This probably isn’t where I should catch up with UMTU, but it’s so outdated by now. Like, this issue came out the same month as USM 17. It’s so bizarre Bendis boxed himself in like this. But we’re back to teaming up, and we got Ted McKeever on deck! Ted McKeever is an awesome, singular cartoonist, making books his whole career that are so completely his vision and style. His comics don’t look like anyone else, they don’t read like anyone else. He’s the kind of cartoonist mainstream comics fans would dismiss as “bad” because mainstream comics fans think everything should look like Jim Lee drew it. And he’s a pretty perfect match for the weird world of Dr. Strange. This would’ve been the most mainstream comic his work had ever appeared in to this point. A long association with the weird side of DC Comics that eventually became Vertigo wound up with him contributing to some odd Batman projects in the late 90s, and he would later have work in several superhero things, but once again, this is Bendis taking a really great guy from the underground and thrusting him into the spotlight. This series was really cool for doing so much of that. Transparency Digital colors as usual. After a very weird Spider-Man splash page, we’re off.
McKeever’s stuff is so incredibly raw and primal. It feels primitive, almost. After this 2-page setup, we’re in the present, and Spider-Man is so bored he’s talking to himself about how bored he is and keeping up some random person in the building he’s stuck to. Spidey swings over a bar where a suspicious looking guy brings some suspicious looking info to another suspicious looking guy.
Now this is funny to me. When this came out, I had read exactly zero comics with Xandu in them. I had no reason to remember this guy’s name. But now… now I have the entire long, weird, generally disappointing history of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange and Xandu up on the blog, and have had a visceral reaction to learning there’s an Ultimate Xandu. Funny what reading 1000+ Spider-Man comics will do to you. And he’s still after the Wand of Watoomb! And he soon learns from this guy that it’s in Dr. Strange’s house! We are really remaking the beginning of the stupid Xandu saga! Oh, man, this is so funny. But this Xandu doesn’t know who Dr. Strange even is, so the guy has to school him.
Type treatment does NOT work for this page! Can’t read it! It tells the rote origin of Dr. Strange, with the added detail of him having a wife and child who died in the car accident wherein he destroyed his hands. We proceed through him refusing to accept his fate, finding the Ancient One, training in the mystic arts, becoming the best of the best (Not referred to as “Sorcerer Supreme,” at least not yet), fighting Dormammu, the usual.
Nobody in a Ted McKeever comic is “easy on the eyes,” but continue, counselor.
So the swerve here to make Ultimate Dr. Strange unique is, all that was his dad. The Stephen Strange from the opening of this book is his secret son, and the guy looking for him was an aging Wong. And young Strange took up his father’s vocation and began learning the mystic arts.
So, Xanadu does what he does and mind controls 2 big brutes into doing his dirty work, and then smash this guy out into the alley to beat him up and that’s when Spider-Man wanders back into the book.
Who could’ve known that that “KONK!” font would later be codified into “the default Marvel Comics sound effect font” in the 2010s by lazy people? Lettering is one of those art forms that only really sticks out if it’s bad, and by 2020, this font is ubiquitous in a way I find extremely annoying.
I cannot believe that the most direct remake in the Ultimate Universe since Amazing Fantasy 15 is this. Elements lifted directly from ASM Annual 2 and MTU 21. Absolutely wild.