There’s little point reviewing Jeph Loeb’s Ultimates by now.  If you’re still buying it, then you deserve all you’re getting, frankly. If you want to read about the real Ultimates, well, go and buy Ultimate Human instead, because it’s MUCH BETTER. Now, while we take the fairly healthy line that in comics, continuity is merely a tool that can be used to help or hinder a good story, that doesn’t mean that we’re ignorant of it. It also doesn’t mean we can resist shooting fish in a barrel. Today, rather than a review, Seb and I have compiled a list of all the ways in which Loeb has screwed up in another exciting issue of Jeph Loeb’s Ultimate Ultimates!

PREVIOUSLY: A whole bunch of unreadable shit happened! The Scarlet Witch is dead! Quicksilver left with Magneto! Wolverine turns up at the Ultimate Avengers Ultimate Mansion! And then the problems begin, as he starts to investigate what’s been going on here, generally rubbing everyone up the wrong way.

Three Kids. Hawkeye had THREE KIDS. This mistake so upsets Hawkeye that rather than noticing, he initiates a double-page spread with Wolverine! Luckily Captain America is available to intervene. But he doesn’t like what he’s hearing!

You might have noticed that Ultimate Cap has been reduced to a single note of characterisation. For you see, he is from the Ultimate 40s, and back then, no-one swore or had sex, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to allow a single instance of any of that sort of thing pass without comment. For instance, last issue:

Or the issue before that: 

It’s not quite as subtle as when he was trying to reassemble his record collection, is it? Additionally, check that first panel again. It’s fairly amusing that after years of forgetting to draw Wolverine as a shorter man, artists are now forgetting that Ultimate Wolverine is not short like the 616 version. Or perhaps you missed his previous, ooh, hundred appearances?

Luckily Thor is around to stop the fighting. As established last issue, in order to prove that he was a genuine Norse god, Thor had taken to talking perfect English, but now he doesn’t have to pretend! Er, sure. Presumably, this is because Thor recognised that a Norseman talking in King James English is a completely bonkers idea best left in the 60s, and if he’d done that in front of Millar’s Ultimates team they’d have thrown him in the crazy house immediately. It would have been stupid then, and hey! IT’S STUPID NOW.

And what’s worse, it appears to be catching on. Wolverine then tries to explain, using “logic”, why everyone should’ve seen this coming, relating the time he had sex with the Scarlet Witch’s mother, Ultimate Magda:

It’s not surprising he’s staring so hard. Either she’s got some kind of adamantium-laced breasts, or gravity has taken leave of its senses. Either way, when the room you’re having sex in appears to be entirely on fire, it’s probably not worth worrying about. Before the whole place can burn down, though, Logan experiences a severe turn of Coitus Interruptus when Magneto bursts through the door!

“First you sleep with my wife, then you misspell my name in flashback!”

Having been kicked to the curb, Logan narrates the first time he met the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, when he joined the brotherhood.

This may just be Loeb responding directly to criticisms about the Scarlet Witch’s slutwear costume (in much the same way as the issue’s RECAP PAGE *finally* tackles both the reason Hank isn’t in the Triskelion, and why Valkyrie has powers…) but why does Logan say “Didn’t ANY of you notice what she was wearing recently?” Why would it be significant to them? No-one in the Ultimates would have ever seen anything besides her Shield uniform, would they?

And let’s get this straight. This scene happens post Weapon X, pre-Ultimate X-Men. That is, during the period where Wolverine had his brain wiped, and didn’t know his own name. He only found it out when (a) Captain America recognised him from the ’40s and called him it, and (b) when Cyclops gave him a wedding ring with it engraved on (er, in a non-gay way). There is absolutely NO conceivable way he would have known it at this point, and even less reason for Wanda to.

Magneto is so upset by this whole state of affairs that he takes the only reasonable action:

Magneto hates his son, sure. But he’s still his son, and Mags has more morals than that (when it comes to mutants, anyway). Unfortunately, Wolverine fails to carry out his test of loyalty when Wanda intervenes, and presumably, the whole matter is dropped forever. You see, deciding to kill your son is the kind of issue you can really flip-flop over. If at first you don’t succeed, forget you ever tried, right? Surely, if Magneto ever wanted to kill Pietro, he’d have done so when he shot him through the kneecaps?

Luckily for Wolverine, Jeph Loeb has never read an Ultimate Comic. Wanda, as written here, is so far removed from the way she was as introduced in Ultimate X-Men that it’s hard to know where to start. Where’s the smart, sensual, confident women who attempted to seduce Cyclops and was a major part of the Brotherhood’s plotting? All we’ve got here is a wet, soppy, poor, whinging excuse for a character. “Oh, I don’t WANT to conjure that! I don’t LIKE dinosaurs! These clothes are too restrictive!”

Just in case it’s not clear, it seems that this entire plot is setting up, god help us, some kind of Ultimate House of M. At the very least, we seem to be getting Ultimate Avengers Disassembled right now. Sounds to me like Ultimatum might just involve Wanda “rewriting” the Ultimate Universe…

Back in the future, nobody is really sure what Wolverine was trying to tell them, but Jan decides that some of them will go and find Magneto, presumably to ask him to clarify this confusing sequence of events. She forbids Cap to come along, because for some reason, she thinks that Captain America - a man from the 40s, lest we forget - is best placed to deal with the media interest on this story. 

Speaking of which, remember when Janet was the most damaged of a damaged group of individuals, battling a severe case of self-loathing that kept driving her back to an abusive husband? Loeb doesn’t, so instead she’s the leader, perfectly “normal”, and utterly devoid of anything resembling “character”.

The team going to find Magneto, however, does include the “Black” “Panther” - a strange mute character with an unexplained, mysterious connection to Captain America. And hey, where had he been just now? And where did Cap suddenly disappear to? Why, it’s almost like we’ve never seen them in the same place at once! And Wolverine appears to know the man wearing the costume! But guys, don’t worry - we figured it out. The Black Panther is actually Ultimate US Agent in disguise. I’ve got a good feeling about that prediction.

Seriously, it’s so blatant, it’s hard to tell whether this is some genuine, sound misdirection, or if Loeb has totally taken leave of his senses and thinks that this kind of thing counts as “subtle foreshadowing.” Time will tell.

On her way to the jet, the Wasp encounters Iron Man!

Honestly, Mr. Madureira, we know you draw everyone like they’re from a Japanese cartoon, but when one of the characters actually is Asian, please at least try to acknowledge that somehow.

Unfortunately, it’s not Iron Man, but a robot of some kind, who delivers a piece of critical exposition, before electrocuting Jan. Meanwhile, in the Savage Land, we get the final-page reveal the fans have been clamouring for since the Ultimate line was launched.

Oh yeah! Ultimate Zabu! Just when you think Ultimates can’t get any stupider, something like this happens. AND TOTALLY REDEEMS IT! ROLL ON ISSUE 4!

Tags: Jeph Loeb, Joe Madureira, Ultimate Zabu, Ultimates
Publisher: Marvel