It's The Oddest Thing

So as you might recall, I dropped Amazing Spider-Man after last month's beatdown on Kingpin. I concluded that the Spidey books in the main Marvel U. were just too grim for me, and I'd stick to ones that were a little more upbeat/hopeful when it's all said and done, Amazing Spider-Girl and Ultimate Spider-Man.

Then I stopped and thought, Ultimate Spider-Man, upbeat and/or hopeful? That can't be right. But then I started thinking about the Clone Saga story, and what's come since, and it really does seem like Peter Parker's life is pretty good.

His Aunt May did have a heart attack, but she's doing better now. She knows he's Spider-Man, so he doesn't have to sneak around behind her back, and even though she isn't thrilled about his using violence to solve problems, she's trying to adjust, and she still loves him.

MJ did get turned into a weird monster-thing by a Peter clone, but she's better now (as far as Peter knows), and the people who helped her were Reed Richards and Dr. Storm, and they helped because Peter and MJ are friends of Johnny's and he wanted to help. Not only that, they got May to the hospital and stuck up for Peter when Fury came around being his usual pain-in-the-ass self. Not only that, MJ stood up to Fury, and made him do a little thinking about how much trouble he makes for Peter, given how hard Peter tries to help people.

And wonder of wonders, it actually seems to have sunk in a little. Sure, Fury's admitted in the past that he's looking forward to when Peter's 18, and working for Nick in the Ultimates (though, if Millar has made the Ultimates free agents in a sense, would that still be true? I guess it depends on whether Peter knows the Ultimates aren't run by the government anymore.). But this time Nick actually admitted how impressed he is that Peter's held up in light of the absolutely insane amount of stuff that's been dumped on his head in the last year or so, and he recognized that throwing Peter in jail for things he had nothing to do with would be really stupid, so he backed off. Of course, he's still got his scientists fooling around with Scorpion-Peter and Gwen/Carnage-Clone, but it's Nick Fury. Baby steps.

And Peter had Kitty, who cared enough to basically force the rest of the X-Men to get in their supercool jet and haul butt over to Queens to help him. And then was going to have the Professor wipe Peter being Spider-Man from May's memory, because she was sure that's what Peter wanted. That wound up not being true anymore, but it had been previously, and she wanted to help Peter enough to demand it.

And after his impassioned plea to not kill Fisk's wife, I'm betting Daredevil has a bit more respect for the kid he's given so much grief to in the past.

It's just odd to realize that in spite of all the garbage he has to deal with, Peter Parker does has family, he has friends, both tights-wearing and non-tights-wearing, he has the respect of most of the superhero community (excluding Wolverine and probably some of the Ultimates, but Wolverine is a jerk, and the Ultimates are all asses, so who cares what they think?). He has a really good support network, and I think he even recognizes that sometimes, which is nice.