Ultimate Spider-Man #155

In addition to this being an accurate representation of my feelings right now, I have to say that #155 may be my favorite issue of Ultimate Spider-Man ever. The series right now is without a doubt as good as it has ever been; probably as good as anything in the Ultimate line has ever been.

It's more or less a tradition to give Peter brief moments of happiness every now and then, only to ruin them shortly afterward. On the surface, in fact, this is essentially the same thing that's happening over in Amazing Spider-Man with Big Time, but even if this whole Death of Spider-Man storyline hadn't been teased to death over the last couple months, I think this issue would be notable for throwing so much sudden happiness Peter's way while still carrying an undercurrent of sheer dread. Part of it is due to Bendis - in particular the fact that he's been writing the title for ten years now and it's possible for one to sense his ebbs and flows after all this time - and part of it is just because it's the Ultimate U and Anything Can Happen.

Over in Big Time, making Peter happy is pretty much limited to taking away his financial worries and giving him something approaching a steady girlfriend (but let's not dwell on that), because the rest of his world is so fixed in stone after all these years. But here, Bendis can give us a reconciliation with JJJ that feels honest and legitimately earned, and reconnections with both Kitty and MJ that carry the weight of the entire series (or most of it, in Kitty's case) behind them. There's just nothing happening with Spider-Man right now that even touches the current Ultimate status quo, and I'm both excited and terrified to see what happens next.

On another note - I'm glad that I had a lot to say about this one, because after months of indecision, I've come to the conclusion that this strip, #100, will be the end of Half-Assed Commitment as it's existed thus far. There will be more coming to this site in the near future, if only because "half-assed.com" is too beautiful to go to waste, but you'll have to tune in next Tuesday at the usual time to find out what's next. Cheers!

Daylight Savings Time

'nuff said.

Onslaught Unleashed #2

The original Onslaught story back in '95 was the first Marvel Comics story I ever read. Even 15 years later, I recall it mostly fondly, and I think the gist of it holds up pretty well for 90's material. It's nicely poignant that this would be my first Onslaught reference since my second strip ever, and what I'm pretty sure is the first time I've referenced an issue (and a spoiler, to boot!) the day it came out. I'd apologize to readers of Onslaught Unleashed, but I don't think there's more than four of five of them out there. Ah, well.

Ultimate Captain America #3

I'm always telling people how patient I am - but nothing makes me more impatient than being told something is going to happen at a certain time and it doesn't. A couple weeks ago, I waited thirty minutes past the scheduled time for a certain bus to come. If I hadn't already checked the schedule, or if the schedule had told me that I'd have to wait thirty minutes, I would have been totally cool with it. But because it was supposed to have come, I absolutely lost my mind waiting for that damn bus. I think that's probably the worst form of psychological torture I can imagine.

Charlie Sheen Theatre

As there's not really anything intelligent to add to this, I want to talk about something else for a minute.

Am I the only one who thinks it's really obvious that Age of X is the Matrix? Maybe not literally, but some form of collective brainwashing? The first thing that clued me in was Hellion's arms - if this is actually a drastically changed timeline of some sort, what are the odds that he'd just happen to have lost them here too? And then Kitty showed up in an anti-phasing suit. And then the thing with Scott seeing the same dog tag info on more than one person. Obviously there's a connection of some sort to 616's actual physical reality (otherwise Hellion's hands and Kitty's phasing wouldn't mean anything), but every single thing about this story screams artificial reality - Fortress X is all there is here; there's nothing outside of the Force Walls whatsoever. I'd even go so far as to posit that this is all the work of someone with positive intentions - trying to show the X-Men how much worse thins could be.

Usually I suck at anticipating things like this, so I'd just assumed that everyone else saw it until I read AICN's two-person review of the story so far, and their reviewers don't seem to have any idea yet. Am I missing something, or am I just that amazing?

Invincible Iron Man #501

Stomach Flu Comix.

'nuff said.

April O'Neil

And I did indeed make up about half of it - the first panel is real, the rest, while representing true information, is extrapolated and not literal. He's explained to me before the thing about April not being a real person within TMNT continuity, but I always tend to put it out of my mind for the sheer lunacy of it. Apparently it was some sort of Kirby homage - her "father" had a crystal that made anything he drew in pencil come to life briefly; April was drawn with a pen, and therefore remained corporeal much longer.

This concept didn't go over very well, it seems.