Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #8 – “Working Stiff”! And so begins a new story arc of an established Loneliness & Cheeseburgers feature! We left off from the previous issue in a state of befuddlement and uncertainty! An epic battle at the school between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin ended with the Green Goblin jumping off a fucking bridge and into the water below! Harry Osborne suspects that it’s his father seeking revenge on somebody for some reason! Peter Parker feels bad for Harry, and too wonders what happened to Norman Osborne and if it’s related to Peter’s newfound powers. Peter suspects the Green Goblin is dead, but Issue #7 ended with a close-up of the bubbly water below!

I can only imagine what kind of hijinks will happen in this new storyline! Does “Working Stiff” refer to a penis that will bone MJ? Whose penis will it be? Oh boy! I can’t wait!

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #8 [June, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Working Stiff”

These Ultimate Spider-Man comic book covers sure leave a lot to be desired so far. With only an exception or two, it’s all been Spider-Man in generic, provocative poses or swinging around on his ropey spider cum webs. The covers aren’t telling me what to expect! I want the fucking cover to SPOIL THE STORY for me, damnit! Why should I have to read the contents to know what happens?? I’m not made of time!

The opening scene shows a grinning bad guy with the kind of sunglasses they give you at the optometrist after they dilate your pupils. He is attempting to rob an armored “Krink’s” security truck when SPIDER-MAN SWOOPS IN TO SAVE THE DAY!

Final Thoughts

Just kidding! But he does swoop in to save the day, so that part was correct. He does it with ease too, like he’s been doing this for almost seven issues now! After stopping the bad guy, the armored truck guards think that now Spider-Man is the one robbing them. They offer him big bags of money with dollar signs on them. Now, obviously Spider-Man has his scruples and he’s clearly a better man than I, because I probably would’ve taken just ONE bag of money, but Spider-Man does some flips away from the scene.

Kong lifts two fingers in the universal symbol for “I’m gon’ lick that pussy”.

Spider-Man’s big triumph is the talk of the school the next morning! With hushed voices in the library, Flash Thompson’s pussy haha I mean posse talks about the heroic event. Kong regrets not being at the scene, because there have been mutterings around the city that a certain newspaper being run by a certain Spider-Man-crazed editor-in-chief is offering BOOKOO bucks if he gets BEAUCOUP photos of the spidery little nerd. Peter Parker overhears all this with a wicked glint in his eye, and later we see him decked out as Spider-Man staging his own photoshoot in a back alley somewhere. “Why shouldn’t I get a little bling bling off this whole superhero thing I got goin’ on?” he says, posing for some action shots with an anime smile in his eyes. And, of course, he reminds the audience of his altruistic intentions to give the money to Aunt May. How about you rob a Krink’s truck instead, doofus?

Parker shows up at the Daily Bugle dressed quite smartly in a crisp, magenta button-down and a blue plaid tie, positively beaming with wonky-eyed enthusiasm! The place is bustling with activity in a way that a real news building probably never actually ever is. J. Jonah Jameson is chewing out a journalist for having the audacity to provide him with non-Spider-Man stories! This is a newspaper! We report the news here at the newspaper! Spider-Man is news! Nothing else is news!

Look what my brother found in a box in the woods! But I have to bring it back home, ok?

As the writers start complaining that Spider-Man is too elusive, they catch Parker in the hallway grinning and seductively holding up crystal clear shots of the local celebrity crime-buster. Jameson starts grilling Parker about how he got these photos, starts rifling through them with disdain over the picture quality ready to shove this kid on his ass back outside, but then he finds one that makes him cream his J. Jonah Jameson Jeans. He offers Parker $50 for it, and Parker was just about ready to shove this guy on his ass back outside when one of the copy editors has an issue with the paper’s website that she shouldn’t be tasked with working on because she’s, and I quote, “not a freakin’ web designer”. BUT GUESS WHO IS? Parker throws out some Year 2001 computer knowledge on their collective cornholes. Jameson offers him a job at the Daily Bugle. Looks like we got a regular Clark Kent on our hands, folks.

That night, Parker has an Uncle Ben nightmare where Uncle Ben gets murdered (spoiler alert). Get over it.

Parker has trouble concentrating at school the next day, probably because the teacher is giving abstruse classwork instructions like “design a poster that identifies the voting practices in your home country of Nationality”. He hatches an idea to use the Daily Bugle’s database to search for the identity of Uncle Ben’s murderer. In his research, he discovers a New York City crime boss named Wilson Fisk. After asking a coworker why no one seems to be going after this kingpin, his coworker basically tells him “Look, Sparky, ain’t no motherfucking way that anyone’s going after the motherfucking kingpin. Idiot.” Well, looks like Spider-Man is going to go after the motherfucking kingpin.

In other words, “go fuck yourself, pint-size”.

Final Thoughts, For Reals This Time

The end here seems like a drastic shift into a who-cares bunch of nothing. Suddenly Peter Parker cares about some sort of crime boss that he didn’t know about 10 minutes ago? YOUR UNCLE’S MURDERER STILL ROAMS FREE. DIPSHIT. GRRR. Come on, Parker, focus. Take your ritalin.

I like the idea that Parker will eventually take a picture of Spider-Man wearing nothing but his mask, a gold chain, and a codpiece. Jameson’s gonna give him a corner office.