Review: The Ultimate Spider-man by Stan Lee, Peter David and more

Rating: 8/10

Synopsis

Beginning with a novella by Spider-Man’s co-creator Stan Lee and veteran Marvel writer Peter David retelling the wall-crawler’s origin, this exciting anthology has original stories featuring one of the world’s most enduring heroes. 

From Tom De Haven and Dean Wesley Smith’s look at Spidey’s early career to David Michelinie’s portrait of a dying reporter who wants his last story to be the revelation of Spider-Man’s true identity and Lawrence Watt-Evan’s tale of a boy whose web-slinging hero-worship leads to tragedy – plus stories by Craig Shaw Gardner, Richard Lee Byers, Ann Nocenti, and many more – here are spectacular new Spider-Man adventures!

Review

The audio done by Thom Rivera is well performed and I think he’s a good voice for Peter and Spidey. 

Personally I love Spider-Man, but I didn’t grow up in a comic book household. So for me, my first Segway into it was the 90s animated series. And then I became a mega fan when Tobey took on the role. 

This collection starts with a pretty awesome novella that covers the origin story. Peter is bitten by an irradiated spider that has been causing some problems inside Dr. Otto’s mechanical arms. While not so different from many of the other versions, I like the idea of one of his greatest enemies having a direct connection to creating his alter ego. The accident that ensues also inadvertently creates Doc Ock. Then in a very similar sequence to the Sam Raimi movie, Peter creates this alter ego in hopes of stopping the burglar that killed his uncle Ben. I’ve always like the idea of finding new strength and immediately wanting revenge, but then becoming this superhero that’s arguably the most genuinely ‘good’ out of all of them. This “good guy” version is kind of what they seem to be doing with Tom Holland’s portrayal. 

The other stories are collected like an anthology. I liked and disliked some of them, but nothing stuck out as particularly bad. Mostly they felt like they belonged to a bigger piece, which made them kind of seem like they were always missing something. I did enjoy a story where Mary Jane asks simply for five more minutes, just for Peter to be told by a police officer that he was five minutes too late to save someone. A really good short on the idea of time and how particularly hard it would be to be a hero and also try to have personal life.