Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #60 – “Carnage (Part 1)”! In the previous storyline, there’s stuff about filming the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movie in Queens, making Peter Parker extremely salty, so that’s an lol. There’s other stuff about Doc Ock trying to kidnap Spider-Man and take him to Brazil, so that’s an lol. Oh, and Gwen Stacy knows that Parker is Spider-Man, so lols all around!

What’s next in store for our intrepid little web-spinning wedgie magnet? Maybe puberty and a 2nd Place Clarinet Soloist Award is in the works.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #60 [August, 2004]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Carnage (Part 1)”

The splash page reminds me about the Venom storyline where old childhood friend Eddie Brock splashed himself with Venom juice and became a big, hulking asshole. It is clear to me that we will be revisiting this.

Half the issue is Spider-Man fighting a giant reptile monster in Curt Connors’ science lab. Spider-Man doesn’t want to fight, he just wants to talk, but the giant reptile monster – whom I presume to be Curt Connors himself – wants to fight, so the fighting happens whether the red spider wants it to or not. The giant reptile monster – Curt Connors – wears a tattered lab coat. This is how you know it’s Curt Connors.

Later that night, or perhaps it’s a flashback to an earlier night, Connors – the giant reptile monster – sneaks into Connors’ son’s bedroom and kills him… then Connors wakes up screaming from the greatest nightmare anyone has ever had since I dreamed that watched Halle Berry’s Catwoman for a second time. He screams like this, by the way, in giant red block letters: “GGGAAAHHH!!!”

Curt calls his ex-wife Doris in the middle of the night to make sure his son, Timmy, is ok. “Well, I just – no. I’m not drunk,” he insists. “I-I had a bad dream, and I – He’s still my son and I can still worry about him.”

Over the phone, Curt hears the sounds of a man breathing or bed springs bouncing or a male voice saying “SUCK MY DICK, BITCH” and he asks who’s over Doris’ house right now. None of your beeswax, Curtis. He dejectedly hangs up the phone and looks at a letter on his desk to his attention from Stark Industries. Curt’s grant will be cancelled unless he produces results ASAP. He has until the end of the month to prove that you can light a lightbulb with a potato, or else Stark Ind. will stop forking over trillions of dollars per week.

Eat shit, Cunt.

Elsewhere, Spider-Man swings around New York following a veritable cavalcade of cop cars! “Peter Parker – the Amazing Spider-Boy,” he says self-deprecatingly. “Even though swinging through Brooklyn violates my ‘stay out of Brooklyn for all the obvious reasons’ rule… this does look serious. And where there is serious, I show up in my red and blue underwear. Why? Well, clearly I have emotional problems.”

This kid slays me! The sirens are blaring so loudly I can hear it through the comic book. The destination is a museum where a hostage situation is underway. Police Captain Jeanne De Wolfe will try to negotiate before the negotiator shows up! Don’t hurt anyone or you’re in for a world of hurt! And so forth.

“FREE NURHACHI! OR BLOOD WILL FILL THE STREETS,” says the thus-far unseen terrorist. “NURHACHI WILL BE GIVEN FREEDOM OR ALL WHO HEAR MY VOICE WILL TASTE DEATH!!”

Sounds like some aggro machismo to me, Pony Boy. Let’s settle down for a tick, shall we?

Spidey enters the museum hoping to crush someone’s skull into a peanut, but the dude screaming about Nurhachi is about 10 feet tall and covered in armor. His fists are spiky. Spidey, as he does in every issue, poops his pants. So, he flips around the room, enabling Mr. Nurhachi-Lover to break shit in the museum. The fighting is clumsy on Spidey’s part; trying to bonk the guy with fists ineffectually. He trips over velvet ropes and gets clobbered. “THE GODS CALL FOR YOUR BLOOD!” the bad guy yells before Spidey thwips him with his patented sticky web fluid. “NO!!” he screams trying to pull all that ropey cum off of his face. Now who’s got the upper hand, dorkus?

He’s referring to all the water he soaked up flying around in the rain, but I’ll give you three guesses as to what I’d rather joke about.

While De Wolfe and the tactical team barge in and tell Spidey to stand down, a hostage begs for his due. “Don’t! He saved us! Don’t!” So De Wolfe calmly asked the Spidery One what he’s doing in the museum. “I just – agh – came here for the gift shoppe,” he answers, bleeding to death internally.

Then he leaves while the police are still trying to figure out what’s going on. And by “leaves” I mean “hobbles” because he got kind of fucked up. As usual. And that’s enough of that for now, I guess. Back to the eternally interesting Curt Connors.

Looks like Peter Parker and Curt Connors had the same idea! Both arrive at the science lab; Parker to find some bandages or morphine or something, Connors to, I don’t know, jerk off into the test tubes maybe?

Parker asks Connors to make good on a promise to help him if he needed it, but what he needs is a real medical doctor and not some fake-ass science-type doctor. Well, Connors is better than nothing, so he tells Parker to take off his shirt so he can start tweaking his nipples. Parker comments that Connors doesn’t look too great either, but Connors just chalks it up to “adult stuff”. Like taxes and alimony and scary dreams about being a murderous reptile. Speaking of which, I guess that’s real, because Parker asks how Connors is doing with that whole scene.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll turn into Mothra. It’s always good to keep it interesting.

These two have a nice little heart-to-heart about accidental genetic mutations. You know, relatable stuff. Connors wraps him up in a t-shirt, basically, and tells him that it’s all he can do. Parker frowns. “Peter, let me give you a ride home,” Connors says while slipping him the tongue. Parker declines. Connors offers him his sweatshirt so he doesn’t die of hypothermia out in the rain.

“Listen, are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help you with whatever’s going on with you?” Parker asks.

“You have any miracle science breakthroughs on you?”

“I am a scientific miracle,” Parker smiles devilishly.

Cute.

Parker leaves as Spider-Man and tells Connors that he owes him big. Good thing Connors has a giant pile of Science Lab Manure that Parker can shovel later. Once Spidey is gone, Connors looks at the needle, thread, and blood on the counter after stitching Parker up. He stares quite lengthily at a cotton ball soaked with Parker DNA. He puts it under a slide, gets his eyes right up against the ol’ microscope eyepieces, stares at the blood at 100,000,000x magnification, and does his best George Takei impression.

“Oh my…”

Final Thoughts

Time to siphon the kid’s blood out of his body. I believe the technical term is “exsanguination”. You love to see it. Strap him to a table and waterboard him for a bit first. You know, for fun!