Review: ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ #24 Draws The Adventure To An End…?

Across the last two years, readers have gotten a unique take on the entire Marvel Universe with Earth-6160. This week the flagship series of that line draws to a close, as one of the greatest takes on Spider-Man ends in Ultimate Spider-Man #24.

Jonathan Hickman, Marco Checchetto, David Messina, Matthew Wilson, and Cory Petit draw this chapter to a close.

Spider-Man is facing the Kingpin in a brawl that will determine the fate of New York City. Venom and Black Cat are fighting to destroy the Maker’s access to the city. Ben Parker and Jonah Jameson are exposing the truth. And Harry Osborn might have to make a deal with the devil to save them all. It all comes down to this.

So the grand two year experiment of the second Ultimate Universe is drawing to a close as Ultimate Endgame runs concurrently to these twenty-fourth issues. And through it all has been the crown jewel Ultimate Spider-Man.

So let’s talk this issue and the series as a whole, with SPOILERS ahead.

For this issue, it’s a fantastic ending to the story. All the major storylines have some sort of closure. Peter defeats the Kingpin, and one of his own cronies finishes him off. Harry and Gwen get what they want, but with a tragic twist. Richard Parker comes into his own as a hero and gets the girl. Even Ben, Jonah, Otto and more get the end of their story.

Even better, Hickman does it all with emotional weight and incredibly strong character work throughout. You feel the fear that Peter feels as he sees Richard in danger. Ben and Jonah’s victory is euphoric, even if the characters themselves are relatively calm, because it fits what we’ve learned about them. And the dual epilogues are such a wonderful moment of pure relief as the world is righting itself.

Checchetto and Messina both do a fantastic job with the pencils. I’m glad to see both of the series’ regular artists contribute to this conclusion, as the series really has grown through them. Both hit strong beats in the action and the character drama. The way Messina drew the final Mysterio page also gave me chills. Wilson does amazing work too, coloring it in a very rich and realistic way, but then using brighter colors to emphasize and draw eyes to the fantastic.

Petit does some fantastic things with letters. I love when lettering evokes natural speech patterns to the point that you can almost hear the dialogue, and Petit has mastered that. He also does some great effects, like Mr. Negative and Mysterio’s speech bubbles, that add greatly to both characters.

As for the overall series?

Generally speaking, I think it’s going to stand up for years as one of Marvel’s greats. It’ll be a fantastic story to pull off the shelf as an evergreen Spider-Man classic. But it’s not perfect.

The real time gimmick was definitely to its detriment. Spider-Man is a soap opera, and the real time gimmick meant that a lot of character beats and development happened off screen. In the case of The Ultimates it worked because a large heroic cast meant it could be more episodic with serialized elements. Here though, focusing on the Parkers and their supporting cast made it feel disjointed.

Having two artists stick the landing for the entire series ruled. It was so good to have that consistency, and though I was skeptical of Messina being the second regular artist because his style felt so different from Checchetto, he ended up fitting so well with Checchetto that I barely blinked when it changed between them in this final issue.

But my last criticism?

Marvel keeps billing this as an ending. That this Ultimate Universe is no more. But this issue didn’t feel like the end end. It felt like the end of act one. There’s so much more story to tell here. What is New York going to be like with Mysterio as the new Kingpin? What’s going to be the consequence of Ben and Jonah outing Fisk? What is going to happen to Harry and Gwen? Or the Parkers? And what about all the classic supporting cast we never met, like Eddie Brock? What are they like?

I don’t believe the marketing spin that this is the end. And if it is, it’s a disappointing end, without a doubt, because of the massive amount of story that Hickman sets up in the last twelve or so pages.

But if it is, I’ll be glad for what we got.

Ultimate Spider-Man #24 is available now from Marvel Comics.