Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #34 – “Inheritance”! In the previous installment, Peter Parker discovers an old video tape with his family hanging out with Richard Parker’s partner, Eddie Brock Sr., and his family. Parker is a dumb dingus and doesn’t remember these people at all, but he nonetheless decides to seek out Eddie Brock Jr. and catch up.

Brock Jr. is a student at Empire State University where he’s engaged in biomedical research. He shows Parker a mysterious flask in the science lab, locked away in a cryogenic vault.

“It’s our inheritance,” he tells a boggling Parker.

Oh boy! Kind of a weird place to store a ton of money, but obviously it’s not money! What a stupid thing to think! Let’s see what it really is.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #34 [March, 2003]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Inheritance”

Wispy Spider-Man! Again, I’ve never seen Spider-Man 3. I can’t stress that enough. I don’t know what’s going to happen or why it’s going to happen! Does Eddie Brock drink the potion and go RAWWRRGGRR PETER PARKER KILLED MY PARENTS and start bullying him with atomic wedgies? Because that would be a comic book!

“This is what our fathers were working on when they died. This – this is their life’s work,” Eddie says of the black container full of mysterious black gunk.

“What is it?” Parker asks, stunned and drooling.

“Right now it’s a big pile of protoplasmic goo.”

“What’s it supposed to be?”

“The cure for cancer.”

Well, hot diggity! Shit like that is why it’s worth being a biomedical whozits transponstor. “And they were close – (according to my dad’s notes) – either they were really close or my dad was just WAAAAY too excited.”

Peter Parker just stares at this guy while he talks about trying to piece together shreds of notes and diagrams and drawings and facts and figures and test tubes and stoichiometries. Pieces of the puzzle might be missing, or perhaps Parker’s dad was buried with them. We could try digging up his corpse! Barring that, maybe there are other avenues? We’ll have to dig up the corpse first and figure out other avenues later, one supposes.

“Plus, I mean, who knows what they had on them when the plane went down, right?” Brock continues as he pulls open a plastic container. That Doc Conners, though, what a fantastic specimen of a human being. The guy gets paid $40,000 a year to help 20-year-old punks think they’re developing cures for cancer, and he enjoys every minute of this meaningless existence!

He’s been really helping me out in the science lab! Giving me pointers. Giving me kisses. It’s a very appropriate relationship.

While only 60% of what I said may be true, Parker eyeballs Brock with a sudden twinge of doubt. Brock pulls out some drawings for a prototype called “the suit”. “Some kind of protoplasmic medical dip that was to be tailored to a patient’s specific DNA code,” he explains, pulling out a diagram labeled “THE SUIT” with arrows pointing to it. “It” being “the suit”. Basically, this gelatinous glop would encompass the person’s body and figure out what needed to be healed. Broken bone? Throw some of this poop on there and it’ll heal it tout suite! Prolapsed anus? Throw some of this mush on there and it will suck itself back in! Think of the possibilities! Freckles? Splash on this stuff like acid and those freckles, plus several layers of skin, will melt right off your face!

“Basically – this would find cancer, diagnose it, and kill it,” Brock adds and suggests that their dads got to at least phase two, which is probably the “diagnose it” part of the cancer-killing processes. What it actually did after diagnosing it is up for debate. Plus, they ran out of funding. Also, their plane crashed! A lot of things made the research stop at phase two.

Both their dads took a position at Trask Industries as work-for-hire employees, meaning that anything they discovered or created was intellectual property of Trask. Isn’t that crazy fucked up? Stupid capitalism. “When the big bosses found out that their cure for cancer might be like – some kind of one-person war-machine thing… they took it away from them.”

This is the part where Parker boggles again. One-person war what now? Brock hands Parker a handwritten journal. I could pad this blog post out and write it verbatim, but I definitely don’t want to do that! And you wouldn’t want to read it anyway! Here’s the gist of Eddie Brock Sr.’s last entry: “The project was taken away from us! Richard blames me for all of this, maybe, and he wouldn’t be entirely wrong! I am, after all, the one that pushed him into this deal with Trask! Now there are lawyers involved and all other manner of loathsome types! And all I really wanted to was to create something to make the world a better place for us and and our children! Waaahhhh!!”

Two days after he wrote this, the Parkers and the Brocks flew to Washington to have a nice, diplomatic chat with some fuckface lawyer over suing the pants off of these Trask assholes. On the way back, Mohammad Atta hijacked their plane and flew it into Bart Simpson’s treehouse.

“Oh, my God… so they just – these people just took this invention away from them,” Parker says, outraged, finally catching up. Brock doesn’t even know if Trask is in business anymore. This sounds like a job for Spider-Man!… later of course. That must be better than getting to second base with MJ, all that cavorting around in public wearing red spandex.

Let’s flip a coin to see who gets to drink the filthy liquid! I bet it tastes like black licorice filtered through a dehumidifier.

“If they took everything away,” Parker says, nudging toward the flask, “where did you get this?”

Brrrt!! You got me! This is something their dads were working on on the side. Behind the company’s back. Technically illegal. They were trying to prove ownership by making their own “suit”, but they didn’t get very far. As you may recall, they got on an exploding airplane!

So, Brock got it from his grandfather. He kept it in the same freezer this whole time, he doesn’t even know what it is. He would have just as well gotten rid of it, but he didn’t toss out any of his son’s things. It’s only in the last few weeks did Brock discover its existence and had it moved to the Empire State University science lab where a bunch of stoned kids definitely won’t accidentally drink it or anything.

“Doc Conners thinks it’s totally useless,” Brock says, staring at the plastic bin of journals and papers. “…but, the thing is – Doc Conners thinks they were really on the right track. Their logic is good, the math is right. It could be that they just didn’t have the technology to support the theories back then.”

Parker doesn’t care much about any of this malarkey. He’s hung up on the “specific DNA” part. “Whose DNA did they use?”

…

I ain’t gonna lie! I was totally expecting it to be Peter’s! But it’s not, sadly. It’s his dad’s. Parker looks at the flask like he’s ready to bring him back from the dead. Or likes he really wants to fuck that flask.

Do you know what’s cooler than a “PROM IS LAME – LAME IS ON FIRE” t-shirt? A t-shirt that proclaims your proximity to the stupid one.

After school the next day, Parker is chatting with Gwen and then MJ and her friend Liz catch Parker and Gwen chatting and then everyone makes a lot of faces. Parker wants to talk to MJ, but Gwen tells Parker to let MJ come talk to him. Then Parker MJ Gwen MJ Parker Parker MJ Parker MJ Liz Gwen Parker MJ Parker. I mean, honestly.

Ride’s here! Brock picks up his buddy Parker in a stunning convertible! This kid was just bitching about how abject poor he is, that he can’t afford to go out on dates. Maybe this is why. “Yo! Pete!”

Ooooh, Peter Parker’s gonna play wingman here, hooking up his college-aged friend with high school-aged girls. “Eddie Brock, this is Gwen. Remember I told you about her – she lives with me and Aunt May… can she get a ride, too?”

“Absolutely,” he answers. Everyone’s loins get a little bit more moist. ESPECIALLY mine. And MJ – MJ looks so goddamned sad as Parker and Gwen pile into this car. Gwen’s all hugging on him an’ shit, squeezing his body, complimenting his muscles. This is all absolutely true. Liz tells MJ to forget about that punk, but she can’t. Of course she can’t. He’s SPIDER-MAN! How do you just go and dump SPIDER-MAN?

Ugh, well, whatever. Brock takes these two canaries down to the mall and they share a meal at the food court. Brock asks them who the biggest “lame-o” is at their school, and when the answer is a unanimous “Flash Thompson”, Brock tells them that joining a frat would be like getting yourself surrounded by 30 Flash Thompsons. Then Brock takes a call from his professor, Doc Conners, who freaks the fuck out at him for letting some outsider into the lab.

Gwen insults Brock for a second when she calls college a hype. “I have learned that any time everyone says ‘Go here!’… go the other way.” Then Brock is like, your loss, I guess I’ll enjoy this FREE REGGAE MUSIC ON THE QUAD all by my own self!

Reggae? Did someone say reggae?? Who here doesn’t love reggae?? Besides this guy over here, I guess *points to white guy Peter Parker* He’s going to sit this one out. So Gwen and Brock are gonna go to the quad by themselves, and–

“Do you think our parents were murdered?” Peter asks.

BZZZ-WHAAT? Did you hear that sound? It was the sound of the mood shattering into a thousand pieces. “Do I think they were murdered?” Brock repeats, scratching his head. “I – I don’t know.”

Parker stares at this guy like he single-handedly brought the plane down with a penis laser.

Unzip your pants, Brock. Gotta check for doomsday devices.

“A whole plane crashed into the Atlantic.” Brock keeps rambling and wincing, but Parker doesn’t wipe the scowl off of his face. He stares at Brock expecting him to confess and bring out a bunch of drafts for a penis laser prototype.

“What are you guys talking about?” Gwen asks, completely stunned. And her question isn’t answered. And neither is mine! What does Peter Parker think this kid did 10 years ago? Does he suspect foul play from this pothead? Should I? Maybe I should

This is Topher Grace we’re talking about here!

Peter Parker spends the evening poring over every single box, every single piece of paper, every single second of recorded tape that he had discovered from the closet. Journals upon journals, floppy disks, all of it pointing to something dubbed the “Venom Project”. Oh boy, this is exciting, ain’t it folks? Parker is even wearing his best tank top for the occasion.

“What ‘the suit’ will do is just help the body help itself. The ultimate natural medical treatment.” Parker watches his dad yammer about the suit in a fundraising plea. They’re in phase two! The dreaded phase two! More money, please. “With your support we believe that we will be able to bring the suit to the human testing phase in the next two to three years.”

Sounds like a scam to me, pal. Take the money and run, is it? You’ll have a suit on your hands for sure, sir. A lawsuit. Take that to the bank, wiseguy!

What a coincidence. I’d rather die in a plane crash than work at Taco Bell.

The footage ends and new footage begins. Richard Parker’s hair is a mess. Well, it’s messier than the mess it already was. He’s also got some stubble, which is the international sign for world-weariness! All he wanted to do was help people! These greedy bastards! “And because I signed the wrong paper for the wrong person… not only can I not do anything to help them, I can’t even tell someone else what I have so they can go finish it.”

It’s a pickle for sure. Just the other day I was legally contracted against continuing my Jerkoff Yoga training program at L.A. Fitness and I, too, am unable to tell someone else how to finish my life’s work! It’s very frustrating.

“Ben, if you’re watching this – you were right. I’ll never say it to your face, but you were right. ‘Never trust anyone wearing a tie.’”

If Uncle Ben was so wise, then how come he died at gunpoint? Not a very wise way to go, now is it? Oh well, Uncle Ben. You tried… you tried…

…

…WAIT A CONSARNED MINUTE! EPIPHANY! “Every time I turn around there’s some greedy piece of garbage looking to turn something of value into a twisted nightmare!!!” Peter screams – in his puny head – bolt upright and shocked at his current train of thought. “Osborn! Nick Fury! Octavius! All of them. Garbage!”

Parker starts getting that fucking costume on like it’ll finally help him to breathe oxygen. “Someone tries to do something worthwhile… Someone tries to make the world a better place than they found it. And what happens? Every time!”

Come on, Peter! I already said it earlier in this very post: “Stupid capitalism”! It’s one of the worst things to ever happen to the world! You’re finally getting it! Good job!

“They took it away from him – well, I’m taking it back. I’ll finish what he started. I’ll do my own tests – I’ll do it myself!!!”

Uh huh. Uh huh. Slow down there, homeboy. You’re fifteen. Go to school and get good grades and put that stupid costume down, son. Let’s think it through for longer than four nanoseconds.

Nope, we’re already at the Reed Richards Science Center splatting security cameras with sticky webs. Sigh… doofus.

Spider-Man immediately finds a ring of keys and unlocks Brock’s storage compartment containing the frozen, er, “inheritance”. Meanwhile, a nearby Brock and Gwen are enjoying some of that fine, fine reggae down at the quad.

Parker unmasks and starts spooning the delicious black liquid into his own cup. “Take just enough – just enough to do my own tests – to match my dad’s notes. Take back what belongs to me.”

Then, like a completely out-of-control bonehead, he accidentally glops a large spoonful of the stuff onto his exposed hand. “Agh! God, that – that feels weird. It’s cold, but it’s – Oh, no…”

The little black blob spreads immediately across his whole hand. Soon, it starts taking over his whole arm. Now, as if swarmed in sticky, black tentacles, the mass engulfs this wretched kid completely within its oozing, sweaty putrescence. Parker tries to claw free, and he gets his face out just long enough to scream, but it doesn’t last long.

Then he looks like a big smoking turd on the floor.

Someone burned the roast!

As if born from a cocoon, Parker bursts forth from the gross pile of bubbling goo groaning and moaning. At first he can’t see, but then everything coalesces in place, his whole figure becoming that of a… dark, black Spider-Man. He’s even got the same eyes! Those beautiful, doleful, sharp spidery eyes.

“Whoah…” he says, giving us all his best Keanu Reeves impersonation.

Final Thoughts

Is this the part where Peter Parker becomes a Bad Boy and then pisses off everyone he loves? MJ, Aunt May, Gwen, Uncle Ben’s ghost, Flash Thompson, Kong, Nick Fury, the Wasp, Kraven the Hunter, and Harry Osborn’s therapist? In that order? Check back to find out or your money back!*

*no