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Review: Ultimate Fallout #4

By | August 4th, 2011
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Written by Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman and Nick Spencer
Illustrated by Sara Pichelli, Salvador Larocca and Clayton Crain

What will become of Captain America? Where have all the X-Men gone? And what is up with the new Spider-Man suit? Don’t miss the final chapters of one of the most talked about Ultimate events ever.

The Ultimate Universe causes “controversy” and makes a massive push for new readers to hop in! But I was already reading it anyway, so let’s just move on.

For some thoughts on the issue, check after the cut.
If I remember correctly, the basic mission statement Marvel had for it’s Ultimate universe was for it to be different than the “real” Marvel universe. “Anything could happen,” they said. “All different, all the time!” they said. But despite that, for a long time it was simply a distorted mirror of the regular Marvel universe, retelling classic stories with different twists on them to make them “new” without actually having to be that new. But then along came a Jeph Loeb and an Ultimatum, and suddenly the Ultimate universe was forced to on it’s own without any connection to what came before, like a “child lost in the big city” family film.

Unlike a “child lost in the big city” family film, however, the Ultimate universe didn’t simply find it’s parents and go home for hot chocolate. The Ultimate universe pushed on and really forced itself to become a new entity – to somewhat mixed results. Several new storytellers came to the Ultimate universe to tell isolated stories and reconcile plot threads, but first and foremost it was the Brian Bendis show, as he was the only creator who could consistently turn out an issue with his collaborators. Thus the new Ultimate universe’s mission statement became something along the lines of “Check out what Brian and his friends can do!” There’s nothing really wrong with that, although again, it’s not that different from the regular Marvel universe.

Having read every single Ultimate story – from Ultimate Adventure to Ultimate Human to you name it – it is very easy to declare the following statement as a true fact over an opinion: this is easily the most entertaining and intriguing the entire spectrum of the Ultimate universe has been in quite a while.

The Ultimate universe initially thrived due to the interconnectivity of the universe. While regular Marvel certainly connects between all the various titles, immediate changes were always seen right away in the Ultimate universe as the braintrust behind the titles worked together for more synergy. There were plenty of slip-ups along the way, but at least it wouldn’t take months for characters and timelines to line-up. Ultimate Fallout is basically one big pile of previews, showing how interconnected the characters of the Ultimate universe are and teasing years of potential storylines, as the new brain trust of the Ultimate universe show off a few of the toys they plan to play with.

This issue more than most is clearly divided into segments. Previous issues all blurred together fairly well in how the stories were split up, but this issue makes no qualms about jumping between writers and artists to different places. We open with Bendis’ new Spider-Man, Miles Morales, who shows up if only to have us ask the question: who really is Miles Morales? No clues are given towards his origin, other than he too has spider-related powers and that Bendis writes him just as he wrote Peter Parker. Miles isn’t unintriguing in anyway, but so far he’s not inherently new; he’s a different character all together, but he doesn’t seem that way. It’s one of those double-edged sword things, where it is good that he feels so familiar and that as a character he is clearly living up to the Spider-legacy, but – and perhaps this is on Marvel for announcing the news Tuesdayy in USA Today – it wasn’t as noteworthy as it could have been except for that one panel where he takes his mask off.

Meanwhile, Hickman and Spencer all give huge teases for potential storylines. Spencer’s is the one that is easily understood; he’s writing Ultimate X-Men and the future of the Ultimate mutants, who have recently been outed as government genetic experiments in Ultimate Origin/Ultimatum. To that end, he writes a quiet and politically motivated scene straight from a Sorkin-written episode of the West Wing to set the stage for his run. Clayton Crain’s involvement in the scene seems a bit off given what Crain usually draws, but it isn’t inherently bad, just off-putting. What’s interesting to note about the entire scene is that this is essentially Spencer taking one of the more ridiculous “hey, look how everything is different here, guys!” moments of Ultimatum and trying to fashion a legitimate and worthwhile storyline off of it. A lot of Spencer’s writing has been rather politically fueled lately, between Iron Man 2.0 and Secret Avengers, so it’ll be interesting to see how Spencer chooses to handle an entirely fictional government in a world that doesn’t have to mirror our own.

Continued below

Hickman and Larocca are the true scene stealers here, though. At the end of Bendis’ Ultimate Enemy Trilogy, it was revealed that Reed Richards had gone insane, and he was left to die floating through space in the N-Zone in a “To Be Continued…” scene. Hickman takes this and picks up exactly where Bendis left off, showing how evil Reed returned to our universe and – to make matters worse – creates some sort of bastardized version of the Future Foundation. Reed is clearly being set up as a villain far down the road, but it’s incredibly fun to see Hickman essentially recreate one of his own ideas for evil purposes. It seems like an interesting version of a “What If?” storyline, where Johnny didn’t die but the Fantastic Four still broke up; how would Reed choose to continue trying to solve everything? And so Hickman and Larocca steal the show for the best written and best illustrated portion of the issue, condensing what would otherwise have been an issue’s worth of exposition and explanations to a few pages that cut straight to the point and set up “something” to be revealed “some time.”

Suffice it to say, Ultimate Fallout is a gratuitous amount of world building and set-up, but it’s incredibly enjoyable world building and set-up. The Ultimate universe when it was first created felt so inspired and exciting, and to be able to see all these classic characters in an unfamiliar setting that was something more than a “sideways alternate reality created by evil speedsters and/or insane reality-warping mutants” was so exciting to be a part of. Now, unlike the last time the Ultimate universe relaunched, it legitimately feels like the creative teams behind the new titles are going to do something more than just “pick up where we left off” and really try to return to the Ultimate Marvel’s mission statement: be different, all the time always. That element alone is worth the price of admission.

Final Verdict: 8.0 – Buy


Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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