Ultimate Spider-Man # 75 Thoughts (spoilers)

DIrishB said:
Perhaps Bendis is using the multiple personality angle to salute the original 616 Hobgoblin, or maybe its just a viable and easy way for Bendis to write Harry's transformation from Peter's best friend into his enemy.
Click to expand...
I been thinking that too. The Ultimate Green Goblin/Norman didn't have the split persona that the 616 had so they transferred that to the Hobgoblin/Harry instead to get that insane-goblin-feeling we all know and love from the Spider-Man movie. :wink: (Not to say that the Ultimate Green Goblin wasn't insane, just not in the same way.)
 
The Captain said:
you arent the only one comparing this arc to that movie...doesnt mean that is the way it is though....
Click to expand...

But if it's not the vacant memories theory. Then it is just like Fight Club. You asked how if he's an illusion is Shaw driving the car or kicking the crap out of him. That's the best way to show you. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks so... or do I have to poll this question too? :wink:
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
But if it's not the vacant memories theory. Then it is just like Fight Club. You asked how if he's an illusion is Shaw driving the car or kicking the crap out of him. That's the best way to show you. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks so... or do I have to poll this question too? :wink:
Click to expand...

lol, put up a poll if you want....doesnt matter to me
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
It does have to be "shown" didn't you ever see Fight Club.
Click to expand...

Right on, and when we are seeing interaction with Shaw from Harry's perspective, it is going to look like Shaw is driving. Harry's a kook, though, so that doesn't mean that's what is actually happening.
 
The bunker not being real makes sense considering the paraphenalia in it.

Also, I assumed that Harry's excursion was like the CIA plot in A Beautiful Mind. In this film, Russell Crow plays a man with severe schizophrenia, and he believes he is caught up in a mad conspiracy involving the Cold War and codes he's been cracking. He ends up in a huge car chase sequence, which it turns out, never happened. In the writer's commentary, the writer says that a lot of people assumed that Crowe was driving himself around, but the writer says that such people would most likely just be huddled in a corner talking to themselves. So I assume that Harry is just on the couch.
 
UltimateE said:
Right on, and when we are seeing interaction with Shaw from Harry's perspective, it is going to look like Shaw is driving. Harry's a kook, though, so that doesn't mean that's what is actually happening.
Click to expand...

I think he meant it DOESNT have to be shown.....
 
The Captain said:
agreed 200% and yet thats exactly why im pissed....God forbid, something could happen to me in between reading these issues each month and im expecting a quality story to pay off.. back in my prime of comics, issues 25, 50, 75 and 100 usually meant something....instead i get 11 pages of s*** that i could have figured out on my own....
Click to expand...

This is exactly my problem with Ultimate Spider-Man.

To give you a little lecture on story structure, a protagonist's life is more or less neutral until the inciting incident. This event of story radically upsets the protagonist's balance of life, either towards the positive or the negative, with or without irony. For example, the murder of Richard Kimble's wife in THE FUGITIVE. The opening scene of the film, and we're off. Sometimes, the event comes in two parts. The inciting incident of JAWS is one; the shark eats the swimmer and the sherriff discovers the body. We don't have 'slices of life' in between these two events. The incident can come anywhere in the story. In THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the inciting incident is Frodo picking up the One Ring and then Gandalf explaining to Frodo what the One Ring means and what must be done about it. This scene occurs almost an hour into the film. How do you keep your audience interested? Sub-plots. In The Lord of the Rings, we have Bilbo's party. In SPIDER-MAN, the inciting incident is in three parts: Spidey gets his powers, Goblin gets his powers, and they meet. The meeting doesn't happen for more than an hour. To keep the story going we have the MJ love story, the Uncle Ben plot, and the Osborne insanity plot.

Now look at USM.

Ultimate Carnage has the inciting incident of "hero discovers monster". This does not happen until the 4th part of the story. Are there any sub-plots in the first three issues? The closest we get is Connor's desire for a breakthrough. But this has an inciting incident that occurs in the second issue. So in three issues, all we get is one inciting incident for a sub-plot.

Ultimate Hobgoblin is, (as is the general convention for superhero stories: hero discovers villain - hey, it works for Bond) the same. The inciting incident doesn't occur until the fifth part (we assume). What sub-plots do we get? Harry is supposed to have a sub-plot, but it is under written. We don't know anything about Harry, and instead of being mysterious, it just feels slow and pedantic. The MJ/Peter break-up sub-plot would be nice if, emotionally, their sub-plot had changed over three years - which it hadn't. They were in this position three years ago, so it's feels like retreading old territory. The sub-plot didn't start until the third part.

So when you are saying "nothing's happening", I'd have to say you are exactly on the money.

Hero discovers Villain. A superhero story starts with that. If you delay it, by God, you've got to put something in their to replace it... just like Bendis did beautifully in the first 7-issue arc of Ultimate Spider-Man.
 
Last edited:
once again....agreed 200% ^^ and i think youve basically described what ive felt was missing with this series for a while...like in cats and kings, we had the whole mj fighting with her dad sub plot and the elektra/kingpin subplot, but that was all chained together by black cat....so it worked good for me....the venom arc didnt really do such a great job of that, but at least the protagonist was shown from the beginning....you could follow the story, it was just a matter of time before eddie has the costume.....

in this arc you are expecting to see harry decide to turn evil....its all mixed up in flashbacks....and thats not so bad....but when you take 11 pages each issue to show something like that it gets painstakingly stupid....and if its not a flashback, its some drawn out scene with no dialogue...without the nice cliffhangers i think id actually miss some issues purposely.....
 
I think Bendis just likes the characters that he's playing with. I don't blame him; the way he's made them so human makes it almost impossible to ignore the fact that they, if taken straight from the pages of the comic, could jump right into our lives and go undetected as comic characters. I personally don't mind that aspect of it... Right now, my problem is with the art team. The colorist needs to go.
 
Bass said:
This is exactly my problem with Ultimate Spider-Man.

To give you a little lecture on story structure, a protagonist's life is more or less neutral until the inciting incident. This event of story radically upsets the protagonist's balance of life, either towards the positive or the negative, with or without irony. For example, the murder of Richard Kimble's wife in THE FUGITIVE. The opening scene of the film, and we're off. Sometimes, the event comes in two parts. The inciting incident of JAWS is one; the shark eats the swimmer and the sherriff discovers the body. We don't have 'slices of life' in between these two events. The incident can come anywhere in the story. In THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the inciting incident is Frodo picking up the One Ring and then Gandalf explaining to Frodo what the One Ring means and what must be done about it. This scene occurs almost an hour into the film. How do you keep your audience interested? Sub-plots. In The Lord of the Rings, we have Bilbo's party. In SPIDER-MAN, the inciting incident is in three parts: Spidey gets his powers, Goblin gets his powers, and they meet. The meeting doesn't happen for more than an hour. To keep the story going we have the MJ love story, the Uncle Ben plot, and the Osborne insanity plot.

Now look at USM.

Ultimate Carnage has the inciting incident of "hero discovers monster". This does not happen until the 4th part of the story. Are there any sub-plots in the first three issues? The closest we get is Connor's desire for a breakthrough. But this has an inciting incident that occurs in the second issue. So in three issues, all we get is one inciting incident for a sub-plot.

Ultimate Hobgoblin is, (as is the general convention for superhero stories: hero discovers villain - hey, it works for Bond) the same. The inciting incident doesn't occur until the fifth part (we assume). What sub-plots do we get? Harry is supposed to have a sub-plot, but it is under written. We don't know anything about Harry, and instead of being mysterious, it just feels slow and pedantic. The MJ/Peter break-up sub-plot would be nice if, emotionally, their sub-plot had changed over three years - which it hadn't. They were in this position three years ago, so it's feels like retreading old territory. The sub-plot didn't start until the third part.

So when you are saying "nothing's happening", I'd have to say you are exactly on the money.

Hero discovers Villain. A superhero story starts with that. If you delay it, by God, you've got to put something in their to replace it... just like Bendis did beautifully in the first 7-issue arc of Ultimate Spider-Man.
Click to expand...

Beautifully put, and right on the money.
 
I know everyone is going for a fight club take on Shaw, i have said this before but why was Shaw in the first arc trying to kill peter, and then Shaw rings Norman!
I don't think harry personailty would pick out a guy that he doesn't even really know, and have an imaginarey friend that was one of his fathers workers (hired gun, pretty much)

It just doesn't make sense, i could understand if it was a guy, that we haven't met,and he appeared out of nowhere and said, ok i worked with your dad, and he told me all these secerts and hiding places.
And it turned out harry had tyler durden fever, and the guy was in his head.

And also shaw couldn't become Mysterio, at the start when mysterio showed up in the 616 he was in to smoke and mirrors, and really just a joke, i know later on he became a bit more of a threat(but not much)
Shaw doesn't suit what the 616 version was like, shaws a dirty work guy, and the 616 version worked in the movies, and knew smoke and mirrors.
I would rather Mysterio follow kinda a simlar path as the 616 version.
 
Shihad said:
I know everyone is going for a fight club take on Shaw, i have said this before but why was Shaw in the first arc trying to kill peter, and then Shaw rings Norman!
I don't think harry personailty would pick out a guy that he doesn't even really know, and have an imaginarey friend that was one of his fathers workers (hired gun, pretty much)

It just doesn't make sense, i could understand if it was a guy, that we haven't met,and he appeared out of nowhere and said, ok i worked with your dad, and he told me all these secerts and hiding places.
And it turned out harry had tyler durden fever, and the guy was in his head.

And also shaw couldn't become Mysterio, at the start when mysterio showed up in the 616 he was in to smoke and mirrors, and really just a joke, i know later on he became a bit more of a threat(but not much)
Shaw doesn't suit what the 616 version was like, shaws a dirty work guy, and the 616 version worked in the movies, and knew smoke and mirrors.
I would rather Mysterio follow kinda a simlar path as the 616 version.
Click to expand...


the story isnt over yet....shaw is manipulating harry...its not all something harry is making up in his head....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top