Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #35 – “Legacy”! In the previous installment, Peter Parker learns a lot more about what kind of research his dad was doing. Mostly it was for curing cancer, but in the wrong hands it could be used as a weapon. Too bad their company owned all intellectual property rights to their research and creations. Not a damn thing anyone can do about that! And then a plane crashed, and the rest is history!

As Parker learns more and more, he gets more and more upset that his father’s work was wrested right out of his hands! Aiming to pick up where his dad left off, Parker swings and webs his way to the Reed Richards Science Center to steal a bit of the black liquid being kept in the lab. Like a massive, reckless dingus, he plops some of it on his hand. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Long story short, it has encased him in a “suit” and it looks like he has now turned into Bad Spider-Man!

And now he’s going to spend his days smoking cigarettes and listening to The Who while Aunt May cries on the couch.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #35 [March, 2003]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Legacy”

A celebrity who looks uncannily like Jessica Simpson moves through a crowd, waving and smiling before entering her limousine. “Okay, get me the @#$!! out of this vomitorium you call a city,” she says to her driver, closing the door. Three men in masked green suits have taken out the driver and are about to taze her assistant. She’s next! And the limo drives off.

The woman screams all “AAIIEEE!!! AAIIEEE!!!” about it. One of them is on the phone with a Mr. Mattola, presumably her agent, and threatens to cut off certain pieces of her body to be sent to him. This woman has made 12 million dollars in record sales, so their ransom demands will seem very fair! They await the money in a giant sack with a dollar sign on it by the oak tree where that little girl reads Beezus and Ramona books every afternoon.

IN SWOOPS THE GOOD GUY! Purple Spider-Man lands atop the limo and tears the roof wide open with his bare hands. Well, not bare. They are gloved, technically! “Wow, a limo! Is it prom season already?” Good to see that the new Spider-Man hasn’t lost his clever edge.

Our “hero” punches the driver right through the side window and takes over the wheel. Another guy shoots a bullet right through the same shoulder where Parker took a bullet in Issue #29, but this time the special self-healing suit immediately assesses the situation and returns his shoulder to normal. “Wow, huh?” he says to the woman. “I’m glad you saw that too, because I don’t think anybody’d believe me.”

He shoots a dark webs at the dudes, and I can’t tell exactly what happens to them but smoldering is involved. The woman continues screaming. The men are screaming. “YOU KIDS SETTLE DOWN BACK THERE OR I AM GOING TO PULL THIS CAR RIGHT OVER!” Now Purple Spider-Man is screaming. There’s an abundance of screaming. He gets tired of the woman screaming and splats her mouth with dark web spooge. We can keep that one for posterity.

Coming soon to an X-rated theater near you.

Purple Spider-Man is driving around the city like a maniac, and it’s unclear what he’s trying to do with the car. I think he’s trying to help the woman? Maybe I should keep reading, but I like speculating out loud so that you can read some extra words. Maybe he’ll drive onto a helicopter and fly to Myanmar.

I suppose the webs aren’t actually burning anyone. There goes my theory, which I never actually theorized out loud or even in my head, that it’s just loads of hot tar.

A speeding bus crosses the intersection in front of Dark Spidey. “Oh, my God…” he whispers, obviously uninterested in hurting children. So that’s good. He uses the unconscious driver’s face to slam on the brakes, and it’s successful! URT! That’s the sound of the final lurch before the car stops. I like that.

URT!

Dozens of people are silently watching, faces masks of horror, as Dark Spidey exits the limo and dusts off his hands. “Ma’am,” he says gentlemanly, opening the door and extending his hand. He helps her out of the car. “Just for the record, everyone…” he says, leaping away. “…we’re just friends.”

Uh oh, it’s the coppers! “Hands in the air, freak!!” yells a particularly bastardy one, aiming his gun. Dark Spidey is rather incredulous. He did good! In front of everyone, he did good! God, is there no end to the authorities being bitches about everything? I mean, Jesus…

He says “fuck ya’ll” to the po-po and leaps/swings away. As he heads back from whence he came, he jubilates over this new, kickass suit. At first he was like, oh dags, this thing doesn’t rip like his old suit? That’s the business! Especially since, ahem, certain areas might have ripped eventually. “…and I would’ve ended up on the news with my bits and pieces tiled-out like one of those bimbettes on the Howard Stern show.”

But now he can take a bullet?? URT! “My dad was a genius!! A genius!!”

Now it’s onto the next task.

I GOT LOST ON THE WAY TO LASER TAG.

This new guy keeps the cops at bay with his soundwave-blasting guns. It doesn’t last long. It’s implied that Spidey has stopped this guy before, but I don’t remember that! Maybe it was 30 issues ago! Who cares, he’s going to stop him again and he’s scared pantsless about it. The guy, not Spidey. Also, his pants stay on.

Mr. Sound Engineer blasts his waves toward Spidey, who just absorbs them without even budging. “That was – That was actually quite relaxing. Thanks.”

“Oh no…” the dude says, understanding the immediate consequences. Spidey kicks him into a cop car. “Is everyone in one piece,” Spidey asks the crowd, who remains gaping and silent. “Everyone okay? Yes? No? Maybe? Sort of?”

He leaps away. “All righty then…”

A newswoman on the scene sings praises to our dark hero, and compliments his saucy new look! Yowza!

And now, onto the next task.

TAKE THAT, COIN LAUNDRY. QUARTERS FOR LAUNDRY ONLY, HUH? NOW IT’S BULLETS FOR LAUNDRY ONLY, HA HA HA HA!!

This dumbshit is stealing quarters and wounds a man in the process. A family man. A real dad-like individual. He’s bleeding all over the floor while his wife and child cry like “wah”.

Don’t worry! Dark Not-a-Jerk-YET-But-Wait Spidey is on the move! He chases the guy (who is pissing his tender pants, by the way) down the alley. The perpetrator ducks into an abandoned building loaded with old shelves and tipped-over barrels. As he hides, gun a-ready, Dark Spidey skulks around looking for the poor bastard.

In short, he surprises him from the wall, where he’s clinging spiderily, and pounces! He takes one good look at the guy and starts having flashbacks. Memories. Recollections.

“You…”

Reminiscences. Souvenirs. Retrospections.

“You killed my Uncle Ben.”

VENGEANCES! JUSTICES! RETALIATIONS!

“Dude,” the guy sputters, “I- I- I- I swear to God, I known that guy was your uncle…”

Apologies. Bargainings. Pants poopings.

Shit gets kind of real here for a second, so send the kids off to bed for this one. Preferably without their dinners!

No! Please let me go, you ravishing, handsome beast from the deepest corners of the eighth pit of Hell.

“YOU DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE!! YOU DON’T DESERVE YOUR LIFE!! YOU KILLED MY UNCLE BEN!!!”

I don’t have to tell you how scared this guy is. Dark Spider wraps his bulging hands around the guy’s throat. “I WANT TO HEAR YOU SCREAM!!!”

Ok, how’s this: aahhh. uh… aaiiieee. *cough* arrooooo…

Then, suddenly, as if melting off his face, the suit exposes Parker’s terrified eyes and twisted mouth. He’s all like “GUH”.

“AAGGHH!! What’s happening to me? Get this off of me!!” He tries to tear more of the suit off, but the smoky blackness continues trying to envelope his body. Meanwhile, the dude looks like he just had seven heart attacks and fourteen bowel movements.

Looking like a mess, Parker leaps away trying to regain control of himself. His thoughts are scattered. He apologizes to Dead Uncle Ben about flying off the handle like that. His head is swimming with visions of his dad, MJ, getting bit by the spider, Uncle Ben, J. Jonah Jameson, a crying Aunt May, Doc Ock, Gwen, Harry Osborn, the Kingpin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the guy from The Sopranos with the thing, and Beavis. “It’s feeding on me. It’s eating me alive. What have I done?”

He fumbles around in the storm, plummets through power lines, and crashes in a fireball in front of his father’s, mother’s, and Uncle Ben’s shared tombstone.

All his bits and pieces are tiled-out.

URT!

Final Thoughts

Well that was exciting, wasn’t it, boys and girls?! I was hoping for at least another 400 issues of Purple Spider-Man, but I instead I got a full-page spread of an almost-naked 15-year-old in a graveyard. I suppose that’s… almost the same thing.