Editor's Note: Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 arrives in stores tomorrow, August 12.

"The Next Generation: Part One of Six"

Dave Wallace:
Charles Webb:

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Dave Wallace:

Since the final issue of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's magnum opus shipped in May 2007, there’s been an Ultimates-shaped gap in my regular pull list. Jeph Loeb's Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum may have had their fans, but having tried the first issue of each series, I was satisfied that Loeb's take on the characters simply wasn't one that I was going to enjoy. Still, there has always been a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Ultimate Comics Avengers, which (as we've known for some time now) sees original Ultimates scribe Mark Millar return to the characters to relaunch their series under the new "Ultimate Comics" imprint.

As I had hoped, there's very much a sense of Millar presenting a new beginning for the Ultimate Universe that isn't going to go out of its way to make reference to recent developments. That said, it's impossible not to read some backwards-referencing double-meanings and symbolism into the first few pages. Much of this is doubtless intentional: the rebuilding of the Triskelion seems to be representative of Millar's mission to take the remnants of the Ultimate Universe and build it back up to its former glory, and it's hard to not read the line "I disappear for ten minutes and the whole place goes to hell" as a cheeky bit of hubris on the part of the writer. Also, I can't help but read Nick Fury's opening "What the %@#&?" as an indication of the general reader reaction to the recently-concluded Ultimatum miniseries.

Despite the damage that was done by Ultimatum (and you can interpret that statement however you like), Millar does a pretty good job of convincing us that all of the stuff that we liked about his original Ultimates run hasn't been consigned to the continuity dustbin. From the opening pages, the writer restores the sense that the book takes place in a world that closely approximates our own. Nick Fury's mention of the "nice new President" brings the series bang up to date with the modern world, and Millar smartly incorporates the changing political mood into the book's status quo: given the recent changes in U.S. domestic security policy, it makes perfect sense that Barack Obama would have a less lenient attitude towards S.H.I.E.L.D.'s autonomous activities than his predecessor did. Also, there are echoes of the aftermath of Hurricaine Katrina as Cap berates an A.I.M. terrorist for using the events of Ultimatum as an opportunity to stage a robbery.

Despite these concessions to realism, Millar doesn't forget to pepper the story with the kind of outlandish action that helps to make superhero comics -- especially team books -- visually exciting. There's a cool mid-air rescue by Hawkeye, a brutal fistfight that allows the Ultimate Red Skull to make an impressive debut, and a suitably bombastic reintroduction for Captain America (jumping a motorbike out of a building onto a helicopter never gets old, does it?).

More important than both of these elements, though, is a sense that these characters are back in good hands. In the months (years!) that have passed since the final issue of Ultimates 2, we've seen the team mishandled to such a degree that it was becoming difficult to tell them apart from their regular-MU counterparts, and thus difficult to understand what makes these Ultimate versions of the Avengers special and worth reading about. Here, we see them revert back to the slightly iconoclastic yet hugely enjoyable characterisation that we saw in the original Ultimates series, whether it's the debauched excesses of Tony Stark (who makes a brief drunken appearance in a bondage club), the militaristic yet rough-around-the-edges Cap ("what kind of girl gets stopped by a bomb?"), the unphaseable Nick Fury, or the quietly confident Hawkeye (who perhaps gets the best moment of the issue with his "I never miss").

Carlos Pacheco does a very decent job on the issue's artwork. He captures the main characters faithfully (contrary to the early character sketches that I saw recently, Nick Fury is perfectly proportioned rather than being given a hulking musculature), he provides a very interesting design for the Ultimate incarnation of the Red Skull, he somehow manages to make Hawkeye's new costume look half-decent, and he handles the action sequences particularly well. There's a real clarity to the storytelling, with a clear flow of action from panel-to-panel that makes the deft choreography of the scenes unmistakeable. Pacheco also makes some great choices in terms of the perspectives that he chooses to frame his big moments, most notably during Cap and Hawkeye's airborne acrobatics, which are suitably dizzying (I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere about how this should have been released as a "vertigo" book).

Perhaps the biggest compliment that I can pay to Pacheco is that I didn't find myself wondering what the book would have looked like if Bryan Hitch had been drawing it -- well, until the final page, anyway. Millar seems to likes to end his comics on character-focused splash pages, and it's the only moment of the issue that made me think back to Hitch's artwork, as he was always able to leave us on a memorable final image. Pacheco's final page isn't quite in the same league, and doesn't quite manage to justify the full-page splash, despite the shock of the cliffhanger.

Talking of which, the final page's big reveal would perhaps have been more interesting if it hadn't already been given away in advance promotional interviews with Millar. Still, the removal of that element of surprise doesn't stop it from being an original idea that brings an interesting new dynamic to one of the oldest superhero/supervillain relationships in Marvel history.

I'm sure that other reviews of this book are going to echo the sentiment that this issue sees the return of the Ultimates that we first fell in love with. Whilst that will probably accurately reflect the feelings of many readers, it makes it sound as though Millar's return is only welcome because we've had to endure an inferior take on the characters in the interim. That does the writer a disservice: this issue isn't good because it follows something bad -- it's good because it's a well-written, well-illustrated, and interesting Avengers story in its own right. But the fact that it isn't Ultimatum will probably be enough to endear it to most readers, for the time being.

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Charles Webb:

Plot: Cap goes rogue (again) as a little leftover from his past knees him in the face in the present.

Comments: If you've read any of the coverage from the recent Con out in Chicago then you'll no doubt know the identity of the new Red Skull in advance of Steve Rogers' dumbfounded realization at the end of this book. It's… well, it is what it is and the character, recast as a tattooed white supremacist working alongside a re-costumed A.I.M. is certainly visually interesting. But still… is this the cleverest direction one can go in to connect the characters and their conflict?

A reader of course doesn't go to Mark Millar for subtlety. Still working from the widescreen comics playbook, Millar plays every moment 40 feet tall and a mile wide until you can't miss a detail. Nothing's too small to see, and there's not even a hint of subtext to trouble the reader on repeated assessments of the work. Fine, then – let us view it in the time-honored tradition of big action.

Well, on those merits it still fails. This issue opens with Nick Fury assessing the restoration of the Triskelion base, hit by the events of Ultimatum and learning that Cap has gone M.I.A. through the events of the protracted flashback that rounds out the rest of the issue. Cap and Hawkeye are doing their "more-human-than-human" fight shtick against helicopter-riding members of A.I.M. It involves lots of posturing and smack talk between the two leads (hey, Cap doesn't use a parachute except for when he does).

This was all actually pretty refreshing a few years ago when The Ultimates launched and readers were treated to an alternate contemporary take on the Avengers mythos through the prism of post-9/11 cynicism and distrust. The heroes had feet of clay and were ready for TV, and their dialogue was all in the moment since these were people who didn't exist anywhere but. It was adrenaline junkie comics for a country that needed a win in the midst of a quagmire in the Middle East and a celebrity culture that had more to do with visibility than actually having anything to say or offer.

So here we are, heading for the second decade of a new century and the more things change, the more they stay the same… at least in comics. I suppose it could be argued that the continued popularity of Heidi and Spencer would lend credence to the persistence of celebrity vacuity, and we're still trapped in Afghanistan and to a certain degree Iraq. But it still feels like we're in a different place here in the U.S. In some ways we're a lot more emotional and meaner than we were back then. We're not looking for a win inasmuch as we're looking for the moral higher ground.

So where is any of that here? Millar's return to the book should reflect something of the change in tone in the emotional landscape. The Red Skull for instance – white supremacy and race hatred are something more insidious and threatening than the tatted-up skinheads of the 80's and 90's. Oh sure, those guys were scary and brawny but they were also direct – a clear and present danger to anyone a little different. What's missed is the opportunity to exploit the Red Skull for this age – an exploiter of cultural distrust and shrinking opportunities, sometimes a whisper, sometimes a scream that uses fear like a game piece for political and corporate interest.

And Cap – who is he now given that we've killed him (in the 616 at least) and positioned him initially as a thug in the Ultimate U? Well, he seems to be more of the same here with the promise of yet more in the coming months. Millar has said in recent interviews that his Cap will be the ones taking digs at the French – as though this is something interesting beyond a funny line in the first run of The Ultimates.

I'm not interested in this book, but I suspect many of you are. I don't begrudge you that – we get the stories we want and deserve. I do hope that some of you will ask for more in the future though of Mr. Millar. I suspect inside and underneath it all he is capable of more. It's just unfortunate that it's not on display in this book.

Final Word: Maybe I'm not the market for Millar's work anymore, but this edition of The Ultimates has left me cold with even more one-note chest-pumping characterizations and a twist that's dumber than it is shocking.

If you liked this review, be sure to check out more of the author’s work at Monster In Your Veins

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