This is it! This stupid garbage miniseries is almost over. Would this have been ok if it was drawn by a professional? I’m not sure. Would this have been ok if it was written by one person? I think so. Would this have been ok if it was only 6 issues? I think so. But none of those things happened, and it is what it is: garbage. Hulk is now beating up all 48 other superheroes, which seems pretty absurd. There’s 2 Hyperions and a Thor there, for crying out loud.
Panel 3 is a Lee Weeks Hulk head on a stretched version of the usual Land crap body. I think the bottom Hulk is nicked whole cloth from Adam Kubert. The Skrull on the Squadron Supreme goes to tell Quicksilver to collect all the most powerful heroes. Why are they not there already, where did they go? The whole blonde magic ladies tell Scarlet Witch they want to help her fix the double Squadron problem. Hulk starts fighting a 2nd Hulk, but it’s that Skrull guy, who doesn’t last long.
Looks like a John Buscema Hulk at the bottom there. I’m pretty sure this is published after the Damon Lindeloff/Lienel Yu Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine miniseries that began with Hulk ripping Logan in half. He got better. Not much of a threat, is what I’m saying. Well, Thor and Storm and the Hyperions show up to start zapping Hulk. At least that makes more sense than what I thought was happening in the beginning. Then Hulk and Thing fight for a couple pages. Sure, whatever. Feel like we’re just killing time here.
Pretty sure that 2nd Spidey is stolen from Romita, Jr., and the next is Land repeating a trace from earlier in the series. And of course, we’ve seen that Sue so many times by now. Well, Hulk’s down now, big pointless poorly drawn fight over. With the gall to use the caption “Finally…”, Loeb then has Scarlet Witch and the blonde ladies cast a spell. And despite the words to said spell being “Back all things go,” they just get rid of the OG Squadron Supreme. What? Why? All remaining parties agree not to fight anymore, and that Nick Fury is the villain here.
I literally have no idea what’s going on.
So, now, Fury remains a prisoner in Supreme Power world, and Power Princess goes to the Ultimate U. I just had to go look it up. Supreme Power relaunched as Squadron Supreme in 2006, managing a whopping 7 issues that year before fizzling out. I’d bet a dollar it ended prematurely. By the time that ended, Ultimate Power had already published 3 issues. Ultimate Power reaches its belated conclusion in late 2007. There is no Squadron Supreme comic until September 2008, and it’s written by Howard Chaykin, JMS is out of the picture. But Nick Fury apparently did play a big role in that 12-issue run. Power Princess will just kind of bounce around the Ultimate U, appearing in various random places. None of this feels like much of a win for the Ultimate line, and this incarnation of the Squadron Supreme goes the way of the dodo after the 12 issues of the Chaykin book are up. Not great. But wait, we’re not quite done.
One of Mark Millar’s most heinous choices in Ultimates was to make Pietro and Wanda an incestuous couple. Ain’t he great?
What a bunch of nothing! Nothing! Ugh. But wait, we’re not done! Because spinning out of this, Jeph Loeb teamed with the beloved Joe Madureira for Ultimates 3, a series that made the first 2 look like Shakespeare. In the first issue, the Ultimates were attacked in their new home by Venom. With the white spider on his chest and everything. This would later be revealed to be a robot built by Ultron. Why? Who knows? Why did Ultron put a spider on him? Who knows? Bad writing and editing, is the real answer. Anyway, Ultimate Hawkeye, whose family was killed by Mark Millar and who has since become a rampaging homicidal madman who dresses like Bullseye, decides he should hunt down Spider-Man to get some answers about Venom. Spider-Man appears in a single scene in this series, and here it is, with colors by Christian Lichtner:
Great stuff. Anyway. There it is. I am free to go back to USM, where the writing and art are, you know, not awful. 19 glorious issues of USM left in this block. I can’t wait to put this junk behind me.