When reading through my stack of comics I found that finding a pick of the week wouldn’t be too difficult. My week’s fair ranged from mediocre to flat-out disappointing and I was left with two obvious front-runners for the best the week had to offer. Coming  in at a close second was this weeks Detective Comics. And even though the comic continues to offer a top-notch story and groundbreaking visuals I went with the comic that tugged on my heartstrings and that ended up being Spider-Man Requiem.

Spinning out of Ultimatum, a series I stopped reading, Requiem says farewell to the previous Ultimate Spider-Man book, sets up a new status quo for the universe and encapsulates the meaning of Spider-Man and why he’s a hero. The frame story of J. Jonah Jameson writing an obituary for the web crawler is really touching and avoids seeming hokey or forced. He tells us about the first time Spider-Man met the Hulk, which fills in a story only previously seen in Ultimate Marvel Team-Ups and makes a great parallel to the Hulk battle that happened at the end of Ultimate Spider-Man.

One great thing about this series is how it treats the destruction of New York with gravity and pathos, whereas in Ultimatum the whole affair looks as though it was directed by Roland Emmerich in The Day After Tomorrow. Here I feel this story encompasses the very spirit of change along with the human desire to pick up and move on even after great adversity.

As in the first issue I am pleased with the device of using Mark Bagley for the flashbacks and Immonen for the present. Though it might have been cool to have Lafuente draw the last couple pages, just to cement the new world. But that may just be me.

Bendis has crafted a great little character study that really shows what Spider-Man is all about and it hits home in all the right places. And even though I saw the suprise ending a hundred miles off I was glad to see it and I eagerly await Ult. Spidey’s return later this month.