I complained last issue that there wasn't enough context for an Ultimate Spider-Man reader to understand the story in that issue. Apparently, they were picking up story threads from Ultimate Origins. Having not read that series, I felt I was left in the dark, a feeling no doubt shared among many readers.

This month, we get a decent amount of background info to fill in the blanks. So what's the problem now? Well, I think it's just that I don't really care about Rick Jones and his problems.

The story has Rick calming down a bit so that Spidey and his super-buddies can talk to him about being a powered individual. Rick insists on going to the site of the Watcher that gave him his powers. Apparently it's at a top-secret desert compound for something called Project Pegasus. Once there, they find it's been broken into, and some partially reptilian hotties are looting the joint. A fight ensues before some g-men show up and secure the area. Before they could be detained for questioning, Rick Jones teleports everyone back to New York. He feels completely different about his powers after the fight and decides to leave home to figure out what to do with his life. His mother pleads for him to stay, but he refuses, only vowing to come back after he's sorted things out for himself. He also gives himself a name: Nova.

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #8

My problem with this issue specifically and the two-parter in general is that it's not a Spidey story. It feels like those cheesy TV episodes we used to get a lot of in the 70s and 80s. You know, the ones where the story involved a completely new character and you just knew that it was a ploy to get you to watch a spinoff show about that person. That's what this is like. I feel my comfort zone of Ultimate Spider-Man comics has been temporarily hijacked to get me interested in a new character who I don't really feel for one way or another.

Otherwise, everything else was the same as normal, which is typical Bendis fare. I did feel the fight with the lizard chicks was forced though. Again, a bunch of new people who are name-dropped, as if I know who they are. The thing is, I don't. Please, Marvel, don't make me feel like a fool because I don't know these people. Don't make me feel as if I'm missing out on something because I only follow Ultimate Spidey. I used to hate comics in my youth (in the 80s and 90s) when they'd have so many crossovers throughout so many titles that you couldn't keep track unless you bought them all. I was quite pleased all this time that (for the most part) Ultimate Spider-Man was in the ultimate universe, yes, but could somehow be its own independent entity, existing together with yet somehow outside the rest of the books. Let's go back to that, shall we?

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