Editor's Note: Ultimate Human #4 appears in stores tomorrow, April 30.

Plot: The Ultimate Iron Man/Hulk crossover ends and is ultimately…disappointing.

Commentary: The idea of having the Hulk and Iron Man clash is a solid one for a lot of reasons. In many ways Hulk/Iron Man, Bruce Banner/Tony Stark are two sides of the same coin. Both have sprung from brilliant, troubled minds but each manifested on the extreme opposite side. Where Iron Man is the result of cool intellect, Hulk is all rampaging emotion. A Technology based suit of armor hiding a frail man inside matched against a biological weapon of mass destruction with the soul of an abused child. Bringing the two extremes together opens the possibility of finding the middle ground, what Tony and Bruce have in common, what connects them, could save them both…after a big smashing fight with lots of collateral damage, of course. It stands to reason that Ultimate Human should have been about that overlap, of where these two fascinating damaged characters connect, even if it entailed getting smashed through walls and mid-air smack downs. It even seemed back in the first issue of Ultimate Human that was where this whole story would go.

Sadly it wasn’t to be.

Finishing up Ultimate Human I find that there was no connection anywhere, not between Tony and Bruce, not between Warren and his characters and not between this story and an emotional core. This may, of course, be the point. Peter Wisdom became “The Leader” because his arrogance and ego prevented him from even considering alternatives to his reality tunnel. Tony takes a stab at helping Bruce but when it came down to saving his skin, he used the Hulk as a weapon. And Bruce is so damaged he can’t connect to anything but his own misery. If that’s the case, if that’s what Ultimate Human was about, it seems drastically out of sync with what I’ve come to expect from Ellis. Most of his work is cynical but shot through with a scrappy, fighting glimmer of hope. But this theory doesn’t really scan. The story, in the end, just didn’t seem to have a connection or, in fact, a point. Being held hostage by The Leader, Tony turns off the nanomachines inhibiting Bruce’s Hulk cells. Hulk emerges and wipes out the Leader’s men and smashes The Leader to a pulp. It’s an ending that didn’t surprise and it played out with no suspense, more like a thudding inevitability. Even the final act of spite from The Leader, crashing a jet airliner into the Hulk, seemed gratuitous, filling a need to end with a big explosion simply because there was nothing else to do. At the end when Tony, watching the Hulk leap away, mutters "Oh well, nothing left here for either of you, I suppose." He may as well be talking to the audience.

It's not all bad, though, Cary Nord's pencils are immensely satisfying, you really get a sense of the scale of the Hulk and The Leader is pretty creepy (though sometimes he seems to resemble a mutant Stewie from Family Guy). There is a two page spread of the Hulk that dazzles and Nord handles the copious amounts of talking head work with a sure hand fitting in as much variety as a scene of two guys tied to a chair can have. The Hulk knocking the snot out of The Leader's men is one of the few truly satisfying moments in the whole story. There is a panel where The Leader’s second in command holds a gun to the head of the gargantuan Hulk that has such a sense of pathos to it, you feel sorry for the guy. Dave Stewart’s colors are low key and somber creating a realistic look to the preceding. Not a bad choice for such a low key piece of work but a little more atmosphere could have gone a long way.

Final Word: All things considered there was, ultimately, too much padding in this story. On the eve of both these characters biggest mainstream breakthrough, Ultimate Human was meant to capitalize on the momentum. Two issues of material (at most) were milked into four, probably because that's the minimum needed for a trade. I'm sure it will do well but I can't see this story holding onto any new people interested after the movies.

When you take into account the volume of high quality work Warren Ellis puts out (Fell, Gravel, Thunderbolts, and Anna Mercury) a dud like Ultimate Human is forgivable. It's just that because of that volume of high quality work I was so disappointed in what my favorite writer delivered. When you have one of Marvel's most interesting character dynamics on the table and a nearly blank slate to develop it you hope for some feeling. Ultimate Human, unfortunately, didn't have enough going for it to make that connection.

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