Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #4 – “With Great Power”! In the previous installment, Norman Osborne tells his board of directors that he wants to inject his own DNA into himself. Gross! Peter Parker makes a wrestling costume so he can beat large men up for money at the local wrestling, uh, dojo, so he can help Ben and May with the hospital bills. He’s starting to get some notoriety at the ol’ wrestling hole, and he is dubbed the Amazing and Spectacular Spider-Man! But not the Ultimate Spider-Man, oh no, not yet! The wrestling manager tells him to make a better costume because he looks like a spaz. The issue ends with Norman getting strapped in a chair so that his DNA can get injected with his DNA’S DNA so that he can inject his DNA into his own DNA!
Will we see Peter Parker gallivant about town in his Spider-Man jammies? I SURE HOPE SO!
Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #4 [February, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“With Great Power”
The scene opens up with the lab at Osborne Industries. It’s in total disarray and the area is littered with dead scientists. Dead scientists everywhere! The lab is lousy with dead scientists. We see snippets of the news broadcast over the scene of twisted metal, fiery wreckage, and confused, alive scientists. It seems that Norman’s experiment, uhmm…it didn’t go well.
Peter Parker is still beating up shirtless men with big muscles at the wrestling arena. Now he’s wearing his sexy-ass skin tight Spider-Man costume that he probably bought at a Halloween store where they sell superhero costumes! Duh! Once Parker tries to get his money from the manager with the swaggering skinny-boy confidence of a fucking 15-year-old, the manager accuses him of stealing the petty cash fund from the office. He demands that Parker take the mask off or he’s calling the cops while a group of surly wrestle-men and wrestle-women surround him. Parker does a fanciful leap over all their heads and bounces daintily out of the building while yelling quips at them like Sonic the goddamned Hedgehog or something. You know what I’m talking about, right? In the cartoon where he was voiced by Steve Urkel.
Show us that purdy little mouth of yours, son.
As Parker runs away all salty about what just happened (“Really burns my butt.”), he gets his civilian clothes back on while atop a highrise roof and ruminates about how he’s going to keep making money for his aunt and uncle. He gets back to ground level and stumbles upon a robbery in progress. After letting the guy go and getting chewed out by the victims, Parker gets all teenage-snippy as a response, basically tells them to go fuck themselves in their own butts! Wow, in a Marvel comic??! How crass and crude! It’s like I made that up or something! Actually, Parker calls the guy “Reservoir Dork!” which is a pretty sick burn actually! Wowee Zowee! I know enough about the early Spider-Man story to know that this robber is going to be the one to kill Uncle Ben, which fills Peter Parker with great shame and sorrow. Of course, that’s the Earth-616 Peter Parker. This here is the Earth-1610 Peter Parker! This kid might pee on his uncle’s bones.
Back at home, Aunt May and Uncle Ben are frowning at a piece of paper. Peter Parker’s grades have slipped to a “D” in English class. When they ask for an explanation, Parker just mouths off like a runty little whippersnapper and runs out of the house. As he’s guilt-climbing up a tall building and then guilt-leaping onto other buildings, he wonders if he should just tell them what’s going on. He figures he shouldn’t, but he can’t put his finger on why. He plunges into some adolescent identity crisis about the whole thing, getting overwhelmed by not really even being able to process his sudden physical changes, wondering why he’s even playing basketball and wrestling and beating up sweaty men and letting his grades slip and making spider costumes. “Maybe I should bite the bullet and talk to Harry’s creepy dad,” he ponders. Good idea, champ. He seems like a reasonable guy.
You’re gonna get the FROWNING of a lifetime, Mister!
Sackin’ Out with Kong, coming this Fall on FOX.
Parker decides to crash at Kong’s house for the night, which is pretty socially brazen for a so-called introverted wimp up until, what, four days ago? When he asks him if it’s ok, Kong says ok without missing a beat. He’s wearing a Spider-Man shirt like some sort of comic book nerd.
Next we see a party going on at Kong’s place with about 700 attendees. His friends interrogate him about letting Parker sleep at his house, but Kong is all like “screw you guys, why the fuck not? Get over yourselves.” I think I like this Kong fellow! Meanwhile, some hot girl in a strapless halter top who looks 35 years old and not at all like a high school student who would be an appropriate age to hit on high school students is hitting on high school student Peter Parker. She starts slobbering all over him just as Mary Jane walks in. Aghast, she is! Aghast and agog! What the hell is Peter doing?! Gettin’ his dick wet, son, that’s what.
Yeah yeah yeah, Pops, I saw this movie in the theaters, remember?
She storms out, and as Peter attempts to chase her through the throng of smelly, hormonal teenagers. But, Avast Matey, who’s that who just showed up at the front door? Why, it’s none other than Uncle Ben, wearing the frowniest of all frowns! Uncle Ben drags his contemptible skunk of a nephew to the car where he starts whipping with a belt that he tied a nail to the end of. I wish! This is actually Uncle Ben’s old “with great power comes great responsibility” bit that we as an audience know and love and remember fondly when it happened to a 27-year-old Tobey Maguire! Here, though, Peter Parker doesn’t take it so well. He yells at Ben again and runs away while throwing shade at his dead dad. No wonder Mary Jane likes this kid!
Peter spends the whole night on the rooftops wishing his dad were alive so that he can tell him what’s going on with him. HE’D understand. HE would get it. Not stinky Uncle Ben! Maybe it’s better off that his dad is dead, if he were alive with a son like Peter he’d wish he was dead anyway! Ha!
When Peter gets back to his house in the morning he sees a bunch of police cars outside and police tape crossing the front door.
Final Thoughts
Because Uncle Ben was fucking MURDERED, that’s why! Spoiler alert! Haha! I’m not supposed to know that yet! But he’s fucking dead, Peter! And it’s your fault! Buuurn!!
I originally predicted in the first issue that he would be murdered in Issue #6 but it’s even earlier. I can’t believe there’s still over 140 issues of this particular series left. How much story could Spider-Man possibly have? Get over yourself.
Peter “Posh Spice” Parker is a real subject of intrigue down at Osborne Labs! Norman is holding a meeting where they’re going over some crystal clear closeup surveillance footage of Parker getting his ass handed to him by the lab’s death spider. The scientists were certain that the death spider was going to kill Parker to death, but against anyone’s expectations the death spider made Parker feel very much alive instead! Norman is giddy on the inside about the possibility of advancing human evolution using modified DNA technology and proposes to his team a study to recreate the incident using himself as a test subject. He literally uses the word “mainline” to describe the process of genetically altering his DNA and injecting it back into his body, which is cool slang word that the cool heroin kids use for their drug-having hobbies. The scientists are more than shocked, except for Doc Ock who’s standing there smirking with his Jim Carrey from Dumb and Dumber bowl cut.
We begin with another soliloquy, this time it’s about the history of WAYNE TOWER, how and when and why it was built and all that. Bruce’s great, great grandfather Alan Wayne oversaw the project, and he intended the tall structure to be a warm, protective symbol to let all the citizens of shitty, turdy Gotham City know that they are all safe and in good hands. We see Bruce being kicked through one of the “unbreakable” windows at the top of the tower by a hired assassin, subsequently plummeting to his certain death! And so ends the entire Batman saga! The End!
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