THE ULTIMATES #2
"Big"
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Mark Millar
Pencils: Bryan Hitch
Inks: Andrew Currie
Colors: Paul Mounts
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Price: $2.25 US/$3.65 CAN |
So Mark Millar has been handed Marvel's mightiest heroes and something of a blank slate. How does he pay tribute to the stories that inspired this book without being repetitive? The answer is simple: an emphasis on plausibility. As Brian Michael Bendis has done with Ultimate Spider-Man, Millar takes fantastic characters and shaped them into more believable figures with a more modern sensibility. He offers up science (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) and office politics, drawing the reader into a complicated world driven by cash, PR and competition.
With metahuman activity on the rise, the U.S. government has dedicated almost limitless resources to developing its own team of super-powered operatives. Dr. Bruce Banner, apparently recovered from his Hulk episode, is put back in charge of recreating the super-soldier serum that made Captain America a World War II legend, while Dr. Hank Pym works on perfecting a process to allow for superhuman growth and strength. Meanwhile, Tony Stark decides to pitch in with his latest Iron Man design.
Hitch's realistic and highly detailed art is awe-inspiring. He brings the same immense perspective to bear here as he did on The Authority and JLA, but Currie's inks add something new to the equation. There's a grittiness to the visuals that add an even greater sense of realism and maturity. Mounts's colors add to the effect as well; they're more about texture than primary colors and a sense of wonder.
Millar sets aside a lot of the coincidence of the Silver Age super-hero storytelling that inspired this book and comes up with a good reason for these characters to come together. Banner, Pym and Stark may all be brilliant minds and extreme personalities, but here, they're essentially co-workers. I especially enjoyed the rivalry that Millar develops here. Bruce Banner resents Hank Pym a little. He's no longer the golden boy of secret government ops, and that insecurity makes the circumstances far more believable.
The super-hero genre comes with rules. The heroes must have limits, to be overcome only to create tension and climax in the plot. But the rules just were. Superman was vulnerable to magic and Kryptonite. Giant-Man could only grow so tall. Millar takes the idea of such rules uses them to excite the imagination and suspend disbelief by trying to explain the rules. Hank Pym can only grow to 60 feet for a reason, and Janet Van Dyne can only shrink so far for another. It's a clever bit of writing on Millar's part.
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