Well, we’ve just come from seeing BEndis not handle a crossover event too well in Secret War, and now we hop back in time awhile to see him take a stab another one. This one starts like 6 months before Secret War 1. An official team-up between Spider-Man and the Ultimates! Sort of. This one didn’t go over too well, but who knows, maybe reading it in 6 days instead of 6 months will make it sing. Can’t be worse than Ultimate War, a comic that promised me a Ultimates/X-Men team-up, which I bought because I read one of those books, and then, like every single story with the X-Men in it, it turned out to be an X-Men story sort of guest starring the team I paid to see. John Cassaday on covers here. He’s a big start by now. He really got noticed on Planetary with Warren Ellis at Wildstorm, and in this moment, I think, has just come off a year+ on the very misguided Captain America relaunch where he fought terrorism to draw Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men. Whedon’s star being where it was in nerd circles at the time, that’s a major move. A very in-demand artist. Inside, tho, we have Trevor Hairsine. A guy who did a lot of stuff in this period, but neve really took off. Very much in the “realism” mode sweeping Marvel in the 2000s. But first, a prologue drawn by his and everyone else’s boss, Joe Quesada. Joe didn’t have much time to draw anymore once he became Editor-In-Chief, obviously, so that, too, was a big deal. Both of them are inked by Danny Miki, who seemed to be Joe’s inker of choice for most of the 21st Century. Quesada/Miki are colored by Richard Isanove, while Hairsine/Miki are colored by Dave Stewart. That should make for a jarring contrast. Let’s take a look! We open on Electro waking up in a hospital.
That’s a pretty funny way to do that flashback.
Not sure why there’s a bunch of crops from various Weiringo FF covers on the screens in panel 2, but I hope it’s not supposed to be the Ultimate FF that doesn’t exist and keeps popping up.
The Ultimates! This ain’t your daddy’s Avengers! Sadly! Look how angry Cap looks. That’s pretty normal, Millar’s Ultimate Cap is a mean, Jingoistic, barely sentient lunatic. The Ultimate versions of characters would get priority in marketing long after they debuted. Toys and kids’ shoes and whatever. And for some reason, this inferior Captain America suit had legs way, way beyond its use in comics. One Ultimate design that did NOT make it to mass media was that Iron Man. Ultimate Iron Man’s suit sucks so bad. Somehow it’s gotten worse with age. And Black Widow just looks like Black Widow, no one’s bothered to redesign her much. Well, anyway, that’s the prologue done. What this whiplash change in art:
Line art and color art, totally different.
The idea that Ultimate Electro doesn’t have ears is really, really, really weird looking. In Bags’ more stylized approach, I didn’t even notice, but here, it looks WEIRD. Why doesn’t he have ears??? What part of being an electric man means no ears? How does he hear??
Well, hey, that’s 4 Spider-Villains all lined up. It turns out their group therapy sessions are overseen by Hank Pym, aka Giant-Man in the Ultimates (I can’t remember if this Hank was meant to have ever been an Ant-Man previously). Boy, the treatment of his & Jan’s relationship in that book… Ugh. Norman notes that they’re wearing an advanced model of the “Richards gene nullifier” (Bzzzt!) once used to stop the Hulk, and he wants to know why he and Otto are wearing one if they don’t have access to their arms and drugs. He reasons this means Hank knows something about their weird genetics that they don’t, and want to know what they know. Then Fury shows up. There’s a fun bit where Norman acts like he’s Fury’s archenemy and Fury barely acknowledges him. Fury reveals that, by turning themselves into “illegal, unnatural, genetic mutations,” they gave up their rights, and now all they can do is either work off their time as a sort of Suicide Squad situation, or sit at rot, and he doesn’t care which they choose. He makes sure they know that Dr. Pym is the only person in the facility who doesn’t want to kill them and takes off. But, hey, we’re like halfway through this issue and haven’t seen Spider-Man or Peter Parker, so…
Just kidding, this is Kraven on a talk show trying to do damage control after getting whupped in USM 21. While his show was canceled and he was deported, he’s back, and he’s going to hunt Spider-Man on Pay-Per-View this Saturday night! The talk show host brings up rumors that he’s undergone some genetic treatments, which he brushes off, so you know he did.
Ultimate Thor was a new age guru wannabe type who may or may not have been the son of Odin. He thought he was, but no one believed him, and whether it was trues was up in the air for awhile. But he did have super strength, lightning powers, and a big, stupid axe they called a hammer (Which would later find its way into the Avengers movies)
Man I love Ultimate Kraven. Just the bumbling idiot real Kraven SHOULD be.
The Freddie Prinze, Jr. joke. Millar had Hulk rampaging through New York trying to kill Freddie Prinze, Jr. It was savagely made fun of at the time despite being a major set piece in one of Marvel’s biggest hit comics, and it aged like milk. Well, soon enough, Sharon Carter and the gang have detained Kraven, and in his rage, he reveals he can kind of turn into a wolf man or something now. But they just electrocute the crap out of him and he’s no threat to them. Kraven should be this much of a jobber always, in all media. He certainly shouldn’t be the star of his own movie!
Well, what’s that mean? And why only Spider-Man villains in this cell block? Come to think of it, I don’t even remember who the Ultimates fight. Eventually, it’s the Chitauri, which really just means Skrulls, but Millar was too weak to use that name, he thought it sounded stupid, so he made up a new one, but shapeshifting aliens infiltrating human society… Skrulls. The word “Chitauri” would, of course, later be applied to a completely unrelated alien race in the Avengers, which would then feedback into that version being added to the regular Marvel U comics. Such a weird relationship, the comics and movies. But I don’t think the Ultimates ever fought, like, Whirlwind or anything. No real villains.That’s weird, now that I think about it. No Kang, no Loki, no Masters of Evil. Just generic aliens and conspiracies. Boring. Well, we’re one whole issue in and have yet to include Spider-Man. Maybe he’ll show up in #2.