In issue no. 54 of the comic book Ultimate Spider-Man, every-one’s favorite teenage superhero slings down from the sky onto a New York street doubling as a set for the movie Spider-Man, starring Tobey Maguire and directed by Sam Raimi . . . or, at least, cartoony comic-book versions of them. Spidey drops down alongside Maguire, who’s harnessed to the side of a building, faces Raimi and his fellow filmmakers, and proceeds to tell them off: “You suck! And you suck and you suck. All right, Evil Dead 2 was cool, but the rest of you suck.” A few panels later, he adds: “And your movie is going to tank! You know why? Because you aren’t me. You’re fake. You can’t do this!” And with that he backflips gracefully through the air, landing high up on top of some filmmaking equipment.

Picked-on high-school student/costumed crime fighter Peter Parker might have been a little harsh toward Raimi and crew. In Parker’s defense, he was a bit miffed. And not because cameras were rolling during this entire exchange (thus saving Sony $1.2 million in special effects, a producer notes), but because his already-hectic life was subject to big-screen treatment at all and he wasn’t able to earn a dime off the project. So there was plenty of pent-up anger involved. At least he wisely credited Raimi for Evil Dead 2—apparently a masterpiece in any universe. And certainly he was off base when he predicted the movie’s failure, an unlikely scenario if the Ultimate  …