Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #45 – “Guilt”! In the previous installment, Spidey hangs out with the X-Men for a bit of the evening and learns that Geldoff’s mother’s placenta had been injected with mutant agents while Geldoff was in the womb! So the X-Men are going to get to the bottom of this in an equally immoral manner, and Spidey is just going to have to deal with that.

As a result of this trip to the Professor Xavier School, Peter Parker arrives home roughly 49 hours after curfew and Aunt May is one cunt hair away from giving her nephew the caning of a lifetime. Let’s watch! This is going to be good. Something big always happens in the last issue of a storyline, and this time it’s going to be a “no TV dinners for a year” punishment.

(For those keeping track, that’s the 408th joke about TV dinners that I’ve made in this blog. It will not be the last.)

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #45 [November, 2003]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Guilt”

Another issue, another Spider-Man bulge. I never, ever get tired of looking at it!

Aunt May lies down on a chaise lounge, arms folded in a manner of unbridled defiance. Her therapist smiles kindly at her. “So… May… how have you been sleeping?”

May stares daggers at her, so she changes the subject to Peter. May recalls the events from her point of view from Issues #43 and #44. The school needed to be evacuated. She rushed out of work to pick up Peter, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t at school, work, or home. A teacher calls and tells her that Peter wasn’t even there before the evacuation! She was beside herself with worry, fear, and an urge to kick her nephew’s skinny ass.

So when he finally came home, May scared the shit out of him by hootin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’. Peter stays silent, petrified, rooted to his spot. Then May grabs his backpack. “I WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE UP TO ALL DAY THAT YOU DIDN’T GO TO SCHOOL!!” Peter is pooping his well-stained underpants.

May is just about to catch a glimpse of Peter’s Spider-Man costume when a heavy book THUMPs to the floor.

The Howard Pyle classic, now with 50% more eroticism!

It’s a book. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. This nerd has this book in his backpack and May fawns over it, remembering that it was his mother’s. “I remembered her reading it to me, and I wanted to read it again.”

May starts feeling bad while Peter lies his pants off about playing hooky to read a children’s book. He’s like “I only skipped Geometry, it’s fine, I’m ahead anyway, I go to the food court and read all the time, leave me alone you awful, nasty Hellbitch.”

After Peter insists that he didn’t know this would freak May out so much, May sits down and holds her face in her hands.

“I won’t do it again, I promise.”

“I thought you were dead.”

How’s that for some therapy! Her therapist suggests that maybe Peter is on drugs and should be treated poorly like the degenerate junkie that he is. May doesn’t think he’s on drugs, necessarily, but she’s not above treating him like a degenerate junkie. Maybe she can lock him in a closet to “detox”.

May changes the subject. “This is embarrassing to say out loud. It’s– uh– It’s Spider-Man.”

I forgot which issue this was, so I can’t reference, but there was a scene where a few punks on roller blades and skateboards were blasting through a crowded sidewalk stealing purses and bags. May comes out of the grocery store and witnesses Spider-Man cartwheeling around, doing flips, and all around relishing in jovial merriment while he put a stop to the roughhousing of the ruffians. KICK PUNCH THUNK WHAP HONK MOO

“This is the world I live in? This is the world I have to worry Peter is in? I can’t even wrap my head around it.”

Every time Peter leaves the house, May has to worry about Spidery Men out to kill kids like him. Chewing them up and spitting them out like useless, but tasty, tobacco. Or Tabasco. Chaos! Bedlam! Malarkey! “On top of war, terrorism, violence. All those things. Now we have people that run around in their pajamas and do whatever they want? Whatever they want – whenever they want?

Yeah, it sucks. But it’s Chinatown, baby.

She hears the name “Spider-Man” everywhere now. Everywhere she goes. The grocery store and the porno shop. “My neighbor thinks he lives in our neighborhood. And everyone is always seeing him.”

And he’s involved in everything! May’s eyes bug out as she describes all the shit she’s been hearing from other people and in the news. Spider-Man this! Spider-Man that! Spider-Man over there! Look out, kids, it’s Spider-Man! Hotcha!

Fuck that dad. I’m glad he’s dead.

May whines for another seven pages. Ultimately, she thought Peter was dead, but not hit by a bus or falling down a manhole or getting hit by a nuclear bomb or having a heart attack or getting his penis caught in the subway doors or getting mugged by aliens. She thought Peter was dead because Spider-Man killed him.

lmao

Now the therapist decides to ask May if she feels guilty for going to therapy. And yes, she does, mostly because she didn’t go when Peter’s mother died, and she didn’t go when Uncle Ben died. She started going when Gwen Stacy’s dad died. Probably because now she has to take care of Gwen, and she’s a huge slutty slut. “I’m just sick of the whole thing,” she says, probably referring to everyone around her dying. Probably her fault, too. She should feel guilty!

She admits that she thinks she’s using Gwen. Gwen may be grieving and seeking support from May, but May’s the one getting the support. She didn’t take Gwen into her home “out of the goodness of her heart”. She’s using her to feel better.

May be Scroogin’.

Then she talks about “the ghosts”, which unnerves the thus-far stoic therapist. The ghosts don’t really talk and she can’t see them, but when it’s quiet she knows they’re there. One more weird sentence from May and she’s off to the loony bin! That would be a fun storyline. Peter vists May in a straitjacket while she froths about Spider-Man and the ghosts!

So, in short, Gwen is there to break up the silence. Especially since that Peter motherfucker is always out of the dang house.

Peter found an old tape in the basement. It was of a picnic with the Brock family, as as one recalls. The people in the tape are May’s “ghosts”. Ben. Little Peter. Her friends. The woman in that tape was happy. HAPPY! Now the woman from the tape is sad. SAD! “Why can’t I love someone without them dying?”

May’s getting rather dramatic and it’s making me uncomfortable. Why isn’t she being considerate of others here?

We get to the topic of MJ. Every night, since he was a little boy, May would check on him in his bed. Now, half the time, he isn’t there anymore. He sneaks out of the house to cavort with the little red-headed tramp next door. But how mad can she get? The kid does his homework and eats his vegetables. The kid has lost a lot in his life, why deprive him of this kind of happiness? And pussy? “Are you worried that they are having sex?” the therapists asks, eyes narrowing as if sex lead to Nazism (which we all know the opposite is true; Nazis are a bunch of virgin losers). May deflects and reiterates that she lets him have the freedom and then yells at him about how much freedom he has when he shows up at home.

You’re starting to give me the creeps, lady.

And she’s pushing him away, seemingly on purpose. Because if she lets him get to close, HE’LL DIE! PENIS CAUGHT IN THE SUBWAY DOORS!

The therapist is like, that’s not the way the world works, dingbat.

May already knows this, and shut up. Then she repeats herself again and I ain’t paraphrasing that shit.

Finally, finally, the therapist gets to talk. She tells May to lighten up and stop feeling so guilty. Dingbat. Instead of having a pity party and drinking yourself into oblivion, you brought a girl into your home and are taking care of her. Maybe you need her more than she needs you. Fine. It’s called being human and whatnot.

But talk to Peter more. The kid is obviously disturbed and needs to stop jerking off so much.

Also, obviously May was in love with this Captain Stacy and that’s fine too. Shut up about it.

The Spider-Man thing? That’s a topic for next time. Sit with it another week, why don’t ya.

May walks home and finds Peter in a robe. As most 15-year-olds are found to wear on a weekday night. She tries to chit-chat but he feels weird about it, then she suggests going on a little date. An outing. Burgers and fries and comic books. Pizza and a movie theater. Just two buds. RIGHT NOW. Pack your parka, son.

“I have homework,” Peter smiles.
“Fuck homework,” responds May. Again, paraphrasing.

Peter’s like YAY!

May’s like WOO HOO!

All smiles. Happy ending.

Final Thoughts

I hate happy endings!