The Ultimates 2 – Grand Theft America (2.2)

Well, this book finishes up the story where Gods and Monsters left off and to be honest with you, I could use a bit of a break from The Ultimates so it will be a while before I check out The Ultimates 3.  So does this book do justice to the series?  In my humble opinion, no.  I’ve mentioned before that the normal pace for The Ultimates books tends to be a bit slow, but this book isn’t slow at all.  In fact it moves so fast at times it seems frantic, like we’ve missed a panel or two.

Basically the bottom falls out on The Ultimates in this book, which could have worked out very nicely, but I feel that Marvel took the wrong path on this one.  I see what they were doing, I get the fact that Marvel likes to tie issues in the real world into their stories:  Mutant/Super-hero registration, segregation, the Legacy virus… I get it.  I normally enjoy the way Marvel intertwines issues between the real world and the created one, but sometimes it gets in the way.  In fact, I think this could have been a much better book had they just removed the politics and just told the story.  It felt very contrived and rushed the way it is.

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There was some great action in this book, so if you pick it up just for that reason then you’ll probably enjoy the tale, but if you are looking for story that feels honest you may be left a bit disappointed like I was.

Civil War

The thing to ask yourself before going into Civil War is ‘do I like change?’.  I figure most readers of Trade Paper Backs do enjoy change.  They enjoy villains rising from the dead, characters changing powers and even super-heroes getting killed.  Not all the time mind you, but once in a while to shake things up.  Well that’s exactly what Civil War does to the entire Marvel universe, and things will never be quite the same.

This is important for you TPB readers and I can’t emphasize this more, if you want to understand what Marvel’s Civil War was all about, buy this TPB first! I have read many of the other Civil War TPBs and some of them are downright confusing and most add nothing substantial to the main plot.

Long story short and a minor spoiler– chances are anyone knowing even the slightest about Marvel’s Civil War probably knows all of this anyway — the New Warriors which include Speedball and Namorita are starring in a reality TV show about super-heroes and to boost their ratings they raid a hide out for super-villains.  Unfortunately they aren’t up for the challenge and things go wrong when the villain named Nitro uses his exploding power to kill everyone in a two block radius which just happens to include an elementary school.  There’s major repercussions from this tragedy as the American people demand accountability from their super-heroes and in this case, accountability means un-masking.

What really sets things off in this book is the horrible way the current Director of Shield Maria Hill handled the situation in her briefing with Captain America which forced him to take a stance.  In fact Cap took a stance to an extreme that he probably never would have  if cooler minds had prevailed.

So here’s the synopsis.  Half of the Marvel super-heroes led by Tony Stark agree to register with the government, get trained in how to use their powers responsibly and even draw a government paycheck.  The rest of the heroes following Captain America believe the registration act is a violation of their civil rights and refuse to arrest and imprison super-heroes who don’t feel that they need to register.  So of course, the two sides must clash.

Perhaps if the rebellious team led by Captain America had just buried themselves and hidden out things wouldn’t have turned violent, but these are still heroes, people who feel the need to be where the public needs them most, making them easy targets for Tony Stark’s team of heroes and the entire Shield force.

This is a great book as far as TPBs go because with minimal knowledge of the Marvel Universe you can easily understand what is going on yet fanboys will enjoy the more subtle references that aren’t integral to the storyline.  That’s the other great thing about this book as a read, it’s completely self-contained and meant to be just that.  There’s a beginning, we see how and why the conflict began, there’s a middle filled with conflict and loss and finally there is an ending that offers closure, not hinting at what’s going to happen in the next book.  This is obviously a result of Civil War covering a limited series and the end result is a very enjoyable experience.

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You’ll notice that this review has a ton of tags.  I actually limited the character tags to those characters that actually contributed significantly to the action or the storyline.  The number of tags would be double if I had merely included anyone who made an appearance in this book.  So yeah, just about everyone in the Marvel universe picked a side, fought for it and had their lives changed by all that happened.  So to me, this TPB is a must have for any Marvel fan, the companion books…not so much.

The Ultimates 2 – Gods and Monsters (2.1)

The Ultimates 2 starts off with a bang.  Captain America leaps out of a helicopter and kicks some terrorist ass to free some hostages.  But that really has nothing to do with what this book is about.  There are some smaller side story lines, like Hank Pym coming back with his Ant Man persona, the relationship between Cap and Janet gets more involved and Tony Stark falls for the Black Widow, but the core of the story revolves around two characters; one is a god and the other is a monster.

Just when Dr Banner seems to be getting the Hulk under control we finally the consequences from Ultimates 1 come to fruition as the Hulk is held responsible for killing over 800 people on his rampage through New York.  Was it really his fault?  Does that even matter?  There is always a need for a scapegoat and Banner, deservedly or not has become just that.  Now he must be tried before a jury of his peers.

On the other end of the spectrum, Thor is being more vocal in his discontent with the US Government stating his belief that they will eventually send the Ultimates to the Middle East despite the fact that it is prohibited by their charter or something.  He publicly removes himself from the team right before confidential documents about Bruce Banner being the Hulk get leaked to the media.  This brings him into conflict with the Ultimates and besides that Thor’s delusions of godhood appear to be getting worse, will they be forced to fight another teammate?

The book is written at the same pace as the other Ultimate books which may be a bit slow for casual readers but that’s because it’s not meant for casual readers.  This series wants us to take a look at these super heroes and discover just how human they are.  They have faults, desires and fears that impact their lives and the story.

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Again, it’s another good Ultimates read that I’d recommend and it leaves you with one Hell of a cliff-hanger that will have you itching to get the follow-up book Grand Theft America.

The Ultimates – Homeland Security (1.2)

Homeland Security opens up just where Super Human ended and it also concludes this run of the series.  As I began reading the second book I was reminded of how this series are darker and covers more mature themes than a normal Avengers book would and in my opinion they aren’t really suitable for younger readers.

Ok, now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let’s get to the difference between books.  Even though this book concludes the story of the previous Ultimates book, there are significant differences.  For instance, the problems the Ultimates face in the first book are problems that they brought about themselves.  In Homeland Security, there are significant outside forces to deal with, forces of an extra-terrestrial nature.

Another significant difference is the cast.  The core five were established in the last book but that changes as Giant Man’s actions from the previous book significantly reduced his role in Homeland Security and added to the team are Black Widow, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch — the last two are only bit players though.  In an homage to The Matrix Hawkeye and the Black Widow make their entrance in black trench coats carrying black duffel bags filled with weapons and deal some serious damage to some unsuspecting aliens.  Both Black Widow and Hawkeye play important roles in the final battle of the series.

The core team have had big changes as well.  Captain America gets a reminder of how out of touch he is with modern social norms, the Wasp has her own private struggles after having it out with her husband.  Tony Stark admits uncertainty in his self-imposed crusade and in a moment of weakness expresses self-doubt which is out of character for him.  Dr Banner is remourseful for his recent actions and scared about his future yet still has the ability to let his guard down and laugh when visited by Betty Ross. All these changes show one thing, our ‘Super Human’ team is all to human.

The biggest change between the two books is probably the amount of combat in Homeland Security.  You will not go more than four pages in between fights and some of them are just epic.  The main battle at the end of the book is chaotic and frantic just like a real battle would be.

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The main question I have to answer is, does the second book live up to the first Ultimates book?  The answer is yes.  The payoff of Homeland Security is worth the slower pace of the first book and it resolves almost all of the important storylines but still leaves us with a couple of more personal issues that leave us wanting more.  All in all I thoroughly enjoyed both Ultimates books and recommend them to anyone that likes a more realistic and slightly darker super-hero read.

The Ultimates – Super Human (1.1)

The Ultimates is part of Ultimate Marvel, a series designed to re-imagine the stories of some of Marvel’s classic characters with a modern twist.  Not only does this allow Marvel to remove some of the confusing and sometimes convoluted histories of these characters, update their origins within our current scientific paradigm but it also had the possibly unforeseen but beneficial side-effect of de-cluttering this new universe.  Sometimes the classic Marvel galaxy just feels too overrun with both villains and heroes.  Does the world really need to be saved from destruction everyday?  A reduced cast makes what you are reading somehow feel more important and more possible.

But that’s just my opinion on the whole Ultimate Universe of which the the Ultimates are just one part.  The Ultimates are this generations Avengers using pretty much the old cast.  The story begins with Captain America serving a much deserved beat down to some evil Nazis before an explosion sends him into the dark depths of the Arctic where he can cool off for 50 years or so.

Major Nick Fury, a black and more fierce version of than the one from the original universe — who even in the book compares himself to Samuel L. Jackson — is charged with putting together a government sponsored force capable of dealing with the world’s new super-threats.  This comes as a response to the Hulk ravaging a pier in Manhattan and coincidentally, the first member of the new team is a cured Dr. Banner with the hope that he can reverse engineer the super-soldier serum that made Captain America the man he was in WW2.

Dr Banner was eager to join the team and redeem himself but his colleagues Hank & Jan Pym who also agree to join the team as Giant Man and Wasp aren’t so eager to have Banner along for the ride; neither is Banner’s old girlfriend Betty Ross who was brought in as the Director of Communications for the new team.

Tony Stark volunteers his service so the only hold up on getting the team rolling is the new Super Soldiers Banner is going to create when his serum gets completed which is proving more difficult than previously believed.  As fate would have it though just when all looks bleak, a team of marine biologists discover a Captain America popsicle in the Arctic Ocean and somehow Major Fury’s team is able to revive him.  The Avengers have assembled.  Well, I left out Thor, and while he does help the team in a time of crisis he also refuses to work for ‘the man’.

Now that the team is together the problems begin.  Captain America is a man out of time, he struggles with understanding the world’s declined social standards and being 50 years younger than those he loves.  Next, the media starts questioning the governments choice to fund a team tasked at stopping super-powered crime when there’s been nothing worth fighting in months.

In moment of relaxation, Dr Banner overhears his colleagues joking about him and it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.  He feels like an utter failure having not come up with the answer to the Super Soldier formula and he turns to the Hulk for an answer.  That’s the irony of the whole book, Banner Hulks out and it’s his own team that stops him.  If the team had never been put together, Banner wouldn’t have had a reason to bring out the Hulk.  A team with no one to fight manages to to create their own foe to give them a justifiable purpose, even if it’s only one team member who is to blame.

The book touches upon some dark aspects of humanity.  People break into Captain America’s new digs and destroy his personal belongings, Hank and Jan have a fight that goes way too far. It’s real, that’s what I’m trying to get across, some of the shine that normally goes hand in hand with superhero comics has been dulled, but that’s alright, it’s actually what I enjoyed about The Ultimates.

For instance, when Giant Man grows and when Wasp shrinks, their clothes don’t resize with them.  During a fight, Iron Man needs to take time out to recharge, Giant Man takes a hit and is out for the entire fight, Captain America gets beaten to a pulp.

The closer to reality action and the somewhat dark themes makes for a more mature book, and hey there’s a cameo by President Bush and you don’t wanna miss that.  It’s a great read but it does leave a lot of story left to be finished in the second Ultimates book which I’ll be reviewing soon.  That’s probably the only real knock I have against this book as a TPB, but that doesn’t really bother me honestly.

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If you are picking it up hoping for non-stop action, then you are bound to be disappointed, this is more of a character study of classic characters that deserve the attention.

X-Men: Mutant Massacre

Wow, it’s taken a long time to set up MyTPB, but now that it’s finally done I think it was worth the effort.  So what better way to kick off my review site than to start with one of the most infamous and talked about crossover story arcs ever..  The X-Men’s Mutant Massacre!

I had always wanted to read this crossover given how many times I would find it referenced in modern story arcs, but finding all the books in this relatively old & popular crossover stories with some hard to find titles like Power Pack just seemed like more work than I was willing to go through.  Luckily, that’s exactly what trade paper backs are for.

Just to clarify, I had tons of preconceptions about this story.  What I — and probably most people who never read the story but followed the X-men comics — knew was that a group of assassins including Sabretooth called the Marauders were hired to cull the morlocks, and the popular X-man Gambit had led those assassins there.  Finally and probably the most significant change from the story was the transformation of Angel into Archangel.

I was envisioning all kinds of cool looking Weapon-X black-op type of soldiers creeping through the tunnels below New York and killing unsuspecting & ugly mutants with uncanny efficiency, what I got was something a whole lot different.

Ok, so time for a synopsis.  Contrary to future history, as confusing as that sounds, Gambit was never in the storyline.  There wasn’t even a dark figure stalking about the tunnels that we could pretend could have been Gambit, but that’s comics for you, re-writing history (retcon) whenever it makes for a shocking twist.  Ok, so no Gambit, but we still got these super-cool assassins called the Marauders.

Well, as it turns out the Marauders aren’t as cool as I was imagining them to be either.  I’m not going to go through all the Marauders, but a couple of key villains were Harpoon, an Inuit who throws electrically charged harpoons, Scalphunter who wears a ridiculous outfit with thousands of gun pieces all over his body so that he can make different guns on the fly I guess and Riptide, a killer who could spin really fast and then fling out an unlimited amount of shurikens at everyone within range.  Fantastic!

Ok, so the villains kinda left something to be desired, but what about the heroes.  Well between the X-Men and X-Factor (consisting of the original four X-men) you’ve got a lot of good superheroes in this mix, the problem was that neither team ever got near each other so both teams end up taking solid butt-kickings.  I have no problems with heroes getting whooped now and again though, so I was Ok with this.

I must admit reading a comic from the 1980’s does throw you a bit.  I mean Psylocke is not yet a hot ninja chick, Storm has a Mohawk and wears a leather vest and Rogue has a mullet with a skunk stripe right down the center.  But those were the times, so you’ve got to take those in good spirit and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Another hero of note in the Mutant Massacre is Thor, who killed a guy which was pretty cool actually.  I had no real problem with the God of Thunder making an appearance in a mostly mutant storyline & kicking some ass, but the first eighteen pages of his appearance has him babysitting a group of children until a pair of frogs named Pudlegulp and Bugeye inform him of the Morlock massacre.  And no, I’m not kidding, though I wish I were.

The New Mutants make an appearance which really makes no difference to the storyline whatsoever.  You could scrub their entire appearance and be no worse for the wear.  Speaking of appearances that should have been scrubbed, we move to our last group of heroes, Power Pack!

Do I even need to make a list of the cons of having Power Pack make an appearance in what is supposed to be a landmark crossover.  I mean it’s Power Pack for Christ’s sakes. They have to sneak out so their mom and dad don’t see them because their powers are a secret.  If annoying not only the Marauders but also the readers was the point of putting them in the book, then I say job well done Power Pack!

Ok, so maybe my pre-conceived notions of how cool this book was going to be spoiled the read for me.  Kinda like when I saw clerks five years after everyone else in the world had.  It was still a fun read to fill in some of the X-Men history I had always wondered about.

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So what did I make of this all?  It’s not a perfect book by far, but it was pretty entertaining.  The cons were really Power Pack’s appearance, the whole X-Factor versus The Executioners ridiculousness which I didn’t even bother going over here and the lack of truly impressive villains.  The pros on the other hand were some fairly violent changes not contained merely within the book, but also as to how far you could take that kind of violence within fairly conservative super-hero comics at the time – but that’s just my opinion.

So between the historical significance of the book, the birth of brutality in X-titles and some pretty good scraps between Wolverine and Sabretooth, I deem this a pretty good read for fans of the X-Men line regardless of my sarcasm throughout this review.  Just don’t expect too much like I did or you’re bound to be disappointed.