The Good
Venom stomps his way through New York City to find Jefferson, Miles father, who he seems to think is Spider-Man. Miles swoops down and has quite the intense battle with the beast.
Above all else, Sara Pichelli makes this issue worth the read. ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN has been an incredibly fun and cool read, especially since this new volume started with Miles Morales as the star. Pichelli, with Justin Ponsor on colors, raises the bar for what artwork should look like in contemporary comic books. I love the way she's setting up these pages. Pichelli utilizes two pages in a single layout which makes for a much cooler overall piece, and it's a nice break from traditional page layouts in the comics.
Venom's design here works really well. The tongue and the weird tentacles are extremely creepy, and Ponsor does a great job with the color to give Venom this viscous liquid look. The way the character looks during the fight scenes is constantly changing, another very cool element and it gives a great sense of how this character would look in the real world, a giant black glob of goo.
While I'm not the biggest fan of the overall story, the fight scenes are extremely cool, and I love seeing Miles deal with Peter's old baddies, especially when Miles is trying to remember old YouTube videos of how Peter beat them. Miles is still adjusting to being a hero, which I love. He's not perfect. He's going to make mistakes. He's young. That's all represented here.
The Bad
This issue felt more like fan service to me than anything else. Sure, it was cool, but it didn't feel like it had too much substance. The vast majority of this issue is one big fight scene with roughly 5 pages of it involving story. In addition, does Miles get any downtime in the Ultimate Universe? We went right from fighting Hydra and repairing the country to Venom showing up. I understand Jefferson has been on the news because of the Hydra fight, and Venom could have "seen" him on said news, but it just isn't working for me.
Miles tears off his t-shirt to reveal the Spider-Man costume underneath. Why not just take it off? It's just a t-shirt. T-shirts aren't cheap.
Can't Miles be given a break from all this struggle and heartache? I'm not saying the dude has to have an easy going life full of rainbows, but the weight of the world is crashing down on him. A part of me thinks this will make for some compelling writing later down the road when he can't take it anymore, but until them, I feel awful for the character, especially with the end of the issue. This kid can't catch a break.
The Verdict
I love this series, and I've been a huge support of it, but this issue was a tad of a let down. It's still a good and fun read, but the writing and story are not on par with the rest of the series here. I believe this is building to something bigger and better. Bendis has always done extremely well with this book, and I'm still very excited to continue onward with this series.
The best part of this book is flat-out the art. Pichelli and Ponsor nail it. Venom looks extremely cool, and the fight scenes are awesome. However, great art isn't going to make a comic awesome.
Overall, I liked this book, and I give this a mild recommendation.