Comic Book / Ultimate Spider-Man (2000)

Please Note: Due to the comic changing main characters at the end of Volume 2, tropes for the first two volumes of the title are separate from tropes for the third and fourth volumes. As such, all tropes relating to Miles Morales will be collected under the tropes for Volumes 3 and 4. This page will also feature unmarked spoilers for the Peter Parker-focused portion of the series.

Mark Raxton: Man... what's so special about this Peter Parker?
Mary Jane Watson: Everything.

— Issue 78

Ultimate Spider-Man, part of the Ultimate Marvel line, is a retelling of the original Spider-Man comic written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn, originally, by Mark Bagley and later by Stuart Immonen. The Bendis and Bagley collaboration, which lasted for 111 issues, holds the record for longest Comic Book Run on a Marvel Comics series by two people, breaking the record set by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on Fantastic Four.

Issue #1 was published in 2000, and it proved to be the first title in Ultimate Marvel and the most famous and influential title in that label. It provided a Setting Update to Peter's high-school and teenage era and origins from the early '60s to the late '90s. Peter gets bitten by a genetically altered spider developed by Oscorp, and his classic villains have a set of powers and skills that are slightly different from how readers expect them to be. But fundamentally Peter is motivated by the guilt of his Uncle's death, by the idea that "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" and as the series evolves he comes to be the moral and emotional center of the entire Ultimate Marvel universe, and a Hope Bringer for his friends, loved ones, and allies.

After a six-month Time Skip following Ultimatum, which killed off many Ultimate Marvel characters and initially left Peter's fate ambiguous, the series was re-launched as Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man until the comic reached its 150th issue (counting both pre- and post-Ultimatum issues) and returned to its original numbering and naming format for 10 issues, just in time for a crucial crossover event: The Death of Spider-Man, which was Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The series ended with issue 160, followed by the miniseries Ultimate Fallout (Peter eventually got better, but he stopped being the protagonist of the series at that point).

A third volume came out starring Miles Morales, a new character introduced in the pages of Ultimate Fallout. This series was published under the title Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Volume 2, or Ultimate Comics: All-New Spider-Man with new numbering. In 2012, as part of the 50th anniversary of Spider-Man titles, the first 616 and Ultimate Universe crossover, Spider-Men was launched, which saw the 616 Peter arrive into the Ultimate Universe and meet Miles, who never got to meet the original Spider-Man.

In 2014, The fourth and final volume, called Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, began in the wake of the Cataclysm Crisis Crossover. This title ended with #12 and led into Secret Wars (2015), at the end of which, Miles Morales was imported directly into the Marvel Comics Universe thanks to the intervention of Molecule Man. This was done as a part of the All-New, All-Different Marvel line-up, not only starring in All-New, All-Different Avengers, but also starring in Spider-Man (2016), by the same creative team and with Miles as the main Spider-Man with the original Peter Parker serving as a mentor for the younger web-slinger. The crossover Spider-Men II provided a coda for Ultimate Spider-Man and the Ultimate Marvel line as a whole.

In September 2023, Marvel announced a new Ultimate Spider-Man series as part of its rebooted Ultimate Universe (2023). Written by Jonathan Hickman with artwork by Marco Checchetto, this series adds a twist to the origin by having Peter be bitten by the spider as a married man with children, rather than as a high school student.

There's also the 2005 tie-in game, which introduced Ultimate Beetle and was marketed as being in continuity with the series but this has since been the subject of Canon Discontinuity. A version of the game's plot and events was adapted between USM #123-128 ("War of the Symbiotes"). And on the subject of video games, Ultimate Spidey also made an appearance in 2010's Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions as one of the four playable characters (on home consoles). Not to be confused with the Ultimate Spider-Man animated show, which has a different premise; though as with most Marvel adaptations it does have some Ultimate Universe elements incorporated into it.

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Ultimate Spider-Man provide examples of the following tropes:

Volumes 1 & 2

• Abled in the Adaptation: Downplayed with Madame Web as thanks to her Age Lift, she doesn't need life support equipment, but she's still blind and in a wheelchair.
• Aborted Arc:
  • Nick Fury claims that after the symbiote's existence had been revealed to the world, multiple factions all over the world are starting to look for and fight over it. The conflict is apparently so bad that Fury sees this as the prelude to World War 3. This is never brought up again due to the next story arc being part of Ultimatum, with this conflict possibly also being cancelled in-universe due to the worldwide destruction Ultimatum brought about.
  • Early in Ultimate Spider-Man, in Issue 2, there's a panel where Peter's hand starts buzzing and Peter wonders what's wrong with it. The panel seemingly implied that Peter would develop organic webbing, but later issues show him developing the web shooters. The reasons for that panel are never elaborated again.
  • For a short-time, Flash Thompson kept pestering Peter to talk to him privately, but Peter continually blew Flash off due to Flash still being The Bully at the time. It was never revealed what Flash so desperately wanted to get Peter's advice on, but after Gwen Stacy's death Mary Jane speculated that Flash must have had feelings for her. Only problem there is when Gwen got resurrected the topic is never brought up again and Flash largely gets written out of the series.
  • MJ becoming Ultimate Demogoblin and still have PTSD nightmares after that, seemed to suggest that her powers could manifest. A later comic showed her hands shaking in rage as she saw Peter talking to Kitty, implying that her powers were dormant. But this isn't followed up for the rest of the Ultimate Spider-Man run.
  • War Of The Symbiotes ends with the Beetle abducting Eddie Brock so that Latverian scientists can study the Venom symbiote. This is the last time either character appears.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Immediately after getting bit by the spider, Peter is a little jerkish. More moody, rebellious, cutting classes, letting his grades slip, and being insensitive to his Only Friend MJ. It doesn't last long.
• Adaptation Distillation: On occasion, especially the Clone Saga.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • Captain Stacy's first name changed from "George" to "John". Likewise, his wife's first name is now "Madeline" instead of "Helen".
  • Similarly, Flash's first name was changed from "Eugene" to "Fred"
  • Walter Hardy's first name was changed to "Jack".
  • Spot's first name was changed from "Jonathan" to "Frank".
  • The Prowler went from "Hobie Brown" to "Aaron Davis".
  • The Enforcers also got hit with this. Fancy Dan's last name went from "Brito" to "Crenshaw", Ox's real name was changed from "Raymond Bloch" to "Bruno Sanchez", and Montana's real name went from "Jackson Brice" to Montana being his real first name and his last name being "Bale". Frederick Foswell's real name remains unchanged, but his codename went from "The Big Man" to "Mr. Big".
  • When it's revealed that the Blob was Liz Allan's father, his first name is revealed to be "Franklin", not "Fred".
  • Martha and Billy Connors are renamed Doris and Timmy. Curt's last name itself is modified is to "Conners", instead of "Connors". Additionally, the name of Curt's wife is a Continuity Snarl as Curt's debut in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up featured a letter to her, wherein he calls her "Marsha"—and later in the same issue, her 616 name, "Martha".
  • The spelling of "Jean DeWolff" is modified to "Jeanne DeWolfe".
  • Emily Osborn becomes Martha Osborn.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: Does this three times over. First, Norman Osborn becomes the Green Goblin thanks to the same Applied Phlebotinum that affected the spider that empowered Peter Parker, which caused an accident that made Otto Octavius into Doctor Octopus and Harry into the Hobgoblin; and another recurring Big Bad candidate, the Kingpin, is connected to Spider-Man's origin in that the burglar who killed Uncle Ben is one of his lower-level thugs. Finally, Venom is the result of experiments performed by Peter's parents.
  • And to the Ultimate Marvel Universe as a whole, since Osborn was (like many, many others) attempting to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum used on Captain America.
• Adaptational Superpower Change:
  • The Rhino is a Humongous Mecha, instead of a man with Super-Strength.
  • Jessica Drew is also changed. In 616, she has her own powers, like Flight. In 1610, she is an Opposite-Sex Clone of Peter Parker, and has his powers (plus organic webbing, fired from her fingertips instead of her wrists).
  • The Ultimate Spider-Man version of Kraven the Hunter had no powers initially, allowing Spidey to cream him in their first fight. Later he alters his DNA and becomes a horrific werewolf-like creature, and is arrested by the Ultimates who remove said alterations.
  • Doctor Octopus was retconned into having control over metal like Magneto, as opposed to just having a psychic link to his mechanical arms.
• Age Lift:
  • Peter is depicted as going to high school with Mary Jane, Harry, and Gwen. Originally, he wouldn't meet them until college. For that matter, Peter spends his whole story in high school.
  • Jessica Jones is depicted as a senior instead the same age as Peter.
  • Eddie Brock is a couple of years older than Peter instead of around the same age as adults.
  • Aunt May, Uncle Ben, Ben Urich, and Madame Web are significantly younger than their mainstream counterparts with May and Ben as middle-aged instead of senior citizens. Ben as a young adult instead of middle-aged himself, and Web as quite a bit younger than her elderly mainstream counterpart.
  • Related to his Adaptational Species Change into a true vampire, Morbius is centuries old.
• Alliterative Name: The same ones carry over from the original comics: Peter Parker, Betty Brant, Otto Octavius, "Robbie" Robertson, and, at the top, J Jonah Jameson.
• All There in the Manual: The short-lived Ultimate Marvel Team-Up and the Ultimate Spider-Man Super Special that closed out the series contained Ultimate Spidey's first run-ins with the Lizard, Black Widow, Blade, Daredevil, Elektra, and Man-Thing (though the Blade encounter did get revisited in the "Morbius" arc). The Special also wrapped-up the class assignment subplot seen in "Double Trouble" (the initial Doctor Octopus/Kraven arc of the main Ultimate Spider-Man series).
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Mary Jane to Peter in vol. 2 #15, and earlier than that, in Vol. 1, her letter to Peter where she confesses the true depth of her feelings for him after Geldof's attack, and then to Mark Ralston in the issue after Peter broke up with her:
  Mark Raxton: "Man, what is so special about Peter Parker anyway?"
  MJ: "Everything."
• Animal Motifs: It's the same rogues' gallery.
• Anti-Climactic Unmasking: Multiple times. Peter was caught and unmasked by his enemies on several occasions. Luckily for him, his enemies had no idea who the kid under the mask was.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The Oz compound. It turned Peter Parker into Spider-Man, Miles Morales into another Spider-Man but with new extra powers, Norman Osborn into a huge monster that makes fireballs, and Mary Jane into a grizzly-like monster.
• Appropriated Appellation
  • Ultimate Mysterio explained it this way: "'But you can keep calling me Mysterio. I like that. I would have never come up with that name myself but it's out there now... and I like it.'" This may have been a ruse by Ultimate Mysterio, who was revealed to be an android controlled by the mainstream Mysterio.
  • Also Spider-Man himself. He needed a stage name in the wrestling arena, so he chose the name "The Spider". The announcer fixed it in the fly, and gave him the name "Spider-Man". Peter complained for a moment, but then he liked it.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Lampshaded by Ben Urich when Jonah refuses to run his vampire story during the "Morbius" arc^note although to be fair to Jonah, something mystical like vampires is a whole different ball game from super-science.
  Ben: There's mutants, Spider-Men, Captain America frozen in a block of ice for decades, Tony Stark is a human tank, but vampires is too much for you?
• Arch-Enemy: Norman Osborn, Kingpin, Dr. Octopus, Mysterio.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Notable in the Venom arc, when Eddie Brock's former roommate lists off the reasons why he hates him; he always lies, he freaks out when girls reject him, and he gets Cheetos crumbs on everything.
• Art Shift
  • The switch from Bagley to Immonen was noticeable, but not so jarring that it was untenable since the basic premise art-style and coloring remained the same. The subsequent shift from Immonen's more realistic style to Lafuente's more cartoonish style was far more jarring.
  • The series is notable for averting this trope for several years. The series holds the record for longest consistent creative team on a Marvel comic.
• Axes at School: When Gwen first sees Peter getting bullied by Flash and Kong, she pulls a knife on the two.
  • Later, Peter is selected for a random bag check when he's carrying his costume in one. Only a timely distraction keeps him from getting caught.
• Badass Bookworm: Peter Parker
• Back for the Finale: A meta example: Mark Bagley, the artist who was Ultimate Spidey's very first illustrator and who was with the series until Issue #111, was brought back to draw the Death of Spider-Man story arc, which was Peter Parker's last hurrah as the web-slinger.
• Bait-and-Switch: The series does this quite often with references to the classic series (as well as occasional other adaptations):
  • When Peter hears the Bugle is willing to pay for pictures of Spider-Man, he snaps a few shots of himself and takes them along, suggesting he's going to work as a photographer for the Bugle like he traditionally has in the mythology. But while Jonah is willing to give him $50 for one of the photos, he's not interested in employing some strange kid out of nowhere as a photographer; fortunately at this moment Betty Brant starts loudly venting her frustration with the Bugle's website which Jonah has assigned her to manage, and Peter steps up to fix it with his technical knowledge, instead earning himself a job as the Bugle's webmaster.
  • Early in the series, Norman Osborn has Harry treated by a psychotherapist called Doctor Warren. Later on in the series, his full name is confirmed as Doctor Miles Warren when he starts dating Aunt May. However, he is barely ever mentioned again, and has nothing to do with the eventual Clone Saga.
  • During the climax of Peter's first real clash with Norman Osborn, he grabs MJ, takes her to the top of the Queensboro Bridge and eventually throws her off. Peter dives down after her, snagging her by the ankle with a web line just before she hits the water (although conspicuously without a telltale "SNAP" sound effect) then scooping her up and carrying her back up to the bridge. The chapter ends with him trying to reassure her that he has her, only to find her unresponsive, causing him to mutter "Oh no..." and cradle her despairingly in his arms... and the next chapter opens with the same scene, only this time she opens her eyes.
• Beat Panel
  • Used regularly (Decompressed Comic and all that), but possibly most amusing in 118:
  Johnny: (to Peter and Kitty) Oh wait, and you two used to...
  (Peter, Kitty and MJ glare at him)
  Johnny: And now you're— And she's—
  (Peter, Kitty and MJ glare at him)
  Johnny: Oh.
  • Another brilliant instance is when Jean Grey tells Peter he's the first guy in months not to immediately picture her naked.
  Jean: Until now.
  Peter: Sorry.
  Jean: Are you done?
  (Peter clenches his fists together trying to erase the image from his brain; there's a panel of Jean glaring at him; this pattern is repeated several times, her face becoming more and more appalled at whatever he's picturing)
  Peter: I'm done.
  (another panel of Jean looking mortified)
  Peter: Okay, now I'm done.
  (another panel of Jean)
  Peter: Okay, now.
• Berserk Button: Peter manages to hit Nick Fury's by making a flippant remark about his eye. Nick Fury actually looks for a second like he's about to attack Peter.
• Betty and Veronica: More like a pair of Betty and Veronica balls. At any given moment beyond a certain point, Peter will be torn between two of the following: Mary Jane Watson, Gwen Stacy, Black Cat and Kitty Pryde. Though who plays what role and to what extent there is an actual Betty and Veronica role is thoroughly explored and played with, this trope sees a lot of general use throughout.
• Beware the Nice Ones: More so than in the original series!
• Big Damn Heroes
  • The Fantastic Four in the Clone Saga.
  • "The Death of Spider-Man". One question — does Aunt May have to shoot a punk?
• Big Eater: Peter of all people. He has been shown several times cramming his face with food, and even mentions that it's most likely because of becoming Spider-Man that it happened.
  • Venom as well. At one point he even eats a policeman ON A HORSE including THE HORSE. Some form of a sociopathic funny moment of horrible awesome.
• Big "NO!": Peter gives a big one on the last page of #125 when the Venom suit possesses him again.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Right at the end of "Death of Spider-Man" when Peter gets fed up with Norman's insane ranting and smashes a truck down on his head.
• Bishōnen Line: The Carnage creature starts out as a vaguely humanoid fleshy lump the size of a baby and evolves as it attacks people and drains them of blood, roughly resembling the main universe version of Carnage right before it kills Gwen. After that it gains the ability to briefly morph its head into something almost human that resembles Peter (since it was created from, among other things, his blood), but still looks completely monstrous. After draining two cops during its fight with Peter, it reaches what seems to be a mostly perfected form- aside from the clawed hands and feet and Combat Tentacles, it otherwise resembles an almost-completely human and naked version of Peter's father.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: The "Freaky Friday" Flip mini-arc has a pretty funny front with Bendis making the Editor's assistant apologize for it... and then say Bendis' spelling was perfect.
• Bittersweet Ending: Almost every arc and story has one.
  • Peter's time as Spider-Man as a whole eventually ends on this note. Spider-Man defeats the Sinister Six once and for all but dies from his injuries. Kingpin is dead, New York is safe for the time being, a new team of superheroes are defending the city now, Frank Quaid has replaced the corrupt DeWolffe as police captain, Iron Fist's family is safe, and Spidey's legacy lives on, having inspired the people of New York. But Peter's family and friends have been left in mourning, Daredevil is dead, Moon Knight had to give up his secret identity to bring down Kingpin, Shang Chi has left New York with his idealism shattered, Kong and Kitty's relationship fell apart, and now that Kingpin's gone there's an Evil Power Vacuum in New York's underworld. Plus Mysterio is still on the loose along with plenty of other supervillains, meaning that it's going to fall to the new Spider-Man, Miles Morales, to save the city for good.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: The boring teacher at the start of issue 2. His students are falling asleep (he's obviously Ben Stein's character from Ferris Bueller's Day Off).
• Blessed with Suck: Kitty Pryde's new abilities leave her drained after use. Given that her future self (as seen in the UXM/UFF annuals) can use these new powers without any detrimental side effects, one should expect to see this trope to go away over time.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The War of the Symbiotes arc, a Pragmatic Adaptation of the 2005 video game, shows several people and a horse being nommed on by Venom.
• Book Ends: Issue 1 starts with a sinister smile from Norman Osborn. Issue 160 (in which the current Spider-Man dies) ends with him smiling again.
• Body Horror
  • Venom suffers from a constant hunger, which requires him to eat people. Also, the symbiote increases his size and number of teeth.
  • Carnage arguably counts as well.
  • You know how Deadpool wears the mask? He wears it for a good reason. After being turned into a cyborg, his face has no skin and muscle and his brain is exposed. The human shape of his face from under the mask comes from a thin, but tough dome around his head.
  • Sandman. When we first see him he's completely unstable and looks like he's in agony. The Hammer scientist who created him says the physical transformation went perfectly but his mind couldn't handle it. Later on he settles down, but it's implied he has brain damage.
• Boring Failure Hero: Averted. Most notably after Ultimatum Wave, where Jameson sees Spider-Man swing into the worst of the disaster to save civilians, presumes him dead, and prints an issue actually admitting that Spidey is a hero. While outraged when it turns out Spider-Man isn't dead, the reputation boost has stuck so far. Case in point; one issue has Spidey be caught by guards that were just knocked out by Mysterio in a thwarted attempt to rob a gold shipment. In his mainstream universe, they would have immediately leapt to the conclusion he was the one responsible and his reputation would have suffered yet-another-low. Here? The next panel is a newspaper article showing that they actually heard him out and believed him.
  
  And then The Chameleon steals his Spider-Man identity and created chaos all over the city, so he's back to this again. However, during all this, one of the Chameleon twins shoots Jameson in the head, Spider-Man struggles to save JJJ's life, revealing his secret identity to him in the process. In hospital, Jameson tells his reporters that he knows who Spider-Man is... but he's not going to reveal his identity, as Spidey has convinced him that he truly is a hero. Instead, he swears to put out the truth — that the "evil Spider-Man" who caused chaos all over the city was actually an impostor — and vows that he will use his newspaper to help Spider-Man.
• Bounty Hunter: Silver Sable and her crew. Silver Sable's father was a Nazi Hunter; Sable wanted to follow in his footsteps, but was taught to accept that being able to go after the people you wanted meant sometimes going after people you didn't necessarily want in order to pay the bills in between.
• Breather Issue
  • USM #65-71, which followed the Carnage arc. The first issue dealt with featured Peter and the rest of the group reacting to Gwen Stacy's death; and the six issues that followed served as a breather arc before the Hobgoblin arc, and featured the first meeting of Spider-Man and the Human Torch.
  • The Death of a Goblin arc, featuring the deaths of Norman and Harry Osborn was followed by the lighter Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends arc.
  • Issue #28 "Sidetracked" also qualifies. It's positioned between the return of the Green Goblin and the Osborns, where MJ is kidnapped by the Green Goblin, and nearly killed, traumatizing her, and eventually leading to her breaking up with Peter temporarily and the Public Scrutiny arc where a common thug is dressing up like Spider-Man, leading to Peter getting shot, Gwen's mother abandoning her and her father is murdered by the fake Spidey., one of the darker arcs in the early series. It's a relatively breezy issue where Peter is trying to get across town in the middle of a school day to stop the Rhino, but keeps getting sidetracked by everything from Aunt May showing up, to Flash tossing a football at his head, only for him to get there just as Iron Man has defeated Rhino. Although there are a couple pages foreshadowing the Public Scrutiny arc that started the next issue, where Peter finds Gwen hiding behind some dumpsters crying that she thinks her mom is going to abandon the two of them.
• Broken Bird: Gwen Stacy and later Kitty Pryde.
• Building Swing
• Butt-Monkey
  • Formerly the Shocker, which came to an end after a certain issue.
  • The Enforcers also frequently get owned. Special mention to Fancy Dan for getting owned the same way every time.
  • To a lesser degree, Kraven is also relegated to this role, to the point that Spider-Man goes out of his way to call him the most embarrassing foe he's ever faced^note Spidey knocked him out in one punch in their first confrontation, as Kraven had no powers at the time. Even after getting some and joining the Ultimate Six, he's still clearly the weakest of the group. The other bad guys even put him down to his face and make it clear they're being generous just letting him hang around.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • The game was originally planned to tie in to the comic directly, but was almost completely overwritten by the "War of the Symbiotes" arc. Still not a bad game, though.
  • Kitty Pryde makes a big deal out of meeting Spider-Man for the first time in the Irresponsible arc. At this point, she is an established member of the X-Men. However, one of the first issues of Ultimate X-Men after she joins shows her accompanying the X-Men to save Wolverine from a group of decommissioned Weapon X soldiers. Spider-Man is the one who made the distress call and is there when she arrives.
  • Nick Fury's temporary disappearance to another dimension does not seem to occur at a consistent point in the timeline either.
  • These are both forgivable though, since they are continuity issues brought about by tie-ins rather than the individual series itself. For example, Ultimate Power takes place after The Clone Saga but features both Peter dating Kitty and has Peter referring to a debt he owes the Fantastic Four.
  • Ultimate Marvel Team-Up shows Spidey going to meet the Fantastic Four (clearly inspired by the first regular issue of Amazing Spider-Man), and Spidey knows who the FF are, and they are pretty much the adult mainstream versions. The Ultimate version of the FF were later shown to be in their early twenties/late teens, and Spidey didn't know who or what Johnny Storm was when he showed up at Midtown High and later accidentally revealed his powers.
• Canon Immigrant: Geldoff, a villain who appear for one arc, later appeared in the mainstream Marvel Universe with the codename "Proton".
• Capitalism Is Bad: Ultimate Spider-Man takes this further than the Amazing Spider-Man (on account of Bendis being a more liberal figure than either Lee or Ditko were). Uncle Ben and Aunt May are ex-hippies with May still proud of her arrest record over a protest. When Peter tells Aunt May that Norman Osborn is a bad guy, Aunt May quotes Ben about how every rich person he knew acquired it illegally. A number of Peter's enemies, such as the Shocker, are Starving Student whose work was hijacked by corporations, the Kingpin owns Spider-Man's intellectual property and can buy his way out of a video showing him killing a man, and Peter's own father Richard Parker had his life's work (the Venom suit intended to cure cancer) defunded and complicated because corporations wanted to make it into weapons.
• Cat Girl: Black Cat had a brief run as a major character.
• Character Development: Elektra seems to have mellowed a bit between her first and second appearances. She actually smiles. Multiple times.
• Chekhov's Gun: The Oz serum — no-one is quite sure of the extent of its capabilities, but Spider-Man, Doctor Octopus and all three Goblins gain their powers from some sort of application of it. Keep in mind that whilst Peter got his powers from a spider used in Oz testing and only displayed the traditional Spider-Man powers, Octavius was eventually revealed to be more powerful than previously thought, and Norman has returned from the dead and was thought to have been cured of his powers for a time. As of the time of this entry, Harry Osborn is dead (Which could also be once said of his father) and Mary Jane Watson has been said to have been cured of the serum's effects; but when Peter talks to SHIELD about the necessity to keep the Osborns imprisoned after Mary Jane is cured, and is told outright that there is no permanent cure for Oz.
• Chick Magnet: Possibly Peter. At one point he runs through a short list of the hot girls he's met through being Spider-Man.
  Gwen: Who the hell are all these skanks?
• Chronic Hero Syndrome
  • After Gwen's death, Peter decides to give up being Spider-Man because he feels he's not making any difference. This lasts less than a week when he comes to the immediate realization that he simply can't ignore people in distress, no matter what.
  • Even the new anti-mutant laws which forbid the use of mutant powers did not stop Kitty Pryde from playing superhero and saving the life of her ex-boyfriend more than once.
• Clark Kent Outfit: When Gwen, Peter and Eddie squeeze into a car, Gwen gets a feel of Peter's arm and is surprised that he's "all muscle". Peter ad-libs that he's into pilates.
• Cluster F-Bomb
  • The Bombshells are a mother/daughter supervillain pair who both (especially Lori the daughter) swear like marines. Peter and Jessica constantly call them out on it. They are cute, though.
    Lori: We're the Bombshells and we're about to @#$@# your !$@$ so bad you won't be able to @% unless you have a tube and a @#$!
  • Peter also gets really pissed off with the X-Men after they finally undo a "Freaky Friday" Flip:
    Peter: God! You know why people hate you? It's not because you're mutants!! It's because you're all a bunch of @#$@#$ $@$%@ ##@$!! That's why!! You $^$%^ $%^$ $^$%^ $%#^% #$ $% ^#$%^ $%%^!!! AAAGGHHH! (swings off)
    Colossus: Why am I an #$@#$@? I was just standing here.
• Cool Big Sis: Ultimate Gwen Stacy comes across as this rather than a Love Interest. Until she became the Love Interest.
• Comes Great Responsibility: Duh.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: Kitty Pryde even gets to say the line during the Ultimatum plotline.
• Composite Character:
  • Harry Osborn, who became the Green Goblin in the original series, becomes the Hobgoblin in Ultimate Spidey.
  • Similarly, Spider-Woman takes the role of Ben Reilly, who in this version is an older black man who helped make Peter's clones instead of being a clone himself. Tarantula and the first Scorpion are also clones and Kaine wears a tattered version of Ben Reilly's Spider-Man costume.
  • According to Bendis on his message board, the Goblin creature Mary Jane turned into during the Ultimate Clone Saga is Demogoblin, who in the mainstream universe, as his name implies, is a demon.
  • Doctor Octopus takes Miles Warren's role as the creator of the Spider-Clones.
  • Moon Knight has the characters Paladin and Ronin as Split Personalities.
  • Liz Allan takes on the powers and codename of Firestar.
  • The second Scorpion is one between the original Scorpion (having an almost-similar name) and the Black Tarantula (a Hispanic crime lord who, likewise, has ambiguous superhuman powers).
• Compressed Adaptation: The prologue of the War of the Symbiotes arc in the comics was more or less a compressed adaptation of the first half of the game, including Silver Sable trying to capture Venom and introducing the powered armour-clad Beetle.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • Kenny McFarlane's Wikipedia page has a whole section dedicated to the many names Bendis gave him before deciding on that one.
  • Additionally, as mentioned under Adaptation Name Change, there's the kerfuffle over Curt Conners' wife's name in this universe.
  • A bad example comes from the Ultimatum tie-in arc. Issue 131 sees Peter and the Hulk discover Daredevil's body and Peter remark that he didn't know who Daredevil was until Bruce said something — which ignores that he learned it in the "Knights" arc as Peter was personally recruited by Matt in their respective civilian guises, with Matt introducing himself by name and stating he was an attorney and Peter was even there when Matt's law office blew up.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Apparently the real villains of the series, as pointed out by Shocker in his Motive Rant. Norman Osborn, Justin Hammer, Bolivar Trask and Donald Roxxon just for starters, although Roxxon comes across as more of an idiot than outright evil. Uncle Ben had two personal sayings advising people to be wary of Corrupt Corporate Executives: "Never met a man with money who hadn't stepped on someone to get it" and "Never trust anyone wearing a tie," neither of which were shown being spoken by him. Aunt May said the first one when Peter told her he didn't want Norman and Harry in their lives anymore and Peter had a recording of his father saying the second one after his dealings with Roxxon backfired.
• Create Your Own Hero: In the very start of the series, Norman Osborn is dealing with big and ugly experimental spiders, while wearing protective gloves. Then his lawyer calls and he starts discussing with him at the phone, and casually hands the spider to the employee next to him (who was not wearing any protection). Terrified, the guy throws the spider into her box, but he forgets to close it. The spider climbs out, and the rest, as they say, is history.
• Crossover: Not surprising considering it connected to the other Ultimate Marvel series. The usual show up: X-Men, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, The Ultimates, etc.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check
  • Averted this time — Norman WANTED to be recognised for his work in this version (he never had any crazy plans about taking over the criminal underworld) but there was just two problems with his plan to sell his super-soldier goblin formula to the government: a) his formula sucked and b) he was a psychotic murderer.
  • Lampshaded when Mysterio is introduced.
    Spider-Man: Seriously, imagine if you took all this cool stuff you do and applied it to something that wasn't stupid.
  • Peter actually does this quite often, thanks to taking the "Power and Responsibility" message very seriously. It's averted again when he tries it on Shocker when Shocker captures him, chains him up and tortures him. Shocker, who IS actually a mechanical genius, tells Peter how he had a legitimate job at Roxxon Industries inventing powerful weapons, until they took his stuff and fired him.
  • Zig-Zagged with Otto Octavius. He starts out as a legitimate scientist, albeit one involved in corporate espionage and insider-trading. It's brought up several times that his genius could improve people's lives (the technology used to build his arms could open fascinating possibilities for the disabled), but every time he escapes prison he reverts to using revenge to torment the people who wronged him. When Nick Fury offers him a chance to go straight and see a therapist, he pretends to cooperate just long enough to get his arms back and kill everyone who tried to help him. When the FBI give him a job researching gene therapy and super-powers, he just happens to do so by making a bunch of Spider-Man clones specifically designed to emotionally torture Peter. Finally he does decide to just retire from villainy altogether and become a normal scientist. At which point Osborn kills him.
• Cute Bruiser: Kitty Pryde. After the events of Ultimatum, she developed Super Strength and Invulnerability. If the Ultimate X-Men/Ultimatum Fantastic Four annuals are used as a reference, she should be able to smack around superhumans like The Thing with ease.
• Cyborg: One issue has a brief cameo by Deathlok, who is fighting the Ultimates as Spidey swings by.
• Da Editor: Good ol' triple Jay.
• Damsel in Distress
  • Mary Jane, as always. Inverted in issue #122: The Worst Day in Peter Parker's Life, where the Shocker manages to capture Spidey, so Mary and Kitty team up to save him.
  • Spidey actually gets kidnapped a lot throughout the entirety of USM. First by Doc Oc, then by Silver Sable (twice by her if you count the game), there was an incident with Deadpool, once by the Kingpin, another time by the Six, and again by the Chameleons.
• Darker and Edgier: Not as dark as the rest of Ultimate Marvel, but still a little darker than mainstream Spider-Man comics.
• Dating Catwoman:
  • Black Cat has the hots for Spider-Man, until she finds out his age when he takes off the mask.
  • Bobby Drake spends most of the fight with the Serpent Squad hitting on the various members, but unfortunately because most serpents are cold-blooded creatures which need heat, meaning dating a man made of ice probably doesn't appeal.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Spidey, of course, and sometimes during his inner monologues, too!
  • The villains have their moments too. When he first met Vulture, Spidey commented that he wishes for a day when he can meet someone who doesn't try to kill him, to which Vulture casually replies "It's nice to have a dream."
• Death by Adaptation: J. Jonah Jameson mentions that his son is dead, when John Jameson is alive and well in the regular continuity.
• Death by Origin Story:
  • Guess. If you guessed Uncle Ben, you were wrong. Uncle Ben was a character for a couple of issues at the beginning of the comic. The characters that died before the series started and were a part of Peter's story were Richard and Mary Parker, Peter's parents.
  • This applies to Peter, with the original Spider-Man taking the Uncle Ben role for Miles Morales.
• Death Glare: One of those by Uncle Ben is enough to cause Flash and Kong to back off.
• Decomposite Character:
  • Ben Reilly is an African-American man who's not related to Peter Parker in anyway.
  • Tinkerer got this treatment with Elijah Stern taking the Tinkerer identity and Phineas Mason (the Tinkerer in the classic Marvel Universe) later appeared in Ultimate Fantastic Four Annual #2.
  • Doctor Octopus takes Miles Warren's role as creator of the Spider-Clones.
  • The Mac Gargan Scorpion becomes both the Clone Saga Scorpion-Peter Parker, and a Mexican crime lord. Neither actually resemble him all that much, except that the former has the costume and the latter (almost) his name.
  • Flash's role of bullying Peter but eventually maturing and becoming one of his best friends in the mainstream comics is given to Kenny "Kong" McFarlane here while Flash has a reduced role.
• Demoted to Extra: Quite a few of Spidey's extensive rouges gallery and supporting cast end up as this.
  • Flash Thompson plays a far less prominent role here than the mainstream universe.
  • The Lizard, who doesn't even appear in the series proper aside from as Curt Conners in the Venom and Carnage arcs, only appearing in an issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up.
  • Cletus Kasady in the original continuity was the human host for the Carnage symbiote. In the Ultimate continuity, he has no connection to the Ultimate version of Carnage and his only acknowledgement is having his name appear on a list of cat burglars Peter searches through in the 53rd issue.
  • Longtime foe the Rhino only makes a few appearances as a nameless guy in Powered Armor. Spider-Man doesn't even fight him in his first appearance, showing up just in time to see Iron Man already took care of him.
• Description Cut: Inverted. While talking about Spider-Man, Jameson suspects that, at that very moment, he must be up to something that may be a future news cover. And next... is Peter sleeping in class? No, he has just invented the webs.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Ultimate Mysterio
  • Averted in Volume 3 when Ultimate Mysterio turns out to be 616 Mysterio using alternate dimension technology.
• Dirty Cop: Captain De Wolfe
• Distant Finale: The end of Spider-Men II shows a restored Ultimate Universe where Peter is now a member of the Ultimates for real alongside Captain America, Ironheart, Jessica Drew and others, in a relationship with MJ, and with Kong, after being Put on a Bus revealed to have become an army veteran making a comeback, meanwhile Green Goblin is downgraded to another run-of-the-mill bad guy Peter beats up now-and-then.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: When Peter tells Shocker that he feels bad for him (sincerely, not in a joking "you suck" way) because he had no idea of what Shocker had gone through, he only succeeded in making him REALLY angry.
• Dope Slap: From chapter 119, while talking to a certain fire-wielding character who's having a bad day:
  Firestar/Liz: I don't know what to do.
  Iceman: We could get some marshmallows.
  (beat panel)
  Spider-Man: (dope slap)
• Dropped a Bridge on Him
  • Gwen Stacy's death, so much so that Bendis brought her back.
  • Also 2 of the clones from the clone saga — Ultimate Kaine and Ultimate Tarantula — who were not only killed off with casual disdain but whose deaths weren't even given more than a moment's acknowledgment. Below isn't paraphrasing, that's the actual dialogue:
  Peter: Is he dead?
  Jessica: Tsk. Yeah.
  Peter: Oh man... this is so weird.
  Jessica: Oh my God... they both are.
  Peter: This is weird. Well, let's go.
  • Also in Ultimate Comics #1, the Kingpin. He's only just returned to New York after the Ultimatum Wave when Mysterio appears out of nowhere and blows him out of a skyscraper window.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: You can debate endlessly about whether or not killing Peter was a good idea but you can't say that they didn't have him go down facing off against the Sinister Six by himself with a bullet in his gut and fading fast.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In the first arc, when Peter first changes into Spider-Man for a superhero fight, he hides among the bushes and thinks "this can't be how Captain America does it!". The Ultimate Marvel universe was still in its early stages, and Captain America had not been acknowledged yet. He was first used in The Ultimates: he was a war hero from World War II, the first superhuman ever, who fell to the ocean and was presumed dead after stopping a nazi rocket. He was retrieved in the present day of that miniseries, but this story was not there yet. So, for all that Peter knows at that point, Captain America had only been a superhero during WWII, and probably did not even had to bother about concealing a secret identity.
  • Formatting-wise, the first eight issues featured splash pages that loudly displayed the issue's chapter title. It stopped being a thing starting with Issue #9.
  • Also formatting-wise, the text font begins implementing lower-case letters in the speech balloons starting from Issue #14. It also becomes the standard font style for the Ultimate Universe, to the point of Painting the Medium when crossing over with the main Marvel Universe.
  • Eddie Brock makes a cameo as a reporter for the Daily Globe. This is several issues before he is properly reintroduced as Peter's Childhood Friend and a college student studying bioengineering. Maybe it's someone else named Eddie Brock?
• Earn Your Happy Ending: A decent amount of time after Peter's death and Miles's donning of the Spider-Man identity, Earth-1610 (also known as the universe that Ultimate Spider-Man takes place in) was destroyed entirely, and only a few survivors, such as Miles, were allowed to emigrate to Earth-616, the mainstream Marvel universe. However, thanks to Reed Richards efforts, Earth-1610 was eventually restored and all the people in it were revived. The ending of Spider-Men II reveals the Earth-616 Miles Morales going to the restored Earth-1610, where Peter is now living out his adulthood as Spider-Man, finally part of the Ultimates as Nick Fury always told him he would be when he turned 18. He's once again dating MJ, living with Gwen as part of the family, and Aunt May now has a boyfriend. And Peter seems very content with his life these days. Alls well that ends well.
• Embarrassing First Name: "I didn't know your name was Herman!"
• Everybody Knew Already: As shown with both Peter and Miles, teenagers are not good at protecting their secret identities as their classmates eventually put two and two together. It reached the point that during Ultimate Fallout the only one in Peter’s class who didn’t realize he was Spiderman was Flash Thompson.
• Everyone Went to School Together: The series placed Mary Jane, Harry, and Gwen in high school with Peter, whereas they wouldn't meet him until college in the classic comics. Likewise, over the course of the series, the Ultimate versions of Shadowcat, Iceman, and the Human Torch would transfer to Midtown.
• Evil Counterpart: In this universe, Eddie Brock's parents died in the same plane crash as Peter's parents. However, whilst Peter was raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben with the ideals that lead to him becoming Spider-Man, Eddie was less fortunate and his upbringing saw him become a Jerkass.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The Clone saga features many events that would be shocking just by themselves. Peter breaks up with Kitty, or at least takes a break from her jealous complaints. A new villain razes the mall, and turns out to be a clone of Peter. Mary Jane is kidnapped. There's a Spiderwoman, who turns out to be a female clone of Peter. Gwen Stacy is somehow back from the dead. Richard Parker, Peter's dad, is also back from the dead. Unable to hide things anymore, Peter confesses his big secret to Aunt May. May has a heart attack. SHIELD comes to detain Peter Parker with all guns blazing. Mary Jane was injected with Oz and turns into a giant monster. Gwen turns out to be the Carnage suit. There are several clones of Peter Parker, all of them made by Otto Octavius. Richard was actually yet another clone with fake memories, who dies of accelerated aging. All that and more... happens in just one crazy night.
• Fan Disservice: Most of the villains have fought Peter in the nude (see below). Considering the fact that most of them are middle-aged men, this is some intense Fan Disservice. Not so much when Carnage was depowered in the middle of a fight and revealed to be a naked Gwen Stacy. YMMV on Kraven, Norman Osborn, and Flint, who actually look attractive. The old Vulture-looking Blackie Drago, the full-body scarred Electro and Doc Ock on the other hand....
• Fanservice:
  • Mary Jane wants Peter to come with her to the beach for a double date with Liz and Johnny, but Peter isn't really interested. All Mary Jane has to do is say the word "bikini" and Peter instantly changes his mind.
  • During the Clone Saga storyline after both Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy turn into monstrous forms their clothing is ripped apart, leaving them completely naked when they revert back to their regular forms.
  • After gaining her mutant powers and lighting herself on fire, Liz Allen spends pretty much the entirety of a story arc naked.
• Fantastic Racism
  • Liz hates mutants, apparently because her uncle was a mutant and he died. Of course, she later finds out that she's a mutant herself, and that her "Uncle Frank" was really her father. The reader learns that "Uncle Frank" is actually The Blob.
  • The mutants suffer this, especially after Ultimatum. By the time Ultimate Comics picks up, mutants have effectively been forced to go into hiding, and Kitty is only allowed to continue attending Midtown High if she doesn't use her powers.
  • Miles Morales hates symbiotes — not without reason due to the second Ultimate Venom killing his mother. However, that hatred extends to the Earth-616 incarnation of Venom, who is completely unrelated and has no beef with him.
• Figure It Out Yourself: Kong does this within the first 14 issues, in regards to Peter being Spider-Man. It's worth noting that he's the only person to figure out that Peter's Spider-Man, even though their entire class saw Peter get bitten by a spider they had just been told was part of an Oscorp experiment roughly a week before Spider-Man showed up. The series at least treats this as realistically as they can while still not giving his identity away, by having Kong repeatedly try to tell Flash and Liz what he's figured out, but having them so thoroughly disrespect Peter that they refuse to believe it, coming up with one excuse after another why it can't be true.
• Freak Lab Accident: One occurred in the first arc, when Norman tested the Oz serum on himself — caught in the explosion was Otto Octavius and Harry Osborn.
• Freak Out: Kitty goes into a pretty epic one in chapter 10 of Ultimate Comics. Unable to tolerate the hatred and intolerance she gets for being a mutant any longer, she absolutely blows her stack, lashing out violently at her friends for not fighting to defend her and even going so far as to declare "Magneto was RIGHT!"
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Wolverine and Spidey. Apparently, Jean got so fed up with Wolvie hitting on her that she sent his brain to the place he least wanted to be. His brain picked Peter. Bendis wasn't happy with the story, which was apparently the result of an executive mandate.
• Freudian Excuse: Jonah's reasons for hating Spider-Man are much more believable, and much more tragic, in this version. However Bendis has stated that he doesn't see Jonah as someone who "hates" Spider-Man, rather he simply uses him and his inherent publicity to sell papers.
• From Bad to Worse
  • Describes Peter's life pretty well, lampshaded during Ultimatum:
  Peter: Well there's bad and there's bad... and I thought today was about as bad as bad could get... Then this happens. This is so me it's not even funny... I survived a hurricane, I survived the destruction of New York City, I survived the general crazy that is my life as Spider-Man... I turn around and here's the Hulk. The whole Hulk. Right in my face.
  • And after the Hulk, he finds that an army of mystical beasties escaped Dr. Strange. Yeah, Ultimatum was not kind to anyone. Ironically, Spider-Man was the only series that didn't rack up a casualty list in the event.
  • Also the whole "Ultimate Chameleon" arc.
  • The series take on the Clone Saga felt like it had the unspoken goal of seeing just how much they could torture Peter. Mid-way through, while running from Nick Fury, he wonders why he doesn't lapse into a coma or something from the shock of it all happening in one night.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Usually accidental or out of necessity. Examples include Sandman, who cannot turn his clothes into sand, Electro and Hobgoblin, who burn through their clothes, and the Green Goblin, who gets big enough to destroy his.
• Funny Background Event: During Peter and Kitty's argument over the phone in the first issue of Ultimate Clone Saga, there's a panel where something (possibly intended to be someone on a lawn chair, although it's very indistinct) is floating outside Kitty's window on big orange balloons.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Nick Fury pretty much outright says this during the Death of a Goblin arc. This gets to the point that we discover that there's an entire section of S.H.I.E.L.D prison dedicated to containing "illegal genetic tampering", something which Spidey himself is considered (although, because he's a good guy, Fury plans to instead initiate him into the Ultimates when he comes of age, as opposed to arresting him). The end of the "Venom" storyline had Dr. Conners drunkenly muse to Peter as to whether or not it's coincidence that so many people have screwed with their genetics and wound up evil from it. Several characters also muse that maybe the sudden influx of super-powered insanity is a sign that something big is coming, like a harbinger of the apocalypse. It's first mentioned by Kong, who uses Ghostbusters (1984) as part of the analogy. Peter later quotes this.
• Genre Savvy: Both Directors of S.H.I.E.L.D when it comes to the villains' death. Nick Fury's 'no body, no death' belief is famous enough, but Carol Danvers topped him by apparently having Norman Osborn's body monitored, just in case. And when he woke up, they immediately locked him up again.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Norman Osborn, during his transformation.
• Gossip Evolution
  • The other girls in the school said that Peter threw up on Mary Jane's shoes during the spider incident in Oscorp. He didn't. But hey, that's what they say. They even call her "spew shoes". An unimpressed MJ sardonically observes "Well, for them that's almost clever."
  • Flash picked a fight with Parker, who tries to elude him as best as he can. He finally lands a punch, and Peter tries to stop it. But, with his increased strength, he broke Flash's arm. We can see him in tears, whispering "I told him... I said... I didn't want to fight". Harry was not at school, so Kong explained what happened. According to him, it was awesome! And Peter shouted "Next time, I'm gonna kill you! It's payback time!"!
• Hand Wave: Subverted in Peter's first meeting with Nick Fury. Peter wanted to know how did Fury find out his secret identity, and Fury told him that there are few things in the world that he doesn't know. But Peter insisted. So Fury listed some of Peter's old adventures, that if you stop to think it for a moment, should have revealed his secret identity indeed.
• Happier Home Movie: The "Venom" arc starts with Peter finding and watching some old home movies, filmed before the deaths of his parents and Uncle Ben.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: How did Doc Ock really think Osborn was going to react when he said they shouldn't go after Peter?
• The Hero Dies: Peter got a brief reprieve from being killed off in Ultimatum, but as they say, you can't outrun fate.
• Hero Insurance: Yeah, Spidey doesn't have this. This is the main reason why Danvers, the new head of SHIELD, has The Ultimates train Peter. So his future battles don't incite too much property damage.
• Heroic BSoD
• Heroic Bystander: Hollywood: A black stunt double in a Spider-Man costume brains Doc Ock with a camera.
  Spidey: I thought I got revamped there for a second!
  • Hilarious in Hindsight, of course.
• Heroic Sacrifice: They didn't call the last storyline "The Death of Spider-Man" for nothing. Peter takes a bullet meant for Captain America, but forgoes treatment to save his friends and family from the attacking Sinister Six, finally succumbing to his wounds after putting down the Green Goblin.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: The Big Man, Frederick Foswell, never shows his face in the comic. It's usually shown partially shaded by his hat. When the hat comes off, he's immediately given a mask and killed.
• High School AU: This version of Peter Parker has gone through most of the regular Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery... And he's still in high school. Not just still in high school, but still a couple years from graduating. It works.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: All over the place in issues #91-#94 when Spider-Man and the X-Men are kidnapped to be hunted down and killed on live television.
  • The hunt itself, when Spider-Man and the X-Men prove capable of beating the hunters. The hunt is the point of the TV show, sure, but one imagines they could've still gotten decent ratings by skipping right to the execution with everyone still chained up.
  • Spider-Man is included by accident, something Deadpool sees as a bonus. Spider-Man is also the only one who isn't fooled when Deadpool tries to impersonate Xavier to get the drop on the X-Men and promptly kicks him in the face.
  • Xavier has a Power Nullifier strapped on and is strung up inside Mojo's compound so he can be Forced to Watch the X-Men be killed before being lobotomized in what Mojo sees as poetic justice, instead of being thrown into the jungle with the X-Men where he would last approximately three seconds. This gives Xavier ample time to free himself of the Power Nullifier and Mind Rape Mojo so badly that it's given a Gory Discretion Shot.
• Hopeless Suitor: Kitty Pryde in Ultimate Comics. Gwen Stacy to both Peter and Mary Jane before she [Gwen] was killed.
• An Ice Person: Iceman, who becomes a Transplant character from Ultimate X-Men early in Ultimate Comics.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The Shocker, particularly after his big Motive Rant. To a lesser degree, the Hobgoblin (very sympathetic, but not really around enough for the perennial failure necessary to be this trope. Worth an honorable mention though).
• It's Always Spring: Except for when it is Fall. The characters are never shown on summer vacation. Because it's all set in about the same six months, yeah, Decompression at its finest. Bendis stated when the series hit 100 issues that his intention was for 100 issues to equal roughly one year.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies
  • Peter breaks up with MJ after the Hobgoblin incident for this reason, exacerbated by the fact that he's of the opinion that MJ is too reckless to stay out of trouble. To an extent he's right, but he eventually realizes that she's in danger whether they're together or not after the Clone Saga.
  • Subverted, when he started dating Kitty and he tried to pull this on her — she pointed out that it's not a problem with her as she's one of the X-Men, and she can turn intangible.
• Jerkass: Flash Thompson is a bully who takes every chance he gets to talk down to other people.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • The Hulk. He may be "prone" to violent outbursts but he still has a soft side for kids, as shown when he saves some children's lives in a flashback depicted in the Ultimatum: Spider-Man Requiem miniseries.
  • Kong seems like the usual high-school bully on the surface, but it later becomes clear that he's a Gentle Giant who cares deeply for his friends and he becomes a close ally of Peter's.
  • As always, the hard-hitting newspaperman J. Jonah Jameson, whose personality is a lot more stable and consistent since he's only being written by a single person this time. Jameson in this version needs people to talk him down from his rants and is a massive hassle to work with, but he's also got all the integrity of his mainstream counterpart and Spider-Man isn't anywhere near as much of a Berserk Button as it usually is.
• Joke Exhaustion: Spidey torments the Kingpin using an exhaustive written list of fat jokes. On note cards.
• Karma Houdini: Played with in the case of Kingpin. He flees the country after Peter gets hold of a video showing him committing murder and sends it to the authorities. After Ultimatum, however, the evidence is destroyed and Kingpin steps right back into his old position. And then Mysterio throws him off a skyscraper to his death.
• Killed Off for Real: Justin Hammer, Kingpin and several other characters.
• Klingon Promotion: Unintended, but still the case. He (by accident) broke the hand of Flash Thompson, the star of the basketball team, and now the team needs a replacement. Peter is unsure about it, as he does not like sports that much, but when Flash insists they take anyone but him, Peter accepts, just to screw with him.
• Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: The first issue starts with Norman Osborn narrating the Greek myth of Arachne. The worker with him never heard it, and couldn't care any less.
• Last-Minute Hookup: It looks like Kenny and Kitty are together again, after he defended her. Averted, with issue #155 revealing that Kenny wussed out pretty quickly.
• Like Brother and Sister: Gwen told MJ that she and Peter were like this immediately before she was killed off. But then, in the months after the Ultimatum Wave, when MJ broke up with Peter again for some reason, she apparently changed her mind.
• Loophole Abuse: How Norman Osborn avoids SHIELD arresting him the first time he comes back. According to Nick Fury, turning yourself into an illegal genetic mutation is not illegal until it infringes upon the rights of another (Fury quickly adds that they were working on that one).
• Lost in Imitation: Ultimate Spider-Man greatly inspired some of the tropes in later Spider-Man adaptations and stories:
  • Unlike the original Earth-616 Spider-Man from the Mainstream universe (who was asocial and came from a Friendless Background during his teenage years), Ultimate Spider-Man has a confidant in Mary-Jane with whom he shares his secret identity, his worries, and who also serves as a backup. This setup came into movies such as Spider-Man: Homecoming where Ned Lee (based on Ultimate Ganke) serves as Peter's "guy in the chair".
  • Peter's role in the wider superhero community, being seen as Just a Kid, being underestimated by them yet getting mixed messages about how he's a Future Badass, was also incorporated into later adaptations, especially Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Love Dodecahedron: To the extent this becomes a full-blown one depends entirely on one fact: Does an Opposite-Sex Clone with all Peter's memories count as "him" for the purpose of scoring? If yes, that takes Peter's serious, persistent love interests almost to Ranma's levels.
• Male Gaze: Peter is standing in a lift next to Elektra and can't stop staring at her but glances away every time she looks at him (luckily for Peter, she seems more amused by this than angry).
  Spider-Man: What was your name again?
  Elektra: Stop staring at them.
  Spider-Man: What? No. What? I was—
  Elektra: (smirks, gives an aside glance).
• Made of Iron: Moon Knight. The man gets stabbed, exploded and shot in the head on panel and every time, he will not go down.
• Mama Bear: Aunt May
• The Meddling Kids Are Useless: The Rhino is having a rampage in the city. Peter tries to leave the school to go there and stop him, but several things conspire to keep him there: May shows up, Gwen is crying in the dumpster, Flash attacks him, etc. By the time he finally gets to the crime scene, Rhino has been defeated by Iron Man.
• Mentors: After issue #150 of Ultimate Comics, The Ultimates.
  • Cynical Mentor: Captain America
  • Big Brother Mentor/Cool Teacher: Iron Man
• Metaphorically True: In the "Clone Saga" Arc, a train crashes through the mall and everyone thinks that Spider-Man did it when really it was the Scorpion. When Spider-Man destroy's Scorpion's mask, he is revealed to be an insane, cyborg clone of Peter.
• Misblamed: Inverted. The schools blows up, but before the students can see the Green Goblin, they see Spider-Man jumping to the disaster area. Does it turn him into a Hero with Bad Publicity? Not exactly. Kong said "Dude! Seriously... if he blew up our school, he is totally my hero!"
• Mistaken for Cheating: Mary Jane arrives to the party at Kong's house, finds the drunk Liz trying to score with Peter, and runs away thinking the worst (admittedly they hadn't gotten together yet, but it was still upsetting for her to see him with another girl crawling all over him). It was all swept under the carpet when Uncle Ben died, and Peter needed a hug.
• Mood Whiplash: Issue 9-10 of Ultimate Comics.
• Naked Freakout: Liz is embarrassed at first, when she accidentally burns all of her clothes off with her new found mutant powers. She gets over it pretty quickly though, despite being nude in front of other people for a good long while. This may be due to her getting Barbie Doll Anatomy while in that form.
• Never Found the Body: Nick Fury tells Peter that this is one of the very few rules of the superhuman life after Venom disappears. Unsurprisingly, he's right.
• Never Mess with Granny: May has a "chat" with Jameson, resulting his response to Peter being "You can have your job back, and please never make me talk to your aunt again." Subverted on attempting to threaten off Eddie with a hand cannon, who overpowered her. Then played straight during "The Death of Spider-Man" when she shoots Electro three times through the back, causing him to explode and take out Sandman, Vulture and Kraven!
• New Transfer Student
  • Gwen. The Transplanted characters also transferred, but we met them before they did.
  • Also, Lori/Lana the Bombshell daughter.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Justin Hammer, like his mainstream counterpart, is drawn to look like Peter Cushing. Peter, being Peter, lampshades this by calling him Grand Moff Tarkin.
  • An unnamed Britney Spears appears during the Venom arc, where's she's almost abducted, until Spidey (in the Venom suit) saves her. After webbing her mouth shut to stop her from constantly screaming.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine
  • The Kingpin does this when Spider-Man swings by his building for no reason while contemplating his life. Electra shows up and invites him in... where Kingpin offers him pizza.
  • Of course, this could just be Kingpin returning the favor from an earlier story arc when Spider-Man shows up sitting across Kingpin at a fancy restaurant to talk. He ends the conversation by webbing Fisk's feet to the floor under the tablecloth.
• No Dialogue Issue: USM #133, which dealt with Shadowcat and Spider-Woman's attempts to find Peter in the aftermath of Ultimatum.
• Noodle Incident: Happens every now and then, such as Peter referencing one time when Mary Jane had to dial *69 on Kong. Why Kong was calling her anonymously is left up to the reader's imagination.
• Not His Sled: There is an adaptation of The Night Gwen Stacy Died, involving other characters, but with a similar dramatic event. This time, Peter girlfriend's lives
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: The Shocker, normally Peter's own personal Butt-Monkey, gets a bit of his own back and shows he's not just an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain. He also gets quite a good Motive Rant in while he's at it.
• Official Couple: Peter and MJ. Doesn't matter how many times they break up, this is telegraphed almost from the very beginning.
• Off on a Technicality: Apparantly, being apprehended by the Web-Slinger (and possibly any costumed vigilante) is a violation of your civil rights and is the source of Joker Immunity for anyone he has a hand in bringing down, particularly the Shocker, who gets a "Get out of Jail Free" Card for breaking out of jail and his original crimes which Spidey had nothing to do with. As of Ultimatum, the DA's office has done absolutely nothing about this loophole, instead blaming Spider-Man for their cases getting tossed. The Punisher is listening when this is brought up at Ryker's— a rapist says that he's free as a bird, because Daredevil beat the crap out of him as he was about to nail a thirteen-year old in a house he broke into and says that as soon as he's free he's going to finish what he started— aaand that's how the reader discovers that nesting the bowl of a spoon in your palm with the handle between your middle and ring fingers will enable you to slash open someone's throat.
  • The Kingpin was cleared of murder charges after his lawyer got the video of the murder ruled inadmissible. Even though news station played the video for all to see, the citizens of New York treat this as the same thing as him as being completely innocent. In this case it's slightly downplayed in that it's clear Fisk only avoided jailtime due a hefty amount of Money and Connections, and afterward he's lost a great amount of both. While still free, he's forced to spend the next few story arcs lying low and re-building his public image to make up for it.
  • Peter tries to bring it up during class, and the teacher gives him detention. The implication is that everybody knows he bought the cops off, and is therefore the de facto master of the city - and their lives are at risk if they bring it up.
  • When Peter and Nick Fury first met, he explained that SHIELD can not take Norman prisoner because they do not have the appropiate proof of his crimes. Yes, he experimented on himself and turned himself into a monster of incredible power, but there is no law saying that that's a crime (but they are working on that).
• Oh, Crap!: Peter, who escaped from home to crash at Kong's for a night, goes after Mary Jane after being Mistaken for Cheating, but finds Uncle Ben standing at the door, looking unhappy.
• One Hit KO
  • Spider-Man's first fight with Kraven.
  • In The Death of Spider-Man, the Human Torch does this. To the Green Goblin.
• Only Sane Man: Even though she turns out to be on Kingpin's payroll, Captain Jeanne DeWolfe is skilled at taking citizens and cops alike to task for irrationally blaming Spider-Man and shooting at him for no justifiable reason.
• Only Six Faces: Usually averted, but not always.
  • Bagley's rendition of Sue Storm during the Ultimate Clone Saga looked identical to Gwen Stacy (particularly noticable as Gwen herself came back from the dead in that very arc).
  • Even more noticeable was the way Immonen drew Jessica Drew WAY too close to Kitty Pryde — just look at the scene where Jessica glomps Kitty when they meet at the end of Ultimatum. If it wasn't for their costumes they'd be identical. (Ironic, as Jessica's face is supposed to be almost identical to Peter's.)
  • It isn't restricted solely to the girls either — during the beach scene in chapter 118 it's almost impossible to tell Johnny and Bobby apart (Immonen again). Fortunately this was rectified when they switched to Lafuente, who draws Bobby COMPLETELY differently.
  • The creepy eyeless girl in Moon Knight's visions looks an awful lot like Mary Jane.
• Opposite-Sex Clone: Jessica Drew
• Out of Focus: In spite of being a rather memorable player in Spidey's Rogues Gallery in the main canon, Sandman only appears in two story arcs of the Ultimate Books and barely has any lines. It's implied that the reason he doesn't talk much is due to some form of brain damage from his transformation.
  • Likewise, the Lizard is one of Spider-Man's classic villains, but he only appears once in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, and his only two appearances in the main Ultimate Spider-Man title were a flashback and nightmare sequence.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Averted when Morbius made his debut — unlike the classic incarnation, Morbius really is a traditional vampire in the Ultimate Universe. Oh and he's Dracula's brother.
• Person of Mass Destruction: What OZ does... even the smartest people in the Ultimate Universe can't seem to figure out what it can do, let alone cure it. Originally developed as a way to create a Super-Soldier, here are a few examples of what it has done in the series so far:
  • Gave Peter Parker his spider powers when a modified spider bit him.
  • Mutated Norman Osborn into the Green Goblin. He himself has evolved throughout the series, starting as a Hulk-lite who could throw fireballs, becoming aware of himself at a molecular level and displaying serious pyrokinetic abilities (destroying The Triskelion during his escape), and eventually coming back from the dead after getting his head blown clean off.
  • Created Doctor Octopus, who has hyper-sensitive vision (and serious scarring to go with it), could initially control his Tentacle Harness telepathically, and was eventually revealed to be much more powerful than that... being able to control metal with his thoughts.
  • Turned Harry Osborn into the Hobgoblin, whose aura was so hot he could melt bullets before they hit him. Not nearly as powerful as Norman, who beat him to death on a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, presumably because he was only tainted with the drug.
  • Transformed Mary Jane Watson into the Demogoblin, who rampaged out of control for a while before seeing Peter snapped her out of it and she transformed back. Mary Jane was supposedly cured. For now.
• Personal Hate Before Common Goals: At the start of the story arc "Warriors", criminal boss Silvermane has called Hammerhead for a meeting. Taking into account Kingpin's late legal problems, he tries to convince him that this is the chance for them to work together, and take a chunk of Fisk's criminal empire. Silvermane then proceeds to compliment Hammerhead, saying that even when they were at odds, he respected his talents and way of work. And that with a little more of head, he could go very far. When he concludes, Hammerhead says that he likes a lot of what Silvermane said, except for one thing. When he asks what, Hammerhead grabs his head and snaps his neck. Only then answering that he took offense to his commentary of him lacking head.
• Pie in the Face: Oh, no! Peter is sad because he likes Mary Jane! We need a Mood Whiplash asap! And then... Flash's sandwich makes the goal!
• Police Are Useless: Played with and lampshaded heavily, especially in the final quarter of the the series.
• Poor Communication Kills: During the first encounter between Peter and Jessica Drew, Peter is already angry, stressed and confused and Jessica just makes cryptic, confusing, provocative and generally useless comments. Then when Peter attacks her (quite justifiably under the circumstances) she accidentally knocks him out and leaves him buried under a pile of rubble. Somewhat justified; Jessica herself was pretty confused, given that she had come into existence not long before and still was struggling with the fact that she was a girl and not Peter himself.
• Properly Paranoid: A doctor shows up in the school and makes interviews with the students, offering psychological support to anyone feeling bad about the Green Goblin disaster. Peter does not trust her, and thinks that it's some kind of trap. It is. She works for SHIELD.
• Psycho Serum: OZ, Norman Osborn's chemical cocktail seems to be able to do anything. Only those who absorbed the stuff through another medium (the modified spider that bit Peter, the explosion that turned Otto Octavius into Doc Ock) seem to escape the insanity that it inflicts. Except Mary Jane.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Typically common, one notable dramatic example (each word getting its own speech balloon) being when Peter and Dr. Curt Conners find themselves face-to-face with the Carnage organism:
  Peter: Conners?
  What—
  Have—
  You—
  Done?
• Put on a Bus:
  • Liz was put on a bus to the X-Men.
  • In Ultimate Comics, Kong and Kitty were put on a bus, but then Kitty got a return trip whilst Kong got one to Wisconsin.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Enforcers usually seem to fill this role.
• Race Lift: Aside from characters such as Nick Fury, who are mainly tied to other titles, notable Race Lifts include Ox of the Enforcers, etc.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Somewhat and rather humorously for the Hollywood arc, which is set during the filming of Spider-Man 2 and even uses the people who worked on the movie (Tobey Maguire, Sam Raimi). The real-life movie had come out not too long before, in the same year. The real Spider-Man isn't pleased when he finds out, to say the least. Although he's mostly annoyed that he can't get royalties from the movie, at least not without telling them his real-life identity.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Venom following the Symbiote War arc.
• Redemption Equals Death: Otto Octavius
  • Peter Parker, Spider-Man thinks this applies to him as well.
• Retcon: When the Blade encounter from the Ultimate Spider-Man Super Special one-shot got revisited in the "Morbius" arc, Blade was clean-shaven, wearing a movie-inspired outfit, and said his name. In the original special, Blade had a beard, an outfit that was a cross between the movie and original comics outfits, and never told Spidey his name when he threatened him.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Among the enemies this Peter has fought include Killer Shrike (an enemy of Iron Man and the Hulk); the Ringer (an enemy of the Defenders); and traditionally X-Men villains Bolivar Trask, Deadpool (though his debut arc involved the X-Men), and Omega Red. As well as Nightmare, a major Doctor Strange villain who actually combats Peter more often than Ultimate Strange.
• Running Gag: Pretty much any time we see the inside of a police station, there's a girl (sometimes two) in a wacky superhero costume being taken away, usually shouting some kind of revolutionary slogan. These are regularly Shout Outs to big events outside the Ultimate Universe, like a 616-Scarlet Witch screaming "I'm not crazy! I'm not crazy!" at the time of House of M, or a big lady with a Flash costume screaming "I was reborn! Rebirthed!" for The Flash: Rebirth story at DC.
• Sarcasm Failure: From the Ultimate Clone Saga, Jessica Drew puts it well, after a villain asks if Peter's silence means he's too scared to talk:

  Spider-Woman: No, that's how you know he is serious!

• Saved by Canon: Of course Norman, Harry, and Octavius survive the big explosion in Oscorp. The series is still starting, we haven't had any actual story with them yet.
• Science Is Bad: Played with; in keeping with the central theme of Spider-Man, it is shown that it is very easy and very bad to be irresponsible with science.
• Secret Identity Apathy: Deadpool doesn't want to unmask Spider-Man when he's kidnapped the young hero, since he respects masks.
• Secret-Keeper: Loads of them, from the obvious (MJ, Aunt May, Gwen Stacy) to other superheroes (Bobby Drake, Johnny Storm, Kitty Pride) to some surprising curveballs (Kenny and J Jonah Jameson of all people).
• Selective Enforcement: In issue 2, Peter breaks the chair and the teacher just wants to make sure if he's fine, but when Flash laughs about it, he's sent to detention. And in the gym class, Peter attacks Flash with the basketball for talking with Mary Jane: Flash is forced to hit the showers, and Peter just gets away with it.
• Send in the Clones: The Clone Saga, 'natch. Which thankfully was handled much better here then the original series. For one thing, rather than running for several years, it was tied up in less than 10 issues. And for another, they make it pretty clear who the clones are, and there's only five of them.
• Series Continuity Error: In the Clone Saga, the clones are said to be the result of a CIA operation, by several members of the CIA. Then, without any fanfare whatsoever, some issues down the line this changes to Roxxon, and Peter and Spider-Woman act like it's been Roxxon all along, and the CIA thing is completely forgotten (although there are a such thing as government contracts so while it was a CIA-headed operation, it was Roxxon scientists who actually created the clones).
  • The stories featured in the Requiem issues are near-irreconcilable with Ultimate Marvel's continuity, like the appearance of Hydra (which didn't exist until after the Death of Spider-Man storyline), or Hulk being green and chased by the army (Prior to The Ultimates Bruce Banner only became the Hulk once and was an employee of S.H.I.E.L.D.). They might be a case of Unreliable Narrator, considering they're stories gathered by Ben Urich.
• Setting Update:
  • The entire series is a modern retelling of the Spider-Man mythos.
  • Volume 2 is essentially a modern version of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, with the Human Torch instead of Firestar^note ironic, as Torch was supposed to be on Amazing Friends all along, until rights issues meant they had to create an entirely new character for the show, and a few more teen heroes joining the cast too.
• Shipper on Deck: (The original) Gwen Stacy for Peter and MJ.
• Shout-Out
  • Samuel L. Jackson is Nick Fury. No, seriously, Samuel L. Jackson is Nick Fury.
  • One volume of the comic is called "And His Amazing Friends" and prominently features Spider-Man, Iceman, and Liz Allen as Firestar.
  • When the army tries to arrest the Hulk, Spider-Man warns them that they won't like him when he's angry.
  • In an early comic, MJ has an Angel poster. Which one is the fan, the artist or the writer? We have no clue.
  • On the first page of issue 2, Peter's history teacher recites a nearly word-for-word rendition of the Ben Stein scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The teacher is even drawn to look like him.
  • In issue 23, Peter is wearing a ThunderCats (1985) shirt during school.
  • In issue 39, when Peter first meets Dr. Connors, the good doctor erroneously refers to Peter as "Ray Parker's son."
  • After brushing off Carol Danvers, and while smelling particularly badly, Kitty Pryde quotes Raiders of the Lost Ark at Peter.
  • In Issue 154, when told that thinking of anything could destroy the surrounding area, Spidey asks what happens if he thinks of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
  • In the Parker basement, there is a sled named Rosebud
  • Wondering the reason of Spider-Man's powers, Jameson asked "Did he rocket to earth from some doomed planet somewhere?"
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Volume 2 had Spider-Man occasionally fight a mother-and-daughter supervillain duo known as the Bombshells, and he'd take every chance he'd get to admonish them for constantly swearing like sailors.
• Small Steps Hero: Best shown during the Ultimatum arc. The rest of the heroes are chasing down Magneto and Doctor Doom. Spidey is saving people from drowning.
  • You can see the sort of difference this made by the sheer number of people who show up for his funeral. Including a small girl who gives Aunt May a hug because Spider-man saved her from a fire.
• Spiritual Successor: Overlaps with Older Than They Think. Another attempt at retelling Spidey's earlier stories, a mini-series entitled Spider-Man: Chapter One, had been released over two years before this series began. Written and drawn entirely by John Byrne, it has since fallen hard into Canon Discontinuity.
• Stealth Pun: There are plenty of them, but the absolute stealthiest and best is that, unlike in the 616 universe, Peter gets a job at the Bugle as a web designer.
• Stock Superhero Day Jobs: Discussed in a conversation between Peter and J. Jonah Jameson after he learns Peter's identity and offers to pay Peter a token wage, but leave him free to operate as Spider-Man; Peter remarks that whilst he won't accept Jameson's offer, he needs a job that he can step away from at a moments notice so he can go be Spider-Man.
• Superhero School: Peter has to go to this after he gets out of school. His teachers? Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man.
  • Averted when they actually sit down and try to teach him. Iron Man basically admits he has no lesson plan and his "Training" quickly just becomes him and Peter hanging out and talking about technology. Captain America (who actually suggested Peter be forced to give up being Spider-Man) only takes him out into a veteran cemetery and try to shame him into quitting. Thor, meanwhile, never gets a chance to talk to Peter.
  • The fact that they didn't really teach Peter anything is pointed out by Aunt May after Peter dies. Bearing in mind, she was one of the people who talked Peter into the agreement in the first place.
• Super Serum: Oz, Norman Osborn's attempt at creating a replacement for the long-lost Super-Soldier serum that created Captain America. It doesn't effect any two people the same way.
• Super Team: Daredevil forms an alliance with a few Super Heroes to take down Kingpin. They were called the Ultimate Knights, though not in-universe. Subverted in that this team wasn't successful, and the Kingpin's taken down by the police due, when Moon Knight survives an attempted murder.
  • Daredevil was The Leader
  • Moon Knight was The Lancer
  • Spider-Man was The Heart.
  • Iron Fist, Shang-Chi, and Doctor Strange really did not have much of a role. Iron Fist did, however, sell the group out.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • May has prepared meat loaf. Pizza? Meat loaf. Pizza? Meat Loaf. Pizza? Very well, pizza. Pizza that looks and tastes an awful lot like meat loaf...
  • Bendis made Ultimate Black Cat into a much older crime fighter than Peter, however the classic dynamic that Black Cat has with Peter (loves Spider-Man more than the man in the costume, and provides him companionship in his superhero activity) is given to Ultimate Kitty Pryde aka Shadowcat. During the period in which they are a couple, Kitty Pryde even wore a special superhero costume that was dark and had a cat-like face-mask.
• Take That!:
  • The "Hollywood" arc mainly serves as a rather harsh dig toward the first two films in the Spider-Man Trilogy, as Peter is not too pleased about Sam Raimi making a movie about him and Doc Ock with Tobey Maguire in the lead role and at one point visits the set to rant on how everyone involved in making the movie sucks. Before hearing about the Spider-Man film, Peter also bemoans how there aren't many good movies these days, stating that his web-slinging adventures are way more exciting than watching talking fish or robots.
  • A conversation in issue Issue 68 takes a dig at Catwoman, but is possibly a dig at the movie version.
  Peter: And you should talk. You were... like Catwoman!
  Mary Jane: But I don't suck.
• Technology Marches On: With the advent of the internet, Peter becomes a web designer for the Daily Bugle after initially entering the Daily Bugle trying to sell pictures of Spider-Man, and part of the plot had the Daily Bugle transition from a print to an online magazine.
• That Came Out Wrong
  • When Peter, Bobby and Johnny fought the Serpent Squad.
  Spider-Man: Seriously, lizard girls? Serpent Crown? Now I gotta go home and wiki you. (That came out dirty.)
  • There was also the time when Johnny said he'd just made out with a hot girl that Peter knew as Spider-Man, and Peter listed all of the girls he'd met as Spidey.
  Peter: Those are all of the hot girls that I know.
  (Gwen punches Peter in the arm)
  Peter: That I'm not dating and in love with.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech
  • Peter delivers a rather poignant one in issue #65, about why Flash is likely going to be a horrible person as an adult. Subverted, in that Flash doesn't actually hear it and it comes as a result of Kong trying to defend Flash's Jerkass tendancies again.
  • Captain America delivers one to Peter in issue #156, calling him out for acting like an immature teenager instead of a soldier, and behaving irresponsibly. Whilst Cap has a point based on his own experiences with Peter, Peter is also justifiably insulted and asks if Cap's now "going say something more insulting?" Of course, Cap is proven horribly wrong throughout the remainder of the arc.
  • In issue #160, Peter delivers one to Norman Osborn, while beating him down.
  Peter: What's the plan, Osborn? I'm dying to know... what next? You kill me, then what next? Your son you killed won't magically come back to life! Your world as a captain of industry won't magically go back to the way it was! And your hair... won't magically come... into fashion.
  Green Goblin: But you will be dead.
• There Are No Therapists: Actually averted- but only for the villains. When Nick Fury catches the Tinkerer after he sent the Vulture to try and kill Donald Roxxon, part of Fury's recruitment offer to him is that he'll see a shrink that Fury will arrange for him... or else. At various times, other psychiatric and psychological specialists attempt to treat Norman Osborn and Otto Octavious, with a complete lack of success.
  • On the other hand, played straight after the Clone Saga where MJ is left with PTSD after her ordeal. Reed Richards says it wouldn't be a bad idea for her to see a therapist, but of course there's no way she can as she wouldn't be able to tell them what she went through and why.
• They Would Cut You Up: Defied. Spidey initially assumes this is what Nick Fury is talking about when he says that he's not going to do anything to him while he's still a kid, telling him to enjoy his solo time before he's 18. Peter takes this as a warning that he'll be imprisoned or experimented on when he comes of age, and berates Fury for this. Fury cuts him off, saying what he actually meant is that when Parker turns 18, he's going to be allowed to officially join the Ultimates as a peer and work alongside the other established heroes.
• Those Two Guys: In Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Bobby and Johnny skirt this trope. They would very likely BE this trope if they weren't Iceman and the Human Torch. Even still, thanks to the fact they're trying to keep a secret identity, they don't get nearly as much panel time as Kitty, Gwen, or Mary Jane. In nine issues, they've helped with a grand total of one fight.
• Time Skip: The six months transition from Ultimate Spider-Man to Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man.
• To Make a Long Story Short
  • Subverted during the Clone saga. Peter asks Richard Parker how is it that Gwen Stacy is alive again. He starts narrating his whole origin story. He interrupted him several times, reminding him of the big question (at one point the question was even Punctuated! For! Emphasis!). Just wait a bit, we'll get to that... and eventually a big disaster happens outside, before he could end his lengthy explanation.
  • And then played straight at the end of the arc. Mary Jane asks what the hell has happened. Peter makes a brief recap of the incredibly complex plot: Doctor Octopus cloned me and Gwen Stacy and the clones escaped and Aunt May had a heart attack and one of them kidnapped you.
• Tranquillizer Dart: Played straight in the video game when Silver Sable tries to kidnap Peter Parker by knocking him out with a couple of tranquilizer darts... for a few minutes anyway. Then his enhanced metabolism kicks in allowing him to wake up earlier than he was supposed to and resist all subsequent shots. Cue boss battle where he has to fight off both Silver Sable and her mercenaries while trying not to succumb to the effects of the tranquilizers in his system.
• Trailers Always Spoil
  • As far back as the letters page of issue 50, Bendis stated that Gwen Stacy would become Carnage. However, he said it in a way that would make people think he was joking.
  • As noted on the page for "The Clone Saga" in relation to his Ultimate Universe incarnation, the solicitation for #104 included its cover—revealing that the Big Bad of the arc was Doctor Octopus.
• Transplant: Kitty Pryde from Ultimate X-Men (2001). After Ultimatum canceled everyone else's series, the Parkers also took in Iceman and Human Torch.
• Trial Balloon Question
• Tonight, Someone Dies:
  • "Death of a Goblin"
  • "The Death of Spider-Man"
• Too Dumb to Live: For a while, Mary Jane appeared as if she was desperately trying to fall under this, as she completely ignored Peter's warnings to stay away from Harry Osborn and was stunned when Peter broke up with her after this led to her nearly being killed by the Hobgoblin shortly after Gwen's death.
• True Companions: By the start of ''The Death Of Spider-Man, Peter has managed to find some, consisting of Mary Jane, Gwen, Kitty, Johnny and Bobby.
• A True Hero: Both J. Jonah Jameson and Captain America come to see Peter as the truest hero of all because he is the one that puts saving lives above more grandiose goals and is willing to sacrifice his own safety or personal needs to help others.
• Two Words: Added Emphasis: In the first issue of the Clone Saga, after the ending of a phone fight over whether or not Peter was still in love with Mary Jane, Kitty mutters to herself "Two simple words — 'No, I'm not in love with her.' That's all it would have taken."
• Ultimate Universe: Well, duh — it's in the title. Bonus points, however, for the series being the first entry in the trope-naming universe.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Taken to its extreme, with the Blob being revealed to be Liz's actual father.
• Unrelated Cousins: After joining the cast and moving in with the Parkers, Johnny Storm and Bobby Drake assumed the identies of Peter's cousins Johnny and Bobby Parker, as the public knew Johnny and Bobby were the Human Torch and Iceman, and having the two of them live with Peter would raise questions about just why all these superheroes were hanging around and living with Peter Parker.
• Unwanted Harem: Played with quite a bit. At any given moment soon after Black Cat shows up, Ultimate Spidey has at least two love interests. The play comes from the fact that Peter generally resolves the issues quickly and decisively.
• Victory by Endurance: This is how Norman Osborn kills Peter Parker. After battling several other threats alongside The Ultimates (including taking a bullet for Captain America), Peter tries to hobble home and receive medical attention. But when he gets there, his loved ones are being harassed by the Green Goblin and several others from Spider-man's Rogues Gallery. Peter (and his family/allies) fight back valiantly, but Peter eventually succumbs to his injuries.
• The Voiceless: Rhino never talks in his few appearances. He does speak in the game, though. Not that anyone can understand what he says...
• Wall of Text: Some of the stories, especially the Annuals can be quite wordy.
• Was It All a Lie?: After turning into a mutant, Liz Allan was furious at her mother for keeping the truth about her father a secret. She doesn't want to have anything to do with her mother anymore.
• Wham Episode
  • USM #4, which ends on the death of Uncle Ben and likewise, USM #62, which features Gwen Stacy's death.
  • USM #98-100, in the middle of the cliffhanger. #99 in particular had about five back-to-back cliffhangers, culminating in the apparent return of Richard Parker.
  • How Whammy was the Ultimate Clone Saga? Peter meets a crazy supervillain with his face. MJ gets kidnapped by an insane, deformed clone of Peter. Peter meets a "Spider-Woman" who knocks him out. Peter finds Gwen Stacey apparently back from the dead. Aunt May finds out Peter's secret and hysterically tells him to get the hell out. Richard Parker walks in the front door, apparently having been alive all along. Nick Fury shows up with an army of Spider Slayers to arrest Peter. "Gwen" transforms into Carnage, the monster that killed her and attacks Fury. Aunt May has a heart attack. "Spider-Woman" rescues Peter from Nick Fury and reveals herself to be an Opposite-Sex Clone of him. The deformed clone beats up another clone which has 6 arms and mutates MJ with OZ, causing her to turn into a horrific hairy monster when she gets angry or frightened. "Richard Parker" turns out to be an artificially aged clone of Peter with fake memories. It turns out the one behind it all was Doctor Octopus, who is now working for the CIA. And Doc Ock's power isn't control over his tentacles after all — it's absolute control over metal.
  • Ultimate Origins reveals that Richard and Mary Parker were injured by the Hulk during Banner's first transformation whilst Peter was a baby... and it was only the sight of Peter in his mother's arms that stops the Hulk from doing more damage. However, as it had previously been established that Peter knew his parents and that they died in a plane crash with Eddie Brock's parents. However, Bendis claims that they survived.
  • Issue #160. Peter dies.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never revealed what happened to the two detectives, Rodriguez and Mary Lambow, following Ultimatum. Especially when Rodriguez pointing out Spider-Man interfering with police business and Mary hearing Spider-Woman calling May her aunt.
  • It's never made clear what happened to Ben Reilly. The last we see of him is before Carnage gets loose, and nothing is mentioned of him afterward.
  • Likewise with the Scorpion clone, although given he was last seen being handed over to S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists, he's most likely still in their custody, somehow.
  • The Zodiac Key, which was treated like a big deal by the Kingpin, Black Cat, Mysterio and Iron Man, has never been mentioned since. Admittedly, that story did happen just before a massive Wham Episode.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Uncle Ben gave two to Peter right before his death: one for the sudden drop of his grades, another for running away from home.
  • Peter Parker was usually yelled at by other superheroes because he was still too young and usually caused Nice Job Breaking It, Hero situations.
  • Peter cursed out the X-Men for Jean unwittingly involving him in a "Freaky Friday" Flip with Wolverine.
  • Peter and Aunt May get to simultaneously pull this on each other during the Clone Saga.
  Peter: You knew my dad was alive and you didn't tell me??!!
  Aunt May: You're Spider-Man and you didn't tell me.
  Peter: You knew my dad was alive and you didn't tell me!!!
  • "The Clone Saga" also saw Nick Fury attempting to arrest Peter—with the Fantastic Four and Mary Jane calling him out.
  • Ultimate Fallout sees Captain America tell May at Peter's funeral about his prior lack of faith in Peter, including telling Peter to quit right before everything that caused his death went down. Understandably, May proceeds slap the man, and to publicly and loudly call out the Ultimates right then and there for their failure to help Peter.
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: The Hollywood arc, tying in with Spider-Man 2 (complete with Sam, Avi and Tobey). Peter goes to the set to give them a piece of his mind, only to learn that they don't have to pay him since he's a public entity and he refuses to reveal his identity; they even film him using his powers so they can work it into the film for nothing. When Doc Ock attacks the set, the ensuing fight also gets worked into the movie.
• Whole-Plot Reference: An issue features Eddie Brock as a rambling hobo, sitting in a bus stop and narrating his life to the complete strangers that pass by. One even asked if he's the man from the news. Yes, he is. Life is like a box of chocolates.
• Worst News Judgment Ever: Discussed at the begining of issue #6. Jameson is pointing the things the other newspapers have published: all of them are talking about this strange "Spider-Man". And the Daily Bugle? That some fat cat's house catches on fire. Crap, crap, crap!
• Would Hit a Girl: Although rare, when Spidey gets into a fight with a female villain, he doesn't seem to have any reservations about hitting them. Then again these are women with super powers.
• X Called; They Want Their Y Back: "Hitler called, he wants his look back." That was Aunt May from Ultimate Spider-Man. At J. freaking Jonah freaking Jameson.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Things are looking up in Peter's life. He's well liked by the general public for once and no longer viewed as a criminal. He's getting official superhero training to prepare him for a life of government sanctioned celebrity level superheroism. He's been guaranteed a high paying job at Stark Industries. JJ knows he's Spider-Man and not only gives him his old job back but also gives him a payraise, an infinite get-out-of-jail free card that let him ditch work to be Spider-Man, and free college tuition should he survive long enough to go to college. Peter even gets his old girlfriend back as a cherry on top. Almost immediately after this turn of good luck he takes a bullet meant for Captain America and dies in a final battle with the Sinister Six.
• Yiddish as a Second Language: Lampshaded.
  Mary Jane: Where do you know Yiddish all of a sudden?
  Peter: I picked it up.
  Mary Jane: You should put it back.
• Younger and Hipper: Ultimate Ben and May are given a Setting Update from Greatest Generation to baby boomers (specifically ex-hippies).
• You Fight Like a Cow
  • It's a teenaged Spider-Man. Of course this trope applies.
  • After the Human Torch and Iceman joined the cast, this trope applied to them as well.
• You Killed My Father: Gwen believes this of Spider-Man for a long time, even when it was obviously not true.
• Your Mom: Peter once used one of these when he was confronting a gang of street hoodlums, then immediately lampshaded the fact that humour of that kind was normally beneath him.
  Thug One: What are you supposed to be?
  Spider-Man: What?
  Thug One: The hell is this?
  Spider-Man: I'm Spider-Man. Read a paper.
  Thug One: Where's your costume? [referencing how he only has a mask on, the rest of the suit having been destroyed the previous issue]
  Spider-Man: Your mom's washing it for me.
  Thug Two: Ooooggh, ddaayyymmmnn!!
  Thug One: Oh, 'zat howit is? (attacks Spider-Man)

Volumes 3 & 4

• Affirmative-Action Legacy: The logic behind making Miles Morales a half-Black/half Hispanic teen.
• All There in the Manual: Even more so than in the previous era. Nearly every character that is not explicitly associated with Miles Morales has backstory in the previous volumes of Ultimate Spider-Man. This means that at some minor parts readers may be a little lost if they haven't read anything from the Peter Parker era. It is not bad enough to totally leave you in the dark, but you will miss out on a lot of the back-story for established character relationships.
• Alliterative Name: In true superhero tradition, Miles Morales.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Miles has no relation to Peter Parker, and has his own supporting cast and backstory.
• Arc Number: The Spider that bit Miles was 42. The number that had Miles name on it in the lottery was 42. Likely a reference to Jackie Robinson who wore the number 42, or perhaps a less relevant reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, well known for its arc number 42.
• Berserk Button: After Miles and Jessica confront the CEO of the Roxxon corporation he mentions the death of Miles' mother, and he loses it.
• Big Damn Heroes: Miles saved President Captain America's life during a battle with Hydra in the 17th issue. Luckily for him, it was caught on tape and the Daily Bugle aired it.
• Brand X: Viewtube! Though YouTube itself is also mentioned, interestingly.
• Breather Episode: Spider-Men for Volume 3, as it's removed from the core storyline, which is nothing but Serial Escalation.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man #200.
• Brick Joke: When Miles sees the actual Ultimate Spider-Man, he remembers 616 Spider-Man's advice from Spider-Men and freaks out shouting "CLONE!" over and over.
• Broken Pedestal: Miles' dad was very hesitant to talk about his and his brother's criminal past for this reason. While Miles is confused and disturbed by the the revelation, it isn't quite enough to come between them. Little does Miles know, however, the extent to which Jefferson's criminal instincts reach.
• Cain and Abel: The Prowler and Miles Morales, uncle and nephew, have this dynamic. Their first meeting in their costumes leads to a violent clash, and the Prowler soon blackmails Miles Morales into bending his moral code. Needless to say, the tension between the two quickly ascends to full-on estrangement, and ends in an all-out war between the two that ends with the Prowler's violent death.
• Call-Back: As with the first issue of the original Ultimate Spider-Man series, the first scene in this relaunched series features Norman Osborn relating the Greek myth of Arachne to an underling.
  • The first time Peter fought with Omega Red, he joked "I almost wore the exact same outfit today... boy, would that have been embarrassing." When Miles fights with Omega Red early in his career, he uses almost exactly the same line^note which works even better, as Miles' version of the Spider-Man costume is actually quite similar to Omega Red's outfit, prompting Omega Red to point it out, calling it proof of his belief that Spider-Man had never actually died.
  • Another one happens in issue #28 after the alliance of young heroes (a proto-version of the up-coming All-New Ultimates) puts down Roxxon's "Brain-Trust," Spider-Woman remarks during her debriefing to S.H.I.E.L.D that "we have the beginning of something very special", a call back to the end of the Ultimate Clone Saga where Nick Fury says almost the exact same thing to Peter Parker after giving him his blessing to continue being Spider-Man. As a bonus Ultimate Spider-Woman was introduced in the Clone Saga.
• Canon Foreigner: Miles does not have a counterpart in the regular Marvel Universe. Although that can be questioned if the Sequel Hook at the end of Spider-Men is taken into account...
  • He graduates to Canon Immigrant (literally) after the Secret Wars.
• Changing of the Guard: The shift is awkward and jarring for many characters.
• Character Development: Most of Miles' early development revolves around facing and overcoming his fears, including the fear of his own powers and what they mean for his life. Fear also motivates the Prowler, and as a result we see him degenerate from a doting uncle to a violent thug threatening to beat his nephew into cooperation.
  • Later, as Miles starts to broaden his horizons from his rather sheltered boarding school, he decides to be more proactive in being a hero and joins the Ultimates.
  • Jameson actually has a few words to say about this, being disgusted when other reporters haven't actually learned anything from the disasters New York and America have faced.
• Cheap Costume: Miles starts off in a store-bought Halloween costume given to him by Ganke.
• Cool Big Sis: Jessica fills a role like this for Miles.
• Covers Always Lie: It's getting pretty egregious — the first five issues showed Miles in an outfit he had yet to receive, the sixth had an alternative cover that showed an unmasked Peter Parker being Spider-Man, and the eighth and ninth issue covers showed events that did not in any way occur within those issues, nor did they occur later on in the arc.
• Crossover: Miles eventually meets the original Spider-Man in the Spider-Men crossover. Miles cameod in a crossover with All-New X-Men.
• David Versus Goliath: Most of the supervillains Miles fights have this dynamic with him, but the example that stands out is when Miles takes on Giant Woman.
• Deadpan Snarker: Though Miles is in no way the supreme snarker that Peter Parker was, he is learning, and like Peter can be rather sarcastic in his inner monologues.
  • In issue #07, he gets in a couple of battle quips during his battle with Omega Red, even mentally scolding himself for how bad they are, and Omega Red actually takes one of the quips as a sign that it's the same Spider-Man:
  Miles Morales: You're not going to believe this... I almost wore that exact same outfit today.
  Omega Red: You used that line last time! I knew you weren't really dead!
  Miles Morales: I did? (inner monologue) He did. Crazy.
  • Definitely in the blood. After Miles mopes through dinner:
  Rio: Hey... I love you.
  Miles: Love you too, mom.
  Jefferson: Congratulations, it's a teenager.
• Death Glare: One of the residential staff in Miles' dorm gives Miles an insanely evil one for a non-villainous side-character (Miles had just sneaked around the RA and into his dorm without the RA noticing). It doesn't help that he's randomly got striking hazel eyes.
• Dropped a Bridge on Her: Monica Chang, the former Black Widow, gets killed by Norman Osborn without so much as a fight.
• Establishing Character Moment
  • Miles has just found out he's got spider powers. He's mortified that someone might find this out, partly because of the rampant anti-mutant hysteria proceeding Ultimatum (which at this point in the story line happened a short time ago), and partly because of his own father's strong dislike of mutants and super-powers in general. Then he and his friend Ganke happen across a burning building with people still trapped inside. Ganke tells Miles he should help.
    Miles: People will see me.
    Ganke: Who cares?
    Miles: You're right.
  • Cue Miles, who at this point hasn't even entertained the notion of being a Super-Hero, leaping without hesitation onto the burning building and saving the lives of two people and a dog. He does this in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses, wearing nothing even resembling a mask, let alone a costume. This moment establishes that for all of Miles' reluctance, the moment he sees someone in trouble he will drop everything in order to help them.
• Everyone Has Standards: High standards at that. While he's not evil, Jameson was antagonistic towards Peter for most of his run as Spider-Man, and refused to run a story outing Miles's secret identity if there's really no other point, no impact or importance, to that story. It'd accomplish nothing except to seriously screw over Miles. Interestingly enough, the reason why they went back to ranting about Spider-Man was because Jonah (and a lot of people in New York) felt that Miles taking the "Spider-Man" name (and his bumbling first appearance) showed nothing but disrespect for Peter's memory.
• Evil Mentor: Prowler, Miles's Evil Uncle, attempts to tutor him in thievery.
• Evil Versus Evil: There is much more enmity between The Prowler and The Scorpion than between either and Miles Morales.
• Face Palm: Ben Urich does a double face palm when Betty Brant points out that Miles Morales (even though in costume) is black, just before she posits that he and the African-American Prowler must be related.
• Fantastic Racism: Although every Marvel continuity contains at least some degree of prejudice towards Mutants, this 'verse being no exception, special mention has to go to the fact that Miles' Dad openly expresses his prejudice towards mutants. Suddenly Miles' hesitance at openly using his powers make a lot of sense...
• Fat Best Friend: Ganke
• Finger Poke of Doom: Miles' Venom blast.
• Foreshadowing: An early issue of Volume 4 has a crazed prostitute screaming that the Multiverse is collapsing, and that soon all worlds will be merged into one. At the time, it seemed like a harmless Shout-Out to Jonathan Hickman's The Avengers and New Avengers storylines, but then came Secret Wars in which that actually happened.
• Forgot About His Powers: A lot of times, Miles seems to forget he can turn near invisible or paralyze with a touch....
• Good Feels Good: Lana expresses that being a hero felt great and she didn't know what it was like due to her mother.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Miles and Ganke, so much so that they've been mistaken as boyfriends.
• High-Altitude Interrogation: Miles to Roxxon in issue #28. He just spilled everything while Miles sat there listening.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Part of the reason why Miles tries to be Spider-Man is that he feels that his inaction when he received his powers caused Peter's death. Since he and Peter had near identical powers Miles felt that if they had ever met, Miles would been an asset to him by default and a potentially useful ally for Peter's final fight.
  • In Cataclysm: Spider-Man #3, Miles' father, after finding out his son is Spider-Man, snaps at him by saying that he let his mother die. Miles just glares at him and tells him to don't start.
• Heroic BSoD: Miles has one once his uncle The Prowler begins blackmailing him.
  Ganke: Oh my God, what time did you get in last night?
  (Miles walks away)
  Ganke: Dude?
  (Miles keeps walking)
  Ganke: Aw, dude.
  • His father gets one as well, during the United we Stand crossover arc. He manages to get himself arrested by SHIELD agents keeping order, and HYDRA goons attack his paddywagon. They hand him a gun, after having shot the agents and he promptly shoots all three of them. This comes back to haunt him.
  • Miles at the end of the Venom Wars story arc
• Idiot Ball / Distress Ball: Got tossed around a bit in the 5th issue, when Electro awakes. Iron Man tried to take him head-on, but had... some logical weaknesses (as in not expecting Electro to be able to drain the power out of his armor). Hawkeye, likewise didn't have any plan B after "put an arrow into it" (a distraction in the first place). Spider-Woman just pounces on him and gets electrocuted for her efforts^note Note that, in the Ultimate Universe, Spider-Woman/Jessica Drew is a female clone of Peter from the clone saga. Since it's established she has his memories up to the point he was cloned, she should remember fighting Electro two or three times. Nick Fury and co. do get him pinned down, despite him being Immune to Bullets. But the absolute Emperor of this trope has to be the hospital nurse who gave Electro 10ccs of anesthetic instead of 100ccs as prescribed.
• Invisibility: One of Miles' powers. Though if people focus their eyes, they apparently can just make him out.
• Irony: The Prowler, Miles Morales's uncle, learns that it is his fault that Miles was bitten by the super spider. The Prowler then manipulates Miles into working with him, justifying it with the idea that they have a "responsibility" towards each-other. Anyone who knows anything about the actual Spider-Man's origins can see how this is going... places where it shouldn't be going.
• Jerkass: A recurring theme, it seems. They're everywhere; Uncle Aaron, Captain Quaid, Miles's dorm RC, Spider-Woman (though she has a reason), Captain America (who has a slightly worse reason), Betty Brant...
• Laser-Guided Karma: Betty Brant returns trying to make a quick buck by outing Jefferson Morales as Spider-Man. She almost succeeds in getting a book deal. Then Venom sneaks into her home and kills her.
• Legacy Character
• Let's You and Him Fight: Miles accidentally starts a fight when he tries to get on board the helicarrier to ask if he can join the Ultimates. Unfortunately, America is in the middle of a war and in a state of extreme turmoil and the helicarrier was on high alert.
• Knight of Cerebus: Things weren't overly dark and serious at first and the story mainly focused on Miles trying to become a good superhero with help from Jessica and his friends. Then Venom shows up and shit gets serious fast.
• Male Gaze: Miles, as a teenage boy who's hormones are just starting to rev up, muses to himself how he thinks fighting Giant Woman is hot. And that this is wrong. When he knocks her out, the last panel is shown from Between Her Breasts to Miles' face.
• The Mentor: Spider-Woman is essentially taking this role for Miles. The Prowler was seemingly trying to be this, but it quickly becomes clear that he's just manipulating Miles.
• Mistaken for Gay: Jefferson was relieved when he found out Miles had a girlfriend, namely because he thought Miles and Ganke were dating. Miles's own girlfriend even though Ganke liked Miles. Miles is not amused by any of this.
• Mistaken for Racist: After Giant Woman sees Miles unmasked and reports to Hydra rather vaguely that he wasn't what they would expect, Miles reflexively calls her out on racism. He then backtracks and wonders if maybe she was talking about the fact that he was 13 years old instead.
• The Unmasking: Miles unmasks himself to his father during Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #2.
• Mob War: Kingpin's death and Mysterio's failure to pick up the slack has left New York open, and The Scorpion tries to fill the void.
• Mood Whiplash: Downplayed. While Iceman is riding his ice ramps through the sky on his way to the memorial get-together for Peter, he's suddenly joined by Firestar flying on one side and the Human Torch on the other. He's just starting to complain that there's too much fire up there for him when the heat radiating off his two friends melts through his ramp and sends him plummeting to the ground.
  Bobby: I'm okay!
• Never Trust a Trailer: The solicits get pretty egregious in the Spider-man No More Arc.
  • Issue 24 mentions the Power Pack as if they are being formed within that issue. They don't become a formal team until issue 27.
  • Issue 26 solicitation implies that the Ultimate Power Pack are already acquainted and already are on their way to take on Roxxon. They don't formally meet each other until issue 27.Also, it suggests that Miles Morales girlfriend has a secret of her own, but she does not even appear in this issue and most of it was backstory for Bombshell who is not Miles' girlfriend.
  • Issue 27 solicitiation implies that the Ultimate Power Pack have already been formed, Miles has found out that Roxxon is behind his mother's death and is seeking revenge, and are confronting Roxxon. This issue focuses on the battle between the Ultimate Power Pack and Taskmaster and they only just formed this issue.
  • Issue 25 states that there are more young heroes debuting in the issue when there are no more new characters being introduced.
• Oh, Crap!: Multiple characters when they see Miles in costume, and even more when some of them conclude he's the same as the real Spider-Man. The Prowler has a magnificent one in issue #9 as he gradually learns just how powerful the Scorpion is.
  • Miles' reaction when he realizes that not only is he being approached by a resurrected Green Goblin, he is in the same exact place that Peter died fighting him last time.
• Out of Order: Issue 16.1 goes back a few issues to explore the aftermath of the Prowler's death. It ended by reintroducing Venom into the plot.
• Parental Abandonment: Tyrone and Tandy in an emotional and literal sense. Their parents gave up on them and let Roxxon have them, while Tandy went home to discover they were gone.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Peter was small compared to his villains, Miles is this even moreso, justified because of the fact he's only 13.
• Poke the Poodle:
  (The Ringer captures Miles Morales in his rings)
  Miles Morales! (immobilized) Ggnn!!
  The Ringer: Come on!! Come on!
  (The Ringer sends out an explosive torrent of rings at Miles Morales)
  Miles Morales: I can't!
  (The Ringer's rings flail around and bounce harmlessly off Miles Morales)
  Miles Morales: I really can't!! Hello!!
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Non-fatal example:
  (Miles Morales is immobilized)
  The Ringer: Everyone will respect me now.
  Miles Morales: Not in that outfit.
  *SMACK*
• Pretty Boy: Captain America under David Marquez's pen. His features are broader and sharper than are usual for the trope, and he frowns all the time, but he's also very smooth faced and young looking.
• Protagonist-Centred Morality: The handling of the Adaptational Villainy given to Katie Bishop, particularly since they're a 15 year old girl who's only villainous due to being raised by dedicated Hydra fanatics, who gets treated like she's worse than Hitler for, you know, being loyal to her parents (who are shown to, at best, be emotionally manipulative). It crosses into PCM however when Miles basically gives Bombshell consent to beat the crap out of her, even though Bombshell herself isn't so different from Katie, being she too was once an active criminal due to following her mother's lead.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Kitty Pride, Johnny Storm and Bobby Drake all left the title following "The Death of Spider-Man" and joined the new X-Men team.
  • Aunt May and Gwen Stacy moved to France, to get away from the press hounding them in the final issue of Ultimate Fallout. It was mentioned however that they would return to the book, which they do in issue 11.
  • Mary Jane, has not been seen since the finale of Ultimate Fallout, until the Spider-Men crossover. She shows up again during the Venom Wars arc.
  • The Bus Came Back: It was a relatively short trip from France for May and Gwen Stacy, and Mary Jane joins them state-side.
• Refusal of the Call: Despite his best friend's encouragement, and unlike Peter, Miles is far from happy with getting powers. Due to the fact that he knows that with great power comes giant killer robots, an arch enemy and if what happened to Peter is any indicator, death before he hits twenty...
  • This is complicated by the fact that his Spider-Sense seems to be in cahoots with The Call. This makes things even worse in Miles' case since, as we know, trying to be Spider-Man means that The Call has him on speed-dial already, so he's got a triple dose of destiny, responsibility, and his own powers trying to kick him into trying to be Spider-Man.
• Ret-Gone: The apparent fate of everyone in the Ultimate universe except Miles Morales and his mother. Even popular characters like Jessica Drew and the resurrected Ultimate Peter Parker are gone.^note An editorial statement that Ultimate Peter's been dead and gone for a long time raises the question of whether his resurrection and happy ending with Mary Jane are Canon Discontinuity.
• Revenge by Proxy: This seems to be Venom's motivation.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: See Face Palm above. Betty Brant just assumes that the Prowler and Miles Morales are related because both are black.
• Roof Hopping: How Miles initially gets around, as he does not have web shooters, at least until Aunt May gives him Peter's.
• Running Gag: The repeated "That costume is in really bad taste." comments during Miles' early appearances. Repeated to a very confused 616-Peter, in Spider-Men.
  • Volumes 3 and 4 have the same "shouting suspect in the police station referencing outside events" gag. Some guy dressed in Ms. Marvel drag was shouting about two worlds melding into one which was foreshadowing 2015's Secret Wars or referencing DC Comics' Convergence event. And in the final issue of volume 4, a guy (who's drawn to look like Jonathan Hickman dressed as Captain Universe was screaming about everything being his fault again referencing his the end of his The Avengers run and 2015's Secret Wars.
• Secret Identity: A very interesting example in that Miles tries to keep his identity secret, but people keep finding out, either because he revealed it to them (such as Ganke and Peter's friends and family), or they simply figured it out by themselves (such as his uncle Aaron as well as his ex-roommate Judge). It has gotten to the point that the people who know his identity or have found out are about 20 or more.
• Shout-Out:
  • There's a strong resemblance in Miles' first Spider suit and the look of the costume from The Amazing Spider-Man (other than the loose-fitting gloves and boots). His official costume resembles a reworked version of Alex Ross' unused design from the first Spider-Man movie (which itself was later brought into continuity in Superior Spider Man).
  • Gwen Stacy calling Captain America a jerk for forbidding Miles from trying to be Spider-Man is an homage to a moment in the 616 verse where Kitty Pryde said the same thing about Professor Xavier for kicking her out of the X-Men and putting her on the New Mutants, right at the start of Uncanny X-Men #168 (1983). Even their poses are the same.
• Silver Vixen: Aunt May, in the Bagley era. In some issues, she appears to be the mid-fifties to early-sixties woman that she's supposed to be. In others, she's got slight age-lines around the corners of her mouth and is otherwise drawn like pretty much every woman in a superhero comic.
• Superpower Lottery: Miles has all the abilities that Peter had, plus a camouflage ability and a very handy "Venom Strike", which is essentially a debilitating stun that works through touch on or through just about any material. In the first couple dozen issues, only Taskmaster was shown to be able to resist it completely. It would probably be a lifesaver for any actual Spider-Man, but Miles is absolutely tiny at only 13 years old, so these new powers make up for his size and inexperience. There's also the fact that, according to the writer, his Spider-Sense is stronger then Peter's.
• Super Team: After his 10-Minute Retirement, Jessica enlists Miles to team up against Roxxon. After a series of events, they grab three more super powered teens who also have a vendetta against the corporation.
• Take That!: In issue #200, Bobby Drake's version of Peter Parker's future involves him joining a team of teenage superheroes (including Nova and White Tiger), and using a bunch of hi-tech vehicles provided by S.H.I.E.L.D. Mary Jane rolls her eyes and asks if he's done talking.
  • Might actually count as Self-Deprecating Humor, since Bendis actually works on the show.
• Taking Up the Mantle: Miles takes up the Spider-man moniker after Peter's temporary death.
• Taught by Experience: Miles, through Ganke's suggestion, makes it his mission to study all of Pete's exploits, and as he's fighting Venom he makes a mention to himself that fighting villains on his doorstep was how Peter died, and he should change tactics.
• Time Skip: A year passes between issues 22 and 23, revealing that Miles successfully quit being a superhero for the entire year—significantly longer than the time he actually spent trying to be Spider-Man. Tandy Bowen, previously a side character in the first two volumes, was in a car accident that left her and the newly introduced Tyrone Johnson in a coma until 3 days before the issue, after being kidnapped by Roxxon and having their deaths faked. The experiments they underwent gave rise to Cloak and Dagger.
• Treacherous Advisor: Prowler
• Twofer Token Minority: Miles is half-Black/half-Hispanic.
• Villain Has a Point: Roxxon was right in that Miles did a horrible job of protecting his secret identity. His reveal to Katie ended up getting it into HYDRA's hands and his roommate had known for over a year because they weren't subtle about it at all.
• Villain Takes an Interest: The Prowler (Aaron Davis, Miles' uncle) finds out who Miles really is, and very quickly starts to train him in the name of "responsibility". However, it's pretty obvious from his blackmailing Miles into it and his having pissed off the very dangerous Scorpion, that the Prowler wants to use Miles as a super-powered meat-shield.

• Wham Episode: Issue #22, when Rio is killed. The next issue takes place a year later, revealing that Miles legitimately quit trying to be Spider-Man after that.
  • In Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man #2, Miles unmasks to Jefferson.
  • In Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-man, it is revealed that Norman Osborn is still alive and Peter Parker, the actual Ultimate Spider-Man is back as well.
• Wham Shot:
  • The end of Ultimate Spider-Man #200. As everyone leaves the gathering, a mysterious figure peeks from the bushes.
  • Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #4 - Peter Parker in the Spider-Man suit ready to face down Green Goblin again on-camera, which makes everyone watching (Ganke, Aunt May, Gwen, Mary Jane, Ben Urich, JJJ, Katie Bishop, and Maria Hill) go into shock.
  • The end of Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #12 features a shot of Earth 616 on a collision course with Earth 1610 due to the onset of an Incursion, leading right into the events of 2015's Secret Wars.
• Wham Line: Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #1 - "I was hoping to get some of my stuff back. It's more than time for the original Spider-Man to get back into the game."
• What Could Have Been: Discussed in-universe. In Ultimate Spider-Man 200, while commemorating the anniversary of Peter Parker's death, the participants talk about what Peter would have done if he were grown up. Mary Jane imagined that he could have been greater than Captain America and led the Ultimates. Aunt May imagined that he would infuse his science ability with his heroics and start a Spider-Man-esque Future Foundation. Gwen referenced personal discussions with Peter Parker, and stated that he wanted to be a reporter so that people with money could not escape wrong doings so he could use his heroics as Spider-Man to break the story. Kitty Pryde dismissed herself from discussing it, but her panel alluding to her imagination had her and Peter growing up together and being married. Miles cited that if he got his act together and met up with Peter sooner, he would be a partner if not a sidekick. Bobby Drake flat out used the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon scenario as what Peter would have done.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gwen Stacy's epic "CAPTAIN AMERICA, YOU ARE A JERK!!". It's especially funny because she's in a warehouse, so the windows behind her are broken and disused, and as a result it looks like she shouted so hard it shattered the windows.
  • Miles gets shouted at by both Gwen Stacy and Ganke in #24 after he doesn't do anything in the Cloak and Dagger fight
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…:
  Spider-Man! Okay. Guy's crazy.
  The Ringer: YOU WILL NOT TOUCH ME!
  Spider-Man: All I need to do is smack the crazy off his face and this is— uh-oh.
• You Can't Fight Fate: The editors mention numerous times on the letter pages that the appearance of Web-Shooters is predestined and unavoidable - and sure enough, thirteen issues in, Miles gets Peter's Web-Shooters, delivered by Aunt May herself.

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