I am not a big fan of the Ultimate line. It seems like, for most of them, the writers decide to push for "edgy", and just end up writing a lot of painfully unsympathetic people acting horribly to everybody around them until they happen to save the world. Frankly, it's kind of boring to read, when it isn't irritating. Bendis went a totally different route with Peter Parker. He wrote just wrote a modern Spider-Man. Which means that Peter isn't an insufferably arrogant jerk for no reason, he's a kid with a good heart who can still make serious and hurtful mistakes. And that is what makes Ultimate Spider-Man a compelling read. It helps that Bendis executes really, really well. I love that he takes him time getting to the inevitable (Uncle Ben's death, of course) so we can get a real attachment to these characters before the bottom falls out from under them. This trade could really be subtitled "Exposition", because there's far more setup than action. That's fine. There's a lot to setup here. Honestly, I'm wondering now why I never persisted in reading Ultimate Spider-Man past the first five or six trades. Time to fix that.