by Randy Lander

ULTIMATE MARVEL TEAM UP TP Recommended (7/10) Marvel Comics Writer: Brian Michael Bendis Artists: Matt Wagner, Phil Hester & Ande Parks, Mike Allred Colors: JC Letters: Comicraft Editor: Ralph Macchio Price: $14.95 US/$21.95 CAN Although I've come around to the merits of this series lately, the stories collected in this volume represent the very definition of mixed bag. There are definitely things to recommend about the book, namely that it represents one of Marvel's strongest writers working with artists who vary from solid professionals and impressive newcomers to industry veterans. This trade paperback collects three stories, a team-up between Spider-Man and Wolverine illustrated by Matt Wagner, Spider-Man's first meeting with the Hulk illustrated by Phil Hester and Ande Parks and the introduction of the Ultimate version of Iron Man with art by Mike Allred. The latter is the strongest story in the book, but each of them has something to offer. The biggest problem that the stories face at the beginning is that the characters seem a bit too much like their mainline Marvel counterparts, making me wonder what the point of the whole thing is. The most original aspect of the first two stories is how Spider-Man reacts to these new allies, and while it's certainly entertaining reading, how Spidey reacts to Wolverine isn't remarkably different from how he reacts to the Hulk. Essentially, it's the familiar "new hero encounters trappings of being a super-hero" that every hero goes through, and it really doesn't matter who the second character is. Bendis gets around this with Iron Man, as the focus is split much more evenly between Spider-Man and his guest star, and the book takes a noticeable upturn when it gets 2/3 of the way through as a result. While this may not be the best art that any of the involved creators have done, the artwork as a whole is pretty impressive. Wagner's art, as expected, is terrific. He really gives a sense of the crowded nature of New York city, whether it's the crowds in the subway or the skyline littered with buildings and billboards, and he conveys the animalistic anger of Wolverine and Sabretooth with some great close-ups. Each character has his own body language, whether it's the dangerous fury that Wolverine and Sabretooth emit or the acrobatic grace of Spider-Man, and his ability to convey action in static form is second-to-none. Phil Hester and Ande Parks didn't seem particularly suited to their story, with their style seeming more suited to a quieter, darker street level character like Green Arrow rather than the impressive behemoth that is the Hulk. The sheer physical power of the Hulk, a major point of the story, doesn't come through terribly well in Hester's understated pencils. Finally, Mike Allred steps in as an unusual but well-suited choice for the Iron Man tale. I particularly enjoyed his take on Iron Man, an almost animated look that looks a bit old-fashioned (the radio antennae and general shape of the armor in particular) but still manages to come across as modern. Allred has a throwback style akin to Steve Ditko, and the gritty material of hostages being taken in a third world country plays out in a much more palatable way than it would have if the artwork were dark and realistic. In addition, the sense of fun that infuses the dialogue comes through in the art as well, and Allred does a fantastic job expressing the power of Iron Man when he comes back online, as well as paralleling it with a sequence where Iron Man's powers are developed for the first time. While I'm not someone who encourages change simply for the sake of change, I have to admit that I prefer the Ultimate universe to err on the side of making changes and updates. The stories here have problems in this regard, with the Hulk seeming depressingly similar to the one-note version of his mainline counterpart and Spider-Man and Wolverine both coming off as more bland than they do in Ultimate Spider-Man or Ultimate X-Men. Much of this is corrected, however, in the revised and updated Iron Man, with an origin that has a bit more freshness to it, updating the warlord to theoretically democratic revolutionaries and Tony's heart condition into another illness and Iron Man himself into a fusion of biotechnology and engineering. All in all, the character seems a lot more cutting edge, as ably demonstrated by the fear and awe that his kidnappers hold him in and the demonstration of power he puts on near the end. Iron Man has always been tied to his Cold War origins and swinging sixties playboy image, and attempts to update him or make him relevant have generally failed due to these underpinnings, so it's nice to see Bendis cut the character free from these somewhat dated origins and yet keep him true to the basics of the character. In the longterm, there are implications to this book that make me worry, wondering if they damage the credibility of the Ultimate books. The Sentinels in Ultimate X-Men are omnipresent, swooping in on a regular basis for deadly strikes, and yet Wolverine, Spider-Man and Sabretooth can battle it out in the middle of Manhattan without any response from them aside from a yell from someone in the crowd. Ultimate Spider-Man, meanwhile, has presented a world where a new hero is greeted with near-celebrity and questions, with nowhere near the fear that the atmosphere of Ultimate X-Men would suggest. These are two books that don't belong in the same shared universe, and I'm afraid that further team-up issues will only weaken eventual Ultimate offerings and create the same kind of inconsistencies that we can see in the mainstream Marvel Universe. In addition, if there were ever an Ultimate Iron Man title, I'd prefer that the creators get to start fresh and ignore anything written here or not, just as Bendis and Millar had fresh ground to start from when creating their Ultimate titles. If the Ultimate line enforces loose or no continuity rather than the tight continuity that comics fans have come to demand, than I have no problem with Ultimate Team-Up. In the end, the title is fun: For Bendis, who gets to work with a variety of incredible artists; for the artists, who get to play around with some of their favorite characters with no strings attached; and for the readers, who get to see creators at the top of their game just having fun with Marvel's vast character library. The icing on the cake of this trade is a glimpse at sketches from those artists, as well as an afterword by Bendis that sums up the reason for the book's existence in the first place. Although once again, the price seems a little high, working out to about $3.00 an issue rather than the $2.25 each issue cost originally. Email Randy Lander comments about this review.