10 Essential Storylines To Read If You're Just Getting Into Spider-Man

5. Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1

While this writer can personally attest to having gotten into Spider-Man through this particular series, on the surface, one would perhaps wonder what Ultimate Spider-Man brought to the table when it was first published in 2000. After all, it's just Spider-Man, right? What difference could there be?

A lot, it turns out, because Brian Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man is the definition of an easy to pick up comic; leave all that continuity at the door, forget what you know about Spider-Man, and just hop along for the ride as Bendis puts his own stamp on Spidey's origin. You'd certainly struggle to find a more important comic - at the time - than this particular series, and while the influence of the Ultimate Universe would wain come the mid-2000s, Ultimate Spider-Man posed a consistent reminder of its brilliance and potential throughout its publishing run.

That first volume, written by Bendis and drawn by Mark Bagley, has its dated moments, but it was a breath of fresh air when it first released. After all the Clone Sagas, symbiotes, deaths and resurrections of the main timeline, to have a Spidey book that just, y'know, didn't have all that, was indescribably refreshing.

It helped that it was a great series too, and with it all collected in TPB form, it's far from a hard one to track down.