Just need to get out some 4am nerd.

This'll be the background on my comp for a little bit.

I started reading Ultimate Spider-Man sophomore year, downloading a bunch at a time, taking a break and then picking it up again at the end of each semester.

I found out that I was in the home stretch, today. They stopped the Ultimate universe in Fall '09, when there were no more finals to remind me of reading the comics.

So today I spent a couple hours poking around torrent sites, gathering the materials for the big finish.

It turns out they ended the story with this thing called Ultimatum, a world-massacre that killed most of the major characters of this particular comic-universe. Important characters got these gruesome deaths (very unlike the rest of the series), and the last four issues of the Ultimate Spider-Man blew by, ending with the idea that he died in the wreckage of Manhattan.

They stuck to it, too. Ended the comic with his tattered mask. All of the deaths were like that. Quick gunshots to the head, strangulation, evisceration. Super-heroes not so super anymore, no drama, just dying like civilians.

It's not real, I don't even think most would consider it a legitimate piece of fiction. I just felt so awful while reading it. The way you'd get attached to the character of a good book. I mean...I'd spent the last few years of my life investing my free time in these stories.

I thought they'd leave it, but on the very last page of the "Requiem" epilogue, there's that panel, and few more. They find him under rubble, and on the final wedge he opens an eye. End series.

I do a quick Wiki scan, and it turns out that Marvel relaunched Ultimate Spider-Man under a new name, a continuation of the same story line.

Again, not a real thing, but it I felt relieved that this fictional character was still alive, in this paper and ink plane of existence.

My guy made it and that the story's not over yet.