Tag Archives: Ultimate Series

Ultimate Fantastic Four: Ghosts

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It’s been almost a week and an unfortunately high number of other books since I read Ghosts, but I can certainly say that I liked it. The Cosmic Cube storyline that started all the way back in God War finally comes to a head, and in such a way as to make me like that book a little better than I did at the time[1]. Basically, big bad guy Thanatos shows up to swipe the Cosmic Cube he tricked Reed Richards into making for him, which has consumed Reed’s attention for so long that all of his relationships are falling by the wayside. And as if a godlike dude with complete control over death being given a device chock-full of cosmic powers[2] isn’t enough to worry about, two threats from the communist past are also hanging around to make life tricky for our overwhelmed heroes. So, if you’ve been missing the Crimson Dynamo from your admittedly non-existent Ultimate Iron Man series[4] or the Red Ghost (who you may recall controls hyper-intelligent animals and is also sort of a ghost) from this series, Carey has got you covered! Meanwhile, brief spoilers below the break. Continue reading →

Ultimate Spider-Man: Hollywood

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I’m officially a broken record. All the same, the Ultimate Spider-Man series continues to impress. You really wouldn’t think that another fight with Doctor Octopus would be all that much of a much, but where Hollywood shines is in all the gaps and cracks getting filled in with juicy, delicious plot. And also, in this case, heaping doses of meta-humor. Because, you see, there’s a certain movie about a certain urban superhero, filmed by a certain Sam Raimi and starring a certain Tobey Maguire. And it’s being filmed in Manhattan without the permission of or payments to a certain Peter Parker.[1] As if that (and let us not forget Doc Ock) wasn’t enough, longtime Parker houseguest Gwen Stacy reaches a critical turning point!

[1] I think that said movie, in reality, was one of the inspiring forces behind the Ultimate universe reboot of Marveldom in the first place. Which takes the metaness to a whole new level.

Ultimate X-Men: Cry Wolf

I am really ambivalent about my latest X-Men, Cry Wolf. On the one hand, it was a good story that hung together well and shifted around several of the character elements in new ways, such that I am looking forward to what comes next. Also, unlike the last time he showed up, Gambit got a proper introduction and seemed like a real person. Which is good, because he’s apparently a favorite, but I don’t really know of him from anywhere but these books.

But on the other hand, too many of the events seemed forced for the sake of hitting key plot points from the original run. It’s all good and well for there to be a triangle between Bobby Drake and Kitty Pryde and Rogue, but build it up a little bit, yeah? I’ll care more if it doesn’t seem to be performed by rote. I’m willing to reserve judgment on the Fenris Corporation, as I assume they’ll be relevant later and this wasn’t just a whirlwind but ultimately pointless mention.

(I’m not leaving out the actual plot on purpose, it’s just that it was a hanger for the character interactions and changes, and thus seems less important than the other stuff I talked about.)

Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Six

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So, a kind of a funny thing happened. I completely forgot to read this book. I had it in queue, and I guess it was in the back seat of my car or something, and I was so far behind on reviews anyway, and somehow I convinced myself I’d already read it. It could be that a new Walking Dead contributed to my misapprehension on this matter as well? I just realized, suddenly, that there was no review, and then while looking at the book with the intention of loaning it out to my friend Emily (who you will no doubt recall as the violently abused daughter in The Last House on the Left), it hit me that, hey, you did not at all read this. Both matters: rectified!

You would think, having finally caught up to the book I most recently finished, I would have it in me to do more than gush. There’s just something about Brian Michael Bendis writing Ultimate Spider-Man that leaves me incoherent with glee, apparently. I’d like to mind, but if that’s what it takes to get work this consistently amazing and this consistently able to top itself, then I’m not going to quibble overmuch. Ultimate Six re-envisions the first really big Spider-Man event of the original Marvel era, in which six of Spider-Man’s past foes team up to accomplish what none of them could individually: Spider-Man’s annihilation.

Of course, when I say “re-envisions”, what I mean is, “takes the kernel of an idea and demonstrates that, no matter how good Marvel really was in the ’60s, it has the ability to blow that out of the water in the modern era”. Four of Peter Parker’s previous foes, including the Green Goblin and the Sandman as a newly added fifth in a flashback sequence from a few months ago, are under S.H.I.E.L.D. imprisonment for illegal genetic modifications. The consequences of this unfortunate collection of villainy in one holding area are many and varied, ranging from the airing of Nick Fury’s significantly dirty laundry[1], to Peter’s identity being revealed to a significant portion of the Ultimate universe, to the likely psychological collapse of his once-friend Harry Osborn. And even these pale in comparison to what will happen if the Ultimates[2] cannot prevent the team of five (and their newest sixth recruit) from fulfilling their plan to strike at the very heart of the government.

[1] I like that I can trust this event will have future consequences to the continuity.
[2] For timeline purists, the Ultimate Six storyline (which was apparently independent of the Ultimate Spider-Man run, though I like that it was collected here) falls between Ultimates and Ultimates II.

Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Volume 2

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After being underwhelmed by the first Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, I was looking forward to getting through the remaining volumes quickly so that I could move on to some of the side storylines I’ve been seeing in the future that look pretty awesome, and the moreso because apparently there’s some kind of big Ultimate Universe event coming up, and I can’t be more than halfway through the accumulated catalog yet. To my surprise, though, the second volume of the series’ rather short run was thoroughly enjoyable.

The stories are all short and fluffily irrelevant to solid continuity in a way that the other runs and one-shot storylines are not. But they are far more strongly written than last time, including another visit from the X-Men[1] to explain human-mutant relations that clearly predates the UXM series’ start, and a ridiculously non-canonical visit with the Fantastic Four that was over the top hilarious. It also included the origin of Dr. Strange via a direct rip-off of the first Spider-Man/Strange crossover story back in the ’60s. The best moment, Logan/Peter notwithstanding, was the Lizard-Man origin issue. Curt Connor’s tragic scientific success is one of the best “villain” arcs I’ve seen out of Marvel in either universe, even if there’s an underlying message about the consequences of meddling with nature that I’m not so happy about.

The art varied between perfect, wonkily appropriate, and just plain wonky. Really, the only thing I was unhappy with was that three issues were outright skipped between the first and second book, resulting in my need to either scour comic stores for the missing issues directly, or to rebuy the Ultimate Marvel Team-Up run in a single volume. Both ideas are pretty solidly meh, at the moment. But I’m sure I’ll do one of them, eventually.

[1] Plus, yay, more Logan/Peter interaction. Still easily the best Ultimate crossover relationship, though the Nick Fury/Peter and /Professor X interactions are quite interesting. It’s just, Fury is so damn unlikeable most of the time.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: Silver Surfer

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Being behind makes for subpar reviews. So, y’know. But I liked Silver Surfer more than I’ve liked the last few Fantastic Fours, even despite the fact that it was a fair bit more divergent from regular Marvel continuity than I’m used to the Ultimate universe being. Basically, Reed Richards is continuing to research the cosmic cube he was tricked into taking home a couple of books ago, and this time he accidentally summons a familiar-looking silver being riding a familiar-looking silver surfboard. And then the world kind of gets kidnapped. As usual, the FF are the most sci-fi series in Marvel, even when it doesn’t seem to match the rest of the continuity. Sometimes, that bothers me. This time, at least, it was a pretty damn cool story, albeit one with no apparent continuity impact. But I could be wrong about that, easily enough. If I find out otherwise, I’ll let you know!

Ultimate X-Men: The Tempest

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I assume I liked the last Ultimate X-Men book, insofar as I’ve been liking them in general. Plus also, tragedy struck, and while I don’t automatically like that (depending on what happened), I definitely always like aftermath. And The Tempest is very much about aftermath, even though it’s in a quiet way, against the backdrop of a brand new villain and a mutant-assassin in his employ.

And, the book being short, that’s pretty much all that happened. I don’t want to elaborate on the aftermath, because, spoilers, and I can’t elaborate on the new villains, because I’m supposed to recognize them old school, and I did not get far enough to, I guess? But they made for a good story, and I can ask for little more than that! Except for being so deep into a series as to be pretty confusing, I could recommend the book unreservedly as an afternoon’s diversion.

So. That’s that, then!

Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Volume 1

I may have mentioned at one point my sudden realization that a lot of things I have read during my what, year-long now Ultimate Marvel kick, had backward-looking references to some books that came out right at the beginning and I had initially failed to be aware of. But I’ve found these, and they are now in the rotation. Which brings us inexorably to Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, in which various characters from the Ultimate universe, you know, team up with each other.

Or, to be more accurate, Spider-Man meets other characters in an explicit crossover format that comes from the late ’60s or early ’70s or somewhen, because Brian Michael Bendis mostly likes Spider-Man and wanted to revive that format for the new generation. The only problem is, brief historical curiosity aside, the stories weren’t that interesting. The strength of Marvel, past as well as present, has always been its ongoing storylines with long-term consequences. Yes, there’s a lot of soap-operaish returns to life and failed relationships, but they are at least consequential from moment to moment, instead of seen once and irrelevant ever after. Necessarily, one-shot stories are going to come off pretty cold in a world where everything else matters, quite a bit.

All that said, the stories themselves were about a conflict between Peter and the first appearance of the Hulk in this timeline, during which stuff got trashed, Spider-Man proved his own relative strength and durability to the audience, and any kind of climax was left completely by the wayside; about a meeting between the also-inaugural appearance of Iron Man (complete with origin story) and our good Mr. Parker, who actually do team up to stop some… high-tech Communists, I guess? And, best of all, a meeting between Peter and Wolverine in which they try to fight off Sabretooth (he’s an evil mutant who is basically the same as Logan, only, y’know, eviller) before lots of civilians get hurt. Unsurprisingly to me, that last story was the most compelling. I assume it has something to do with what mutually-sympathetic, outsider characters Wolverine and Spider-Man are within their respective worlds. So, yay inevitable chemistry.

The art, which I only tend to notice when it is particularly egregious or unusual, or when the story is boring me, was in this instance equally boring. I wonder if I just think most of the art is fantastic and forget to say so, or if I’m really picky about handing out praise, or if I think most of the art is workmanlike and that only bothers me because I’ve focused on it in search of something to hold my attention when the story is so-so. Probably it’s the first one, but the correlation in my (possibly faulty?) memory between iffy art and iffy plot has been high over time.

Ultimate Fantastic Four: Devils

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In Devils, the Fantastic Four once again tangle with their first enemy, the Mole Man, an event which might turn out to have unintended and far-reaching consequences. I’m not really sure I trust the storyline to go anywhere, though, since it was part of an annual, which issues tend to be further than usual outside the main story arc of any Marvel comic I’ve read. (On the bright side, they are never completely separated from it, either, which still keeps them ahead of my expectations.)

But then they tangled with a Renaissance alchemist called Diablo. And a lot of other alchemists who were less evil but also had a lot of magical powers nevertheless. So, apparently, there’s magic in the Ultimate universe, not just lots of freaky science accidents. I guess I’m less okay with this than I expected, and probably because it’s taken so long to appear. Still, it’s a comic, and I’ll get over it here soon. More disconcerting was how containedly episodic the entire sequence felt. I won’t really know if I’m wrong about that for quite a while, but it might be worse if I am, since it really wouldn’t make any sense to dig the storyline up again, so solidly was it concluded.

Well, okay, there was one reasonably cool loose end. And time travel, which is always fun, even when there are no apparent consequences.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Cats and Kings

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The problem is, it feels like all of my Ultimate Spider-Man reviews are basically the same. That is the only problem, though. I’m pretty sure that if there were forty years’ worth of this series to read, I wouldn’t read anything else for a long, long time. As it is, I hold myself in check, so that I won’t run out for a while. (See also: the Dresden Files)

So, in Cats and Kings, Aunt May continues to be the best (rather than worst) supporting character in comics, J. Jonah Jameson[1] shows sudden depth of character, Mary Jane reveals new troubles that, in retrospect, have been there all along, and… oh, right! There’s also some crime-fighting! Including the return of Spidey’s first foe, the Kingpin, the reveal of a single-dimensional Elektra that has nothing much to do with the one I’ve reviewed lately[2], and new-to-me character Black Cat, who… okay, despite an apparent cribbing of a DC character you may or may not be familiar with, seems like she might be the best crossover between Peter’s life and Spider-Man’s since the Osborn family. It remains to be seen, though!

As usual, none of this comes close to capturing the essential funness of the series. Every volume is like reading the first day of sunlight in the spring in Seattle, or reading your kid’s first steps, or reading the first time you ever had sex with Scarlett Johansson.[3]

[1] He runs the newspaper, the Daily Bugle, where Peter Parker works. But you knew that?
[2] Which is pretty much a good thing. The Ultimate Daredevil and Elektra in their own books have no good way to cross-over with the rest of the Ultimate universe, unlike most of the rest of what I’ve read.
[3] Too much hype?