I went out of town for a few days and didn’t do this. I didn’t miss this series, lemme tell ya. Let’s just get this over with. Thor and Hyperion and still flying at each other in another splash as this issue opens.
Yes. It’s the Charest Spider-Man again. Then a splash of Thor and Hyperion hitting each other. Then…
Spider-Man from the Spider-Man 3 movie poster. How’d it take this long for the live action Spider-Man to appear in this series? It takes another whole page for Sue & Johnny to enter the battle, the JMS issues are unbelievably padded. As they leave Thor, Sue & Johnny to fight Hyperion, Fury tells that Charest Spider-Man again and Captain America he can’t spare any of the others as they protest, saying they have to get Reed back at all costs.
Why did Thor just quit participating? I’m assuming it’s cuz Greg Land sucks, but I don’t know. Look at the bottom panel. Ridiculous. Johnny flies by a Thor that appears frozen in time and fills Sue’s force bubble with fire, but Hyperion just keeps on punchin’. Thor finally moves to go support Sue as Johnny turns his fire up to nova. Which leads to a splash so terrible I want to show it.
This is frankly unprofessional work. Boring, completely lacking dynamism, tons of wasted space, didn’t even bother to draw a background. After a whole nother page of this, Hyperion uses his heat vision to blow up the force bubble in a page with just 2 panels. I think JMS’s 3 issues could’ve been 1 and no one would notice.
He is Superman, after all. Meanwhile, the helicarrier is headed to DC, as Fury is sure it’s where Reed is being kept. There’s a line referencing the Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that was already pretty dusty in 2008, and then Spider-Man writes something down and hands it to Cap. Is it the Charest drawing? You know it!
Thrilling note-passing action! That Nick Fury head has appeared in this issue 3 times. In DC, Reed is met by a bunch of soldiers telling him he’s being transferred to a secure location. After some really terrible banter, an explosion makes Reed run his head through some ventilation shafts to see what’s happening outside.
I don’t know what the Supreme Power analog of Captain Atom can or can’t do, but I know the real one can’t fly, and yet Land always has this guy floating in the air. I bet the Iron Men in this are the easiest swipes to source. Only a few people have drawn that suit at all, and given how few issues of the Ultimates had actually been published to this point, those who had hadn’t done it too often.