This page is for the comic. For the western animated series, see here. For the video game, see here.
- Anticlimax Boss: Kraven the Hunter. He's built up as a highly-skilled warrior who decided to take down Spider-Man. Peter isn't even remotely interested in fighting him (he'd just beaten Doctor Octopus at the time) but when Kraven insists, Peter simply dodges a few times then knocks him out with a single blow. Instantly lampshaded by Spider-Man.Peter: Huh. I thought he had superpowers or something. Showbiz phony.
- Arc Fatigue: Many felt that the Double Trouble Doc Ock/Kraven the Hunter arc ran too long. For newer readers, this can be applied to the entire series: Brian Bendis's Signature Style of decompressed storytelling, while new and groundbreaking when the series debuted (to the point of being copied and imitated by just about everyone in the following decade), has since come under greater scrutiny from the comic reading public, if not fallen out of favor completely by how common it was. As such, many of the storylines can come off as slow or padded by modern standards.
- Awesome Art: Mark Bagley's art is naturally considered this by many fans given his dynamic posing, great panel-to-panel storytelling, and very expressive faces. What's even better is he kept his style consistent for 111 issues straight without missing a beat! It was so good it left a very high bar to pass when he left for DC Comics in 2007.
- Base-Breaking Character: Kitty Pryde, who is either considered a welcome addition to the cast, or Bendis' own Creator's Favorite Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
- Broken Base:
- Miles' Venom Sting, which allows him to end most fight relatively quickly. Some like the distinction of his powers from Peter's while others feel that Bendis has used it as a crutch far too often.
- Spider-Men, the crossover between the 616 & Ultimate universes to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Spider-Man's first appearance — is it a great idea, or yet another case of Quesada dropping the ball, given his previous comments on the matter of a 616/Ultimate universe crossover. Is it too soon to have Miles meet the mainstream Peter from 616 since the former is still finding his feet as a superhero, or just a wasted idea since it comes the year after Ultimate Peter was killed and shortly before the original Peter is as well? The latter in particular, as it completely dropped the plotline going through the end of "Men".
- Complete Monster: See here.
- Crack Pairing: Peter Parker and Kitty Pryde. It made sense in the setting and allowed to integrate the Spider-Man and X-Men comics, but unlike Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy, it was a completely new relationship with no precedent in the mainstream universe and may have puzzled those reading it as a rehash of older stories.
- Designated Villain: Kingpin, in the first Black Cat arc. As things turn out, he had hired Elektra to retrieve an ancient tablet, that he had legally acquired, and that Felicia Hardy stole. He only intended to use it to wake up his wife Vanessa, who is in a coma.
- Do Not Do This Cool Thing: They do not allow you to fight in MMA contests because you are a minor? Jump in there and fight anyway! Or better not, things will not end well...
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Gwen Stacy. So much so they eventually brought her back and more or less said that even if she's a clone she's the same Gwen as before.
- Jessica Drew has minimal screen-time but a huge fanbase.
- First Installment Wins: While the other Ultimate Marvel runs have their fans, the Ultimate Spider-Man run, which kickstarted the label back in 2000, continues to remain the most popular and well regarded by most.
- Foe Yay Shipping: During the "Return of the Green Goblin" arc, we get to look at things through Norman's eyes during a conversation with Spider-Man. The voices in his head tell him things like "kill him" "skin him" "burn him" and "kiss him".
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- In "Cats and Queens", the focus of MJ's story was her wanting to run away from home so she and Peter could be married, with him saying he'll always be there for her. Also in the same arc, Black Cat tells him he'll have seven years bad luck. This was in 2004...
- Similarly, every time the subject of sex came up between Peter and MJ, they resolve to "wait until they're older".
- At July 2005's San Diego Comic Con, in response to the question the Ultimate & 616 universes crossing over, Joe Quesada stated that he'd rather close down one universe than have them cross over because it meant they were officially out of ideas. Fast forward to 2012, and Marvel announced that they will be having Peter crossing over to the Ultimate universe to meet Miles.
- Every discussion anyone ever has about Peter's future now that we know his eventual fate. And then shot to pieces after the reveal that he came back to life.
- Early in 2003, the original Venom arc was published, which revealed in the Ultimate universe, the Venom suit was originally developed as a means to cure cancer. Fall of the same year, Paul Jenkins's first arc on the second volume of Spectacular Spider-Man revealed that one of the reasons the Venom symbiote was drawn to the mainline Eddie was because he had cancer. That said, Venom (Donny Cates) did mitigate this a bit by retconning that the symbiote had gaslighted Eddie into staying with him, screwed with his body chemistry to evoke it, and Eddie never had relatives he'd lost to it.
- If we consider everything that happened later, perhaps the Parkers should have sued the pants off Oscorp for the spider incident of the first issue.
- In issue #13, MJ asks Peter why he doesn't go public with his secret identity. Peter says that this would have negative consequences for his loved ones, specifically asking what could happen if a man like the Kingpin knew his secret identity. About that...
- In issue #88, Kitty Pryde tells Peter that it's not the time to tell the big secret to aunt May. He asks "When will it be time? When a SWAT team comes baring through my ceiling and arrest me?". Let's fast forward and check what was going on when May finally did discover the truth... Oh, Crap!.
- In "Cats and Queens", the focus of MJ's story was her wanting to run away from home so she and Peter could be married, with him saying he'll always be there for her. Also in the same arc, Black Cat tells him he'll have seven years bad luck. This was in 2004...
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In issue #40, Peter calls the event company he used to wrestle for and poses as an executive from Hasbro offering to make action figures based on their wrestlers, only to be told the company already has a merchandising deal with Toy Biz. About three years after the issue was published, Toy Biz itself would go belly-up, leading to the famed Marvel Legends action figure line jumping ship... to Hasbro.
- A small detail, but in the 2004 "Hollywood" arc, when Peter fights Doc Ock on the set of a new Spider-Man movie, a black stuntman in a Spidey outfit hits Doc Ock with a camera. When he tells Spidey that he's just a stuntman, not the actor playing him, Peter says "I thought I got revamped there for a second..."
- In one of the first issues, a photo can be seen that shows a young Peter with his aunt and uncle at Disney World. This was years before Disney actually purchased Marvel Comics.
- In the Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends arc, Johnny Storm tries to make small talk and asks the others if they've seen the movie Billy Madison and Peter asks "About the boy who dances?" The joke being Peter confused it with Billy Elliot. About a year later, one of the replacements for the title role of the West End musical production of Billy Elliot would be a young boy by the name of Tom Holland.
- It Was His Sled:
- In the first issues uncle Ben is not a mere one-note guy who dies, but gets actual character development. Does this mean that they will keep him around? Nope. He eventually dies, just like the original. Not immediately, but soon.
- Peter has a sudden pain in the wrists while trying his powers. Does this mean that he will have natural webbings? No: he made his own web-shooters some episodes later.
- Spider-Woman in this universe is actually a female clone of Peter Parker.
- Peter Parker dies while protecting his loved ones from the Sinister Six
- Miles Morales takes on the mantle of being Spider-Man after the original one dies.
- Narm:
- The final issue of Fallout ends with Nick Fury confessing to MJ how he feels responsible for Peter's death. In the middle of it, he admits he had been "grooming" Peter to be a superhero. Not the best choice of words, given the unpleasant other connotations that word has in the twenty-first century.
- In the middle of his long rant at Miles and Spider-Woman, Roxxon randomly yells "childcare" for no readily apparent reason.
- No Yay: Bendis played up the Like Brother and Sister angle with Peter and Gwen so much that this was the reaction when they finally did hook up, it was given an in-universe Lampshade Hanging by MJ in bitter-hysterical-ex mode.
- Older Than They Think:
- This was actually the second attempt by Marvel to reboot Spider-Man after the Audience-Alienating Era of The Clone Saga. The first one was Spider-Man: Chapter One (in 1998-1999, about a year before this one) but it was poorly received and was nowhere near the success of Ultimate Spider-Man, mostly because it was a remake of The Amazing Spider-Man with the same plots and designs which many saw as an attempt to replace the imperishable classics whereas Ultimate Spider-Man really was a Setting Update and retelling with new takes on the classic characters. Many of the plot ideas and concepts from Chapter One were reused however such as Norman Osborn and Green Goblin being the Greater-Scope Villain connected to all the villains.
- On the flip-side, something many younger fans and others also make a mistake, but since Ultimate Spider-Man was new and on the shelves when Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy came out, many have claimed, owing to similarities that it was some kind of movie-inspired tie-in. In fact, the comics were published in 2000 (and of course given the time it takes to write and draw a comic, and several issues worth, it was in production in 1999), whereas the first movie came out in 2002, and Bendis' comics inspired the film for some details (and Bendis himself was invited to make contributions and suggestions though he admits little of it was accepted).
- The Scrappy: Ultimate Deadpool had one appearance as a mutant-hating cyborg that tries to kill Spider-Man and the X-Men on live TV. Not only is this nothing at all like the mainstream Deadpool, the total lack of fourth-wall jokes and a snarkier attitude had fans dismiss this interpretation as a one-note, generic version of the popular anti-hero.
- Ship-to-Ship Combat: Who made a better girlfriend for Ultimate Peter; Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, or Kitty Pryde. Have a lot of fun with that conversation, though the comics make it clear that it was always Peter and MJ from the start.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some fans feel this way about the series. 'Tis a retelling though, so you can't win 'em all.
- The main dislike is that Bendis took "teenage" Spider-Man to mean "incompetent" and that Ultimate Spider-Man gets unmasked all the time, not only to major villains like the Goblin but also minor random characters like Silver Sable. By comparison, the original Peter went through his original high school arc (a mere 28 issues) with no one deciphering his secret and then later with only the Goblin knowing it albeit between spates of amnesia. Spider-Man was so competent that when Green Goblin finally unmasked him in OTL, he was shocked that Peter was Just a Kid since he was certain he was an Experienced Protagonist. The overall effect goes from Batman turning out to be as young as Robin, to Robin trying to be Batman and failing.
- Some fans disliked the changes to villains. Norman Osborn becoming a giant goblin monster who can throw fireballs was a neat concept in theory but in effect, it made him more of a Hulk or Captain America villain than a Spider-Man one and also made him too similar to Curt Connors (i.e. scientist who turns evil by transformation).
- Doctor Octopus getting turned into Mageto-lite, by giving him magnetic powers was another divisive change.
- The radical change to Venom in the Ultimate story was liked by some since it tied him into Spider-Man's mythos more easily than the alien-origin symbiote of 616, but the overall emphasis on Richard Parker as part of its Myth Arc and making Eddie Brock into Peter's childhood friend was seen as going a step too far since it dampened Peter's everyman appeal by making him the son of a genius scientist. The adaptation of this story in The Amazing Spider-Man Series was heavily criticized by many for this specific reason, since it overemphasized Richard Parker at the expense of Uncle Ben, who for most has to be Peter's real dad for the story to work.
- The transition from Ultimate Spider-Man to Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man. The change of artist and the shake-up of the status quo has resulted in a more Broken Base. The second transition to an entirely new main character was less so.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Having Spider-Man undergo training from the Ultimates to become a better hero was an interesting idea...that was introduced just before volume three. For what it's worth, that ended up being the basis of the otherwise unrelated cartoon. So presumably someone in development agreed.
- Peter coming back from the dead, since nothing ever came of it, and the entire ultimate universe got blown up a few months later anyway. The idea of Peter and MJ eloping and going underground and presumably having crazy adventures on their own has a lot of potential but now that's just gone. Although, the story Spider-Men 2, reveals that this universe is alive and well again.
- The concept of Peter as essentially The Leader of his Ragtag Bunch of Misfits (such as Johnny Storm, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Jessica Drew) set up in Vol. 2 in the Post-Ultimatum era was a pretty cool idea, with many seeing it as a chance for Spider-Man to come into his own and become a Marvel-wide superhero in the manner that he has never been able to do in the main continuity. Unfortunately, Bendis and others keep Peter in Small Steps Hero mode and the concept breaks down in the "Death of Spider-Man" arc with the band breaking up and going homeless in the wake of Peter's death.
- Too Cool to Live: Uncle Ben, thanks to his character getting more fleshed out before his inevitable death.
- Tough Act to Follow: Ultimate Spider-Man as a whole set a high bar for the rest of the Ultimate Universe to follow and while the other books started off good to great, none of them managed to maintain a consistently good level of quality for the fifteen years the Ultimate Marvel imprint ran.
- On the art side of USM, while there were artists who did their best to fill Mark Bagley's shoes after he left the title in 2007 note few if any managed to come even close to surpassing his 111 consecutive issues run on the title.
- Unintentional Period Piece:
- The choice to make Kraven the Hunter a reality TV star is an obvious artifact from a time when reality shows were the biggest thing on television.
- The dialogue of the young characters features a lot of casual usage of terms that, at the time, were seen as "casual swears" or the kind of "edgy" things teens would say, but now are regarded as very hurtful slurs against homosexuals, people with disabilities, women, and some other groups. This was actually quite common among Marvel's teen-aimed books around this time, making it a distinctly early-2000s feature.
- Unnecessary Makeover: Mary Jane was on the receiving end of one via Liz Allen in one story, which involves wearing incredibly skimpy clothing and dying her hair black. Said arc wasn't very popular. MJ herself even hates it and quickly ditches it the first chance she gets.
- The Woobie: Miles Morales has the usual chaos of being Spider-Man while also trying to live up to the world's expectations of him as the second Spider-Man of Earth 1610. His uncle dying while trying to turn Miles into a crook and later Miles' mother Rio getting killed by Venom traumatizes Miles so much he quits being Spider-Man for a full year!
