Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #46 – “Afterwards…”! Back yet again with ANOTHER Spider-Man adventure. That Peter Parker just won’t quit. In the previous storyline, a Latverian transfer student named Geldoff blows up cars with his magic powers for fun because he’s a mutant, and that shit ain’t cool. Spider-Man tries to intervene and teach Geldoff about responsibility, Uncle Ben-style; telling him to slow his roll and use his powers for good. But then the X-Men show up and whisk Geldoff away to their Academy for Freaks and Misfits.

Also, Aunt May has a lengthy therapy session where she talks about everybody around her in her life dying. Maybe she should stop being a natural death magnet? Therapy won’t help that, May. Try one of those holistic healers who can reverse the polarity with bat guano and secret herbs and spices.

Anyway, this is my favorite comic book series by far. Let’s dip back in and see what’s in store for the little dumbass Peter Parker.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #46 [November, 2003]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Afterwards…”

Two months ago. A woman named Sharon Carter, Agent 13 of S.H.I.E.L.D., sits in a dark room with her hand on a glowing yellow circle. Possibly a lie detector of sorts? Or maybe it’s just comfortable and warm like a ring of piss. “I hate this,” she grumbles. She looks haggard and disheveled.

She’s Agent Carter. She’s been with S.H.I.E.L.D. for about six years. She answers directly to Nick Fury, bald eyepatch extraordinaire. Or at least she used to. She deals with public disturbances related to mutant entities and phenomena. Unnatural mutations, meaning self-inflicted mutations. As in, did it on purpose. As in, perhaps, injecting some shit into your neck over and over again, for one thing.

Just last night she had to travel to New Jersey for an incident involving Doc Ock, who was tearing shit up and throwing cars around with his slimy metal octopus arms.

“You can read the files on Octavius. But at this point he was officially an escaped, violent, illegal genetic mutation. S.H.I.E.L.D. was on his trail immediately!” Carter relays. But he was a slippery one, successfully hiding until he damn well wanted to be seen! S.H.I.E.L.D. (which is fucking annoying to write out) was supposed to bring this mollusk in quietly, but he goes and calls a press conference with live network coverage and a big, public showdown with a spider boy. Another illegal genetic mutation. It’s all very irritating. Lots of paperwork. Nick Fury is keeping an EYE on everything, lmao

Hey, at least it makes for some exciting TV!

Carter describes her disposition as “fermished”, which is apparently a Yiddish word meaning “all fucking fucked up”. From her armored van, she had witnessed the fight. It was an absolute disaster that this was happening. Just some real bogus stuff. The press is there. A huge audience. Carter is totally verklempt.

“Uh, Agent Carter…? Fury is on the line,” says a member of her tactical team.

“Tell him I’m already in the field.”

“She’s already – uh, yes sir. He says he’s watching it on TV and unless that’s you in the Spider-Man costume you better get on the phone.”

By the time S.H.I.E.L.D. got there, the fight was over. Doc Ock was KO’d and Spider-Man was mugging for the cameras. Now the police were on the scene. And EMS. More fucking people, man. Real meshuggah.

Once they make it to the area, Carter and her team try to pick up the pieces. They tell the local police to vamoose, but then a reporter barges into the conversation and asks if she’s FBI. What she’s going to do about Hammer Industries. What she’s going to do about Mr. Octopus Man. Then suddenly, the network “loses the feed”. Ha ha heh heh. Whoops! And etc.

More scoping the area ensues. No sign of mutants. SNAFU big time. “Fury is going to eat our faces,” says Carter’s sidekick, Agent What’sHisName. Who cares. “He’s going to eat my face,” Carter corrects him. “We can’t come back empty-handed.”

Unless there’s children around, of course. This is America, after all.

So the team maneuvers around Hammer Industries huntin’ for mutants. They enter a lab where three dorky scientists are fearfully hunched over a computer. They’re not sure if the coast is clear to, like, step out of the building and get on with their lives.

Carter points a gun at them. They look rather scared. “Who else is in the building?”

“N-no one. We had – everyone took off.”

“Octavius came in here before and really scared the crap out of–”

“Why didn’t you run away?” Carter asks.

“We live here.”
“You live here?”

“I’m not leaving our experiment.”

Whoops, that’s a slip. Carter looks pissed. She turns her head and finds a naked man sitting forlornly in a cell with padded walls and a glass door. “THE HELL IS THIS?” Carter grits her teeth. “What is this man doing locked up like this?”

“That’s–”

“We want our lawyer.”

“But–”

“Shut up, Dwayne.”

Carter knocks on the cell; tries to get the guy’s attention. Carter’s sidekick pulls up a file: the guy’s name is Flint Marko (might as well be Beef Chucksteak). Marko looks up at Carter as she enters the cell. “Flint? What are you doing here? Do you speak English?”

Flint just looks at her silently. Carter’s sidekick desperately tries to get her attention.

Flint stands up. Carter draws her gun.

Slab Bulkhead! Thick McRunfast! Fist Rockbone! Crud Bonemeal! Big McLargeHuge!

And in a huge dust cloud, Flint flies forward like a bullet and runs out of the cell, trampling Carter on his way out. He floats around on the other side of the room looking like some Pig-Pen-ass genie. Agent What’sHisName (Woo) is down but ok. Some douche on the team named Riggs is down and probably dead or something, I dunno.

Now Carter points her gun at the three nerds. “OKAY, WHAT THE &$#@ WAS THAT??!!” she yells. Obviously. Two question marks and two exclamation points, man. It’s pretty serious.

We see a glimpse of Flint’s file; information that Carter got after the fact. He was sent to Ryker’s Island for fifty years for trying and failing to rob a Brink’s car, going home to beat up his girlfriend, and beating up one of the cops that came to their door (later dying in the hospital from injuries). How he got involved with Hammer Industries is still being investigated, but perhaps money and deals were swiftly involved!

The project’s codeword is “Sandman”. As in, so boring that he makes you sleep. OR, it explains all the dust.

Carter’s team gives chase to the Sandman and runs out of the building where they find Spidey making short work of the creep. He’s doing his famous cartwheels.

“So yes,” Carter relays back in the interrogation room, “that’s when I knew I had lost control of the situation.”

My brain eats bullets for breakfast!

Spidey got kicked around good. Carter aims her gun and shoots Sandman square in the forehead. It barely leaves a scratch. Then he sprays a storm of sand in their direction, kinda like that really annoying Pokémon move.

“Hey beach boy, quick question…” Spider-Man bounds back into the scene. “Can you do the math on this?”

He gets sprayed with a firehose, which makes him melt like the dang ol’ witch from The Wizard of Oz. Then Spidey finds MJ in the pile of sand for some reason, I don’t know why. Maybe I’ll learn later. Or not!

Sandman is back with a vengeance! Then, out of nowhere, one of the scientists shoots him with a gun that causes him to disintegrate and stay disintegrated. Probably will last ten minutes, tops. S.H.I.E.L.D. uses this brief respite to arrest the scientists.

Spidey talks to Agent Carter in the aftermath.

“What was that?”
“Sorry, National Security.”

“Whatever. Ecch – I have sand in certain places I’d rather not discuss.”

Spider-Man asks for a ride home, but, even after saving her life, Carter snubs him. He fwips some Spidey webs and swings away.

Epilogue: Back in the interrogation room…

“Uh, can I say something on the record before you wrap this up–”

“If you wish.”

“I just – I just wanted to say that this is a bad idea.”

“What is?”

MONOLOGUE TIME! The short and sweet of it: destroy the mutants. Don’t detain and experiment on them. They’re menaces. Fuck ‘em.

A sexy evenining awaits.

Final Thoughts

Looks like Agent Carter has seen better days! Maybe she’ll get dishonorably discharged from S.H.I.E.L.D. and spend the rest of her days flipping burgers for Nick Fury at his mansion’s private Burger King.