Ultimate Spider-Man: Today
Issue: #36
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inker: Art Thiebert
Colors: Transparency Digital

The reggae concert is over, and Eddie Brock and Gwen Stacy are sitting in Eddie’s dorm room, talking. Eddie tries to kiss Gwen, but she turns him down, pointing out that she’s only 15. He tries to talk her into it, and she leaves. Grumbling, Eddie turns on the television and sees the broadcast of Spider-Man in his new suit. Eddie recognizes the dark suit as being the same stuff he’s been working with in the lab. He rushes to the lab and finds a person in a hooded parka and bare feet taking the sample out of the locker. It’s Peter, who has had to steal some clothes. He’s also left footprints – down a wall from the window in the ceiling.

Peter tells Eddie that the experimental goo is uncontrollable and should be destroyed. Eddie shouts that he trusted Peter with a secret and grabs for the container, but Peter picks him up by the front of his shirt and holds him off the ground. Eddie figures out that Peter is Spider-Man. He threatens to call the police if Peter doesn’t give him back the sample.

Peter apologizes for breaking in and stealing the sample, but then goes on to talk about others who experimented with substances they couldn’t control and ruined not only their own lives, but others’ lives as well. Peter knows that if they don’t destroy this sample, it will come back to haunt them.

Eddie pleads with him, but Peter insists. Finally Eddie tells him to go. Peter says that no one, not even his aunt, knows about his life as Spider-Man, and that Eddie’s trust in him means a lot. Then Peter takes the sample and carries it across the city to a smokestack, where he drops it in, watching it burn. He goes home to change, and finds Gwen in the living room. She tells him that Aunt May is at a PTA meeting. The discussion turns to Eddie, and Gwen says he tried to hit on her after the concert. Peter tries to argue that Eddie just made a bad decision. Gwen says she has a sixth sense about these things, and that Eddie is a bad guy.

The action flashes back to Eddie just after Peter has left with the sample. Certain that Peter is gone, Eddie opens his locker to see the container of goo missing. Then he opens another locker to reveal a second canister of the substance; the first was the experimental one, this is the control sample. Eddie dips two fingers into the substance.

Submitted By: Seldes Katne