Back when the Super Nintendo videogame system was first released, one of the earliest games available was SimCity, which allowed you to design and build your own city.
I enjoyed the game, and spent entirely too many hours playing it. But once I had built a city up to its maximum potential, there was only one thing left to do: I had to destroy it.
The game allowed you to bring down all kinds of disaster on your hapless Sims - earthquake, hurricane, giant monster attack - all good fun.
I bring this up because this is essentially what's going on with the Ultimatum mini-series. The creative team is blowing things up left and right, piling up an impressive body count of heroes and villains, laying waste to entire continents and managing some character assassination along the way.
But because the death is being doled out on a massive scale, it reads like an imaginary story. Are they really going to kill him and her and it? And will they stay dead?
Worst of all, most of the heroes die a meaningless death. A good hero deserves to go out fighting - not drowning in a freakish weather event. It has all the emotional impact of the SimCity game - which is to say, none at all.
The art by David Finch is quite good, although I could do without the gore - dismembered heads, close-ups of dead bodies and arrows piercing - this is not a comic for kids.
I suppose this is one way of getting rid of the Ultimate Universe - but it seems an awful waste of a concept with a lot of potential.
Grade: C
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