Things have returned to normal for Miles after the events of Divided We Fall, but a new, yet familiar foe has emerged to to ruin the boy’s reclaimed peace.

Here is the summary from Marvel:

Miles finally has his costume, his web shooters, and now he has his first A-list Spider-Man villain! There’s a new Venom in town and he’s hungry! All this, plus Miles’ new girlfriend and the return of award-winning Ultimate Spider-Man artist Sara Pichelli!

The war against Hydra has ended and Miles has returned home to resume his normal life (well as normal as it can be for a 13 year-old superhero). He resumes his school studies and home life and everything seems to be putting itself back into place, that is until reporters come to his house seeking to interview Jefferson (Miles’ Dad) after he protected a group of civilians by taking out a group of Hydra agents. And Just when things couldn’t get worse Jefferson is confronted by the all new Venom!

This issue serves to both cool down the story after “Divided We Fall” but also begins to bring in plot threads from USM 17.1 a month ago where the new Venom was introduced, focusing a bit more of Miles’ supporting cast as well as some of Peter’s. There is an air of mystery as to who the new Venom is and why he has chosen to appear now. This works pretty well, seeing as how Venom is one of the many villains that helped evolve Peter during his tenure as Spider-Man, so it fits that another one of Peter’s major rogues would appear opposite of Miles sooner or later (The 1st being Electro, who Miles beat quite easily, without even knowing who he was). There are also a few other good moment in this issue: such as Maria Hill (who is a detective in this universe) interviewing J. Jonah Jameson after what happened at the end of 17.1, a couple funny bits pertaining to how Miles & Ganke are going to recreate Peter’s web fluid after Miles runs out (while swinging), and we also get some more insight into Jefferson, whose past was poked at in earlier parts of the series, but have been slowly been expanded on as the comic continued.

Sara Pichelli resumes art duties this issue and she hasn’t lost a step during her brief hiatus from the book. She certainly has a sense of realism to her art style and the design for Venom looks pretty good, looking more menacing and alien like. A few of the scenes look a bit off, but they do a good job of conveying the emotion of each event though. One of the highlights in the artwork was definitely the last page, which I won’t spoil but it was really well done.

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man continues to be a very consistent series, and issue 19 looks like a great start for the next chapter in Miles’ story as Spider-Man in the new year.

4/5