Ultimate Human #4 (of 4) — Writer: Warren Ellis; Penciler: Cary Nord; Colorist: Dave Stewart
This has probably been the least of the Ellis Ultimate mini-series, since it just doesn’t amount to much: having Pete Wisdom as the bad guy, a sort of Ultimate Leader, came off as self-indulgent and too inbred to make much sense, and there was never a feeling of anything being at stake. The best Ellis offers a prickly back-of-the-neck-hairs weirdness, a glimpse of a world that’s simultaneously harder, stranger, and more fun than the one we’re used to, and this title never achieved that: blah blah Iron Man blah blah Hulk blah blah nanotech… there was maybe one good comic’s worth of material here out of the four issues, and that just wasn’t a good enough percentage to be worth buying.
XXXombies #4 (of 4) — Writer: Rick Remender; Art: Kieron Dwyer
This had some pop to it — a mashup of a zombie-plague story and the kind of ’70s movie (kickass father searching for his daughter, who’s been absorbed into the Hollywood porn industry) that Charles Bronson might have starred in. Lots of mobsters, sex, violence, gore and parody, all professionally rendered by Dwyer, but as with Ultimate Human it just never amounts to much — we don’t care about the characters because they’re cannon fodder or jokes (they’re all so tongue-in-cheek that it’s a wonder they can even talk), and the ending is more of a stop than a conclusion, with a last page that seems to have wandered (shambled?) in from a completely different book.
Giant-Sized Avengers/Invaders #1 — Writer: Roy Thomas; Artists: Sal Buscema; Frank Robbins; Lee Weeks
A reprint collection: the Thomas/Buscema is the first appearance of the Invaders, from Avengers #71, while the Robbins offerings come from reprints of their own issue #10 and Annual #1 (the latter with guest art from Golden-Age pencilers Alex Schomburg, Don Rico and Lee Elias), and the Weeks is from Thomas’s return to the characters in Giant-Size Invaders #2, from two years ago. Not a bad package if you don’t already have the stories; the Robbins art, especially, looks stylish and sleek today, although back then a lot of readers scorned it as too cartoony for superhero work.
Daredevil: Blood of the Tarantula #1 — Writer: Ande Parks; Art: Chris Samnee
Brubaker gets a co-credit with Parks on “story,” but otherwise isn’t around. He’s missed, because he does this kind of gritty crime tale (the Tarantula is a street-level tough with minor strength and healing powers, who struggles to do the right thing) better than anyone else in comics right now. It’s all OK, but DD is pretty much a walk-on, and everyone runs around and angsts nobly, but then ends up the same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning. If this was meant to gauge interest in the title character, I doubt that the needle’s going to move much.
Ultimate X-Men #93 — Writer: Robert Kirkman; Art: Harvey Tolibao
It’s remarkable that, with Apocalypse rampaging and Jean Grey doing a Phoenix manifistation, this book seems so inconsequential. Kirkman has a way of making worn old comics plot twists seem fun, but the one here, which culminates in the hitting of the Cosmic Reset Button, just didn’t resonate. Readers who haven’t seen the plot twists enough to recognize them as cliches would probably like this better, although the art is still pedestrian at best, and the scent of cancellation is starting to gather around this title (after 93 issues, its brand-new, anything-can-happen Ultimate vibe has dissipated almost completely).
Phil Mateer
