We’ve said it before on this site a few times, but it does bear repeating that the Ultimate universe is in an awfully strange place at the moment. The catastrophe of the supposed flagship title, Ultimates, has of course had its bones picked over ad nauseam in the now-months-long wait between the third and fourth issues (that itself seeming to signify some pretty large-scale rewrites, you’d think). But elsewhere, there’s an increasing sense of pointlessness to the whole thing. Ultimate X-Men has just come out of an interminably dull Robert Kirkman run which seemed to forget it was even part of the shared universe, while Ultimate Fantastic Four hasn’t done anything of note since Warren Ellis’ run. Even Ultimate Spider-Man, the one shining light of the entire imprint, seems less concerned with building long-term story setups than it is with telling some cracking standalone stories – ones which you feel Bendis could do just as easily in a continuity-free, All Star kind of environment.

All this means that it’s hard to see what purpose a series like Ultimate Origins serves – it almost feels like an attempt to quickly tie up the various loose ends that have been planted over the years and which should have ended up meaning rather more, before Ultimatum comes along and puts the whole thing out of its misery (although again, with the Ultimates 3 delays, it’s hard to know what the hell’s going to happen with Jeph Loeb’s promised earth-shattering crossover – and it’s hard to care). What’s strange also is, after very little in the way of buildup, the series has suddenly been promoted quite heavily – the whole enterprise reeks of hasty afterthought, really.

Still, that said, it’s a chance for Bendis to start joining the dots, and in a way it is satisfying to begin to see some payoffs for things that you suspect he and Millar were planning all along. More than anyone else, it’s his universe, and if he wants to play around with it and give a firm “origin” for every instance of superpowers contained within, then so be it. It’s hard to deny that it’s quite a fun little read – the best moments coming in WW2 flashback, with the unfortunate demise of the first “Captain America” (a neat idea in and of itself), not to mention the bizarre team-up of Nick Fury, James Howlett and Wilson Fisk.

Art comes from Butch Guice, of whom I’ve been a fan since the days he was called Jackson Guice and drawing Action Comics. Here, as with his recent fill-in work on Captain America, his pencils are perhaps a little overly drenched in those thick inks and dark colours that have become something of a Marvel trademark of late, and so his usual level of character expression, and his elegant flowing lines, aren’t allowed to be quite so evident. Nevertheless, it’s decent, clear art that tells the story effectively, and the opening sequence with Spidey and the Hulk is particularly strong.

One instance of dodgy chronology aside (the first Hulk “incident” was only six months ago? Really? So two-and-a-half volumes of Ultimates and almost a hundred issues of Ult Spidey have happened since then?), this does bear the hallmarks of a masterplan coming to fruition – in fact, it feels like the opening salvo in a universe-shattering crossover, rather than one simply designed to give us some background. Is it too late to hand Ultimatum over to Bendis instead, do you think? Surely if anyone’s entitled to tear the place down, it’s him – Loeb’s already done enough of that with Ultimates, after all.

Tags: Brian Michael Bendis, Butch Guice, Ultimates
Publisher: Marvel