Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #31 – “Black Van”! In the previous installment, Parker has been wounded in the shoulder by a bullet and spends most of the issue running from the police, getting his wound taken care of in the emergency room, running from the police again, and being afraid of what Aunt May is going to say. MJ was long for the ride the whole time too. She’s a keeper, that one.

Parker is safe and sound in his bed, but the whole city is now looking for Spider-Man and he needs to figure out how he’s going to hide his injured shoulder from his aunt. Kid can’t catch a break!

He deserves everything he gets.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #31 [January, 2003]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Black Van”

Finally! Cover art that doesn’t look like Spidey is posing for the Playboy centerfold. Behind bars where he belongs! Tried as an adult! Fuck him.

Ha, ok, the issue opens with Captain Stacy at the Atlantic City Police Detectives Conference. I can’t believe that’s actually important enough to feature a scene there. Stacy thinks he should open his speech with a joke, but one of his men says he will shoot him if he even tries it. And furthermore–

Whoops, we can’t continue this chatter with Stacy and his underlings. A loud BOOM and a loud AAIIEEE! causes these cops to draw their guns and scout the area. It appears that our good friend Spider-Man has toppled an armored car and is now hoisting the security guard by the front of his uniform. “Drop the guard and put your hands over your head!” Stacy shrieks. “I mean it!!! I’m not giving you to the count of three!! Do it now!!!”

Doop de doo. Sucks for Peter Parker, whose alter ego is being dragged through manure. To add injury to insult, so to speak, he’s spending his next day in school gripping his shoulder as if a bullet went through it yesterday. Loser.

The English teacher is talking about the gripping tale that is Animal Farm and asks Parker to tell the class what an allegory is. He, in response, mumbles and murmurs. He is advised to go to the nurse, and that’s just what he barely does. Kong, ever the comedian, asks to see the nurse too. He is met with a dish full of flak.

Oh, hell no. This is a one-way ticket to Rapeville.

Sweating and shuffling, Parker slowly makes his way to his locker. “Oh man… what am I doing?” he thinks. “I could be dying for all I know. I mean, I got shot last night. An actual cop shot me in the arm with an actual bullet and here I am in class pretending everything is fine. I am insane.”

Obviously, he’s delirious. He needs to go home and get a big bowl of Raisin Bran and forget about his shoulder. He needs a doctor. If he tries to stay home sick, Aunt May will find out and totally flip her wig, and Aunt May doesn’t even have a wig! Not one that Parker knows about, at least.

This is when he finds the note taped inside his locker. Sounds sketchy, but he’s desperate. Desperate enough to risk a kidnapping, it seems, but hey. When you’re 15 years old, you’re kinda stupid. It comes with the territory.

“Well, my spider-sense isn’t tingling or whatever it does when I’m about to get pounced on…” He cautiously approaches the black van, sweating like Roman Polanski in a junior high school gymnasium.

“Peter…” Oh shit, it’s a woman’s voice and she knows his name! Be cool. Be cool. “…Yeah?” he responds. Nailed it.

The woman’s name is Janet Van Dyne. Nick Fury sent her. She’s pretty hot. “Nick figured you might need a doctor who specialized in genetics – who made house calls.”

She’s a very persuasive debater.

Oh yeah. Janet Van Dyne is the Wasp. I think I knew that; Evangeline Lilly. That’s the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

“Healing nicely,” she says of the horrible wound. “Do you have an increased cellular chemokine interleukin-8 or IL-8?”

Look, lady, the kid already has a girlfriend. Enough of that kind of talk! “Uh – I got bit by a spider,” he answers rather wanly. Kid looks like total garbage, about ready to pass out. He does have increased healing powers, possibly, but he doesn’t know for sure. He just shoots webs and stuff.

Van Dyne pulls out a large jet injector filled with raw sewage. “They discovered a chemical in chickens call cCAF that can increase healing time in humans,” she explains, smiling at the still sweating teenager. He doesn’t really want to be a guinea pig for this untested substance, but what choice does he have? Aunt May will throttle him if she finds out that cops are shooting at him. “I whipped up an interesting little cocktail from your own, very unique, blood sample.”

Stick him with it already, we haven’t got all day! She tells him that he’s lucky that his wounding was televised and that S.H.I.E.L.D. happened to be in their secret man cave eating nachos and watching Survivor on their 39-inch plasma TV, or else they wouldn’t have seen the breaking news item!

We only like BIG potatoes in S.H.I.E.L.D. Twice baked, full of cheese and bacon. Hell yes.

After injecting him with chicken cum, she tells him to take it easy for a few days. When Parker asks her if Nick Fury mentioned who might be running around impersonating Spider-Man like a real asshole, she tells him she doesn’t care. No one cares.

“But, I tell you, if someone was running around in my costume doing that… I would find him and beat the holy snot out of him.”

Good advice! He’ll just skip school and murder the guy like Roman Polanski at a Manson family reunion. Later, Parker is flanked by Gwen Stacy and MJ. Gwen tells Parker he looks like a million bucks. Parker tells Gwen that he feels like a million bucks! MJ looks sad like she just lost a million bucks.

Gwen is like “you faked sick you little twerp” and then calls Parker and MJ sneaking around in the middle of the night to have the sex. “Come on, I totally know…” she grins. “The two of you are sneaking around in the middle of the night… Dude you came in at one in the morning,” she says laughing while Parker and MJ look at each other horrified. “I heard you. If my dad caught me with a guy at one in the morning… he would lock me in a tower like that chick in that movie.”

The two lovebirds are half-listening. ONCE AGAIN, there are cops parked outside the Parker household. This is it this time. Aunt May kicked the bucket; stuck her head in the stove, said goodbye to the cruel world, perhaps filled her pockets with large rocks and stood in the bathtub. You hate to see it.

Here’s the montage: Captain Stacy’s buddies are sitting on the couch with Aunt May. Aunt May looks sad. Gwen walks through the door. The cops look sad. One of them hands Gwen her father’s police badge. She looks sad. Then she gasps. She looks terrified.

She yells in big red block letters. “NO!!”

Now that that unpleasantness is behind us forever and always, it’s time to come back to Ben Urich’s House of Pancakes.

Hello, Ben Urich. I’m Tom, blogger for TomWritesAboutStuff. Are you… uh… is there a Mrs. Ben Urich? *swoon*

Urich is interviewing people who sort of, kind of, not really, witnessed Captain Stacy getting murdered. One guy was taking out the garbage and heard a “thump”. Another guy saw Spider-Man – THEE Spider-Man – ripping off an armored car, which was completely nutty! Then he started beating the shit out of this guy, really letting him have it, this armored car guard. But he didn’t see what happened next. Another guy witnessed Spider-Man heading for the hills when Captain Stacy (whose mom had got it goin’ on) and his buddies drew their guns. A woman saw Spider-Man running across rooftops speaking Spanish. Spanish! Then the cops started firing with one bullet tearing through the imposter’s backpack. Here are the following events:

-Spider-Man throws the flaming backpack.

-A kid, right in the trajectory, looks up at it.

-Captain Stacy rushes forward and tackles the kid out of the way.

-The kid lands in another cop’s arms.

-The flaming backpack lands in Captain Stacy’s lap.

-And then something else happened!

OK Sulkypants. Haven’t you done enough sulking today, Sulkypants?

Pretty interesting stuff! Anyway, he dead. Parker, MJ, and Gwen are hanging out on top of Parker’s roof stargazing. Peter Parker, ever the suave reassurer, tells Gwen that every witness who saw the incident verified that her dad died saving a little boy’s life. “He died a hero. And – I know that doesn’t make it any better but – that’s what happened.”

Ha, unlike Uncle Ben. He didn’t die a hero. He died an idiot.

“They – uh – they don’t know what was in the knapsack yet…” Parker continues, trying to bring some much needed awkwardness to the situation, “…but they think it was stuff to open the armored car with – blow it up or something. Maybe that plastique stuff – that playdoh they make bombs with.”

Cool stuff, Parker. You sure know a lot about bombs, that helps a lot. “Spider-Man…” Gwen scowls, and I know where this is going already. Parker gibbers and tries to tell her that Spider-Man is a good guy! They don’t know if this guy is really Spider-Man! He’s doing bad things! It’s not consistent with past behaviors! He’s just masquerading as… he’s just pretending to be… uhhh…

Gwen just glares as Parker rambles. Even MJ has a look of “sorry this guy is talking” on her face. “You guys mind?” Gwen says, burying her face into her knees. “I’d kinda like to be alone for a while…”

OK! Whew! They leave her on the roof to fall down and die accidentally. The next day, Peter Parker slouches into the Daily Bugle office. He can hear J. Jonah Jeffrey Janis Joplin Jimmy Johns Jameson shouting, as per usual. “Don’t talk to me – Urich! Just go!! Go go go!! Ben, take a photographer with you!”

Ben doesn’t have time to listen to J. J. J.meson, he needs to go ASAP. Send a photographer down; in the meantime, Urich has his shitty 2002 digital camera.

“What’s going on?” Parker moodily asks Robbie Robertson.

“Oh, that idiot dressing up as Spider-Man got himself into another standoff with the police… I tell ya, Peter… I sincerely hope that this isn’t the same Spider-Man and I sincerely hope whoever this reckless maniac is – I hope they put this guy away for all time.”

Oh Robertson, you usually don’t fly off the handle like this! It must be serious. He looks up and sees Parker had run off. Good God, man, are you really going to be Spider-Man right now? Wanna get shot in your other shoulder, doofus?

We see him swing through the city, swoopin’ and swervin’, hovering over police and then crashing through the very bank that “Spider-Man” is already inside. The police are dumbfounded, of course, but let’s see where this goes…

…

…

…Spider-Man sees Spider-Man holding a woman up with a taser to her throat. Spider-Man looks up at Spider-Man while a group around both of them look at Spider-Man. It’s like that meme where the Spider-Mans are pointing at each other, but this is serious!

Final Thoughts

I don’t know anything about this Spider-Man story, so I’m guess this is fucking Flash Thompson pretending to be Spider-Man because he’s a spindly loser with bowl haircut and a penchant for jackassery. I’m most certainly wrong, but a man can dream.