Welcome to the first installment of Big Shiny Robot’s monthly ongoing Earth 1610 recap and review, Ultimate Monthly. Let’s cut the bullshit, and dive right into it…
Ultimate X-Men has run it’s course, bowing out with a beautifully illustrated final issue, laying to rest the series as well as a plethora of it’s characters. Picking up shortly after the conclusion of Jeph Loeb’s Ultimatum with Kitty Pride slinking through the Triskelion to retrieve Wolverine’s remains for burial. Back at Xavier’s campus, Rouge, Jean Grey and Iceman, the surviving X-Men, prepare to lay their fallen teammates to rest in a mass grave. The services are interrupted when Mystique, Sabertooth and Assemble crash with a proposition to start a new X-Men team. A fight ensues, some ass gets kicked and the Brotherhood of Mutant stragglers leave with their tails between their legs, leaving the X-Men to bury their friends and family and walk away from superheroism forever.
This book seems to do the series some justice, after several years of bad art, bad writing and poor sales. Ben Oliver’s art in the book is fantastic: subtle and shy away from the bulging muscles, square jaws and big tits and ass artwork Mark Brooks’ had endowed the book with in it’s final days. Aron E. Coliete has penned a fine issue, the first in his disappointing run on the book. Happily this story doesn’t involve a shitty reimagining of Alpha Flight, human/sentinel hybrids or after school anti-drug dramas. So long Ultimate X-Men, if Mark Millar or Brian Bendis had been writing you you’d be missed.
Ultimate Fantastic Four: Requiem
Written by Joe Pokaski
Illustrated by Robert Atkins
An Open Letter to Ultimate Fantastic Four.
“Dear Ultimate Fantastic Four,
When you broke your cherry as a well written and well drawn retooled version of Stan Lee’s classic I was nothing short of amazed. When I asked a clerk at my comic store how this book came to be, he explained that when two very talented writers love each other they come together they produce one kick ass book. You were very special, managing to develop an amazing story about a family that incidentally had super powers. The Thing cried himself to sleep, Mr. Fantastic was a snot nosed kid with daddy issues, the Invisible Woman was a compassionate girlfriend and good big sister and the Human Torch played practical jokes and couldn’t grasp the concept of having power and responsibility and it pulled on everyone’s heart strings.
Yes, you did pass through the hands of many a writers, but they all knew how to push you forward and successfully reinvent classic stories of your older brother, the original Fantastic Four. That was until someone at Marvel decided to hand you over to the talentless Mike Carey, who took all those three dimensional aspects you had and tainted them with bad dialogue and even worse, convoluted stories that shat out your integrity like a hooker with dysentery. There was so much potential and yet, you were cut down in your youth, now we’ll never see Reed and Sue tie the knot, or see Ben Grim become the godfather of their children or Johnny Storm grown into his own as a superhero.
In your final issue, you pass through yet one more writer, one not as moronic as Carey, yet one very banal, not quite giving you your dues. Our last 32 pages of you consists of a badly drawn backstory to how the Human Torch gets sucked into the pendent of the demon named Dormammu. The trauma you had ensued during the events of Ultimatum seemed to have little to no barring on your four beloved heroes and everyone goes their different ways, us readers included. It’s like a bad break up, sent over a text message. I feel bad for you Ultimate Fantastic Four, you were abused by bad writers and may you rest in peace.
~Humanjunk”
Welcome to a new chapter in the Ultimate universe. Ultimatum is over and the damage has been done. Heroes have died, teams have disbanded and they need to be avenged and the surviving members of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Ultimates are gonna do it. Mark Millar returns to his motley crew of dysfunctional superheroes with the talented Carlos Pacheco to take on Captain America’s son and new foe, the Red Skull. The first issue of this new ongoing series is damn good, but it’s hard to expect anything less from Mark Millar. It’s balls out action packed and well paced, you finish 32 pages wanting more in the best way possible. The book has the potential, if you read Marvel books and this isn’t in your hold you’re an imbecile.
We knew Ultimate Spider-Man wasn’t really going to die. How could Brian Michael Bendis let that happen? Ultimate Spidey single handedly launched what is probably the best web slinging title in 20 years. It’s also happens to be one of the best books regularly published by Marvel, it’s consistently good, it moves forward and has everything a reader could want in a superhero book, melodrama, great villains, adventure and heart. Well, welcome to volume two of Ultimate Spider-Man. It’s a brand new era for the young hero having survived the cataclysmic events of Ultimatum and officially earning the respect of New York City as a hero. Anyone who followed Ultimatum knows that a lot of characters died, heroes and villains alike, but not all of them; not the Kingpin of New York, Wilson Fisk and not Mysterio, who’s now gunning to run the underbelly of New York’s organized crime.
Bendis treats the book as a new beginning; it’s light hearted and feels like an episode of Degrassi rather than a John Hughes high school dramady. It’s snappy and fun and certainly the antithesis of the Earth 16010’s last few hellish months of death, violence and mayhem. Sadly, artist Stuart Immonen has moved on to greener pastures (Bendis’ ongoing New Avengers) and has been replaced by David LaFuente. LaFuente’s art certainly contributes to the books light and new found cuddly atmosphere, but doesn’t really do it any justice. His close ups of character faces are absolutely hideous and looks like the art of an anime obsessed 6th grader who can’t draw his way out of a paper bag. Spidey’s head is a huge, round grapefruit on a toothpick and when the mask is off, Peter Parker looks androgynous which is creepy when he makes out with a horribly drawn Gwen Stacy. LaFuente’s character designs are Hot Topic chic and cater to the blind. What Bendis sees in this hideous art is beyond me.
As good as the writing is, Ultimate Spider-Man #1 is a frustrating book. It picks up 6 months after Ultimatum and skips a lot of potentially interesting story and character development; like how does a 15 year-old, who’s already lost so much, cope with being a hero in such a traumatic event; how does his relationship with Mary Jane dissolve and why does he rebound with Gwen Stacy? Long time readers of the first volume of Ultimate Spider-Man will feel slightly gypped by the book, like Bendis tried to fix something that wasn’t broke. But, most comic book readers fear change, so let’s all wait and see how it unfolds.
What’s coming up this month?
The next issue of Ultimate Spider-Man hits shelves and Marvel Digital Comics this Wednesday (September 3rd) and continues the New World According to Peter Parker arc and on September 9th look for Ultimate Avengers #2. Warren Ellis returns to the Ultimate Universe for the first time since his stellar Ultimate Human with the first of a four issue mini series called Ultimate Armor Wars; where Tony Stark has to prevent the theft of his technology, which will hit your local comic store on September 16th.
Until next month, cheers!