Whereas The Ultimates and Ultimate X-Men have been dealing with separate pieces of the same conflict, Ultimate Spider-Man has only recently crawled out of its hole and become more actively involved with these other books. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily to the benefit of this series. Issue #16 spends too much time retreading old ground and focusing on Ultimates-centric matters and not enough on the more "mundane" struggles that have made Miles' journey so interesting.
The most perplexing aspect of this issue is the renewed hostility between Captain America and Miles, as though Cap's acceptance of Miles' activities wasn't just documented in the aftermath of last issue's Rhino battle. I don't mind seeing Cap playing the reluctant mentor to Miles. It makes sense given his lingering guilt over Peter Parker's death and Miles' desperate need for some sort of combat training. But at this point that relationship should be further along than it is. Meanwhile, this issue too often feels like it's working in the shadow of Sam Humphries' Ultimates issues, from the battle with the randomly placed Hydra agents to the rehash of Cap's Presidential acceptance speech. Earlier issues in this arc did a better job of reflecting the new Ultimate status quo without letting that impact the flow of the story.
Issue #16 also suffers from the loss of David Marquez. Ultimate Spider-Man used to be a bastion of visual continuity thanks to artists like Mark Bagley and Stuart Immonen. Those days are clearly gone now. Pepe Larraz steps on board for this issue. While he handles the action scenes well enough, his facial work is too loose and inconsistent to match the detailed expressiveness of artists like Marquez and Sara Pichelli. This series really needs to find some visual stability. I'm sure the recent plotting hiccups will work themselves out, but finding a regular penciller to fill their shoes is a much more difficult proposition.
Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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