I wrote in April this year about the oversized "
Ultimatum" hardcover that collects all 10 issues of "
Ultimates 3" and "
Ultimatum" by Jeph Loeb and artists Joe Madureira and David Finch. I finally got the book and read it on Christmas Eve. I confess that the reason it took me so long to pick up the Ultimatum story was a reaction to all the negative reviews over the internet. Most readers called it the worst Marvel story ever published. I don't think that's fair. I mean, a lot of stuff published during the Bob Harras era were really bad. But then, that's the nature of fandom, one moment they loved Jeph Loeb (during his DC days paired up with Tim Sale) and the next moment, he's the next Rob Liefeld.
Anyway, I was really excited about "
Ultimatum" months before the single issues were even out. Truth was, I was a lot more excited about the series than "
Civil War", "
Secret Invasion", "
Siege" and "
Blackest Night" put together. Then came the negative reviews following the release of the 1st issue of the series. As the series progressed, the reviews got worse and, I should say, more virulent. With only a limited budget for comics monthly, I decided to check out other books instead - I did not even pick up the Premiere Hardcover or the subsequent tradepaperback that came out. Thankfully, Marvel decided to repackage the whole thing into an oversized hardcover putting "
Ultimates 3" into the same package (since the two series actually make up a whole story anyway) and wrap up the whole thing in a beautiful Joe Mad cover featuring Ultimate Cap, Ultimate Wolvie and Ultimate Hawkeye. In short, the perfect Christmas gift for me.
Then I sat down and read the whole thing in one sitting. Verdict?
I LOVED IT. I'm serious. The very vocal internet fans were all wrong about the whole thing - just like they are wrong about a lot of things (e.g.
Heroes Reborn). I mean, I can understand that this is no "
Watchmen" or "
Dark Knight Returns" or even "
Kingdom Come". I can even understand how some folks were turned off by some of the violent deaths (e.g. the cannibalistic Blob stuff). But as a slam-bang Marvel event, it actually works. I think a lot of the hate on this book came from people who were very caught up in the "serious" socio-political subtextual stuff that was in "
Civil War" and "
Dark Reign". In fact, many of the reviewers have never invested 8 years reading Ultimate Marvel in the first place (
many of them considered Ultimate Marvel nothing more than glorified fan-fiction and thus not REAL in the first place - well, news for you guys: 616-Marvel ain't real either!). Jeph Loeb wasn't really going for realism in the story. Granted, some of the criticisms of the man were valid. I agree that it felt like Loeb was trying too hard to *sound* like Mark Millar or Warren Ellis. Truth was, he shouldn't have tried so hard in the first place. Loeb is an older American who was never gifted/cursed with the acerbic wit/cynicism of a Millar or Ellis and should never have tried to be what he could never be.
That being the case,
Ultimatum also featured Jeph Loeb doing what Jeph Loeb does best - a big-screen stupid action movie on paper. We probably would've gotten the same thing if Michael Bay wrote comics. Now, I love/hate Michael Bay as much as the next guy, but c'mon, you guys still line up for tickets when "
Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon" hits the screens next year. It's fun in a stupid way - or stupid fun, to put it simply. But the guy delivers. Admit it, we even pick up the DVDs for rewatches on evenings when all we want is stupid fun - nothing too introspective, nothing to mind-bending, nothing too artsy-fartsy. Just stupid fun.
Ultimatum is in that vein of a popcorn movie on paper with the gloriously detailed art of former Top Cow alumni, David Finch. It's really just me. If you gave me a choice between a fun Batman movie (like those by Joel Schumacher) or a supposedly "deep" and "introspective" Batman movie with socio-political overtones (like those by Christopher Nolan) for an afternoon matinee with the kids, I'd choose the former everytime. I like the silly one-liners and the puns. I like the colour and the pomp. In short, I like the stupid fun. In fact, Jeph Loeb's roots were in stupid fun - anyone remember
Commando or
Teen Wolf? Well, Loeb wrote those stupid fun classics as well.
Anyway,
Ultimatum is touted as the story that ended the original Ultimate Marvel universe. In a way, that's true. But I don't think that it affected the Avengers in a significant way. The book that was hit the hardest was, of course, "
Ultimate X-Men". In fact, aside from Bobby, Kitty, Jean and Rogue, all the rest of the X-Men died in this story. Bobby is now a co-star in the new Ult. Spidey book while Kitty and Jean show up in Loeb's Ultimate X book. The FF disbanded and according to Bendis, Ultimate Reed is now the number one villain in the Ultimate Universe. The economic motivation behind the selection of characters that bit the dust was one of the elements in this story that bothered me. I mean, it's quite obvious to many comic fans that the X-Men (especially the post-Vaughn
Ultimate X-Men) isn't really the pull that it was in the 1980s/90s. As Bendis declared in one interview, the Avengers are indeed the new X-Men of the millennium. That's true following the hugely popular "
Ultimates 1 & 2" by Mark Millar and Brian Hitch, and also the Avengers relaunch by Bendis and David Finch - which led to the two Iron Man films and the upcoming Cap, Thor and Avengers films. Spidey will always be popular and Ult. Spidey was the most successful (in terms of both sales and critical acclaim) of the Ultimate monthlies anyway. Therefore, it felt like all these elements went into considering who should bite the dust rather than the actual story itself. In other words, it sometimes felt like the villains in the piece (chiefly, the killer flood unleashed by Magneto) were targetting characters that were no longer financially viable properties (
read: no movie deals in the near future). The only exception is probably Ultimate Wolverine but then, the 616-version is still showing up in a gazillion titles a month anyway so aside from a few continuity buffs (like me), no one will miss Ultimate Wolverine.
Other than that complaint above, I really,
really enjoyed ULTIMATUM. It was shocking in that Marvel actually wiped away so many characters in one series. In fact, this has never been done before in comics since DC's "
Crisis On Infinite Earths" in 1985/86. Many reviewers said that the deaths were so sudden and meaningless. I know. I'd be the first to say that Ultimate Dazzler (who was 10 million times more interesting and complex compared to the 616-version) deserved a better send off. But then, that's what really happens in a disaster. Remember 9-11? Remember the killer tsunami from a few years back? Remember the Szechuan earthquake? Or the victims of car accidents and violent crimes? Sudden and meaningless - with the mourning survivors trying to make sense of the whole meaningless carnage after the event. On that note,
Ultimatum delivered in spades. And no, there's no sense of closure either. Not even in the
Requiem one-shots that followed the event. This was what the Ultimate Universe was about in the first place - the place where anything could happen. I'm surprised that not many people talk about this element in the Ultimate stories.
My beef with the whole thing was that it really should have been a 12-issue maxiseries. Loeb wasn't given enough pages to flesh out the whole thing - which probably was the real reason why people say that the deaths were so meaningless and sudden (
actually, they were not so polite - most of them complained that the whole thing was a gore-fest or a death-porn). However, being squeezed into a 5-issue miniseries does have its advantages. It has an energy and punch that are sorely lacking in comics today - even in
big-event comics. Truth is, that's what I find missing in so many really well-written comics by folks like Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka. Now, don't get me wrong. I like that stuff too but the crazy/stupid Liefeld-ian energy just isn't there. Go back to Kirby's stuff in the 1960s/70s to see what I mean. Marvel then was very well known for in-your-face action where characters punch, kick, leap, blow things up, etc. as compared to the more polite and restrained DC of Carmen Infantino. John Buscema took over from Kirby on many of the books and continued giving us characters who were "
Amazing", "
Mighty" and "
Incredible" because of the physical prowess more than anything. That's what
Ultimatum felt like to me. On one page, Peter Parker and his friends are out on a city-tour, the next page, a killer tsunami strikes NYC. One one page, Reed is proposing to Sue, the next page, they rush up to the ceiling and Sue passes out trying to push back the killer waves with her invisible force field. Magneto does more than pull out Wolvie's adamantium, he literally skinned the ol'Canucklehead and destroyed him on the cellular level. Valkyrie chops off Magneto's arm with a sword! Cyclops blows off Magneto's head with his optic blast while the Thing squeezes Dr. Doom's head like a grapefruit!
Furthermore, as a Magneto-centered event, it works far better than the sometimes boring and very talky "House of M". Magneto here is a demi-god of destruction (especially when armed with Thor's hammer, Mjolnir). It's been a long time since we get a villain capable of carnage and destruction on such a level. It's crazy that the fans who complained that Robert Kirkman's take on Ultimate Apocalypse was too tame are also complaining that Ultimate Magneto was too murderous or destructive. The last time we saw destruction and carnage on this level was the Warren Ellis run on "
The Authority".
If there's one thing I learnt reading
Ultimatum, it's this: don't believe the negative reviewers on the internet. Go check out the work yourself. :)
