Ultimate Comics: Ultimates by Jonathan Hickman (spoilers)

It's a very arbitrary line, I know, but I just think the Dome is too much. Some sci-fi is fine, and perhaps if the comic announced it was Reed I'd be more okay with it, but Hickman spends a lot of time inside the Dome explaining what happened and to me, it's just too much.

But then, I felt that way about some parts of ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. I love outthere sci-fi, but I don't like such a large jump in superheroes which to me, I much more enjoy when they're closer to home.
 
My only big problem is the destruction of asgard in a couple pages with "and they were gone forever..." or something like that tacked on at the end. It seems like a stupid anticlimax and should probably have its own story - BUT - after ultimates 3 and ultimatum, I can see the need to take a vengeful scrubbing-brush to a good deal of the universe as it (barely) stands. Otherwise, I'm hopeful about this. I doubt it will stand as a sequel to ultimates 2 (which stands alone and really doesn't need one), but it comes a lot closer than previous efforts.
 
I don't know if this counts as a spoiler cause it's in the preview but I will anyway.
Thor is going back to his hammer/axe hybrid!
 
Here's the preview Pickle's talking about.

But this just reinforces my point even more about how Hickman has to "undo" Loeb and Millar's latest work. This is good because the status quo was awful, but annoying because Hickman can't just write the stories he wants to tell, he has to stop and talk about other people's stories first.
 
plungingforward said:
My only big problem is the destruction of asgard in a couple pages with "and they were gone forever..." or something like that tacked on at the end. It seems like a stupid anticlimax and should probably have its own story - BUT - after ultimates 3 and ultimatum, I can see the need to take a vengeful scrubbing-brush to a good deal of the universe as it (barely) stands. Otherwise, I'm hopeful about this. I doubt it will stand as a sequel to ultimates 2 (which stands alone and really doesn't need one), but it comes a lot closer than previous efforts.
Click to expand...

Eh, I didn't have a problem with that for two reasons: its a nice change from the decompression most comics seem to go with nowadays, and second, it kind of perfectly illustrates how dangerous and advanced Reed and his followers are now: they destroyed Gods and "Heaven" very quickly and efficiently. Its a perfect measure of the ****-storm to come, I believe.


Captain Canuck said:
when did the Asgardians come to earth again?
Click to expand...

I honestly forget. It could've been New Ultimates, Ultimate Avengers (though I don't think so), or just happened off-page (not actually seen in the comics, happening before the opening of UC: The Ultimates).
 
DIrishB said:
I honestly forget. It could've been New Ultimates, Ultimate Avengers (though I don't think so), or just happened off-page (not actually seen in the comics, happening before the opening of UC: The Ultimates).
Click to expand...

it didn't happen in New Ultimates or Ultimate Avengers. Maybe it was mentioned in Ultimate Fallout?
 
Captain Canuck said:
when did the Asgardians come to earth again?
Click to expand...

At the end of Ultimates 2. It was a huge event.
 
I just re-read Ultimate Fallout, it happens in that book (but briefly).

Thor mentions that Odin sent him to earth to remake two worlds and that the world tree now grows on earth too and now the people of earth can look to the gods for inspiration or something to that effect. Then a few issues later Hawkeye tells Fury that the EU is getting worried about the asgardians and that their super team is being prepped to deal with the situation.

In other news, I thought Hickman was using a new Captain Britain b/c the old one got blown up in the pages of Ultimatum (he did), but in Ultimate Fallout (right after Hawkeye and Fury are talking about Asgard and the European super team) Hawkeye mentions that Brian Braddock has been diagnosed with cancer and he's not Captain Britain any more. So I'm not sure what that's all about.
 
liked issue #3. Loved the end.

I don't like that Reed is the villain though. I feel like they should be able to make him stop by asking. He always was a reasonable guy. Which doesnt make him a threatening villain at all.
And it's weird none of the children of tomorrow have gotten any character development. They might as well just be robots or clones or whatever passes for cannonfodder nowadays.
 
Bass said:
I've read #1 and #2 and it's kinda annoying for two reasons:

The first reason is that Hickman is clearly undoing all of Loeb's work and some of Millar's later work. This is a good thing as those stories were terrible, it's just annoying because we can't just have good, new stories, we have to first wade through the crappy environment to get something good out of it. It's annoying that Hickman has to take a moment to explain how Tony can have a new Jarvis, how there can be a Captain Britain at all, and so on, when I'd rather see Hickman just do what he wants because the guy's fun to read. He shouldn't have to apologise for other writers' mistakes.

The second reason that I find it annoying is that THE REPUBLIC IS BURNING is way, way too sci-fi. One of the things that made the Ultimate comics so unique was that they felt very much in today's world. They felt like very contemporary versions of the characters. The drawback to this is that they can be a bit dated in hindsight (as is the case with Hulk wanting Freddie Prinze Jr) but they still feel contemporary. Hickman's Ultimates could take place on Yargzon XII in the Jingitaxis Nebula without missing a beat. It's arcane as hell. Yes, some political elements are mentioned but they are so irrelevant and undefined it could be anything. This is fine for FF where we've got cross-dimensional Reed Richards and time-travelling Inhumans and Kree invasions and everything. The FF is supposed to be sci-fi and his sci-fi in THE ULTIMATES is good sci-fi (the Dome is a nice ultimization of Terminus from Byrne's FANTASTIC FOUR), I do like it. But it feels wholly inappropriate for THE ULTIMATES. It feels more like RED WING.

It's good stuff, but it's not THE ULTIMATES. Maybe THE AUTHORITY. Maybe, once he's done clearing the deck and he's building his own Ultimate team, maybe he'll turn it down but I seriously doubt it. I just hope I can acclimatize to the crazy sci-fi in a title called THE ULTIMATES.
Click to expand...

The problem is so many writers in the UU have killed off so many characters abruptly in deaths that seem rather meaningless. With all those wasted characters, another writer would have find a way to reintroduce some of those characters to introduce more story telling potential. This the problem with killing off characters is that you have less avenues for story telling and the UU writers have killed off so many characters unceremoniously, that they have left themselves in a bind.
 
Captain Canuck said:
I just re-read Ultimate Fallout, it happens in that book (but briefly).

Thor mentions that Odin sent him to earth to remake two worlds and that the world tree now grows on earth too and now the people of earth can look to the gods for inspiration or something to that effect. Then a few issues later Hawkeye tells Fury that the EU is getting worried about the asgardians and that their super team is being prepped to deal with the situation.
Click to expand...

Ah, thats right. Jeez, I only read it a few months ago and had completely forgotten...

In other news, I thought Hickman was using a new Captain Britain b/c the old one got blown up in the pages of Ultimatum (he did), but in Ultimate Fallout (right after Hawkeye and Fury are talking about Asgard and the European super team) Hawkeye mentions that Brian Braddock has been diagnosed with cancer and he's not Captain Britain any more. So I'm not sure what that's all about.
Click to expand...

The new CB is his brother Jaime, right?
 
So I'm caught up on this. It's pretty good, but the pacing is feeling kind of rushed. The action was very briefly set up in Ultimate Fallout, and it's been completely hectic since page one (well, except for the history of the dome in issue 2) I hope the books slows down a bit after the initial conflict with the children of tomorrow and unpacks what's going on a little bit.
 
Y'know... the pace hasn't been a problem for me. I think Hickman has a good sense of pace. He seems to cram things into his comics but it doesn't feel rushed. At least, it doesn't to me. I wonder if it's not so much that it's rushed, but that it's faster than say, Bendis' new ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and other comics. So if you're switching from that to this, this would feel rushed, whereas the reverse would make Bendis' comic seem slow. Hmmm.
 
I guess I don't like that the stage was set in a handful of 5-10 page vignettes during Ultimate Fallout (most of which i forgot about and had to go back and re-read so I could understand what was going on in Ultimates) and then the Ultimates series has basically just thrown us into the action, leaning almost completely on UFallout as the setup. Maybe you're right and I'm just used to Bendis' decompressed style (and Millar's old style on the Ultimates).
 
I have to say, I read Hickman's ULTIMATES before I read FALL-OUT, and with the exception of the bad guy being Reed, there was nothing in FALL-OUT that wasn't evident in the first issues.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top