Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates #5 Review

The world is in some deep poop what with The People and The City popping up.  Can the Ultimates make headway to stop both powers from destroying the world as we know it or will they simply be stuck in the crossfire?

Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates #5

Nick Fury meets with the President of the United States who is asking for any kind of action to be taken against the City of Tomorrow that has popped up and engulfed a bunch of Europe.  Clint Barton goes to the Pentagon to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss not the City, which seems to be a hot topic, but the growing numbers of metas being created in Tian, the home of the People.  Thor is now haunted by the fallen Asgardian warriors and it is destroying his relationship with Jane Foster.  Sam Wilson, the Falcon, has discovered a way to infiltrate the City by the use of cloaking technology.  He quickly discovers he may be in way over his head.  Finally, Fury goes to a remote camp in New Mexico hoping to recruit Steve Rogers back into the Captain America outfit and lead the Ultimates in the coming war.

This issue has lots of interesting pieces of bigger stories.  But that’s just it…  These are pieces.  One of the more interesting pieces is the ridiculous mad-on the U.S. Government has to take down the City regardless of whether or not an army can honestly make any inroads to defeat the City.  It seems like this is all set up for some sort of catastrophe where the U.S. Army will try to strike against the City and just make things worse for the Ultimates.  I like Thor’s issues with now being the living embodiment of Asgard and constantly being surrounded by his dead friends.  Between how much it can seriously mess with Thor at inopportune times and Volstagg’s farts, Thor’s likely being driven crazy by his task that Odin placed on him.  Cap’s appearance at the end is also interesting…  It seems like regardless of his beef with S.H.I.E.L.D., he would know he’s needed more than ever, or at least will help in some capacity.

There are other things that were a little more of a head scratcher than anything.  Clearly, Spider-Woman’s only piece of this issue is there to set up an appearance in the Ultimate Spider-Man book.  Generally, I’m not too hard on the idea of a shared universe…  Hell, it was awesome as a kid to know everyone existed in the same world, but here, we’ve seen next to nothing of Spider-Woman.  If she was more a full part of this book, I’d be more likely to go over to Ultimate Spider-Man and see what she’s up to.  Outside a gorgeous full body shot from Brandon Peterson, she means little to me or this story, so I’m not really sure why spend a couple pages here.  Another issue I have is the scene with Tony Stark.  I’m not sure what his spiel about the stock market had much to do with anything.  Is this setting up something for later in the arc?  Is this something that is going to happen in another arc?  There’s a lot of exposition and a lot of dialog spent on Stark making over eight billion dollars after the markets close.  That scene felt a lot like one of the Senate scenes in the Star Wars prequels…  A lot of material for not much necessity in the overall plot.  It may turn out to be more than it seems, but the thread seems to go nowhere as it’s never called back in the book.

From the art side, Brandon Peterson and Esad Ribic just knock this out of the park.  Their styles are already similar in some regard so the switch from Brando’s pages to Ribic’s and back.  If anything, the art in this title and the Ultimate Hawkeye miniseries have carried both books beyond Hickman’s higher brow writing style and, for the most part, it’s what’s mostly kept me coming back for more even if I’m not too sure what’s always going on.

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Tags: Avengers Comics Books Jonathan Hickman Slider The Ultimates Ultimate Comics Ultimate Marvel