If I thought I could get away with it, the entirety of my review would be “Holy shit.” Because, in contravention of every reasonable expectation I could have had, Clone Saga did not merely maintain the high standards that I have, despite myself, come to expect from the Ultimate Spider-Man series; it surpassed them in every way. Everything else that it crosses my mind to say is, although probably accurate for me as a reader, actually too hyperbolic to put on a page. Suffice it to say, I wish I could do a targeted mindwipe of the book, so I could read it again for the first time, Right Now.

It is my understanding (in fact, there’s an entire introduction discussing it) that this revisits yet another long-celebrated moment in the original Spider-Man continuity. As such, I look forward to it, but I’m glad there will be so many differences, because if it was very similar beyond the essential clone concept, I would be doomed to disappointment. But, okay: in thumbnail, Spider-Man fights the Scorpion at the mall, only to discover that the man inside the suit is Peter Parker! In the aftermath of that stunning moment in the real Peter’s life, Mary Jane gets kidnapped by… but that would be telling; and Nick Fury declares war on Spider-Man, a move that could well be his biggest mistake. And honestly, I’m barely scratching the surface.

And, I know I’ve said this before, but, my God, Aunt May. Simply amazing.

I know this is supposed to be a review of the second (and I suspect final) volume in the Ultimate Annuals series. But it’s not so much a series as it is a collection of the oversized annual edition of each of the four major Ultimate serieses, and unlike last time, I’ve read most of these recently. Like, the X-Men story is I think the most recent thing I’ve read in that run, in which Nightcrawler goes from an unfortunately prejudiced dude who needs to have a good lightbulb moment to a disturbingly broken kidnapper who is probably on the verge of defection to evilness, over the next storyline or two. Or the Fantastic Four story in which Mole Man returns with a new plot to kidnap geniuses and harness them for his own uses. Okay, that one was pretty good, but I’ve already reached the end of the Ultimate FF run (save for the Ultimatum stuff), and it didn’t actually have the payoff it seemed like it should have had later on, so I am retroactively a little disappointed in it. Plus, the only story that isn’t collected in another book I’ve already read, in which Captain America and that Falcon guy from Ultimate Galactus head into the post-war American landscape[1] to fight an old Nazi menace? It kind of bored me. I think I blame this on it being the first Ultimates story I’ve seen that wasn’t written by Mark Millar. He’s good at those!

So, okay, yeah. Pretty disappointing book all in all, though I have given unfairly short shrift to the FF story. Except, y’know, Spider-Man. His story, which you may recall me choosing not to review when I read Deadpool earlier this week, is another clash between Peter Parker, Daredevil, and the Punisher. Except, right, I never read the original such clash because it was somehow left out of the three Ultimate Marvel Team-Up books in which comics-run it occurred. Luckily, someone eventually released a giant collection of that entire run in one book, making my three individual volumes obsolete. So, I read the three comics in question out of that, just to feel caught up. In short, across pages of annoyingly impressionistic artwork, we’re introduced to the Punisher, cop-turned-vigilante who hunts and kills dirty cops and dirtier criminals and spends most of his time in jail for said vigilantism, and Daredevil, blind lawyer with super-heightened alternate senses that allow him a better grasp of the world than any civilian and most superhumans. And Pete puts the Punisher back in jail while annoying the snot out of Daredevil for his happy-go-lucky attitude and his penchant for jumping into the middle of things first and asking questions later. (Which is I guess why Nick Fury is annoyed by him too. Also Blade.[2])

So, anyway, in this follow up meeting (Also including the Moon Knight (who I still have no kind of handle on), the Kingpin (still a magnificently realized bastard), and Kangaroo (uh…)), Daredevil still finds Spider-Man annoying and the Punisher still finds him detrimental. But none of that is really the point. The point is this: there’s been a long-term piece of plot involving the new[3] police captain, Jeanne de Wolfe, that I haven’t ever mentioned partially because it’s been largely in the background and partially because, well, any amount of detail places us squarely in spoiler city. But the thing is, as much time as I spend talking about how great the USM series is, right? This is just on a day-to-day basis. In the meantime, there are these deep undercurrents spanning something like half of the series to date that I’ve never even felt the need to mention. And of course there’s an inevitable huge payoff, that leads me to have to jump back into two paragraphs of review material just to explain how even an oversized single comic in this series is still so very cool. This is why I can’t stop gushing, no matter how hard I try to hold myself back. Because it’s just always this good.[4]

[1] Yeah, for serious, I really really need to do a quick reread of the four Ultimates titles that have been released so far, ’cause I barely have any idea what’s up in that quadrant of the Ultimate universe anymore, and I’m starting to reach the point where everything really does tie together. Maybe I’ll do one mega-review? Maybe not, depends on how it strikes me I guess.
[2] Yeah. The half-vampire guy. Seriously.
[3] The old captain was Gwen Stacy’s father, up until he was shot and killed by a guy in a Spider-Man costume. Good times!
[4] And the last page or two, in which Daredevil has a conversation with the Moon Knight guy? I’ve learned my lesson and mention it now, as I expect it to be the next major undercurrent.

I almost wish, if only for half a moment, that Bendis would write a bad, nay, even a merely mediocre run of Ultimate Spider-Man, just so I’d have something new to say. “It’s just so good! You’ll love it!” Whatever, man. I’m losing all credibility over here. But, okay, why do I love it this time? I have an answer to that. Now and again, one of the series will focus on a character with whom I’m unfamiliar, and the author will seem to be so proud of having worked that character into the Ultimate continuity that the book just coasts on recognition factor without really trying to be actually good in its own right. In fairness, that plan has worked on me when I did recognize whatever new character it was, but for the many times when I do not, the laziness outshines everything else.

Except this time, not so much. I’m not particularly familiar with Deadpool, and really all I know about him is that in the Wolverine movie earlier this year, he was maybe kind of indestructible? That character is largely dissimilar to this one, in any event. But, and here’s the part where I fulfill the inevitable gushiness quotient, Bendis went ahead and wrote a fine plot around the advent of Ultimate Deadpool. See, Spider-Man gets mixed up in a plot to murder the X-Men on broadcast television[1], and this guy Deadpool is the main hunter. But despite all kinds of mutant powers and explosions of exactly the types that a superhero comic needs to have to maintain credibility[2], most of the focus is on Peter and the delightfully unconfident Kitty Pryde, his recent paramour. Because, as has consistently been the case throughout the USM run, Peter Parker’s life is the important thing; super-villains and web fluid alike take the back seat. This is why it works. But also, Aunt May has a hot date, so I guess maybe it isn’t always about Pete after all. Then, for a change of pace, vampires! And more friendship trouble with Mary Jane! And the Kingpin! But I’ll glance at that last bit in my next review.

[1] Which is actually a callback to a previous UXM storyline, but I forget which one. It was alright, in any event.
[2] Unlike me, you see, is the thread tying this review together.

The reasonably self-explanatory first volume of Ultimate Annuals collects the annuals from each of the main comics in the Marvel Ultimate line-up. An annual, if you’re not familiar, is a extra-large comic published outside the monthly run, sometimes used as the climax of or opening to a major storyline but just as often not very relevant to the immediate continuity. Though, Marvel being who they are, continuity is generally king. The downside to these books is two-fold, in that 1) most of said annuals have already been produced in their respective series, and 2) one of them has not, so I needed the book anyway. Far easier than finding and sorting an actual comic in the middle of my graphic novel shelf, and probably not that much more expensive, used. So, that happened.

However, reading so much material I’ve seen before, and some of it recently, did free me up to pay attention to other concerns, such as the artwork and each story’s place in the arc. So, there’s a Fantastic Four story in which the Inhumans are shoehorned so that they can be seen, and I guess that is my problem with a lot of what I read of the Ultimate Fantastic Four run in the first place. The lack of consistent writer over any period of time made it so that a lot of what I read failed to engage me on a new coolness level, instead of the baseline “I recognize that!” level. Plus, in this case, the art was just distractingly bad. (Not to my taste, if you prefer.) And then there’s an X-Men story that checked in on Rogue, Gambit, and Juggernaut, and it was a pretty good one that did shift things around some and matter later, but felt maybe a little rushed. And then there’s a Spider-Man story that I read in literally the most recent Spider-Man book, and while the story itself was sweet and funny and seems like it will matter for at least the next while, the art was distracting there too, not for being bad, but for being even marginally different after so much consistency throughout the USM run.

And finally, the Ultimates story that I had not read before. By now I was already paying attention to the art, but I think I would have anyway, because it was so distractingly familiar. Finally placed it, same guy that did the art for the Preacher series. His style definitely fits the Ultimates, so that was alright. The story was Nick Fury unravelling a few layers of his ongoing plans, which mostly involve improvements to superhuman defenses and the political fallout from that, but also touch on his ongoing suspicions about Henry Pym’s loyalties and his worldwide search for evidence as to the life or death of Bruce Banner. ‘Cause, for serious, the Ultimates books have always been less “super” and more “spy/political”, and I once more avow my almost certainty of re-reading that entire sequence before I get to the build-up to Ultimatum, probably sometime next year?

Takeaway lessons: 1) Rereading comics can be pretty okay. 2) I allow myself to re-use words with distracting frequency, if I decide they have become thematic rather than merely indicative of vocabularic deficiencies. 3) That Ultimates series just keeps on delivering, but is somewhat more dense compared to the other series, and thus needs more contemplation. 4) Amount, quality, or newness of material have no particular bearing on how long I’ll keep nattering about them, and it’s mostly down to my writing mood when I sit down.