Superhero

Ultimate Annuals

I just finished reading this last night. This collects the first 4 annuals from the Ultimate Universe under one cover; the cover btw is by Bryan Hitch. It’s not a bad cover, just that Hitch has done better than this, far better. Still it’s got most of the characters in there and it’s an action shot, whatever.

So what annuals are we talking about? Well we get a Fantastic Four annual with the first appearance of The Inhumans, we get the first appearance of Juggernaut in the pages of Ultimate X-men. We get a longer than usual issue of Ultimate Spider-man and we get an extended Ultimates story.

I’ll review the stories separately since they’re not actually linked in anyway, as the writers of those series are the ones that take the writing duties of their individual annual and thus tie it into their books seamlessly. Just because they’re under one cover doesn’t mean that they crossover or anything like that. 4 separate stories. I’ll also be reviewing in the order in which I enjoyed them.

Ultimate Spider-man
By Brian Bendis and Mark Brooks.
So it’s not Mark Bagley on art as it’s been for nearly 100 issues of Ultimate Spider-man, however Mark Brooks continues delivering that same look anyway. It’s a decent look for a Spider-man book. It tells the story and that’s what’s the most important thing. I think part of the reason why I hate the superhero aspects of the book (and this is for the regular series as well) is down to the ultimately (no pun intended) costumes used for the villains. I HATE, HATE, HATE the superhero aspects of this book. I’d rather Bendis just showed Peter’s problems and successes with girls and keep the whole spider-man thing in the background, with the exception of when he uses it in everyday life. Like grabbing a can of coke from across the room using his web, that sort of thing. It seems our litter Parker has kinda moved on from Mary Jane and is trying to find someone that won’t get hurt while he does what he does. He’s going after a superhero date, in the form of Kitty Pryde from the X-men. It’s a cute little story that I can’t wait to see how it all goes sour (yeah like that will ever last). The strength of this book is the character interaction. Period. Bendis does this better than anyone.

Ultimates
By Mark Millar and Steve Dillon
I’ve got to admit that I thought Steve Dillion was not the right person to call for this story. I think Steve is one of the untouchables, as he was the second half of one of Vertigo’s most amazing books of all time, Preacher. So you can expect me to be a little concerned when he’s drawing Captain America. The thing about this particular story is that it’s not a Captain America book, it’s a Nick Fury book. And I don’t been that pansy from the normal Marvel Universe book. I’m talking the mean version that looks like a young Sam Jackson. Basically by the end of the book it’s clear who’s the most powerful man in the world, and no it’s not Dubawu Buushie. It’s a very good tale that shows another side of the Ultimate universe and what could be both the guy we should trust the most, or the guy we should fear the most.

Ultimate Fantastic Four
By Mark Millar and Jae Lee
See this really doesn’t work. Putting Jae Lee on the art doesn’t do you any favours. You see for me Jae Lee defined the Inhumans. He bought them to my attention. Together with Jenkins they crafted the best damn story to come out of Marvel in the past 10 years at least. So putting him onto the ultimate version of the inhumans isn’t doing you much favours because he’s already drawn and crafted the ideal versions of theses characters. Millar’s script isn’t half as powerful as Jenkins was, so he had that going against him. However it’s a decent yarn, I didn’t feel cheated, but that’s only because I know how much better it can actually get.

Ultimate X-men
By Brian K. Vaughan and Tom Raney
The was bad. No seriously. Tom Raney used to be one of my fav artists. The man was the other half to a series that put Warren Ellis on the map. Yes people, before Authority, Ellis was slogging away at Stormwatch with Raney for a good few years. They crafted some excellent work, and Raney has never reached that level since. It’s a crying shame as I have a lot of faith in the man. The problem of course is that he shows no flair in his design work here. His characters look stilted and I don’t really like what he’s done here. I know he can do better.

Regarding the story, this was actually pretty disappointing, simply because it wasn’t exciting. Rogue is off with Gambit in Vegas, and then Juggernaut shows up to claim back his girl. That’s effectively the pitch. The ending is good in a ‘I’d like to know what happens next’ but you don’t feel like there’s some closure. With all these stories there’s that sense of finding out more, however this one just seems like you have to buy the next issue to find out what’s going on. Brian is capable of much more but it’s hard with the X-men characters without actually loosing that soap opera feel to it.