Written by Mark Millar
Illustrated by Leinil Francis Yu and Stephen SegoviaConspiracies intensify, loyalties are questioned, and tragedy has struck. What will become of our heroes and the rest of the Ultimate Universe? When you don’t know who to trust, the only certainty is chaos…
While you-know-who is busy you-know-whatting, the other guys are doing other stuff. Next to the Big Thing of the month, should you care? I’m a cruel man. You’ll have to go beyond the jump to find out.
Matt is covering the Big Deal, the polybagged Death Stunt Triple Axle. Of course, this is pairs skating, even if only one of them is singing their spandex on the flaming hoop. Here I am, reading the less sequined partner with the far wackier name, Ultimate Comics Avengers vs. New Ultimates (or, on cover: Ultimate Death of Spider-Man: Avengers vs. New Ultimates). Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve read the preceding four issues. (Only “pretty sure,” nothing definite.) Still, going back in for number five, I can only sit back and stare at how this whole thing seems to be going out with a whimper.
It’s #5 of this particular series, but #23 of Mark Millar’s second go at the Ultimates (even if 18 of those issues were about the ‘Ultimate Avengers,’ but really, the difference is even more make-believe than everything else about comics). The first segment set up the new team, new characters, all that. The second was about Punisher and Ghost Rider and stuff. The third was a vampire invasion. This, the fourth, is everything imploding, or exploding, or both. It’s just hard to see where all of this is coming from, and why it’s a climax to anything, as opposed to “another Ultimates adventure.”
We’ve been fed segments and snippets that glue together otherwise unrelated stories and ideas that start to break off from any kind of central plotline only to quickly circle in on themselves in a cul-de-sac. For stories like this, where Things Fall Apart, it’s best to have a tightly-plotted series where minor details add up to a larger picture of misdirection and clues — we should be able to say “crap, I didn’t see this coming, but now that I re-read it all, how can I not see it looming in the background?” Here, it’s: “Crap, I didn’t see this coming, and looking back, I can’t see where it came from, either.” Plot points and characters fade in and out in an almost arbitrary fashion; Oblique Strategy superheroics.
Of course, that shouldn’t matter quite as much if this thing is all about The Death of Spider-Man!!!, as the cover claims. This issue is not about that at all. There’s a Spider-Man in this issue, but it’s not Peter Parker, just a wrap-up of a dangling plot thread that manages to seriously underwhelm in its payoff. (Black Hulk, the sensational character find of 1972, is similarly written off just as blandly.) If something isn’t wrapped up this issue, it’ll be wrapped up in the next; that much is obvious. Still, after the climaxes of Ultimates I and II, it’s a little hard to get worked up here. War in North Korea? Sure, could be an exciting story. But it’s following up on “the invasion of Earth” and “the subjugation of America, plus vikings.” All that, and not even any dead Spider-Men!
Leinil Yu and Stephen Segovia bash out art that seems as disconnected from their usual bombast as the story does from Millar’s. (Say what you will about Mark Millar’s often juvenile obsessions, but if there’s one thing his stories are guaranteed to have, it’s bombast, for better or for worse.) In recent years, Yu’s work has gone from sketchy to… well, a sort of deliberate sketchiness, a high-energy cross-hatched look full of squinting muscle men and arched-back babes. Stephen Segovia takes those tendencies even further when left to his own devices. Here, though, things are muted, robbed of all but the hints of both men’s distinctive art styles (and done no favors by the colors, an endless sea of grey and beige). Millar’s new Ultimates run has been marked most profoundly by how it seems to largely just be about how cool all of the characters are (well, all of them except Daredevil II, anyway). Exceptionally cool art, therefore, could have maybe pulled it all off, or at least helped it squeak through to the finish. This is all right, but all right just isn’t enough.
With the death of Spider-Man and the impending new #1s of stuff, it feels like an era of the Ultimate universe is coming to a close. An abbreviated, confused era — we can call it “The Abbreviated Era of Confusion” after its defining characteristics. This is a fitting end to it, then, or at least a fitting part of an ending. Maybe Ultimatum soured them on going for apocalyptic style over substance, or maybe this is just a case of building something that’s less than the sum of its parts. It could be something spectacular — in the sense of “spectacle” — but instead it’s just a prolonged sigh before the next people do the next thing.
Final Verdict: 5.0 / Pass
