Ultimate Spider-Man #91-94

Genre action Author Brian Michael Bendis Publisher Marvel Comics External Links Official Marvel Comics Website

For a few story arcs, now, Ultimate Spider-Man has been relatively the same. The arcs "Warriors" and "Silver Sable" were mostly action stories, with a few character moments thrown in between. The most recent arc of the series, "Deadpool" is mostly only different in that it adds the X-Men into the fray.

"Deadpool" plays off Peter Parker's relationship with Ultimate X-Men team member Kitty Pride. At its beginning, the two face off against an admittedly lame villain, The Ringer. They share a romantic moment, and then Kitty Pride heads back to the X-Men mansion only to be kidnapped by what appears to be her teammates. She sends a robot plane to Peter Parker's house. It brings him to the X-Men mansion where he is kidnapped by the Ultimate version of Deadpool.

Honestly, the setup is about as corny as it sounds. It serves as an excuse for Spider-Man and the X-Men to end up on Krakoa Island and fight cyborgs. The catch? The entire fight is broadcast on international television. And therein lies the greatest flaw in Brian Michael Bendis's writing.

Bendis, in an attempt to compress as much story into as few issues as possible-after all, he has to pace out his anniversary story arc just around the corner-starts writing as if the comic were a television broadcast three issues into this four-issue comic. Not only does this make the story frantic and confusing, but it also gets annoying. Artist Mark Bagley is forced to draw sixteen tiny panels-with room for captions-on several pages. All this to compress a story that really wasn't that great to begin with. The story ends on a more down-to-earth note, but by then the story is well beyond saving.

On the art side of things, Mark Bagley remains quite good. He has used great layouts and decent art over the past ninety issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, and he hasn't stopped yet. Unfortunately, the supporting art crew rotates during this story arc like a drunken ballerina. The art looks the best toward the middle-when Danny Miki is inking Bagley's pencils, and Richard Isanove is on colors. But for the rest of the story, they aren't present. Perhaps it would have been nice if the finished art had some consistency at least for the story arc.

"Deadpool" can hardly be described as one of Ultimate Spider-Man's better arcs. For a book that has had such astounding high points, this is another in a recent line of disappointments. Hopefully the anniversary story arc will be an improvement.