Never Judge A Book: Ultimate Spider-Man #7 Review

We’re now seven issues into Brian Michael Bendis’s new Ultimate Spider-Man, and Miles Morales is in his costume, Peter Parker is in his heaven, and there is finally superhero action in this superhero action comic book. Man, I’m liking this book a lot more now that something’s actually happening in it. Who woulda thunk it?

However, the book gets a rough start thanks to Kaare Andrews cover. Sure, it’s beautifully rendered with pseudo 3D / photorealistic backgrounds, and unlike the cover in the last issue we reviewed here, it doesn’t look like Spider-Man’s so excited to have superpowers that he’s double-ejaculating like some kind of pornographic Chow Yun Fat while busily sucking his own dick. No, in this cover, Spider-Man is overlooking the city, demurely and quietly squatting… and apparently crapping a giant golden dook. Right on top of the American flag. Look, I really like Kaare Andrews work – his stuff on Spider-Man: Reign was excellent – but the man draws these Ultimate Spider-Man covers like he’s trying to see what weird shit he can sneak into them. I’m guessing that either we’re two issues away from a cover where Spider-Man sprays webs onto Black Cat’s upper lip, or that I just have a filthy, dirty (sanchez) mind and should stop reading perversion into these covers.

Things, however, are a little more plain vanilla between the covers (Ha! Get it?).

Every Picture Tells A Story (Badly): Ultimate Spider-Man #3 Review

Let’s start with the most obvious problem with Ultimate Spider-Man #3: the Kaare Andrews cover.

This cover looks like Spider-Man is trying, more successfully than most 13-year-old boys, to suck his own dick. While shooting streams of sticky goop from his general crotchal area. With his apparently gapingly spread ass shown more prominently and unobscured than his fucking head.

There are action covers, and then there are action covers, Kaare… I think Marvel picked the wrong issue of this book to hide in a polybag. Actually, I might have preferred receiving it in a lead-lined sack.

Let’s move on to the second most obvious problem with this book: More Goddamned useless widescreen visual storytelling. I’ve talked about this before, and go figure, it’s another issue of Bendis-written Ultimate Spider-Man that makes me bring it up again.

Pages two and three are delivered in a standard, read-page-one then read-page-two format. Pages three and four, however, are amongst the most egregious examples of fucking with format for no return at all I can scarely describe it.

Here: I will ruin the spine of this book on my scanner to show you what I mean: