Ultimate Power

This book made me wish that Brian Michael Bendis was writing the Ultimate Fantastic Four as well as Spider-Man. Ultimate Power has some great pacing. He knows when to write it quick and when to let the characters have a moment. The exchange between Nick Fury and Spider-Man alone as to how to deal with what happened to Reed was enough by itself to make me like this book.

Unfortunately, as I have no idea who these Powers people are, I would have liked a little more information up front. Maybe a quick introduction before the massive fight scene. The massive fight scene was a bit problematic as it was easy to lose who was who and what was going on. Finally, if this is where Nick Fury has disappeared to in Ultimates 2 then Spider-Man ought to have had a better idea where he was in the later volumes of the Ultimate Spider-Man. Perhaps there'll be more information whenever Ultimates 3 comes out.

I'll give it a 4.

Ultimate Marvel Team-Up

Trying to stick to the Ultimate Spider-Man theme going on here I found a place to force in the Ultimate Marvel Team-Up. It was tough, as although all the stories in the team-up were written by Brian Michael Bendis, they don't exactly fit into the continuity.

Some of the stories are great: like the Spider-Man/X-Men story or the Spider-Man/Shang-Chi stories. Some of them are terrible: like the Spider-Man/Iron Man story. The Spider-Man/ Daredevil/Punisher story was interesting but seemed more like an excuse to write a Daredevil/Punisher story.

The quality of writing and the quality of art is all over the place with this one and I can't really recommend it as much as the series itself. There are some neat things in it and it does put Peter squarely in the Marvel universe but it could have been a lot better. I guess it gets a 2.