Upon re-reading comics that got me into comics I decided to pick up my volume 1 of Ultimate Spider-man. I remember first opening this book at around 12 or 13 and just loving every minute of it. Now that I'm 31 years old, does it still hold up? Well...YES.

This was prime time Spidy. While amazing Spider-man in the 616 was in good hands and focused on an adult Peter dealing with being a teacher and soon to be husband, this was all about Pete back in High School. The thing Bendis does really well back then is teenage talk, and everyone here bounces back and forth but it works 100%. On top of that you got Peter's origins but also Green Goblin. A two in one!

I really dug this Peter. It's similar to the 616 of being a nerd who gets bullied, gets powers, kind of a jerk, and learns his lesson. So that's all here. What they VASTLY improve on is MJ, who really clicks with Peter from the get go. I also think Green Goblin is scary as shit in this universe, and even not in his final form, his massive hulk like figure is scary in comparison to Spider-man's small features. The pacing works well and I think the change of how Ben died, and also the fact Peter's breakdown is near perfect, really help here. The art? SOOOO GOOOOOOD.

I wasn't a huge fan of Harry in Ultimate Universe and this re-read doesn't change my mind.

But even with Harry being meh, the rest is sooooo good it's easy to still give this great scores. A very very very easy 4.5 out of 5.