I was one of the doubters when it came to the addition of the Ultimate line to Marvel's comics lineup. The idea seemed shaky - to restart Marvel's Universe from the beginning, offering a modern take on classic concepts and giving the characters a fresh start. It had been tried before to less than stellar success (Heroes Reborn, anyone?)
The line has been around for, what, almost a decade now (can that be right?), and the results to date have been mixed.
The Ultimate Spider-Man comic is definitely the jewel in the crown, an excellent retelling of Peter Parker's life during his high school years. Writer Brian Bendis has turned in some of his best work on that title, and it continues strong today.
Almost every other title has been a mixed success. The Ultimate versions of the Fantastic Four and X-Men have had some strong stories, but also some poor ones. The Ultimates title has suffered from incredibly long delays between issues - and don't get me started on Ultimates 3.
The rest of the brand's comics have been similarly hit-or-miss, though many have featured excellent artwork. Of late the focus seems to be on big event crossovers, like the interminable Ultimate Galactus series.
Now along comes the Ultimate Origins series, which also features excellent artwork by the underrated Butch Guice. But for a book that promises lots of answers, it really only serves as a prologue for the next "Big Event," Ultimatum.
The promos for Origins touted it as showing how everything in the Ultimate Universe is tied together, and I guess it sorta kinda does - but it adds up to a big "Is that all there is to it?"
Oh, there are a few revelations, and some readers may be shocked to discover what was really going on in that Weapon X lab - but for the most part, it's just connecting the dots and setting up the next story.
I was hoping for a little more out of this series than a sales pitch for the next one. At this point, the Ultimate line is living up to my original (low) expectations - I've been dropping the titles one by one, and Spider-Man's the sole survivor at this point.
If the line could live up to that title's quality, I'd still be along for the ride - but as it is, I'm losing interest fast. And Ultimate Origins may have sealed the deal.
Grade: C-
4 comments:
No kidding about the incredibly underrated Butch Guice. I started reading Ultimate Origins because I saw his art on another comic currently coming out: STORMING PARADISE from Wildstorm (written by Chuck Dixon).
I've been away from the Ultimate comics for a while. All the books ended up going bad at some point and losing me. I saw Butch Guice was drawing and ended up picking Origins up.
It really.... lost me. There was no real story. Just some vignettes to... fill out continuity? What was the purpose of this comic? What was the dramatic story? What was the thematic arc? Who are the characters in this and why do we care about them? What does this story tell us, in no matter how minor of a way, about the human condition? Who is this comic for?
Maybe it was only an advertisement for comics I'm not reading and don't know about.
I'd recommend you pick up Storming Paradise. It's an alternate history story about the actually planned invasion of mainland Japan during WWII that would have happened had the atomic bombs failed. It's six issues, monthly, and the first four have come out so far. I only have the first three because my comic shop's distributor didn't send them their #4 order for no disclosed reason. Which is crap!
I'll be picking up #4 and #5 together at the beginning of November.
Butch Guice. He's the man.
Krod, I think you're right on the money about "Origins" - it didn't seem to have a point, except as sort of an ad or prequel to an upcoming series. After all the promotion, I expected more than that - like an actual story.
I somehow missed "Storming Paradise," but I'll have to track it down - I'm a big fan of both Dixon and Guice. Thanks for the recommendation!
So here's the problem.
The Ultimate series was basically an attempt to pick it up from the beginning. And in the beginning of the series, that's a great idea. Marvel's problem was continuing.
If they kept it at a limited run, they could've had a beautiful thing going. It'd be like the first volume of "Runaways" or Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns." But no - they had to expand on "Runaways" and Miller had to cash in with "The Dark Knight Returns Again," which bastardized the original stuff. Likewise, then there had to be an "Ultimate" comic for everybody. Yeah, Bendis is still doing well with Spider-Man, but enough is enough.
It seems that with "Ultimatum," they're looking to re-wipe the slate clean. Doesn't that mean that they should just put a cap on the Ultimate stuff? If there's a Marvel Universe and an Ultimate Marvel Universe, shouldn't they just exert their best writers and artists to making one good Marvel Universe? Besides, it's better to have a small good thing than a monster series that went to crap.
Carl, I'm torn between the idea of keeping or doing away with the Ultimate Universe. The problem is, I think the idea has a lot of potential - but so often the potential isn't realized. (This is probably true of most comics.) When it's good, it's very good, but when it's bad, it's awful. What I find most amusing is that Stan and his fellow creators were making it up as they went along, and managed to keep the continuity easy to follow - whereas the Ultimate series has those original stories to use as templates, and still have managed to totally gum up the continuity works - so much so that they're ready to try their own "Crisis" to fix it.
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