"The Ultimates: Super-Human"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “The Ultimates: Super-Human” as presented in Marvel Ultimate Epic Collection format.

            In 1945, the Nazis had created a super-weapon that was aimed at Washington, D.C. that would potentially bring an end to World War II. The United States Army sent in a platoon to try to disable the weapon, led by a super-soldier named Steve Rogers, codenamed Captain America. Along with his teenage friend James “Bucky” Barnes, and the rest of the platoon, they charged on Germany. Not all of the platoon survived the assault, and they were unable to stop the weapon from being launched. Captain America jumped on the missile and detonated a grenade that knocked the missile off course and prevented it from hitting its target, and Captain America disappeared into the waters of the North Atlantic, leaving behind his fiancé Gail Richards.

            In 2002, newly posted Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. General Nicholas Fury reignited the Super-Soldier Program with the hopes of preventing super-powered threats from becoming a problem for the United States of America. He met with Doctor Robert Bruce Banner, who had attempted to recreate the serum that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America and had instead turned Bruce into a creature called the Hulk. Bruce had been leading the Super-Soldier Research Facility in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but when hired by S.H.I.E.L.D., the condition behind his substantial paycheck was he was demoted to number two, behind his prior assistant Henry “Hank” Pym. Hank was married to Janet “Jan” Pym, a mutant with the ability to shrink in size and gifted with wings, who also had some unfortunate bug-like qualities. Jan called herself the Wasp. Hank, using Jan’s DNA, had created a serum that allowed him to grow in size to almost sixty feet in height, the maximum height the human body can support. Hank took on the codename Giant Man. S.H.I.E.L.D. also hired tech genius businessman billionaire Anthony “Tony” Stark, who had an advanced technological suit of armor and assumed the identity Iron Man. Bruce’s ex Betty Ross was hired as the Director of Communications for the Super-Soldier Program. As they were preparing to move forward with the project, Captain America’s body was found frozen in the Arctic Ocean. Miraculously, Steve Rogers had survived frozen in ice for fifty-seven years and was able to be revived. At first, Steve was unaccepting of his new surroundings, and it took some convincing to acclimate him to now living in the 21^st Century. Nick Fury brought Steve to the house of Bucky Barnes, now an old man and now married to Steve’s ex-fiancé, Gail. While Steve and Bucky had a tearful reunion, Gail refused to come see Steve. Steve also found out most of his family had passed away in the fifty-seven years he had been in suspended animation. The Ultimates were announced at the Triskelion in the Upper Bay of Manhattan, their new headquarters. While Giant Man, Wasp, Iron Man and Captain America were introduced as the faces of the Ultimates, Fury was also attempting to recruit a man claiming to be Thor, Norse God of thunder, a protestor and former mental patient who was gaining notoriety in Norway and gaining a group of followers. Thor, however, refused to join Fury’s little gang. Held back from the launch were Clint Barton/Hawkeye and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, who were awaiting rewritten histories to cover up past indiscretions, and in the background were Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, children of the mutant terrorist Magneto and former members of his Brotherhood of Mutants, who were unable to be shown as public faces due to their genetic statuses. Time went by after the launch of the Ultimates, but the team had no threats to face. While Betty began to move on from Bruce with Freddie Prinze, Jr., Bruce made the drastic decision to inject himself with Captain America’s blood and the Hulk serum. This created an even more powerful version of the Hulk, who went on a destructive rampage through Manhattan, fixated on finding Betty and winning her back for Bruce and removing Freddie Prinze, Jr. from the picture. Captain America, Iron Man, Giant Man, and the Wasp were dispatched to stop the Hulk, and Thor joined in to aid in the fight. The team was able to calm the Hulk and revert him back to Bruce Banner, and Bruce was put in a holding unit, while his identity as the Hulk was withheld from the public and the Ultimates were hailed as the heroes who saved Manhattan. As the Ultimates were invited to Tony’s penthouse for a black-tie dinner, Hank and Jan got into an argument that turned horribly violent. While Thor refused to accept a S.H.I.E.L.D. paycheck as a member of the Ultimates, he agreed to come to the aid if ever the need arose. Jan was taken to the hospital, and Hank was wanted for spousal abuse charges. Jan was quickly transferred back to the Triskelion, but her assault went public. Steve went out on a hunt for Hank. Clint, Natasha, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were introduced to Tony and Thor, who were all briefed on the presence on Earth of an alien race called the Chitauri since 1777, who were able to assume human form and had been in part responsible for the rise of the Nazis during World War II. S.H.I.E.L.D. had believed them to have been completely annihilated after World War II, but several Chitauri had then been discovered to be hiding on Earth. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Psi-Division recovered the location of a Chitauri base near Micronesia. Before Fury could order against it, Steve found Hank in a bar in Chicago and had a S.H.I.E.L.D. team bring him to Hank’s location. Steve put the beat down on Hank, and Hank was apprehended. While in his holding unit, Bruce and Betty began to reconnect. Steve visited Jan in the Triskelion infirmary, but Steve’s actions against Hank and butting into Hank and Jan’s personal business only served to upset Jan. While Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Black Widow and Fury flew with a S.H.I.E.L.D. Unit to Micronesia to assault the Chitauri base, Jan discovered that S.H.I.E.L.D. had already been infiltrated by the Chitauri, and their leader Kleiser was already on the Triskelion. Jan was caught by Kleiser and brought to the Chitauri base in the Arizona desert, while the Chitauri base in Micronesia was just a decoy base and was detonated, killing most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Unit, but Thor had managed to teleport several of the Unit to safety, including Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow and Nick Fury, and they arrived at the Arizona base. The Chitauri began their full-scale assault of Earth, with the intention of destroying the Earth. Captain America fought Kleiser, Iron Man and Thor flew in to stop the weapon, Black Widow came to rescue Jan, and Hulk was unleashed to destroy the invading ships and the Ultimates battled to save the Earth from the threat of Chitauri destruction.

            Okay, so now we have the synopsis out of the way, let’s get on to my own personal take on this graphic novel. Essentially the Ultimates are the Marvel Ultimate Universe version of the Avengers, but I will say that this is a vastly different take on their story, and I will also say that I found that to be a good thing. When Stan Lee created the Avengers back in 1963, they assembled by happenstance, all joining in to fight against a common threat and then realizing that working together as a team was beneficial. In Mark Millar’s Ultimates, the team is assembled by S.H.I.E.L.D. as a combat unit to fight threats ordinary units couldn’t. This is a completely different origin story. And I feel that it actually worked. I liked the idea of the Ultimates being a military unit. I thought the Hulk story was great, I loved Millar’s choice of hooking up Betty with Freddie Prinze, Jr., I thought that joke was pretty funny. I liked how Bruce and Betty’s relationship played out after that while Bruce was in a holding unit, it was actually quite humorous. I liked how Millar made Wasp secretly a mutant, but I wish he would have taken a little more of an opportunity to play up on that more than he actually did, it was just mentioned once and it was never brought up again throughout the rest of the graphic novel. I liked the concept of having a black ops unit within the Ultimates, keeping Black Widow, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in the shadows because of their statuses keeping them from being public faces. I especially liked Quicksilver’s comments of how he and Scarlet Witch had actually been helping if you looked at the tapes and slowed them down, those gave me a good chuckle. I liked the Chitauri as the enemy that was the true test of the Ultimates as a team. I liked that Thor wouldn’t join S.H.I.E.L.D. on principal but would aid anyway because it was the right thing to do, and his characterization as a former mental patient now messiah activist was, in my opinion, rather brilliant, rather than just outright saying that this was truly the God of thunder. What I didn’t like was the spousal abuse story. I felt like Millar went a little too far with that one and that it was rather unnecessary with how graphically it was illustrated. I felt that it negatively portrayed mental illness, and I honestly did not approve of that storyline. I did enjoy Brian Hitch’s work as the artist, I thought he did an amazing job illustrating this graphic novel, I really like his artistic style. I loved how I read that Millar had told Hitch to make Nick Fury look like Samuel L. Jackson and that when Disney finally made the movies, they actually did contract Jackson to play Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I actually totally geeked out the first time I saw the post-credits scene in “Iron Man” when they introduced Jackson as Fury, having read this comic series after it was originally published back in 2002-2004 prior to the release of the “Iron Man” film and there was actually a scene in this graphic novel where the group discuss who would play them in films and Jackson was named as Fury. In general, I rather enjoyed this graphic novel.

            Next up on our agenda of things to discuss, we’re going to talk about accessibility. For those of you who know what I mean, please bear with me while I explain this to my new readers who have never read one of my reviews before and don’t know what I mean by using the word “accessibility.” So, what I mean by that is, if you know nothing about the Ultimates or Marvel Comics at all, can you pick up this book, read it, and understand what you’re reading? This is the first volume of the series from a universe that was relatively new at the time and had very little background history. It has no direct ties to any other series published by Marvel. There are no crossovers or events occurring during this graphic novel. It has a self-contained origin story. So, yes, this book is extremely accessible. If you’re new to Marvel and are looking for a good place to start, this is an exceptionally enjoyable book to pick up and begin your Marvel journey.

            Okay, now we’re going to get to the point that you’ve all been waiting for: my numeric score. So, my scoring system is extremely basic. I score on a scale of one to ten. One is the lowest score and means this book is complete trash and is not even worth reading. Ten is the highest score and means this book is perfection. On principal, I generally don’t give out tens very often because perfection is extremely hard to publish, but there have been occasions where I felt that this score is appropriate. As far as this book goes, I do not feel like a ten is an appropriate score for this book. I found some faults with the story, especially the spousal abuse storyline that highly detracted from my enjoyment of the story. And while I generally enjoyed Hitch’s art, there were moments where I felt like his artwork had a few mishaps. Unfortunately, there was also some content that doesn’t hold up over twenty years later, especially the inclusion of President Bush. But overall, I found this book to be high-quality and extremely enjoyable, so when I give it a score, I am compelled to score it at… an eight. It was entertaining to read, and the art was, for the most part, nice to look at. I feel like it deserves a particularly good score, but it’s not quite near perfection, so a minor deduction is required, but it shouldn’t be impacted harshly for the few problems I had with this book.

            Next up, we’re going to discuss if I give this book my personal Tim Cubbin recommendation, and then, regardless of that fact or not, whom do I think should be reading this book. If you’re guessing that I give this book my own personal recommendation, you would be absolutely correct. This book does, in fact, get my seal of approval. Moving on to whom do I recommend this book to, the answer is to anyone who likes the Avengers and wants to see a different take on what the team could be like. So, if you’ve never read a Marvel Comic book before and have an interest in the Avengers, I highly recommend you read this book, this is a totally interesting twist on their origin and worth the read. If you’re already a Marvel Comics fan and have never read this, I recommend this book to you, this is a whole new reimagining of what the Avengers could be, and I think you will enjoy this. If you’re just reading this review and have gained any vested interest in reading this graphic novel based solely on what you’re consuming right now, I’d recommend you get out there and pick up this book, if you enjoyed my review, you will definitely enjoy actually reading the entire story as there is obviously so much more than what I can describe on this blog and I think you should make the effort to get the complete story and enjoy this work for yourself.

            Well, I think we’ve gotten to the point where I’ve said pretty much all there is to say at the moment. There is a little more to add in conclusion, however, so don’t quite give up on me yet. First off, if you liked this post, there are over four dozen other reviews like this one to read, so keep checking out timcubbin.blogspot.com for more of my work. I am a huge collector of Marvel Epic Collections, I buy every Modern Era Epic Collection and Ultimate Epic Collection as soon as I can after they are released and if possible, I try to put up a review right after I finish reading them. So, obviously, I am going to be working with a lot of potential content. I currently have a Modern Era Epic Collection in my possession I am preparing to read, so you can expect to see a review of that one coming up some time in the next couple of weeks after this post, I have to finish reading it first, then find a day where I can actually sit down and write a review of it, but I will promise you it is coming soon. I have 160 other posts on this blog and there is no end in sight, so keep checking it out for more content if you’re interested. If you go really far back on my blog, I’ve actually written short stories, poetry, articles, essays, and editorials, but right now my main focus is on writing reviews. If you think these seem highly professional, it’s because I have a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in journalism, so writing this kind of thing is what I should professionally be doing, but due to circumstances, it’s not something I’ve actually been able to secure, so I currently work in a grocery store and work for free on a blog in my spare time. But it’s in my nature and I don’t mind doing it, it is the job I honestly should be doing but just can’t actually manage to get hired for due to the situation in my life that I don’t want to talk about and you honestly don’t care about. But enough about that. Keep checking back regularly for more, as there will definitely be plenty of upcoming content on the way, I’ll be doing this blog until I am physically unable to do it anymore, so that’s probably going to be a long time. I’ve already been doing this for five years at this point. And at this point, I’m just rambling on unnecessarily and boring you with useless details about my personal life that you really don’t want to know, so I’m going to let you go now and move on with your life while I move on with mine. But I will be back soon, and I hope you come back with me. And so, until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!