“What the F–k Is Wrong With You?”: Ultimate Spider-Man Was Designed to Fix Marvel’s Biggest Mistake

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For dedicated Marvel fans, Peter Parker’s Spider-Man tends to be the publisher’s most contentious hero. There’s a vocal contingent of fans who believe that Marvel has lost direction with its flagship hero, though of course the exact date that started is a matter of debate. Those fans will be relieved to hear that Marvel’s recent Ultimate Spider-Man – rebooting the Web-Slinger’s entire lore – was custom-designed to address their concerns. Indeed, the creator behind the original pitch doesn’t understand what’s wrong with Marvel to have ignored this demand for so long…

Spider-Man Fans Want Peter Parker to Grow Up

Ultimate Spider-Man Was Designed to Deliver

In a recent interview with Popverse, writer Donny Cates (Venom, Thor) shared his original vision for the new Ultimate Spider-Man. Cates developed the concept for Ultimate Spider-Man but was unable to write the series due to a car accident which affected his ability to work, with the series launching in 2024 from Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto.

In the interview, Cates spells out that the basis of Ultimate Spider-Man was allowing Peter Parker to grow up. In 2007, Marvel’s controversial ‘One More Day’ arc erased Peter and MJ Watson’s marriage from continuity, with Marvel wanting to keep Peter young and relatable. Fans have railed against the change ever since, wanting to see Peter Parker continue to grow and mature as a character, and even have children (especially because the alternate MC2 continuity means many feel like they already know his daughter, May Parker.)

Cates expresses that fan demand for an older, more mature Spider-Man is clear, and that he couldn’t believe Marvel wasn’t catering to the demand. Cates states:

My entire pitch for [Ultimate Spider-Man] was that people want him to be married, to have kids. Do it for them! What are we doing here? There’s an entire contingent of people screaming for him and Mary. It’s like we have a Chili’s, you have people screaming for ice cream. ‘No, f**k you, we don’t have ice cream.’ Sell ice cream! What the f**k’s wrong with you?

Cates therefore set out to use Marvel’s new Ultimate Universe to offer fans the “ice cream” they craved, as well as exploring Peter Parker in a new context – not as a teen hero, but as a married father who has to combine vigilante justice with raising a family. Cates adds that the Ultimate Universe was perfect for this as a follow-up to Marvel’s 2000s-era imprint of the same name, which had its own teenage Peter.

The thing is that people who read those original Ultimate Spider-Man books are now my age, right? And Spider-Man’s not really a cipher for us anymore. Because we’ve all got jobs and kids and stuff like that. And the idea of great responsibility is way different than Peter’s life. …

Spider-Man has always been there for me. And I pitched it because I wanted to have a Spider-Man for me. So I said, ‘The ultimate Spider-Man for us would look like us; a little gray in the beard, has to go to the store and get stuff for the kids.’ I was like, ‘That’s what people would respond to now because we grew up and didn’t have a Peter for us anymore.

Marvel Editorial Refuses to Accept Fans Want Spider-Man to Grow

Thankfully, the Creators Found a Way to Deliver

One person who firmly disagrees with Cates’ point of view is Marvel editor Tom Brevoort. In a post on his blog Man With a Hat earlier this year, Brevoort held fast to the idea that an older, married Peter Parker is the hobbyhorse of a small minority of fans, not the way forward for the larger franchise. Brevoort wrote:

I’ve been hearing from a couple of yahoos whose idea of a good time is to send us the same form letter about MJ and Paul every single day , Glenn. But here’s the thing: I think the point of view that you’re talking about is simply incorrect. First off, the difference in sales between ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN is relatively slim. It’s not like ULTIMATE is doing twice or three times the business or anything. And secondly, I don’t think that the success of ULTIMATE at the moment is just down to Pete and MJ being married within it. I think it has a lot more to do with the quality of the work that Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto are producing. So I get that people who want Pete and MJ back together are of course going to point to that series, but the truth is that it doesn’t really make a convincing argument to me at all. I’ve been around this particular sort of block too many times over the years to mistake the signals.

However small the contingent of fans who want an older Peter, it’s a movement that is clearly influencing Marvel’s creators, and not just in good ways. Daredevil and Batman writer Chip Zdarsky has shared that he doesn’t want to write Amazing Spider-Man, citing in a Reddit AMA that, “It just seems to be a ludicrous amount of work for a readership that has too many specific ideas of what should happen, and get too angry when their expectations aren’t met.”

While Cates hasn’t been able to write Ultimate Spider-Man, the series has continued with his vision, with fans receiving the new comic well. However, it’s also worth noting that canonicity is a big deal to longtime comic fans, and that’s the one thing that isn’t on offer yet. The adult Peter is a variant character in a very different world (one where the villains won), while the mainstream Spider-Man continues on as normal. To stretch Cates’ metaphor, Marvel is serving icecream, but it’s still not quite the flavor fans were clamoring for.

Whether Spider-Man fans will be happy longterm with Ultimate Spider-Man‘s answer to Peter’s lack of growth will be seen in the coming years, but it’s clearly just as much of a debate behind closed doors at Marvel as it is between fans.

Sources: Chris Arrant, Popverse; Tom Brevoort, Man With a Hat; Chip Zdarsky, Reddit

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