Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 – “Big Time Super Hero”! In the previous installment, Uncle Ben got got. He’s dead, AND we know it now! When Peter finds out that the perpetrator might be nearby, he scoots off Spider-Man style to try to kick his jerk butt! When he ruffles him up a bit, he learns that it was the VERY SAME criminal whom he let escape during another robbery, commenting “not my responsibility”. Ah, but the word “responsibility” is coming back to haunt him now! Now and forever! Everyone you love keeps dying, Peter! Who’s gonna be next? With great power comes great…something. I forget.

A lot has happened already in five issues! There’s a lot more story left, unless of course the next 100+ issues of Ultimate Spider-Man are entirely made up of just Levi’s and X-Ray Spex advertisements.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 [April, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Big Time Super Hero”

Oh boy, I completely forgot about J. Jonah Jameson as a Spider-Man character. A Spider-Man character extraordinaire, you might say. Well, YOU might not say it, but SOMEBODY might. (me). It looks like we finally get to see his first appearance in Issue #6. Mr. Jameson is shoving some newspapers in the faces of his willfully disengaged staff. It seems that all the competitive publications are printing front page news stories about this mysterious Spidered Man. And what is his newspaper, the Daily Bugle, printing as front page news? The Osborne family’s house burns down due to some lunatic pumpkin bomb-throwing maniac?? BOOOOO! That’s boring! Fuck that noise with 1000 toys, son! J. Jonah Jethro Jimbob Jameson wants his newspaper plastered with nothing but Spider-Man stories! Stories such as: Where did Spider-Man come from? Why is Spider-Man cavorting around town in his underwear? Is Spider-Man a mental patient? Is Spider-Man single? You can almost see that the artist might’ve drawn a boner on him. Look closely…yep, it’s there.

Boner sighted.

Speaking of cavorting around in his underwear, Peter Parker is in an attic or a garage or a shed hootin’ and hollerin’ in his tighty-whities over some dork science bullshit. I guess he, the 15-year-old teenager, has been spending a lot of his free time trying to work on the adhesive that his dad was working on before he died? Snooooze. Why isn’t this kid out egging cars or trying to get laid instead? It almost looks like he spooged all over a frying pan! So, I guess in this universe Spider-Man webs don’t actually come out of his wrists naturally? In this universe he actually has to sit down and do some science to make this web gunk and fill a spray bottle with it? He spends a lot of panels fetishizing this new spoogy super glue stuff, looking forward to tweaking the recipe to make it juuuuuuuust right with respect to elasticity, tackiness, strength, character, and panache, and flavor. He can’t wait to trial-and-error his way through it all! “Man, Uncle Ben would’a loved this.” he says, clearly no longer grieving probably 14 hours after the guy got killed. Aunt May yells at him to go to bed. Parker continues hanging from the ceiling, which isn’t where his bed is. It isn’t where his bed is at all.

It seems that Peter Parker didn’t get much sleep, because he’s snoring away at his desk at school while the student body gawks like crazed monkeys. One kid looks particularly intense and ravenous. Parker’s teacher yells at him, which startles the poor kid into breaking another desk with a heartily exclaimed “NNYAA!”. After the teacher threatens to tell the basketball coach, Parker tells her not to bother because he quit the team. This sends the local jocks into a tailspin of sadness hitherto unknown four issues ago! “It just wasn’t me,” Parker explains sheepishly. “Your uncle croaks so you can’t play ball?” Kong says, hilariously. Oh man, the fire in MJ’s eyes after hearing that one. Hoo boy. Oh man. Whoa nelly.

NOT PICTURED THIS TIME: A boner.

To make matters even more awkward and weird, Harry Osborne strolls through the school hallway like a distracted zombie wearing a shitty turtleneck. He keeps responding to statements like “We were worried about you!” and “I’m so sorry about your family!” with stuff like “Yeah?” and “Are you?” and “Why?”, so it’s like hey thanks for showing up I guess. And because bad luck comes in threes, enormous explosions rocket through the hallways throwing kids everywhere! Did Kong fart? NO! Harry Osborne, stricken with possibly turtleneck-related panic and trepidation, suspects that it’s the mysterious flying demon that scorched the Osborne mansion. Another explosion, as written in the comic book, goes “FRABOOM”. Harry thinks that this flying demon is trying to kill him again and yells for help.

Never fear, Spider-Man is here! We are treated to a full-page view of Spider-Man’s taint as he leaps forward to save the day! There are kids below him staring up at the taint too. It’s quite a taint.

Hold on, we are taken to the scene just moments ago with Peter Parker ducking into a restroom to change. As the fire sprinkler system rains water down on him, he runs through his anxieties about having to possibly explain why Spider-Man was in the school and if his peers will figure out his secret identity. Good thing kids are dumb, Parker, you would’ve been fine. He decides to duck back out of the building and change behind some parked cars. After the old switcheroo, we are treated to another identical page of Spider-Man’s full-blown taint, and we proceed from here.

Spider-Man scours the water- and smoke-filled school hallways on a MISSION to find a BAD GUY. One emerges from the smoke! He throws some quips at the hulking (edit: not the Hulk) figure towering before him, like “I wanna see your hall pass” and “Are you the new Home Ec teacher?” because comic book nerds who grow up to be comic book writers still like to put 1960’s comic book nerd humor in them. Spider-Man is awfully cocky for someone who has never encountered a real villain before, unless that villain is VIRGINITY then he is well-acquainted! This scary fireball-lancing villain wears a purple cloak and has muscular legs and a visible package. IS HE WILLEM THE FOE? Ha! See, I can be just as funny as Spider-Man.

Super-Man, proving time and time again, that he thinks he cute.

As he’s duking it out with the Deep Purple Fireball his inner monologue reveals that he’s actually one false move away from shitting his Spidey-Tighties, but he’s largely preoccupied with how the fuck he’s going to end this little encounter gracefully. This little dilemma eventually resolves itself, albeit without the graceful part, when our malefactor grabs onto Spider-Man and launches both of them through a brick wall and into the ionosphere. While getting taken way the hell up into the sky, Spider-Man gets a good look at the face of this goblin who is green…for lack of a better identifier how about we just call him the Green Goblin (yes, that’ll do)…and this goblin utters “PPPPRRRRKKKKEERRRR…” Oh my!

Final Thoughts

Man, watching the first Spider-Man movie from 2002 really spoiled a lot of the twists for me in this comic book series! Then again, this is Earth-1610! The Green Goblin could be Peter Falk for all I know. Peter Falk as Columbo. I read once that Peter Falk used to wander away between takes on the Columbo set and the stagehands always had to find him to bring him back. Wait, what was I talking about again?

I already know who the Green Goblin is! I have no speculations! See you in Issue #7.