Ultimate Spider-Man #23
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeUltimate Spider-Man Vol. 3 #23 is the penultimate chapter of Jonathan Hickman's acclaimed reinvention of Peter Parker on Earth-6160 — a run that earned a 2025 Eisner nomination for Best Continuing Series and a 2026 nomination in the same category, marking it as one of the most critically recognized Marvel series of the mid-2020s. As the darkest-hour issue before the finale, it crystallizes the series' central moral argument: that an older, family-man Peter Parker, operating in a world engineered against heroism by the Maker, must rely on a makeshift alliance of reimagined 'villains' — Otto Octavius as Superior Spider-Man, Harry Osborn as Green Goblin, and his own son Richard as Venom — to reclaim the world's stolen destiny. The issue also deepens this universe's most pointed commentary on the 616 continuity: where Marvel's mainline stripped Peter and MJ of their marriage, Hickman's Earth-6160 places it at the moral and emotional center of a story that was partly lauded by critics as a corrective to that decades-old editorial decision. Its narrative beats — Kingpin and Mr. Negative overwhelming Peter at his lowest, Harry choosing Gwen over Peter — set the stage for a series conclusion that Marvel billed as the end of the entire Ultimate Universe publishing line.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The series was conceived as the debut title of Marvel's relaunched Ultimate Universe imprint following the Ultimate Invasion miniseries, with Jonathan Hickman writing and Marco Checchetto as the primary artist; David Messina contributed interior art alongside Checchetto on the later issues, including #23. Issue #23 was shipped December 10, 2025 with a cover by Checchetto and color art by Matthew Wilson, edited by Wil Moss and Michelle Marchese under Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski. The series ran exactly 24 issues before concluding with the Ultimate Endgame crossover event in early 2026, making #23 the penultimate single issue of the entire Earth-6160 Ultimate Universe publishing initiative.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Written by Jonathan Hickman with interior art by David Messina and a cover by Marco Checchetto; released December 10, 2025 (cover-dated February 2026).
- Penultimate issue (#23 of 24) of Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 3, the final arc before the series concluded with the Ultimate Endgame event ending the entire Earth-6160 Ultimate Universe line.
- Features three simultaneous Spider-Men in the same story: Peter Parker (Spider-Man), Richard Parker (Venom), and Otto Octavius (Superior Spider-Man), whose Superior persona debuted in the preceding issue #22.
- Narrative low point of the series: Peter Parker is beaten down by the Kingpin while Mr. Negative's power suppresses his ability to fight back, and Harry Osborn (Green Goblin) chooses to remain with his wife Gwen rather than come to Peter's aid — a pivotal friend-or-idol decision that sets up the finale.
- In this universe, Mysterio is Gwen Stacy-Osborn (Harry's wife) and Captain Britain is Henri Dugarry, inverting or radically reimagining both characters from their 616 counterparts.
- The series — and by extension this issue — was nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series in both 2025 and 2026, underscoring the critical esteem in which Hickman and Checchetto's run was held throughout its publication.
- The series is set on Earth-6160, the second iteration of Marvel's Ultimate Universe, in which the Maker (Reed Richards of Earth-1610) engineered a world where no one could become a superhero — the Kingpin and his Sinister Six serving as the Maker's regional enforcers.
- The 'Paper' — the underground investigative outlet run by Ben Parker and J. Jonah Jameson under the alias 'Ben Reilly' — appears in this issue as an ongoing subplot, representing the series' parallel narrative about journalism and resistance to authoritarian information control.
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