"The Ultimates: Gods and Monsters"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “The Ultimates: Gods and Monsters” as presented in Marvel Ultimate Epic Collection format.

            A year after saving the Earth from an alien invasion, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s superhuman defense team the Ultimates (Steve Rogers/Captain America, Tony Stark/Iron Man, Janet Pym/Wasp, Clint Barton/Hawkeye, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver, and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch), led by General Nick Fury, continued to fight terrorism. Hank Pym/Giant Man had been expelled from active duty, Thor quit the team, and Bruce Banner/Hulk was imprisoned, but Banner’s identity as the Hulk was withheld from all unauthorized personnel and the general public. Steve and Jan were exploring their relationship following Jan and Hank’s separation following domestic abuse. Tony and Natasha had also begun dating. Hank was trying to find a way back onto the Ultimates under a different codename, workshopping the identity of Ant-Man. Bruce, while in lockup, was working on more potential super soldiers for Ultimates membership, but was meeting with no success. Bruces’s identity as the Hulk was leaked to the press. This proved there was a leak from deep within S.H.I.E.L.D. and shed a bad light on Fury and the Ultimates, who had pretended for over a year to be unaware of the Hulk’s true identity or origin. Steve tracked down Thor, who was the suspected leak, but Thor denied any involvement in leaking Bruce’s identity, knowing that exposing Bruce was basically a death sentence as the Hulk was implicated in mass murder. Bruce went on a highly televised trial as the Hulk, with Matt Murdock defending Bruce. Betty Ross, Bruce’s ex, begged Bruce’s forgiveness, feeling guilty for Bruce turning Bruce into the Hulk, but Bruce refused to forgive Betty. Bruce was found guilty and sentenced to death. Bruce’s execution was carried out by sedating Bruce and setting off a one-megaton bomb, but unknown to S.H.I.E.L.D., Bruce survived the explosion. Tony gave Natasha a suit of armor similar to Tony’s own Iron Man armor. While on a test run, Tony flashily proposed to Natasha. Natasha accepted Tony’s proposal. The Ultimates were called to Europe to meet with the head of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s European Defense Initiative, James Braddock. The Ultimates were introduced to the European super soldiers Brian Braddock/Captain Britain, Umberto Landi/Captain Italy, Carlos Fraile/Captain Spain, and Hugo Etherlinck/Captain France. The Ultimates also met a man claiming to be Gunnar Golmen, head of the Norwegian team, who had been working on technology that had been stolen by his brother Thorlief, the man the Ultimates knew as Thor. Thor had been going throughout Europe aiding in protests using the alleged stolen technology. The Ultimates went to Norway to confront Thor to put an end to Thor’s activities and take the technology back. During the confrontation, Thor claimed that Gunnar was actually Loki, Asgardian God of Mischief, trying to trick the Ultimates. After a battle, the Ultimates, with the aid of the European Defense Initiative super soldiers, were able to subdue Thor. Thor was restrained and placed in a holding cell in the Triskelion. Loki visited Thor in Thor’s imprisonment to gloat and to tell Thor that there was a traitor among the Ultimates.

            Hank joined up with fledgling wannabe superhero team the Defenders (Nighthawk, Black Knight, Hellcat, Power Man, Son of Satan, and Valkyrie. Hank had been trying to give S.H.I.E.L.D. androids Hank called Ultron and Vision Two to aid the Ultimates, but Fury did not want to accept Hank’s gifts. The Defenders were primed to make their big superhero debut, stopping a robbery at a cigarette warehouse. This bust failed miserably, with Nighthawk badly injured, Hank landing in the news indecently exposed, and the perps getting away.

            Jan had been meeting with Hank, unsatisfied in her relationship with Steve. Steve wanted to spend so much of Steve and Jan’s time with Bucky Barnes (Steve’s World War II buddy) and Bucky’s wife Gail (Steve’s ex-fiancé whom Bucky married after Steve was presumed dead), while Jan wanted to spend time with people Jan’s own age. The wolf in the fold and several enemy agents visited Clint’s house and shot Clint and executed Clint’s wife and three kids, then took Clint. Steve and Jan had a fight and Steve left to think. Security footage of the attack on Clint’s house revealed the agents who assaulted Clint and Clint’s family to be led by Steve Rogers. While visiting Greenwood Cemetery with Bucky, Steve was apprehended by a S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical team led by Fury. The Liberators (Colonel, Abomination, Crimson Dynamo, Hurricane, Swarm, Perun, Schizoid Man, and Loki) launched an assault on the United States of America, attacking S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers, the Triskelion, and New York City, aided by Hank and Hank’s androids. Natasha revealed herself to be the actual traitor inside the Ultimates. Natasha took out Tony’s butler Jarvis and planned to have Tony wire Natasha money, then execute Tony as well, but Tony revealed the armor that Tony had given Natasha had nanites that Tony could control, and Tony subdued Natasha. Clint managed to escape his captors. Schizoid Man and several agents of the Liberators came to put down Steve, but Jan had already released Steve and Steve and Jan subdued the would-be assassins and went to free Thor, but Thor had already escaped. The Liberators went to Washington, D.C., abducting Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four. The Ultimates followed and battled the Liberators at the White House, where they were reunited with Hawkeye. The Hulk also made a reappearance and joined the Ultimates as the Ultimates, Nick Fury, and Betty Ross fought to survive against the Liberators. As the battle turned in the favor of the Ultimates, Loki summoned an army. Things looked bad for the United States of America until Thor appeared, aided by an army from Asgard. The two armies fought, with the fate of the country hanging in the balance.

            Retired assassin Mister Nix was called out of retirement to kill Nick Fury. S.H.I.E.L.D. was working on a reserves team for the Ultimates, to add to the core team, or to act as replacements should anything happen to the active members. The Defenders recruited Whiz-Kid to their team.

            Okay, we’ve got the synopsis out of the way, it’s time to move on to my individual segments of this review. We’re going to start, as we always do, with my personal opinions on this book. First off, I’m going to talk about the story. I will say I was not fully pleased with these stories. I thought the first six issues and the annual were great. I totally loved them. It’s once we get to the point where Black Widow takes out Hawkeye’s family where I started to feel offput. I thought executing an innocent woman and three young children, including a baby, was too much. I originally thought the domestic assault in Vol. 1 was bad, this just totally surpassed that on a scale of one-to-totally messed up. And Jan confiding in Hank about her insecurities with Steve just totally ruined my impression of Jan, that Jan would even want to breathe the same air as the man who put Jan in the hospital is beyond me, considering everything that happened between Jan and Hank. The whole battle with the Liberators seemed messy and a little disjointed. The epic-ness of the battle also detracted a little bit from potential story development. All that said, what I did find enjoyable was the trial of the Hulk, the introduction of the European Defense Initiative, the Ultimates versus Thor, the introduction of the Defenders, and the hit on Fury. Next up to discuss is the artwork. I will say that I enjoy Brian Hitch’s work a lot. I love his stylizations; I think they’re totally amazing. I particularly like when he draws closeups of faces, the details he draws are amazing. Sometimes, when he draws characters from a distance, it does go a little wonky, but I generally enjoy his artwork. I will say that Steve Dillon did a fair job with his illustrations, but there’s just a little something about the faces he draws that just doesn’t quite look right. I didn’t find the artwork to be totally offensive, but at the same time, the appeal wasn’t consistent. The next thing I’d like to discuss is the appropriateness of the title. I know, I’m very nitpicky, but I have to do an in-depth assessment of this book, and the title is an important part of that, in my opinion. So, this book was titled “Gods and Monsters.” In my honest opinion, I feel that is a fair title for this book. Considering we have the conflict between Thor and the Asgardians against Loki and his army, as well as Hulk and Abomination as a key focus in this book, the title is an appropriate way to describe this book. And to get even more nitpicky, I will also assess if the cover is appropriate. The cover shows the Ultimates and the European Defense Initiative standing and flying together. I feel like this is a good way to advertise this book. It properly captures the essence of the interior, showing the characters battle-ready. I feel like the marketing for this book was proper and describes and depicts the contents of what the reader can expect when they go to experience this graphic novel. Overall, this wasn’t a terrible graphic novel, in my opinion, but there was just a line that got crossed too far that changed my experience quite drastically, and not for the better, but the illustrations were relatively appealing for the most part of this graphic novel, which did improve the experience immensely.

            Next up on the list of things we’re going to discuss is accessibility. I know I’ve talked about this over seven dozen times by this point, but I know that every time I do a book review, I have new readers who don’t know what I mean by this, so I have to explain myself, so if you’ve been with me before, please bear with me while I go over the meaning of accessibility in application to a graphic novel once again. So, by doing this, I’m asking if a book is accessible, meaning can a person who knows absolutely nothing about the Ultimates or Marvel in general obtain a copy of this book, read it, and understand everything they’ve read based on just the content in this particular volume, with no outside knowledge or context. My answer to that is yes. This book is relatively self-contained. The contents are all thirteen issues of Ultimates 2 and Ultimates Annual #1. This does not tie into any events or crossover into any other comics series. While having read the first volume of The Ultimates helps understand this book more comprehensively, I will not say that I feel like it is required reading. The story starts fresh, not continuing directly from where the previous stories left off while still following the threads established in the first volume of The Ultimates. If you’re interested in starting to read Marvel Comics and have never done so before, while I wouldn’t describe this as the best or perfect place to start your adventure into reading Marvel, I also would not deter you from choosing this volume as your starting point. I would encourage you to read “The Ultimates” #1-13 prior to reading this volume, but I wouldn’t tell you that it’s essential to do so if you just want to read this book.

            Next up on our agenda is the numeric score. This is the part of my review that establishes just how good I feel a book is and is one of the most essential paragraphs in my reviews, but I am aware that some people come to hear about the stories as well, so I wouldn’t say that this is the most important paragraph. Anyway, if you’re new to my reviews, you don’t know how I score books, so I’m going to have to go over that again for those of you joining me for the first time. My system is fairly simple: I score on a scale of exact whole numbers ranging from one through ten. The lowest score I can give is a one, which means that this book is a horrible read that I wish I could go back in time and make it so that I never even knew this book existed, let alone bought or read it. Ten is my highest score, which means that this book is sheer perfection and I will read this book again when I feel the urge and love every second of it every subsequent time, I reexperience this book. A ten has specific requirements for me. It has to have a captivating story that is enjoyable from start to finish. The artwork has to be consistently appealing through every panel of the book. And the title and cover must properly market the majority of the content contained within the pages of the book. We’ve established that this book did not have a story that was enjoyable throughout the entirety of this book, and the artwork did have inconsistencies, but the title and cover were proper representations for this book. So, laying everything out on the table and dishing out my score, what we’re looking at here is… a six. This book was only half enjoyable story-wise, and the art left a little something to be desired, but I do score it on the higher side of midrange.

            Next up is the recommendation segment. This segment is designed for two purposes. The first is to express if I, Tim Cubbin, would personally tell you, my wonderful readers, to go out and get your hands on a copy of this book and read it. The second purpose is to describe what kind of interests a reader would have that would lead them to enjoy this book, besides fans of The Ultimates, Marvel, or the creative team. Let’s start with the first point. If you’re interested in reading this book now based solely on the words you’ve just spent the past few minutes reading, I would tell you to hop onto your favorite online retailer, or check a local bookstore, comic shop, or library, or try to see if anyone you know has this book because this book gets my recommendation, but it doesn’t get my highest one. As for the audiences who would most appreciate this book, I would say it would be people interested in mythology, or stories about wars on terrorism, military, espionage, or technology.

            Okay, we’re getting to the point where we’re almost ready to say goodbye. There’re a lot of things I do have to say first. First off, I’ve been doing this blog for almost six years now. In that time, I have posted 200 times. If you liked this post and have some free time, please continue exploring timcubbin.blogspot.com for tons of more content. I have written several short stories, poems, essays, articles, and editorials, as well as reviews of prose novels, manga, comic book events, and over seven dozen other Marvel Epic Collections. The current direction of this blog is to review Marvel Modern Era Epic Collections and Ultimate Epic Collections. I purchase each one as soon as I can after it is released, and if possible, put up a review as soon as I can after I finish reading it. I post on a very frequent basis, usually at least once every two months. If you liked this post and have some more time to kill and want to read a similar post, I invite you to search for my review of “The Ultimates: Super-Human” for more Ultimates content. I would like to state that I am aware that everything I say on my blog is my opinion. You are free to agree or disagree with me. If you’ve read this book and have differing opinions, feel free to leave a comment, or if you agree, I’d really like to know. I’d love to hear what my readers think. Please always feel free to drop a comment on anything you want to say, if you like my work, you don’t like what I’m doing, you want me to do something different, there’s something you want to see, anything at all, I’m always receptive. In case you’re wondering, my next post is going to be “The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Island” which you can expect to see posted within the next three weeks following this post. If you read with me all the way through this, you are THE BEST! I’m going to keep doing this blog for as long as I’m able to, so don’t expect this to stop anytime soon. I hope you’ll be back with me next time. Until then, Tim Cubbin… out!