Seems more appropos for that new Ant-Man, though...

I would buy that issue.

I hope he gets the clap.

How many other superheroes *are* married? Especially those with name recognition? Taking away Green Arrow and Black Canary (too recent), the JLA is a blank slate aside from Superman and Flash. And the Avengers (classic version) just have Wasp / Hank Pym and Vision / Scarlet Witch (and both those have been far less stable than Peter and MJ were). I guess Daredevil's married now, but that's one of those Bendis decisions that it's best to pretend never happened.

If anything, having Spidey be happily married makes him almost *unique* in both universes. By reverting him to a skirt-chasing, two-girlfriends-a-month type of guy, they not only make him less relatable to the average reader (because, let's face it, Peter's never-ending flow of gorgeous women in his life got a bit ridiculous - no one has THAT much good luck), but turns him into the type of character that every other single comic hero has been turned into.

Now, I agree that the marriage came out of nowhere back in the day. But it was *twenty years* - there were college seniors who'd never seen a comic where Spidey wasn't married. Heck, if this had been pushed back to 2010, there'd be more years of a married Spider-Man than an unmarried one (I think my math is right there). Spider-Man lost relevance because the books were horrible in the 1990s, not because Peter was married during that time.

Tom Daylight: I beg to differ on your points with regards to the Spider-marriage. marrying Peter Parker was an organic development to his overall character arc. Keeping him single and refusing to let him develop past a certain point? Now THAT is the definition of "generic superhero."

it's nice that they've kept the Ultimate universe relatively small in the number of books they publish. I think the Supreme universe crossover was a mistake.

As for why bother when USM exists, did you know that they only publish one issue of that every month, and Bendis won't let anyone else write it? Why should 75% of the Spider-Man comics be lumbered with an ill-thought-out-in-1987-but-nobody-dare-get-rid-of-it-because-it's-been-there-too-long storytelling restriction? (Okay, the marriage is "nice". But it's not Spider-Man, it turns him into a generic superhero.)

His Ultimates was pretty much about a bunch of unrepenant thugs and mental screw ups

You forgot to add 'who kick @ss on a global scale!'. Yeah, I liked it. I can easily see how the impact of the ending was lessened to molecular levels by the delays but i read it in trade so that didn't bother me so much.

I lost interest in the Ultimate universe a long time ago. I find Bendis' dialogue to be a bit tiring, and Millar's work is crap. His Ultimates was pretty much about a bunch of unrepenant thugs and mental screw ups and I got bored with his U-X-Men. I will concede that Millar's Ultimates were attempting to tell different stories, but his and Hitch's inability to maintain anything approaching a schedule shot the series in the foot.

Anyway, I like Ultimate Spider-Man. And found the Ultimates interesting. But I have no philosophical or moral justification in their defense. I just like them. If they were cancelled, that would be the only argument I would have in their defense.

As to the business of the actual post, Ultimate Spider-Man is the only Spider-Man I've read/purchased since I dropped the mainline evangelical version just before they started that whole The Other business (and since they stopped making Mary Jane Vs./Loves Spider-Man). Ultimate just seemed to work better for the character than 616—and not because of the marriage, but because Ultimate just more consistently told interesting stories and allowed the core appeal of Peter Parker to shine through.

I never really got anywhere with the rest of the Ultimate line however—though I tried with X-Men for about fifty issues. And while the first two Ultimates series were engaging, they felt like they took place in an entirely different kind of universe from Ultimate Spider-Man.