Waiting for the Trade By Bill Miller Ultimate Spider-man: Death of Spider-man by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley collects Ultimate Comics Spider-man 156-160   Why I Bought This: While the Ultimate universe isn’t really my cup of tea, this was on sale for $10 at a local bookstore and is supposed to be the biggest story in the history of the Ultimate line; so at that price why not?   The Plot: The Sinister Six escape from prison, led by the Green Goblin. Norman knows Peter’s identity and so he takes them to Aunt May’s house (Peter is still a teen in this universe) and challenges Peter to a fight on his front lawn. Spoilers follow after the break.

Waiting for the Trade by Bill Miller   Spider-man: Return of the Goblin by Paul Jenkins & Humberto Ramos collects Peter Parker: Spider-man (vol. 2) 44-47.   Why I Bought This: Over a year ago I bought the trade for a Spidey vs. Venom story called “The Hunger” by Paul Jenkins and it was astonishingly good: like by far the best Venom story to be told outside of the character’s first few appearances. Paul Jenkins in general seems fairly well-regarded for his work on Spidey and after the reading that Venom story I wanted to sample some more of his run. It seemed like stories tackling Spidey’s other major foes would be the best pick-ups in that regard so I grabbed both this Green Goblin story and a Doc Ock trade off Amazon.   The Plot: Norman once again makes a run at Peter through his friends and family. The story features a lot of psychological back and forth so there’s no way to recap without heavy spoilers.