The Ultimates is the best bimonthly title Marvel is publishing. At least, if you take the average number of issues produced in a year and divide them by 12 months, instead of looking at the actual release schedule. At any rate, it's been three months, so it's time for another rare treat, a new issue of The Ultimates, and once again my wish to complain loudly about how late it is gets subsumed within my desire to appreciate the wit, the cool factor and especially the stunning artwork that defines this title. The creative team opens with a very Matrix-style action sequence that probably no one else in comics could pull off, moves on to an Ultimate spin on the alien bad guy story and closes out with a cliffhanger reminiscent of last issue, which once again has me anxious to see the next issue.
While The Ultimates has featured the best characterization and character interplay of any of Millar's books that I've read, the action sequences have been teased for the longest time, culminating in issue five's blowout. The opening sequence of this book makes that blowout look pale, as Millar, Hitch and Neary take a page from The Matrix playbook and create a portrait of an urban assault that demonstrates not only how badass the two new members of the Ultimates are, but is just visually spectacular to look at. The opening sequence, with a couple of obvious, maybe even photo-referenced, nods to The Matrix, just invites re-reading, and I've looked over it at least four times already. It is quite possibly the best super-hero action sequence that we've seen since the death of The Authority.
I'm a fan of the mainstream Avengers, and probably always will be. But I can't deny that I like the Ultimates better. They feel more like real people, partly because of Hitch's unbelievably realistic artwork and partly because of Millar's wiseass characterization. I love the cool and professional exterior of Hawkeye, I love how sexy and flamboyant the Black Widow is and of course I continue to enjoy the goofed-out playboy version of Tony Stark or the ultimate cool that is Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. And I like the tweaks to the alien invasion plot to give it a little bit more of a conspiracy, a science-fiction rather than super-hero twist.
Mind you, I was a bit put off that Hawkeye (one of my absolute favorite characters from mainstream Marvel) and Black Widow seemed to be murdering any number of innocent people, and wish Millar had given up the game a little earlier, but that wouldn't really fit in with the shock value ethos that drives The Ultimates, so I'm not surprised he didn't. I also wish that we weren't being told that Hitler was the result of alien manipulation, as it reduces the human capacity for evil and undercuts the realism that has driven this book. But both of these are minor quibbles with what is otherwise another excellent issue.
The issue closes out with a cliffhanger very similar to the one that closed the previous issue, and I'm dying to see the payoff. Probably about three months from now. If I seem a bit hung up on the lateness of the book despite my glowing praise for it, that's not accidental. This is a fantastic book, one of the best new books of 2002, but Marvel needs to either come out and schedule it as a bimonthly (or quarterly?) book or perform some miracle to get it back on schedule, because the anticipation for each issue only gets worse when a new issue is released and it's so damn good.
