In 2019 Shelfdust asked over a hundred comic book critics, podcasters, vloggers and commentators to pick their personal, subjective favourite ‘first’ comic book issues of all time. From their choices we counted down the top fifty entries, which you can find here! But we’re not leaving it there. Now the list is over and we know which comics made the list, we’ve invited critic and podcaster Matt Lune to host a weekly show right here on Shelfdust! Each week Matt will be sitting down with a different comic critic to look at every comic which charted into the top fifty, one issue at a time.
This week it’s time to get super-distracted from our schoolwork, as we look at the comic which ended up in 17th place: Ultimate Spider-Man #1 by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Art Thibert, Steve Buccellato and Richard Starkings.
Although it now looks gleefully dated to the time it was made, Ultimate Spider-Man #1 remains a breath of fresh air, especially against the deliberately edgy or provocative books which made up the rest of the Ultimate line. Here we get a perfectly charming take on the classic story, with new patter from Bendis and fast-paced art from Bagley which gives you everything you already know, but in a way you didn’t realise you wanted. This week Matt is rejoined by special guest Christian Hoffer to talk all about it!
The episode can be found here. If you like Spotify then head here, or you can find it on Apple by searching for Shelfdust Presents. For a direct download, you can get your hands on the episode here!
Come back next week….. as Matt will be talking to Paul Lai about New Gods #1!
*
Christian Hoffer is the co-host of A Wild Podcast Has Appeared, and writes extensively for Comic Book dot com, where he focuses on Pokemon, tabletop games, and more. You can find his writing here, and follow him on Twitter here!
Matt Lune is a critic and podcaster who has written for publications including PanelXPanel, The MNT and Multiversity. You can find him on Twitter here!
This podcast is made possible thanks to the Shelfdust Patreon page! To find out more, head to our Patreon page here!
shelfdust.com 