For decades, Marvel has been determined to make Peter Parker suffer over and over again. Does he have a girlfriend? She dies. Does he have a daughter? She disappears. Does he have a wife? Mephisto makes her vanish. Do they reconcile? She ends up lost in another dimension and falls in love with someone who happened to be around. Those affected by ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ had been asking for something good to happen to Peter for years. And then, once again, the Ultimate universe arrived.
The last universe
When the Ultimate universe was first published back in 2000, the idea was to showcase the renewed origins of superheroes with a team of top-notch artists. Ultimately, it was merged with the 616 universe, and the comic line disappeared… until 2024, where they’ve promised to come back strong and, most importantly, with completely different and unexpected stories.
And one of them is the new ‘Ultimate Spider-Man,’ in which Peter Parker is happy, married to Mary Jane, has a son and a daughter. Then, in his maturity, he gets bitten by a radioactive spider. That’s the big novelty here: for once, neither his children can have the powers (I’m looking at you, Spider-Girl), nor will we see his origins as a teenage acrobat. Now, Spidey is mature, adult, and reluctantly heroic.
The story will be written by Jonathan Hickman, who always stirs things up when he takes charge of a project. There have been other collections that have kept the married couple with children (like ‘Renew Your Vows’), but this is a unique case that will be released alongside ‘Ultimate Black Panther’ and ‘Ultimate X-Men.‘ Will the big M realize that we want to see a happy Peter, or will they miss the hint? Probably the latter, but for sure.
