Ultimate Avengers Vs. New Ultimates #6

Mark Millar
Leinil Yu
Stephen Segovia
Sunny Gho


Once upon a time when I was in 8th grade, I would open up the latest issue of Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men and get something digestible, free of clutter, and just more free in general. Backed by some of the biggest talents in the industry, the Ultimate line of comics soldiered on for years without a hitch and I applaud Marvel for that. Life was breathed into many old characters (Invisible Woman, the Wasp) and revamped personalities made some characters more interesting then they actually had been in the original continuity (Thor.) But nothing lasts forever, and the Ultimate books decline culminated in Jeph Loeb's Ultimatum... Which was one the most critically panned crossover series of all time. And with good reason. So when the smoke cleared and half the Ultimate Marvel universe was dead, it felt for some like a good time to call it quits on Ultimate Marvel. Hell, I thought that was the whole point of the "Ultimatum." Unfortunately, that wasn't what happened and Marvel decided to keep pushing things along.

Now the Ultimate Marvel universe faces the same problems the regular one did- namely, confusing continuity that was dictated by previous shitty writers and then made more confusing by more overly complex plotting... The title alone is confusing! Questions come up like who is that Ultimate Black Widow, which Ultimate Giant Man is that, and who really cares? I sure don't. Mark Millar might secretly be an 8th grade boy and I think he finished up Ultimates 2 with about as much intelligently delivered political intrigue as his brain can muster. Here Millar has pushed it over the limit- I thought it was about the Avengers fighting the North Koreans but that actually got little attention and was delivered without any clarity. And I'm glad it all ends with all of the heroes looking like jerks again but if they're all jerks then what am I supposed to care about? The hippie dippie Ultimate Thor that I know wouldn't lightning bolt someone to death without really thinking it through.

Leinil Yu's artwork is decent as always, though he seems to be going for too many close-up shots. He's a real talent but frankly, I don't think he's trying that hard and I don't blame him. I will say that colorist Sunny Gho did do a pretty nice job keeping this muted and Ultimate.

I do kind of like Blade in the Avengers except it feels like he's in there because he wasn't randomly killed in Ultimatum. Blade, Hawkeye and crew being turned into hulks was also pretty tacked on and Yu didn't do much to even make it clear that that had happened in the previous issue. I'm not really bothered by Spider-Man dying, that story has potential if given it's day in the sun, and the dialogue throughout wasn't that bad. But the problem with these big crossover stories is that they involve so many characters that almost none of them get attention. The other problem is that Mark Millar has allowed himself to get trapped in the habit of simply elaborating on bad plot threads for the sake of continuity, and the Ultimates line was created so that writers wouldn't end up doing stuff like that.

3.0