Comics/ Comic Reviews/ Marvel Comics

Ultimatum #2

By Zak Edwards
Dec 26, 2008 - 21:28
A word of warning, spoilers ahead, not that it matters.

Low expectations can work in a couple of ways. Sometimes, like with the first Pirates of the Caribbean, low expectations can be good. You aren’t expecting much so you’re pleasantly surprised. But the flip side of this is when your expectations are low and so things done poorly are emphasized, leaving an even poorer impression than it probably deserves. Last month I gave Jeph Loeb’s Ultimatum the benefit of the doubt, now I’m just going be offended.

Professor Xavier is trying very hard to tell you not to buy this book. With his mind!

It really wasn’t like I was expecting anything, but Loeb does the same things wrong he did with Ultimates 3; shove things in readers faces instead of using any semblance of subtlety, not helped by penciller David Finch’s ridiculous pencilling, and take things way too far way too quickly. He did this with Ultimates and he’s doing it here. It’s offensive, it really is. First off, his title “Death Becomes Her,” doesn’t make any sense unless you are counting Thor’s bang buddy, Vakyrie as the central focus of the story. Or maybe it’s the giant evil death lady Thor goes and visits, in another dimension, to get her back, but only through fighting zombie skeletons. Either way, a series about the end of the Universe is instead focusing on the death of a character who was intentionally made to be pathetic and then transformed into sex appeal to compensate for Loeb’s disastrous writing. And the brief points away from Thor’s plot, not subplot, are equally ridiculous. From the Blob eating the Wasp to Hawkeye suddenly shifting from stereotypical angry grieving man to relating to another character on an emotional level, the issue is a train wreck. That’s probably one benefit of terrible characterization, any character can fill any role needed. Oh, and Professor Xavier dies, again. All Loeb needs to do to become the Ultimate version of stereotypical bad comic book is bring him back to life, again; just like Robert Kirkman did in Ultimate X-Men about a year ago. As described, the scenarios Loeb puts these poor card-board cut-outs through points out everything keeping comic books back from being seen as nothing more than mindless drivel designed to show off women in tight clothing and burly men killing things.

And this is not helped by David Finch’s pencilling which can only be described as attempts at creating masturbation material for thirteen year old boys. As soon as the panel depicting Carol Danvers, full-length, with her massive breasts and impossibly white blonde hair, I started rolling my eyes at the art just as much as the story. It’s insulting, offensive, misogynistic, and pathetic. It just adds to increasing the setbacks comic books need to get past.

1/10 Pathetic, the reading equivalent of snorting concentrated floor cleaner and feeling your brain cells slowly and painfully die.

Last Updated: Jan 7, 2012 - 7:41
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The Wasp

What is it with Marvel Comics and the Wasp this month? First they kill the other one with purple dots in Secret Invasion, now they have the Blob eat her counterpart...

There's something Freudian here but I can't seem to know what it is.

#1 - Heve St-Louis - 12/26/2008 - 22:04

Love the line about floor cleaner, Zak. Bravo :-)

#2 - Geoff - 12/26/2008 - 22:47

Marvel standard procedure, What do we do with this character? Don't know! Well then, lets kill'em.

At first i thought it was some sort of anti-red head thing, what with jean grey, scarlet witch then mary jane being killed or written out or completly altered but it really is there default response to everything. Ultimate x-men is coming to the end so total non-surprise that they are going to get slaughtered, same with the ultimates. If they can't think of something for the character then they just kill them to try and give the story more impact but its being done so often and so obviously that we're not just not caring but actually getting annoyed at the lack of thought about the whole thing. This is the ultimate universes big event and i'm tempted to save my money and just skip it. :-(

#3 - Chris - 12/28/2008 - 18:21

Reading reviews like this makes me really happy. The fact that this title's being critically lambasted compensates slightly for the (stupidly) high sales numbers. According to a poll posted on an X-Men forum, over 50% of respondents thought this issue was good to excellent. BLARGH.

#4 - JJJ - 12/29/2008 - 07:24

These event comics suck John Holmes-Size Dick. Period.

They plan these sh-tty stories almost 2 years in advance for starters. That said the comics still come out f--kin' late? Both Marvel AND DC have got to stop letting these "hollywood" (wannbe's the lot o'them!)writers use these characters they don't give a sh-t about 'cuz they hope the get to rub up on Scarlett Johnassen or Jessica Alba if they're lucky. Grant Morrison Sucks! Jeph Leob has written some good stuff (The Long Holloween is one of the all-time great Batman stories) but his stuff has been more miss than hit lately. Brian Michael Bendis, Don't Get Me Started.

#5 - robscully - 01/02/2009 - 22:58

I feel so guilty....

for promoting the Ultimates books when they first came out. I didn't *mean* to get people on a train that was going to be run over a cliff!

According to a poll posted on an X-Men forum, over 50% of respondents thought this issue was good to excellent. BLARGH.

JJJ, I have a theory about that. I noticed the same thing about a couple of prose SF series where the first book (or maybe two books) got 2 stars on Amazon, and there were dozens or even hundreds of reviews (eg "The Fifth Sorceress") and most of them were negative. But by the third book, the rating was much higher.

However, there were a lot fewer reviews. By that point, only the author's friends and the people with no taste were left - everyone who had been willing to give the series a chance to improve had followed their own advice and stopped reading it. It wasn't that the books had gotten any better - OR that it had attracted new fans. It had just run off everyone who cared about plotholes, characterization, worldbuilding, and basic grammar...

I suspect something similar, and of course this becomes part of the death spiral (not limited to comics, or even publishing) where a company doesn't want to hear negative criticism, so they ignore it, and only listen to the cheerleaders who think EVERYTHING's just WONDERFUL! and tell them to "ignore the h8ers" - as a result, they keep losing old customers and failing to attract new ones...but their cheering squad is still telling them they're doing everything right. --What to do, what to do?

#6 - bellatrys - 01/03/2009 - 09:24

It's Our Fault Anyway

To quote a personal hero of mine, Spider Jerusalem:

This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn't we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didn't want to live like this, we could have changed it any time, by not fucking paying for it. So lets celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger.

We keep buying it, they keep making it. We stop, they change. But they set things up in a way to keep us wanting to stay on top of things. Now, I'm the biggest hypocrite, look at my other reviews, but that would be the simple solution. Another solution, read comics not done by the big two, look at newbies eager to prove they're the best. Like Jonathan Hickman or Jeff Lemire.

#7 - Zak - 01/06/2009 - 21:48