I really wish Quesada or Wacker or Brevoort or Buckley or whoever is in charge of oking the covers for this series would pass the task to someone else.  While I’m not a huge fan of the art in the pages of The Ultimate Spiderman, their covers have been off-the-hook (this comment brought to you by the year 1994).  The covers for Amazing Spider-Man starting with issue #600 have been awful.    They don’t have anything to do with the book’s contents (Manapaul’s Adventure Comics #2 cover is a great example of a cover that tells the story of the issue) and they’re absolutely hideous.  Mary Jane Watson is supposed to be a model, but on the ASM covers she looks like a cross-eyed  hipster wannabe from the 1990s.

The art on the inside of the book is fine.  Kitson isn’t breaking any new ground, but he’s standing steady on the ground other artists have laid out beneath him. 

Storywise, I’m not a huge fan of Van Lente, but I’ve enjoyed this story arc of Spiderman.  Thus far, the Spider Braintrust hasn’t let me down.  The characters have all behaved consistently no matter who’s been writing it.  Something that’s not easy to pull off when you have multiple writers.  That said, while I’ve enjoyed this arc, it hasn’t blown me away on any front the way some recent story arcs have.  It’s been very good, but it’s been preceded by excellence.  And I’m more enjoying where this story sould go than where it is.