Spider-Man and Wolverine’s sleepover

We’re jumping to the Ultimate universe, where Spider-Man’s in high school and Wolverine hasn’t discovered all those juicy secrets about his past yet.  But just like the delightful “normal” Marvel universe, hordes of unnamed people still want to murder the immortal Wolverine for whatever mayhem he caused in the past/present/future.  Luckily, Ultimate Wolverine has no problem hoisting his unfortunate situations upon other costumed heroes — as long as the heroes aren’t the X-Men or anyone with relevant experience in stopping covert military operations.  I’m only going to show one scene in this arc today from Ultimate X-Men #34, written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by David Finch, but it’s a good one.  I promise.

First, the set up:

Cue three pages of Wolverine taking a hail of bullets and barely escaping with his life.  Ultimate Wolverine isn’t quite as invincible as his normal universe counterpart.  But a group of assassins are definitely out to kill Wolverine for reasons that aren’t revealed until the final issue of the arc.  It’s six issues long and I’m only showing you twelve-ish pages from the first issue.

So with the ability to run or walk or do anything but pathetically crawl away, poor Wolverine has to go someplace safe.  And by that, I mean the nearest place.

I get scared when I think I see a bug run across my carpet, much less the bloodcurdling fear I’d experience if I discover an unknown man hiding behind my boiler.  Spider-Man has the right idea, screaming like a little girl, when he discovers this monstrosity bleeding all over his floor.  Plus with Wolverine not being a threat, Spider-Man’s Spidey-sense didn’t activate, no doubt leaving a small amount of pee in Peter Parker’s underwear.  Luckily, Wolverine explains the situation with all the verbosity and patience we’ve come to expect from the angriest and hairiest man who’s ever flirted with a teenage Jean Grey.

Let’s give Mary Jane Watson a break.  She’s seen plenty of superheroes and supervillains up close by this point in her Ultimate Marvel universe life, but never the charred, bullet-ridden, almost-corpse of a half-yeti/half-man.  Most importantly, she has to faint so Spider-Man can make that fantastic cinematic dive to catch her.  Lucky for her, her lack of censorship when Wolverine wakes up makes up for a little of her fainting embarrassment.  Also, she’s the only fifteen year-old to wear overalls who hasn’t just farmed for sixteen hours straight.

Problem solved.  The two can go their separate ways and Spider-Man can call Wolverine whenever Doctor Octopus needs a good clawin’.  I think I can see the building blocks of a beautiful friendship being born, especially now that the danger has long past and Wolverine’s safe and out of harm’s way from all those evil military people.

So goes the superhero life.