Comic Book Review: 'Ultimate Comics Spider-Man' #15

It’s been an eventful couple of days for Miles. He may or may not be responsible for killing his uncle Aaron, the super villain Prowler. He met with and was blessed by Peter Parker’s Aunt May, Gwen Stacey and Mary-Jane Watson. And he met and was ordered to retire by Captain America. In the background, the Ultimate United States has fallen apart, with the Sentinels taking over certain states and others seceeding from the union and with washington DC being bevastated. Following all that, this issue we take something of a breather.

Miles and Ganke experiment with his new webshooters, which goes results in some minor property damage. Then Miles goes home to his parents to find… Maria Hill, former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., now an NYPD detective investigating the death of The Prowler, a.k.a. Miles’ uncle Aaron. She acually sheds some (relieving) light on his death, but introduces a larger problem– why did a low-level thief like The Prowler suddenly decide to make himself the kingpin of New York? And what’s worse, she knows Spider-Man is involved. I’m sure we will be seeing more of her in this series. Back at school, the effects of the “Divided We Fall”/”United We Stand” crossover takes its toll as Miles and Ganke’s school shuts down until the crisis is over. This allows Miles to spend more time as Spider-Man, but with the severity of the current situation in the US, he and Ganke both determine that he might want to set his sights higher. He attempts this with the usual Miles flair, which is to say completely awkwardly and mildly disastrous.

Honestly, this was kind of a fill-in issue. The biggest developments involve Maria Hill, but that’s obviously set up for something coming down the line. It was nice to sort of take a breather and have the characters interact a bit, though. There’s a long scene at the beginning of Ganke trying to give Miles/Spider-Man a gimmic. The idea is infinitely stupid, but that makes the scene funny. And the inquisition by Maria Hill is as sharply written as this title gets and that’s pretty damn sharp!

David Marquez’s art is amazing! His facial expressions are excellent! I love how unique he makes the background “civilians” look. Most artists are content to draw mobs of Caucasian people of average height and weight, but he goes to the trouble of drawing Miles’ classmates as a mixture of kids of different sizes, shapes and races. It adds a level of realism that makes the book stronger. There’s really only one action scene, but he handles it very well, with gangly, cartoony Miles flailing all around like a rubber toy. I love it!

It’s a slower issue, but still entertaining and it does add to the overall book as a whole. The writing and art are top notch as always.