It’s fitting that, with this anniversary, Peter should reflect upon the most important bits of his origin story. He “teams up” with Aunt May for this quiet, introspective issue as they meet at Uncle Ben’s grave for the…well, whateverth time. I wonder if it’s hard to keep track of anniversaries if you live in the Marvel Universe.

Anyway. I haven’t been a frequent enough Spider-Man reader over the years to know how much of this is really new and how much is rehashed. Sometimes I felt like bits of their confessions to each other, about their shared past, about what was important to them…sometimes I felt like I’d read it before. It’s entirely possible – perhaps likely – that a few similar things were said in Ultimate Spidey ages ago when the spotlight really fell on May.

But maybe new and different isn’t the point.

I was a little disappointed with Dillon’s art on the issue, and that frequently took me out of the story. Dillon’s Peter doesn’t look all that much like Peter, to me. And when Dillon draws sad expressions, they look lifeless and distant – perhaps deeper, in their way, but for me they didn’t work in this melodrama universe. I like Dillon in a lot of stuff, but I’m always thrown when he shows up in a fairly mainstream comic.