Ultimate Spider-Man #115 - Mobile Edition

Marvel Comics
Ultimate Spider-Man #115
By Zak Edwards
November 3, 2007 - 14:31

Marvel Comics
Writer(s): Brian Michael Bendis
Penciller(s): Stuart Immonen
Cover Artist(s): Stuart Immonen

Ultimate Spider-Man #115

After a three amazing issues, a pointless one, and a fairly decent one, Ultimate Spider-Man is now back at being a great comic book. It had some tough competition this week, even from its own publisher, with a new issue of Thunderbolts coming out. Yet Bendis and Immonen have given their readers another issue to be proud of. Like most great issues in this series, Bendis has managed to strike a balance between Peter Parker and Spider-Man while developing a good plot and incorporating great characters. All the necessary ingredients for an amazing story. Combine that with Immonen backing Bendis up with some very sharp visuals, it seems like this book can do no wrong.

This issue is almost split directly in the middle for action scenes and talking scenes, and I mean right down the middle. Take the book, open it to where the staples are at the center and at the bottom is a transition panel from talking to action. Both halves display strengths this title has, with strong dialogue and great art through both. For the dialog, Bendis has created a laugh out loud comic book this month. Spider-Man’s taunting of Norman Osbourne is incredibly funny, making long fight scenes not feel like an attempt to increase page count. The discussion between Peter Parker and Ultimate Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel in regular continuity, but not in this Universe) are well put together as well. Carol Danvers plays an excellent antagonizer to an increasingly nervous Peter Parker, who continually uses terrible humour as an attempt to deal with the situation. Bendis knows how to create dialog very effectively, with characters talking with each other as opposed to stating lines at each other. Bendis makes frequent use of shorter, more frequent speech balloons that convey conversation, but without making characters sound stupid, as actual conversation does not transfer to the written word easily. He consistently tackles these obstacles and creates the illusion of a very conversational dialogue. He created a comic here that is completely entertaining and hilarious.

"Zombie" Variant Cover by Stuart Immonen

Stuart Immonen’s penciling is so good, his panelling so dynamic, that Mark Bagley is now a fond memory rather than someone to compare this art to. He has almost mastered the panelling that spans two pages that this series has been commended on. With three of these layouts this issue, only one is a little difficult to follow. Other than that one minor discrepancy, Immonen’s pages flow with a pace to match what’s going on. The fight scene flies around, that’s the best way to put it, it’s hard to describe it any other way. Also, with most of the characters needed for this story being already introduced, there is no longer a guessing game on who the characters are with this artist. This problem will no doubt be encountered in later issues, but for right now all the characters are easily recognizable. Immonen only improves on an already great script with his art.

8.5/10 Ultimate Spider-Man proves again that it’s one of the best super-hero comic books going.