Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #71 – “Strange (Part 2)”! In the previous installment, Parker and MJ have their expensive dinner out on the town, and Parker regales her with a tale of how he encountered Doctor Strange.

Or did he? Memories are surprisingly hazy…

…because he’s actually currently in a living nightmare and MJ is some sort of vampire beast thing and the dead figures of Uncle Ben and Gwen have come to haunt him! Aaaahhh!

…and so forth.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #71 [March, 2005]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Strange (Part 2)”

Doctor Stephen Aloysius Strange is passed out on the floor, as we had seen him in the previous issue. A gust of wind stirs him awake, and he notices that the glass is shattered on his large, round foyer window. He palms his face nervously.

Spider-Man is passed out on his floor.

And Strange’s bald assistant, Wong, is tied up on the floor with sticky webbing over his mouth. “By the hoary hosts of whatchacallit, what happened?” Strange says, channelling his inner Ron Burgundy. “What is going on? What is this?”

Strange casts a spell that dissolves the webbing off of Wong’s mouth. It also dissolves Wong’s shirt right off his body, exposing his tender, pierced nipples! Strange gawks at him, and I think he might even have just licked his lips?

“What happened?” asks Strange.

“Thank the Ancient One, he’s still alive,” replies Wong.

“Is that really Spider-Man?”

“I believe so, yes. He came in through the window–”

“What? He crashed into here? He just crashed in?”

Spider-Man’s breathing is shallow. Wong removes the mask, exposing Parker’s secret face! “He’s probably going to be mad you did that,” warns Strange, but Wong doesn’t give a fuckshit. The kid needs the kind of a help only a pierced-nippled man can provide.

The last thing Strange remembers is meditating on the floor with Wong. But, uh oh, he forgot to create some astral defense spells before the meditation. Without doing that, you can accidentally open astral plane dimensional doorways! Shit! Shit! Possible possession by unearthly, magical, possibly nefarious energies! Fuck!

Wong tried to wake Strange with no success. Especially since he was, you know, attacked by Spider-Man before he had a chance to really try. But the real question here, my bald sir, is why Strange was in a weird sleepy dream state in the first place? Who had put him there?

I don’t know, sir! Your subconscious is delicious to interdimensional beings? At any rate, it seems that the energies have left Strange and latched onto snotnose over there *points to the lousy unconscious teenager*. Strange smacks the kid a bit to try to wake him, and when that doesn’t work he gets up to go look for some spellbooks. “Hang in there, kid,” he says.

Meanwhile, Parker is having some nasty-ass nightmares. Every creature he has ever fought – Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Wilson Fisk, Venom – are attacking him all at once, and they’re all 50 times their usual size!

And now Parker lands in the middle of a picnic, the kind of picnic where people’s Uncle Bens are still alive! But then, suddenly, almost everyone turns gray and drops dead right in front of him.

This is what you get for masturbating, kiddo. You made God angry.

Parker runs away from the scene and suddenly finds himself stumbling upon a kid facedown in the pond. “Hello?” he says to the prone, unmoving body.

“Gwen can’t hear you Parker,” Harry Osborn says behind him. “She’s dead.” Parker asks him how he can talk to her, and Harry responds by kicking him off a cliff! Ha!

Yeah, so this whole issue’s going to be the damn dream, isn’t it? BO-O-O-ORING!

While Parker blubs and flubs in the water below, Strange and Wong (outside of Nightmareland) pore through books to find the good ol’ abracadabra that will wake Parker up again. After what seems like dozens of hours of wasted time, Strange stumbles upon some information about the Dream Dimension. Some powerful, strong, burly men have succumbed to the horrors of the Dream Dimension and died after unsuccessful recovery. The entity within the Dream Dimension feeds off of nightmares, sapping energy to nothing and working toward phasing into the corporeal world. Oh no!

Strange demands that Wong get him some candles, incense, crystals of Agamotto, and a liverwurst sandwich. This kid’s going to wake the fuck up on his watch.

GGGAAAHHH!! I forgot to pay the Hulu bill!

Meanwhile, Parker likely bolts up from a dream-within-a-dream, panting and sweating, saying “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” A shadowy figure in the bedroom with green pants, and a green brassiere, and holding a couple of sai walks closer to the bed. “What’s the matter, sweetie? Nightmare?”

Parker doesn’t find this entirely unusual, so he starts spilling about the dreams he had. The thus-far unseen woman asks him if he has heard the old legend that if one dies in their dream, they die in real life? The figure of Mary Jane enters the light and throws the sai right at Parker’s chest, but it bounces off harmlessly. Equally scantily-clad figures of Liz and Gwen hold Parker down on the bed.

“I’m going to have to kill you, Peter, because if I don’t… you’ll kill me,” she tells him. “You do know you’re going to kill me, Peter. Of course you will!! I will die just because I know you!!”

Parker is horrified by the very truth of this matter! In fact, MJ says she’ll die before that saucy cougar Aunt May!

Figures of J. Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, and Ben Urich appear in front of the bed to take bets on who will die first, Aunt May or MJ. Jameson bets on Aunt May because, and I quote because it sounds like something I’d write, “That woman will drop dead the minute she finds out the nerd wears a costume.”

But Parker will die way before any of them. In ten years, no one will remember there even was a… whatchucallit… Spideyman.

A giant robot bursts through the window and starts choking Parker out while everyone around him cheers. “KILL HIM!! KILL HIM BEFORE HE KILLS ALL OF US!!” smiles and shrieks the figure of MJ. Things are really getting chaotic! Wouldn’t it be really, really funny if Parker never woke up from this? lmao

Too bad. Doctor Strange enters the dream and tells the robot to let Parker go. The robot turns into Aunt May and she’s all like “RAAWWRR! NO!” Strange does some boogity-boogity, which causes Aunt May to yell and whine. She keeps switching between robot and beast and MJ and robot and goddamnit.

Klaatu Barata Nikto, motherbitches!

Strange, as you can see, continues speaking in his wacky language to banish the monster from Parker’s tender neurons. After a spell, so to speak, the demon grows to about 25 stories tall and shapes itself into the visage of Doctor Strange’s father! “GO TO YOUR ROOM!” he says, basically, then zaps Strange with purple laser eyeballs. “This is my domain! The arrogance of you! This is your doing, sorcerer.

Doctor Strange does some magic finger waggling and the demon seems to disappear into a lesser dimension. One of them dimensions that’s fewer than three. I’m gonna say two. “You shouldn’t have used the image of my father like that,” Strange grimaces. “All you did there was make me angry.”

Parker, in an unmasked Spidey suit, hovers unconscious in midair. Strange swims over to him and asks the kid if he’s ok after he slaps him about the face a few dozen times.

“Well done, sir, that was quick.” Wong holds a visibly exhausted Strange while Parker woozily lifts his head up from the floor. “Whatthefuzzaga!!??” he blubs. Strange assures the kid, who smells like poop now, that everything’s going to be ok. The threat is gone. All those bad dreams about the people you live dying and/or killing you? Poof! Heh. So, uhm, wanna go bowling?

Parker stammers that he has seen Strange before, somewhere, maybe. And after Strange admits that he used a memory spell on Parker, which obviously didn’t work very well, Parker leaps through the glass of a fucking window and bolts away from the house.

Doctor Strange admits to Wong that he completely faked his way through saving the day! He should really catch up on his reading, because next time something that is actually prepared might attack! I like this Strange cat, he seems like a lovable fuckup.

Speaking of lovable fuckups, the kid no one loves cavorts back to his house and rolls up into a scared little ball in his basement. The visions are still there haunting him a bit, but MJ starts knocking on the outside basement door to give him kissies and snap him out of it.

He ignores the knocking. All he can think about is MJ yelling about how he’s going to get her killed someday.

“But tonight was our fancy date…” MJ grovels.

Final Thoughts

HAHAHAHAHA!! What a hilarious ending! What other antics is this Peter Parker dickwad going to get into next, I ask ya! Penis caught in a mousetrap?? Cucumber up the butt?? Exciting potential awaits!

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #70 – “Strange (Part 1)”! In the previous installment, after Johnny Storm all but explodes all over a bunch of kids at a beach bonfire, Spider-Man shows up in his life to have a heart-to-heart about being some guy who has powers. They work together to save a babysitter and a baby from a burning building, causing Johnny to go “cool” and “wow” over using his powers to help people. It was all very heartwarming. My heart is so fuckin’ warm right now.

In the last mini-story of this story arc, we get to see Spider-Man interact with Doctor Strange. I hope he brought plenty of toads and newts for Strange’s mysterious potions. Right? I don’t know anything about this Doctor Strange guy! Does he mix potions like a witch in the woods?

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #70 [February, 2005]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Strange (Part 1)”

Peter Parker has his hair slicked back and MJ Watson is wearing a strapless black dress that she got at Hot Topic. Parker tells her that she looks like a 25-year-old model. “This was a good idea,” he says cheerfully.

They sit down to a lovely dinner at the Tavern on the Green, a fancy restaurant that’s also heavy on the schmancy. So fancy-schmancy, in fact, that they take one look at the menu and gulp. MJ will be having soup. Parker will load up on bread.

Parker can’t take his eyes off his girlfriend. She looks like a million smackeroonies. She’s distracted by a story that he started and didn’t finish a while ago; something about a magician. Parker doesn’t want to tell the story, but what the fuck else are they doing? Gorging on foie gras? Tell the damn story.

It all started in class one day. He was barely paying attention, which reminded him that he used to pay attention in class all the time before he became Spider-Man, aka “before my life turned into a big ol’ pile of crap”.

All he could think about was Gwen Stacy’s empty desk. It preoccupied his squishy noggin so much that he had to leave and get some fresh air. He pulled on his costume and took off, wondering if he even wants to be the dang Spider-Man anymore. “I can’t handle it,” he says. He thinks he’s too young, but he wears the costume anyway. “I keep putting my life in danger to help other people, and I swear to God I really have no idea why.”

He was just about to go to work when, suddenly, the Ultimates showed up! They were facing off with some half-zombie, half robot. “People were running around like it was a Godzilla movie,” Parker says. This is the part where I finally understand, unless I’m mistaken, that in the Ultimate universe they call the Avengers “Ultimates”. Did I get that right? Hello?

So, Spider-Man started helping the Ultimates out a bit, since Captain America was there and he wanted to look good in front of him. Spidey bonks Mr. Half-Zombie Half-Robot in the head and incapacitates him. Good work, son! Here’s a lolly.

Shove off, kid. Make yourself useful and go pound sand.

Clint “Jeremy Renner” Barton sneers at Spidey and tells him he’ll see him at prom. Then he grumbles something about hating kids, which sets Spidey off in a sour mood. “I mean… this is what I have to look forward to when I grow up? People being just… jerks?”

Parker frowns heavily at the copy machine as Xeroxes of his butt pop out of the printer. “Every adult I talk to is so angry about whatever nightmare they created out of their life… all the things they didn’t do, all the girls they didn’t ask out, the life lessons they never learned…”

Yeah yeah yeah, everyone’s so angry all the time that it’s making Parker angry. Welcome to life, nerd. And fuck you.

“Putting angry news stories onto the angry server so that people can go on to the angry Daily Bugle website and get angry reading about the angry world outside their angry home.”

Speaking of angry, J. Jonah Jameson wants to speak to the young lad. And by “speak to” I mean “rant and throw staplers at”. He asks Parker if he remembers having “that talk” (the birds and the bees and the penises and the vaginas). The talk where Jameson actually lets his guard down and gives Parker words of encouragement? It happened! I just don’t remember the issue anymore to link to it. Oh well.

Also part of that conversation was allowing Parker to shadow a reporter for a bit once in a while. Go follow Grumpy Ben Urich to Doctor Strange’s house for a fluff piece. “He’s the new L. Ron Hubbard,” Jameson claims. Urich doesn’t want to waste his time with this story, but Jameson insists.

“The guy’s father, the original Doctor Strange, guy’s been missing for years,” says Jameson. “There’s a history there. A lot of people believe this guy is the real deal. Merlin, or some goofy thing.” Suddenly, Urich drags the kid out of the office by his shirt, so that’s the end of that conversation.

Back at the restaurant, MJ thinks that Parker’s story sounds cool so far. Parker looks shadowy as he says he thinks he has met this Strange fellow before. But he can’t remember. MJ arches an eyebrow and wonders how this kid can think he met someone. “I have this creepy feeling that I have,” Parker claims. “But I can’t remember it.”

For instance, check out this footage of Dateline NBC with Chris Hansen…

Parker reminds MJ of the documentary they both saw about the guy. Or the two guys, rather – the father and the son. A drunk-as-a-skunk Stephen Strange crashes his car, killing his wife and his unborn child and damaging his hands. He was a surgeon, you see, and now he can’t Ben Carson his way through his career without accidentally slicing through vital arteries and various other gross body parts.

Strange traveled the world seeking miracle cures, like salves and Satanic rituals, but nothing worked… until he met a man in Tibet. “Strange never did find what he was looking for. Instead he found so much more. According to his own writings, he found a purpose and meaning to life that he never knew existed. And that is the story of the original Doctor Strange.”

*golf clap*

In the documentary, Clea Strange, Doctor Strange’s former student/wife/punching bag, speaks of his ambitiousness. As for his disappearance, some believe that he trapped himself in another dimension! Others believe that his existence is merely a hoax. She told the police 20 years ago that one minute he was there, the next minute he was gone. She looked for him for years: in Paris, in Queens, under the kitchen table, he was nowhere to be found.

But his son, Stephen Strange Jr., who never knew his father, started learning some of his secrets. Soon he adopted the Doctor Strange moniker, and although his accomplishments can’t hold a candle to his father’s, well, he’s a good boy! And he’s certainly making a name for himself, showing up on talk shows, magazines, there’s even a reality show in the works. And that’s all Clea wants to talk about. Fuck him, she doesn’t like him much anyway.

And that’s about it.

Ben Urich and Peter Parker show up outside Casa de Strange, a house in the middle of downtown that’s shrouded in mist. “This is simple puff piece,” says Urich. “It doesn’t get simpler than this.” Parker vaguely acknowledges this; he’s clearly uncomfortable as they ring the doorbell. Strange’s extremely bald assistant opens the giant wooden door and says it’s not a good time. But they had an appointment! Urich gets pushy, but the assistant insists that the Doctor is not available and that they should get the fuck off the property, please.

No sex on this date kiddo.

Parker’s Spidey-Sense goes haywire as they leave the residence. He becomes preoccupied while Urich gets in a cab, itching to do a little Spidey-style investigation! He returns to the house and busts through the wooden door, trespassing like all get-out! “Wait a second, this is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife!” he says, Byrning so hard that I’m swept off my feet. Doctor Strange is on the floor while the bald assistant conjures up a flaming orb in his hand, and…

“Wow. Then what happened?” asks MJ.

“Well, I beat up the bad guy and… huh. I think I did. Yeah, I must have.”

MJ’s eyes and smile are as wide as the dickens. “Wow.”

Parker’s face is sheepish. Something funny’s going on.

Suddenly, MJ’s eyes get a weird glint in them. Then her skin starts to get pale – basically gray. “An all ‘A’-student. An ‘A’-student and you don’t know you haven’t woken up yet. That is funny.”

Okay, uh, what the fuck is going on all of a sudden? Two figures grab Parker from behind – Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy. They have plastic smiles and fire in their eyes!

“You’re having a nightmare, sweetie,” says the now horrific figure of not-MJ. “And you’re never going to wake up.”

Final Thoughts

Sucks for Parker! Nightmares make him wet his pants! His bed is going to be a swamp and Aunt May will beat him to death with a lamp.