the plot: Now in full swing as Spider-Man, Peter Parker dispatches with the Shocker, before heading off to the Daily Bugle to sell some photos of Spider-Man to J. Jonah Jameson. Jameson reluctantly buys the pictures, because, for one thing, they're not very well taken. On his way out of Jameson's office though, Peter helps Jameson's secretary with a problem on the Bugle's website and is offered a job maintaining it. Meanwhile, later, with the vast compute file resources at his disposal, Peter decides to look up the thief that killed Uncle Ben and finds a startling connection between the thief and a certain infamous overweight criminal Kingpin.

the review: After an exciting opening storyarc, the dynamic duo of Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley set up what should prove to be an equally interesting storyline with the Ultimate introduction of the Shocker, the Enforcers and, more importantly, the Kingpin of crime, Wilson Fisk himself. Following the opening arc, this issue faced the possibility of falling short and becoming nothing more than the start of a continuous flow of Ultimate villain introductions. But fortunatly the team has come up with an interesting way of bringing in classic Spidey villains in new light. Witness the intro of the Shocker, and the revamped Enforcers, seen briefly on a computer monitor. Being a fan of Ox, Montana and Fancy Dan, I was afraid that they might have been drastically changed from their classic versions, but thankfully they were left, for the most part unchanged.

One factor in this issue that struck a chord with me was the effects of Uncle Ben's death still being felt by Peter. In the original Lee/Ditko version it seemed that following the first few issues of Amazing Spider-Man the fact that Uncle Ben had even been killed was dropped entirely and the effects of his demise were not felt by Peter. It makes sense that given Peter's guilt he would be haunted by Ben Parker, and while that element may have just been a plot device to place Peter up against the Kingpin, it worked very well and was appreciated.

What else can I say, but as long as Mark Bagley and Brian Bendis are working on Ultimate Spider-Man it will be one of the finest titles published by Marvel, 'Ultimate' or not. And a final note, the scene between Jonah Jameson and Peter Parker was great. I hope there's more of that to come.

Ultimate Spider-Man #8 gets **** out of *****

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