Comics / Comic Reviews / Marvel Comics

Ultimate Origins #5

By Zak Edwards
October 22, 2008 - 16:15

And so Brian Michael Bendis’ highly-hyped saga about the origin of the ltimate Universe ends with an almost cacophony of “that was a waste of time.”  Rather than this series revealing anything except an Ultimate version of the Watcher, a character (if you can call a big, glorified laser pointer that happens to mind possess people a character) used solely to hype up the Ultimatum, Ultimate Origins has merely given readers a more compact version of things they already knew or had figured out for themselves.

Okay, this may be an overstatement, ew did learn Wolverine was made a mutant rather than born one, leading to all mutants being a science experiment.  And Uatu, the laser pointer, has picked a herald to help with Ultimatum.  Thank you, Uatu, Jeph Loeb is going to need all the help he can get.  So the series is really disappointing and couldn’t live up to all the ‘everything is connected’ taglines.  So, all in all, the series did what many speculated and what it was probably intended to do, drive up awareness and sales of the Ultimate Universe’s Ultimatum event, strategically placed to begin after all the events occurring in the regular Marvel Universe are drawing to their conclusions.  Get ready for Ultimatum, it’s going to be big, haven’t you seen all the adverts?  Of course, I’m still going to read it.  Damn it.

Butch Guice’s pencils and the art in general has really done this series a favour.  The dramatic shading and dark colour palette work well with the material.  Guice’s ability to convey emotion through both mood of the panels and individual facial expressions have helped drive home the impact events have had on the characters, even if they didn’t have one on the readers.

/10 (not a 0)    Just bad.  One of those issues that makes you lose a little faith in mainstream comics.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12