Peter Parker is the kind of superhero you just have to feel sorry for. I mean, look at the many woes and misfortunes heaped on the poor lad's head just in the first several pages of Irresponsible. He's lost his last Spider-Man costume. His teacher busts him and Mary Jane passing notes in class and, get this, reads them aloud. And it's not like they're even together, after the last book, although he wants them to be. He has to go heroing in sweats and, despite a very cool bust of some very bad men, he loses a lens. And when he goes to a party with Gwen Stacy, they utterly fail to have fun.

Oh, and Mary Jane shows up looking way hot, in a slutty teen kind of way.

And then there's this mutant kid named Geldoff who blows up cars just by looking at them, and the cops show up and, as Gwen says, "bedlam ensued." And there's a bus stop, and a bus ride, a love note and a big, fresh kissing scene at the window as the music swells.

What is this, you ask, some kind of spandex soap opera? Well, sure. Brian Michael Bendis, the genius writer behind the series, knows that superheroes are people, too. And teenage superheroes in particular have mixed-up emotions and hormones, and everything about them is all pathos and passion. This is Peter Parker's life, people. If you don't want to read about it, bub, pick up a copy of Wolverine instead.

Oh, all right, and there's more with the mutant who blows things up, and fights, and he has a funny accent, too. The X-Men show up. Peter's aunt breaks down the basement door. Peter's aunt talks to a psychologist. And Peter loses his clothes.

It's all very complicated. And it's all terribly fun. Damn, Brian, the Ultimate Spider-Man books are mighty good, mighty good indeed. How can you stand yourself, being so talented all the time?

by Tom Knapp
Rambles.NET
5 August 2006