#ultimate spiderman

see when it comes to the ultimate verse, IMHO, the ultimate spider-man imprint is the best non-616 marvel series (both peter and miles's runs). ultimate x-men is mediocre, has good reimaginings of a lot of the x-men but makes a lot of them assholes and not in the fun way. ultimate fantastic four is a completely revamped imagining that really depends on the person reading as to whether they like it or not (I liked it). the ultimates (the avengers) is just bad and awful; if you do read it, pick ultimate thor as your favourite and do not get attached to any other ultimate; trust me it's for your own good.

ultimate spider-man starts out very very 2000s and bendis writing is, well. self-explanatory. a lot of it is outdated but I will say that in the context of USM, it weirdly works?

the events of USM pre-miles all happen in one year. so you get more time spent on character arcs and the effects and consequences of important decisions. because you're being introduced to a new universe where a lot of things are different, and the main characters are all hormonal teenagers without proper support structures to address the problems they're going through. when you combine that with the fact that 616 spider-man was based off of a lot of romance comics and uses soap opera esque plots, it makes sense.

there's a lot of...fucked up shit, to say the least, in the ultimate universe which I'm sure you've probably heard of. some way, somehow, bendis was writing the least problematic shit in that universe.

overall, ultimate spider-man is a good read but can be divided into three major eras.

original ultimate spider-man with all the 2000s dialogue and bendisms you could imagine.

revamped ultimate spider-man which mellows out a little more and adds more superheroes to the supporting cast. (this is my favourite era)

miles's ultimate spider-man, which has the best writing in comparison to the other two. if you choose to start here without reading peter's usm, you can, but just read ultimate fallout for prior context.

now peter only gets home from spider-manning after the first alarm goes off, and he sleeps through the other three.

but bobby? this boy is consistently waking up to whatever justin bieber song that johnny is into that week. and he can't even try to kill johnny for it because peter's asleep and if they wake him up when he's asleep for once, then mj and gwen will kill them both. but despite being the kind of guy who prefers to sleep in, he'll wake up early and take the opportunity to scroll social media.

but one night, bobby wakes up to johnny pacing the room after his second alarm goes off and peter's bed is still empty. bobby finally gets it out of him that he's terrified of losing people, after franklin and reed* has died.

when peter gets home that night to see them cuddling in bed, and then catches them cuddling two nights after, it only clicks to him that there's something going on between the two of them when he casually mentions it to mj and she's like ??? peter...