The (Ultimate Letdown) Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 Review

Ultimatum, one of the worst comic book mini-series mankind has ever created, has been over now for a couple of weeks. What was it’s ultimate purpose (see what I did there) in the end? Besides making Marvel some money off of fan boys who will read any piece of shit thrown at them, I believe it was to set the stage for a relaunch of the Ultimate line and that’s exactly what we have here this week in two new Ultimate Comics #1 issues. The first I’ll be reviewing is:

Title: Ultimate Comics Avengers #1
Writer: Mark Millar
Art: Carlos Pacheco and Danny Miki
Publisher: Marvel
Price: $3.99

After letting Jeph Loeb molest and fondle the team quite inappropriately in the last series Marvel has decided to hand The Ultimates back over to series creator Mark Millar. What’s different? The book is no longer called The Ultimates for starters. In what can only be seen as a step in the right direction to end some unnecessary confusion for comic noobs (which I believe are what a lot of Marvel’s customers are) the title on the cover has been changed to Ultimate Avengers. I have no idea why this hasn’t always been the case but it may have something to do with the fact that Marvel has it’s head up it’s own arse most of the time. Another change is that Millar’s usual artist of choice, Bryan Hitch, has been replaced by former DC exclusive artist Carlos Pacheco. I personally prefer Carlos over Hitch but Pacheco is fast becoming a shadow of his former self artistically. I’m not saying he isn’t still better than most comic artists out there but to me his art has really lost a lot of the excitement and energy it once had.

Well, was it a worthy #1 issue for the $3.99 price tag? Hardly. While the comic came in at 24 pages, 7 of those pages were splash pages and, at most, pages only had 3 to 4 panels each. I understand that Millar has always written The Ultimates to feel like a Hollywood movie and that’s why there are so few “panoramic” panels per page but this isn’t a fucking movie. It’s a god damn comic book. Why put a constraint on the visual storytelling? It’s completely maddening at points because comics CAN DO so much more visually than film can. I have always thought Millar’s and Hitch’s Ultimates comics looked like nothing more than stale film storyboards and unfortunately this new series continues that trend.

As for the story itself it really is nothing special at all. It starts off by letting us know that Nick Fury has been relieved of his duties at SHIELD but no sooner does that happen than SHIELD needs Fury back to run a Black Ops team to bring in a rogue Captain America. The rest of the issue than proceeds to show us (a little anyway) why Cap went rogue in an overlong and drawn out action sequence which ends with a scene completely ripped off from the Star Trek film which was released two months ago. For Fuck’s sake, Millar. Give it some time before you blatantly rip something off.

I really hope that Pacheco got paid more than Millar did for his work on this issue but I seriously doubt that. If it weren’t for the art this book would have been piss poor. The script is average at best and the reveal at the end (kinda lame and cliched) is completely for shock value which I really shouldn’t have been surprised at since that seems to be Millar’s m.o. as of late.

There were much better and CHEAPER books that came out this week that you should have invested in instead of this one.

J.