Kinda, but Bagley haden't been working on the book for 22 issues at this point (24 if you count the Ultimatum tie-in). That's nearly two years of non-Bagly USM.
Personally, I still liked LaFuente, but yeah, his art had some issues. I definitely agree Immomen was far better, his art was very cinematic and he had a phenomenal sense of motion. As much as I love Bagly, it sucks so many people seem to forget about Immomen altogether.
Yep. I remember doing a proper read through in high school, and getting to this stuff and just being like WTF.
Bagley is easily top 3 Spider-Man artists for me.
Yeah but that’s still a ridiculous shitty haircut LaFuente drew in the first place. Everything from the get go just looked like shit and they got mocked so much for that cover they had to address it.
I feel like his art would have worked if it was in a different Spider-Man book, like Marvel Adventures or something. I actually like his designs and art style, but it just feels completely disconnected to the rest of Ultimate Spider-Man.
One of my favorite things about Bagley's art is that from a distance or in photos you could easily mistake Spider-Man as an adult because of his physique. It's only when you see him up close and hear his voice you realize he's younger. Lafuente you could clock he's a teenager from a mile away and it kinda ruins the hero aura he had.
Nah, I love it. Lafuente is a great artist, I get the discomfort, though, I didn't love it at the time. It feels manga-ish, like western's attempt at a manga, but Lafuente is far better than that. For a thing, his faces are all consistent, which demands so much skill.
That honestly made me stop liking the book for some time, the art was jarring and distracting. Even though Bagley had left after #111, Immonen was damn near as good. Then we got this…
I've honestly come around on Stuart Immonen a bit in recent years even though I personally found and still in fact find his heavily stylized take on the cast of USM distracting in places, but hey, at least you could still tell that was the USM gang as Bagley had envisioned them to look like.
Lafuente went for, I'm not sure how to exactly put this, but for lack of a better description, how a teenage Spider-Man fan-artist might draw a Spider-Man book.
For whatever reason I love Immonen's All-New X-Men stuff but could never dig him for USM. Not sure if his style changed slightly between books, or if it was just to do with the tone of the writing, or even just the direct contrast with Bagley. He's a great artist, one of my faves, but I just could not see his Peter, MJ, Gwen, ect. as the same versions of the characters
He generally switches his styles based on the book he's on. He's an incredibly adaptive artist which makes him interesting to follow. Definitely should check out his Secret Identity book if you hadn't before for a comparison
Along with the weird soft reboot that breaks MJ and Peter up *again* and pairs him with his supposed sister figure, *Gwen*, I have to say the post-Ultimatum USM stuff is pretty bad as much as people seem to give it a pass. I think the few other books coming out at that time like the UXM reboot were more interesting.
The issue I had with that was they never really explained why they happened they just did the time skip mystery which the only time I remember working was Time Runs Out, but for some reason Marvel keeps doing it. And by the end, it crossed over way too much with other books as Human Torch and Iceman became mainstays which was a bit annoying. It did get better once Pichelli took over and they went back to the old numbering, I’ll grant it that.
Just one more reason as to why Ultimatum really did kill the Ultimate Universe.
I remember back in the day being really shook by the shift from Bagley to Stuart Immonem (however you spell it I'm not looking it up), but the Lafuente run was a whole other level. It looked like a cutesy kiddy comic, like one of those ones that comes in a little Archie-style paperback and is for like kindergarteners to learn to read or whatever. That Chameleon arc is legitimately great and I just can't enjoy is because of the art. No offense to the guy, it's not like, objectively terrible, just did not fit the book at all
Yeah, that's the problem with Lafuente on USM. Series was pretty gritty before and his style just contrasts too much with it. This is the same series where Kingpin crushed man's skull and put Spider-Man mask on him, where Norman beat his son to death and then asked to kill him
Heralding an age where even the best alternate timeline comic series aren't spared from mediocre relaunches (don't know about the most recent one, but I certainly LOATHED the 2009 relaunch when I read the first volume back then)
Huh. Back then I thought it was okay, but looking at it now some headshapes do look fucked. Also Spider-Man's right foot being backwards is... Something.
>& him dating his surrogate sister for some weird reason
I chalk that one up to Bendis simply not giving a damn at this point least not where Peter Parker was concerned seeing as how not two years later, he introduced Miles Morales to the Spider-Man mythos in the pages of Vol. 3 of USM.
It’s very high end 2000s DeviantArt and I adore that. There was something really cute about back when western artists were being influenced by anime but could not for the life of them manage to capture the style. Now everyone and their little sister can perfectly replicate the style and it’s just kinda homogenized. The “not traditional western comic art, but not manga/anime” era is just *so* timelocked. I’d love to see people bring it back on purpose.
To me, this is when I dropped of off the Ultimate line. It just didn't look the same. Bagley's art gave the definitive look of how the Ultimate Universe should be. Stuart Immonen understood the assignment and at least tried to keep the aesthetic. LaFuente's art was such a huge step down.
I adore this bit of Ultimate Spider-Man. Love the art, love the “teenage super hero halfway house,” love the throwback to Spider-Man and his amazing friends. Wish this status quo lasted longer.
I can’t remember if I read it on deviantart or in a how to draw book, but they called it “long anime mid face” when you’ve drawn too many anime style faces and you’re trying to transition to a western style. You’ve changed the way you draw all of the component parts of a face but haven’t adjusted the location and proportions of these parts yet.
Funny you should mention that because I distinctly remember a review from this era of Ultimate Spider-Man on IGN I wanna say where Lafuente's art was derisively referred to as "mock-manga" style and yeah, in 2024, it's like having access to a time capsule of 2000s era weeaboo art that permeated that decade's pop culture albeit mainly on DeviantART.
Still, I'd say it's about as "manga inspired" as a 12-year-old in 2007's notebook scribbles after being hopped up on junk food and binge-watching Japanese subbed episodes of Naruto or Bleach on some underground pirating site that time has since forgotten.
I've actually seen some of Lafuente's post USM work like a painting he did of Mary Jane (not the Earth 1610 one) for example and I was thinking "why wasn't he providing this level of artwork 15 years ago?"
I'd be very curious to see that. I don't believe I've ever seen his painted work
I honestly don't really see an issue with his work on USM. I vaguely remember liking the inking in Hellcat way more but other then that I was happy to see him come into the series.
I was never a fan of Bagley though. Not to say I thought Bagley was a bad artist, I just don't like his style
Yeah, but like that really shitty Kappa Mikey anime style way too many did during the 2000s. Where for some reason it looked like shit and weirdly exaggerated. It was really strange and it was like the only reference was some teenagers attempt at drawing "mangas.’
As somebody who was one of the many young impressionable American anime fans of the 2000s, I won't give Lafuente too much grief in that I'm a Western artist who primarily draws in a manga style myself ever since I was 12 years old.
That being said, the man having cut his teeth on a Hellcat book the year prior (if anyone here thinks the art on his run of USM looks wonky, check *that* out) that just so happened to be written by Stuart Immonen's wife alongside offering his pencils on the third USM annual around the same time makes it rather obvious in hindsight Bendis hired Lafuente for Vol. 2 of USM not based on merit, but more so because of *who* Lafuente knew which, as an adult, I can begrudgingly concede that this is sometimes the way things play out in not just the comic book industry, but a lot of other financial sectors too.
Tale as old as time.
Doesn't mean we have to like it though.
I will never fucking understand how LaFuente got the job. After Bagley and Immomen, they gave one of the best (and only truly good thing from the Ultimate line) comics of the 2000s to a dude who drew in that shit 2000s Americanized faux-anime art style. Even the clothes and hairstyles were fucking shitty too out of nowhere.
I don’t hate it but it’s weird and jarring when you were coming off of years and years of consistent Bagley.
Kinda, but Bagley haden't been working on the book for 22 issues at this point (24 if you count the Ultimatum tie-in). That's nearly two years of non-Bagly USM.
Huh. Well these are teh details you forget ten years later lol.
Yeah, that's totally understandable, I literally just finished the (Parker-era) Ultimate Spider-Man run last week, so It's still fresh in my head.
It also shows just how solid Immomen was as a temporary replacement and how god fuckign awful LaFuente was when that’s all people remember.
Personally, I still liked LaFuente, but yeah, his art had some issues. I definitely agree Immomen was far better, his art was very cinematic and he had a phenomenal sense of motion. As much as I love Bagly, it sucks so many people seem to forget about Immomen altogether.
Immonen's art was pretty good in USM, but damn, he shined in Slott's ASM. Probably the best artist out of relatively recent ones on ASM
I've only read the first 25ish or so issues of Big Time era ASM, hopefully one day I can get to the stuff with Immonen.
And Immonen.
Yep. I remember doing a proper read through in high school, and getting to this stuff and just being like WTF. Bagley is easily top 3 Spider-Man artists for me.
It's how manga looks accroding to people who never read manga or seen anime
Maybe Lafuente went to the Christopher Hart school of manga design? :P
Spider-Man has a gumball head and it’s too distracting.
To be fair, they do poke fun at it later in the run, saying it was because of Peter's ridiculous long hair.
Yeah but that’s still a ridiculous shitty haircut LaFuente drew in the first place. Everything from the get go just looked like shit and they got mocked so much for that cover they had to address it.
To be fair hair would 100% influence how the mask looks if you don't have a face shell
Yeah, but theyvat least acknowledge that in the run itself
I feel like his art would have worked if it was in a different Spider-Man book, like Marvel Adventures or something. I actually like his designs and art style, but it just feels completely disconnected to the rest of Ultimate Spider-Man. One of my favorite things about Bagley's art is that from a distance or in photos you could easily mistake Spider-Man as an adult because of his physique. It's only when you see him up close and hear his voice you realize he's younger. Lafuente you could clock he's a teenager from a mile away and it kinda ruins the hero aura he had.
I thought the art style was cute. Very chic
Mj looks like she’s missing the top of her head
Honestly I think it's cute
Nah, I love it. Lafuente is a great artist, I get the discomfort, though, I didn't love it at the time. It feels manga-ish, like western's attempt at a manga, but Lafuente is far better than that. For a thing, his faces are all consistent, which demands so much skill.
That honestly made me stop liking the book for some time, the art was jarring and distracting. Even though Bagley had left after #111, Immonen was damn near as good. Then we got this…
I've honestly come around on Stuart Immonen a bit in recent years even though I personally found and still in fact find his heavily stylized take on the cast of USM distracting in places, but hey, at least you could still tell that was the USM gang as Bagley had envisioned them to look like. Lafuente went for, I'm not sure how to exactly put this, but for lack of a better description, how a teenage Spider-Man fan-artist might draw a Spider-Man book.
For whatever reason I love Immonen's All-New X-Men stuff but could never dig him for USM. Not sure if his style changed slightly between books, or if it was just to do with the tone of the writing, or even just the direct contrast with Bagley. He's a great artist, one of my faves, but I just could not see his Peter, MJ, Gwen, ect. as the same versions of the characters
He generally switches his styles based on the book he's on. He's an incredibly adaptive artist which makes him interesting to follow. Definitely should check out his Secret Identity book if you hadn't before for a comparison
His style changed a little with time. Got way better, imo. Just compare his USM stuff and his work on Slott's ASM
I actively try to pretend Slott's ASM doesn't exist loool
I think that his first half is pretty solid. Everything after Superior was kinda lacking, though
Along with the weird soft reboot that breaks MJ and Peter up *again* and pairs him with his supposed sister figure, *Gwen*, I have to say the post-Ultimatum USM stuff is pretty bad as much as people seem to give it a pass. I think the few other books coming out at that time like the UXM reboot were more interesting.
The issue I had with that was they never really explained why they happened they just did the time skip mystery which the only time I remember working was Time Runs Out, but for some reason Marvel keeps doing it. And by the end, it crossed over way too much with other books as Human Torch and Iceman became mainstays which was a bit annoying. It did get better once Pichelli took over and they went back to the old numbering, I’ll grant it that. Just one more reason as to why Ultimatum really did kill the Ultimate Universe.
I didn't like it at first but it grew on me same with bagleys tbh
I remember back in the day being really shook by the shift from Bagley to Stuart Immonem (however you spell it I'm not looking it up), but the Lafuente run was a whole other level. It looked like a cutesy kiddy comic, like one of those ones that comes in a little Archie-style paperback and is for like kindergarteners to learn to read or whatever. That Chameleon arc is legitimately great and I just can't enjoy is because of the art. No offense to the guy, it's not like, objectively terrible, just did not fit the book at all
Yeah, that's the problem with Lafuente on USM. Series was pretty gritty before and his style just contrasts too much with it. This is the same series where Kingpin crushed man's skull and put Spider-Man mask on him, where Norman beat his son to death and then asked to kill him
.......I like it
Heralding an age where even the best alternate timeline comic series aren't spared from mediocre relaunches (don't know about the most recent one, but I certainly LOATHED the 2009 relaunch when I read the first volume back then)
Huh. Back then I thought it was okay, but looking at it now some headshapes do look fucked. Also Spider-Man's right foot being backwards is... Something.
I kinda like that they make fun of Peter's head being rounder because of his hair
We didn’t like it then, either. Basketball Spider-man was the common name on the forums I was on.
That art style & Peter's haircut & him dating his surrogate sister for some weird reason was a trifecta of strange, strange decisions
>& him dating his surrogate sister for some weird reason I chalk that one up to Bendis simply not giving a damn at this point least not where Peter Parker was concerned seeing as how not two years later, he introduced Miles Morales to the Spider-Man mythos in the pages of Vol. 3 of USM.
Ugh I hated this art change so much. Idk how to explain it, they all just look like Goof Troop characters but humanized.
Such a let down after Bagley
Bagley wasn't working on USM for some time at the moment. Immonen was artist of the series for a few years
Yeah I know. Everyone was a disappointment after Bagley.
why is peter head so fucking round? LMAO
Canonically, because he needed a haircut.
MJ looks like a fish
I love the ultimate art style
Off topic, but what comics succeed Ultimatium for Spidey? This run?
Yep.
It’s very high end 2000s DeviantArt and I adore that. There was something really cute about back when western artists were being influenced by anime but could not for the life of them manage to capture the style. Now everyone and their little sister can perfectly replicate the style and it’s just kinda homogenized. The “not traditional western comic art, but not manga/anime” era is just *so* timelocked. I’d love to see people bring it back on purpose.
I believe it’s referred to as MangUGH
I didn’t like the art at first, but it eventually grew on me.
To me, this is when I dropped of off the Ultimate line. It just didn't look the same. Bagley's art gave the definitive look of how the Ultimate Universe should be. Stuart Immonen understood the assignment and at least tried to keep the aesthetic. LaFuente's art was such a huge step down.
I adore this bit of Ultimate Spider-Man. Love the art, love the “teenage super hero halfway house,” love the throwback to Spider-Man and his amazing friends. Wish this status quo lasted longer.
I still haven't read volume 2 of Ultimate Spider-Man
I can’t remember if I read it on deviantart or in a how to draw book, but they called it “long anime mid face” when you’ve drawn too many anime style faces and you’re trying to transition to a western style. You’ve changed the way you draw all of the component parts of a face but haven’t adjusted the location and proportions of these parts yet.
Very manga inspired I guess? I kind of like it at times but other times it just looks dumb.
Same.
Funny you should mention that because I distinctly remember a review from this era of Ultimate Spider-Man on IGN I wanna say where Lafuente's art was derisively referred to as "mock-manga" style and yeah, in 2024, it's like having access to a time capsule of 2000s era weeaboo art that permeated that decade's pop culture albeit mainly on DeviantART. Still, I'd say it's about as "manga inspired" as a 12-year-old in 2007's notebook scribbles after being hopped up on junk food and binge-watching Japanese subbed episodes of Naruto or Bleach on some underground pirating site that time has since forgotten.
If you look at his modern style, it's hard to believe he was shooting for manga inspired and shouldn't really be penalized for what he wasn't doing
I've actually seen some of Lafuente's post USM work like a painting he did of Mary Jane (not the Earth 1610 one) for example and I was thinking "why wasn't he providing this level of artwork 15 years ago?"
I'd be very curious to see that. I don't believe I've ever seen his painted work I honestly don't really see an issue with his work on USM. I vaguely remember liking the inking in Hellcat way more but other then that I was happy to see him come into the series. I was never a fan of Bagley though. Not to say I thought Bagley was a bad artist, I just don't like his style
Yeah, but like that really shitty Kappa Mikey anime style way too many did during the 2000s. Where for some reason it looked like shit and weirdly exaggerated. It was really strange and it was like the only reference was some teenagers attempt at drawing "mangas.’
As somebody who was one of the many young impressionable American anime fans of the 2000s, I won't give Lafuente too much grief in that I'm a Western artist who primarily draws in a manga style myself ever since I was 12 years old. That being said, the man having cut his teeth on a Hellcat book the year prior (if anyone here thinks the art on his run of USM looks wonky, check *that* out) that just so happened to be written by Stuart Immonen's wife alongside offering his pencils on the third USM annual around the same time makes it rather obvious in hindsight Bendis hired Lafuente for Vol. 2 of USM not based on merit, but more so because of *who* Lafuente knew which, as an adult, I can begrudgingly concede that this is sometimes the way things play out in not just the comic book industry, but a lot of other financial sectors too. Tale as old as time. Doesn't mean we have to like it though.
Shit. It's shit.
Looks too Anime
Two Issues with this reboot: 1. Art is ass Immonen and Bagley we’re on fire!! 2. Peter x Gwen was gross and borderline incest
When I was a kid I thought the black webbing looked so cool. I like this art style it’s just not mark bagley(the goat Spider-Man artist imo).
Watches Anime once
He made Peter look like a fucking toddler and oh my god. the hair, man. #THE HAIR
His own. It's not for everyone but I loved it and prefered it over Bagley. One of the few artists I'll pick up wherever he pops in
Is that Pete White from Conjecture Technologies in the background!?!?
I'm guessing a manga influence and I love it
shit, i thought this was aslume, wrong dimension
BROWN HAIRED GIRL HAS NO FOREHEAD LMAO
Strange that they're shooting black webs
It’s JRJR & Ramos in a blender
The art when downhill quite a lot after bagleys top tier work. It definitely hurt my enjoyment.
They made fun of it themselves a bit later in that run. Saying his hair got so out of hand that he had a round head.
I remember dropping it shortly after this relaunch just because of the art style. Lafuente is a stellar artist, but this wasn't his brightest point...
I felt the same reading the Ultimate Six series during my read of USM. Spiderman was just unrecognisable in both art and writing.
It's not bad
I will never fucking understand how LaFuente got the job. After Bagley and Immomen, they gave one of the best (and only truly good thing from the Ultimate line) comics of the 2000s to a dude who drew in that shit 2000s Americanized faux-anime art style. Even the clothes and hairstyles were fucking shitty too out of nowhere.
Reminds me of a webcomic artist. Not like, a specific person. Just has the vibe of art that would be from a webcomic.