"Cruel to be Kind" by Nick Lowe (Stiff, 1979), written by Nick Lowe and Ian Gomm; music video filmed at Lowe's actual wedding!
No, no! Not that Nick Lowe. (He was born on March 24.) I'm talkin' about Marvel Editor Nick Lowe, vice president of content and executive editor at Marvel Comics. He's edited a whole shebang of Marvel Comics (Ultimate Spider-Man, The Ultimates, Ultimate Iron Man, Nextwave, Neil Gaiman's The Eternals, X-Men, Runaways and many more)!
from Ultimate Spider-Man #67 (Marvel/Ultimate Marvel, December 2004), script by Brian Michael Bendis, pencils by Mark Bagley, inks by Scott Hanna, colors by J. D. Smith, letters by Chris Eliopoulos
Well, it's a darn good thing you were, because you're kinda right. Flip open your copy of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up #9 (you do have one, don't you? Don't you?) and you'll find just what the bull ordered, with the small exception that the story's not set on Earth-616 but rather the Marvel Ultimate Earth, Earth-1610. If you wanna quibble, it doesn't even take place on sixteen-ten, because the not-then-published Ultimate Fantastic Four series would later render it non-canonical—the horror! The horror of being removed from canon! To which I say, in my best Nero Wolfe impression, pfui. In the words of a very, very smart man with a very, very, very bushy beard, it may be an imaginary story...but aren't they all?
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #100: This comic is not fun. I'm gonna be blunt: I got more joy and thrills out of the reprint of Amazing Spider-Man #87 in that Stan Lee comic than I did in this ultimate-sized 100th issue of Ultimate Spider-Man, and I genuinely enjoy and like USM. I don't often review the series here in Comics Oughta Be Fun because the swift-to-trade publishing programming means I can save some of my hard-earned dimes by "waiting for the trade." I actually do like the modern teen Spidey and his heroic and romantic problems, and I've peeked in on the last few issues of this storyline enough to know that this is a much better Clone Saga than the original, but this one-hundredth issue was nothing more than a big disappointment and a bit of a sour taste to me. It read so swiftly (to be honest, many decompressed Ultimates do read pretty fast) that I didn't feel I got my money's worth. More important, it didn't wrap up the story. I know I'm spoiled by the classic idea that an anniversary issue finishes off a storyline, but it's seldom I get to the end of a comic and say "that's it?" as I did here. I didn't care for the portrayal of Aunt May as a fed-up, venomous "had enough" personality who would toss out Peter with a scream. And most of all, I didn't like that in his own hundredth issue, Spider-Man is reduced to doing nothing but talking and reacting. Where's the fight? Where's the action? Where's a Spider-Man who battles his problems instead of sniveling about them? Not here, that's for sure. He might show up in the next issue or the one after that, but I don't know if I'll be pickin' that issue up. The issue's padded with sketchbooks, history, and a pointless four page preview of an X-Men book that has already shipped. What I thought was gonna be a fun issue in a generally entertaining series really disappointed me. It'll read a lot better in the trade, sure. But there's nothin' classic about this issue on its own.
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