possibly “Woof”). The series, I would argue, while harmless and homogenized as it was in and of itself, had a really profoundly negative influence on Spider-Man moving forward. How so? Because it was so successful, it gave people the idea that what made it so popular was the fact that Peter Parker was young and a high schooler in it (Note that I did not say “hip;” that will be important in a second). Not the storytelling, not the content of the arcs or what Bendis was trying to say, but that he was young. As young as you could possibly make him, and more than that, that he stay ETERNALLY YOUNG. This has contributed to what I perceive as the character’s downhill decline for the last ten years that has precluded us from some possibly great stories. As soon as they saw it was working, people in charge who might be inclined to shoot for a younger-skewing audience anyway took Peter’s USM de-aging as a sign, and ran a marathon with it. If we could make him fifteen here, why stop, let’s make him fifteen EVERYWHERE and FOREVER.

Why only in the last ten years? Why would it not have a more immediate effect? Well, for two big reasons. The Raimi films had already gotten underway by that point, and like them or not, many many people did. I firmly believe you either “get” Peter’s character and appeal, or you don’t. We were lucky enough that the filmmaker entrusted with the movie series just kind of “got” it, but he faithfully adapted the comics of yore, and so Marvel in turn was careful to toe the line. And Amazing Spider-Man writer J. Michael Straczynski, for all the guff I gave him earlier, definitely “got” Peter’s character. Since JMS most certainly marches to the beat of his own drum, once he was in charge of guiding the flagship title for seven years, they were not going to get him to change his tune come love or money. He wanted an older married Peter who was maturing in life and moving ahead, so by God, that’s what we were getting as long as he was in the driver’s seat. The other comics, under the guidance of JMS’ main Amazing title, followed his lead, leaving USM out on its own where it would be a distinctly unique telling for the first half of its existence. This was exactly why it was created and the niche market it was supposed to fulfill; the only joint in town where you could get uniquely young Petey Parker as opposed to the “old” guy in the regular titles. Peter had not been a high schooler for 40 years UNTIL USM, which was part of its initial appeal. I would argue Bendis, for all his faults, “gets” Peter as well for the most part, which is why you can forgive some of the annoyances of 15-year-olds talking like David Mamet characters. But the writers who followed Bendis and used this template, did they “get” the character in equal measure? Oh, dear God, no.

As soon as they got a chance, Marvel tried to make all Spider-Man comics like USM. Part of why the book succeeded was because it WAS so unique, a refreshing look at the adventures of Peter “when he was a boy” in case he was a little too old in four other titles that came out every month. But when he became young everywhere, the novelty wore off and it was no longer “special.” Not only did it dilute the USM brand, it got to the point where fans hungered for an older married Peter back, like we saw briefly in the out-of-continuity “Renew Your Vows” series, just to have some kind of a release from the braying jackass he became in nearly all other forms. Joe Quesada was one such unfortunate soul who definitely did not “get” Spider-Man beyond whatever he liked about it when HE was a tween- a trap you should never fall into. As soon as Joey Q had his opening, and I honestly believe if he could have gotten away with it one second sooner he would have, he lunged for the dismantling of the marriage in the uber-controversial “One More Day” story. Had he been at all able to do it quicker, I would no doubt be complaining about the last fifteen years of Spider-Man. Instead, this story coincided with the Raimi trilogy wrapping up in 2007, and luckily (or I guess not so luckily), Joe was the EiC and not the main writer after this tale split up Peter and MJ for good, leaving him a swinging single of dubious age that a new writer could tackle.

And who would this be? That’s where it becomes tricky to know where the influence begins and ends; where the tail wags the dog. Beyond the initial “Brand New Day” reboot thinktank, which revamped the Amazing Spider-Man title and never looked back since, we have had a grand total of one writer guiding Amazing Spider-Man for the last decade: Dan Slott. Now, I am not a fan of Slott’s Spider-Man for various reasons, and since he seems to have a habit of tracking down people who speak ill of his work, I think I will just leave it at that (for now). But remember when I said you either “get” the character or you don’t? Well, I really don’t feel Slott gets the character. At all. In any way. Loving Spider-Man deeply and writing him the way he was for the first 45 years of his existence are two different things. Gone was the mature, married Peter; in was a man-child who seems to have no differentiation between the Peter and the Spidey persona, nor any real filter when it comes to increasingly lame jokes and zingers he fires at every turn. This is not to pin it all on Slott, as the loudmouth, quipping Peter (as opposed to loudmouth, quipping SPIDEY as he should remain) seems to have leaked into all media. See all of the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon where Peter seems like ADHD at best or a lunatic at worst; or Peter kissing Gwen on the graduation stage in Amazing Spider-Man 2. Amusing in small doses I guess, but not who Peter Parker is, ever has been, or ever should be in my not-so-humble opinion.

I couldn’t say where this came from. But I have to think the trend came from learning the wrong lessons from USM. What it really was intended as was a one-off take on a young Peter, who looked and acted differently from the mainstream version; not an actual template. That was part of the comics’ joy, and I would argue part of Bendis’ own enjoyment that clearly shines through in the writing: a Spidey of his own creation that no one will get a chance to write again. It’s very clear the young Peter is partly autobiographical, and the comic is the kind of one he would have liked to have read himself as a teen. Bendis has even admitted that he based Aunt May on his mother and Peter on himself, living in a single-parent household, so some of the more “odd” characterizations can be explained better when seen in this light.

But re-reading all of the issues, to my surprise I notice that many of the ghastly affectations currently afflicting Spidey’s character are NOT prevalent in USM itself. Sure, he’s young, but the character of PETER himself is actually shockingly reserved in comparison to even the most conservative portrayals today; Peter isn’t actually that much of a smartass in the series. He’s kind of a goofy introvert; you know, like he’s SUPPOSED to be! When Peter himself does mouth off, it’s rare, and you can kind of acknowledge it as maybe how a 15-year-old who doesn’t quite have his act together would talk. Not a 30-year-old who makes jokes to Jolly Jonah Jameson’s face just because he knows the reader/viewer is watching and wants to mug for them. I would think that part should be obvious, in that if Peter comes across like a poor man’s Dane Cook to civilians, they’re going to figure out he might also be the superhero version of a poor man’s Dane Cook as well. This is the notion I was broaching of Spider-Man not being today what his character is supposed to be. In USM, to its credit, it’s almost as if they took the actual character of Peter as he had been portrayed for his first 40 years, and then did a story on what he’d be like if he was young today without changing his essential qualities. Imagine that!

I would be remiss if I did not mention the rise of Miles Morales, Peter’s young successor who came from the series’ reboot and is definitively part of the pop cultural zeitgeist today, but we’re talking about the original Bendis/Bagley run. And that run has become seen as nothing but table setting for Miles; almost as if he was the goal we took 160 issues to get to. But what a 160 issues, full of thrills, heartache and classic Spidey retold in a new vein. That is why I would say USM has endured, and why it remains so very beloved by a certain segment of fandom today. So what if the pop cultural references were dated even in the year 2000, and characters frequently wore “Old Army” clothing as the latest, most trendy fashions? It was still innately Peter Parker, in a wonderfully alternate setting not unlike the popular MayDay Parker/Spider-Girl comic (Which felt beyond dated and hokey in 1998 despite being set in the future and which I could never get into, but that’s for another day).

USM wore its heart on its sleeve, was extremely accessible, and for better or worse, shipped 18 issues a year, on time every time, for the duration of its original creators’ run. That’s no mean feat, especially in today’s world. Heck, especially in the time it was created in, where deadlines were routinely blown left and right! We cannot fault the original work for the fact that people took the wrong lessons from it, nor does that diminish its strength just because the specific voice it put out was the one thing not adhered to. The fact that USM had a legacy about “youth trumps all” when it comes to Spidey is a testament to how very popular it was, never mind the fact that people only took the most superficial things away from it. Let’s not forget all that Bagley-designed merchandise either, where you couldn’t turn a corner without finding the outline-less figure from the cover of issue #2 on every toy related to Spider-Man. And it was most certainly the comic book that defined Spider-Man for the generation it was created in (again, sorry JMS!), in the way Romita defined the ’70’s or McFarlane defined the ’90’s.

So Bendis and Bagley should take a bow; whatever the after-effects, they created a cultural touchstone, an evergreen work that despite everything, is actually not really that dated when you try to read it today. Perhaps the very reason why Bendis didn’t try to speak to Gen Y was because he knew some things would endure and others would not, such as not using his own authentic voice. If he tried to pander or be inauthentic to himself just to cater to the age range of his “target” audience, the comic might very well have failed. THIS is the lesson that should have been taken away from USM, that creators should take the essentials they know to be true about Spidey and not betray them, whilst simultaneously trying to find their own voices. In terms of accomplishing what the Ultimate line set out to do, Ultimate Spider-Man’s creators, in a true sense, very much succeeded.