ULTIMAN GIANT ANNUAL #1

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Saturday, December 08, 2001

A meteor gave Chris Kelly the powers of Ultiman, and now, in one of the strangest secret identity ploys in comics history, he poses as his low-life brother Carl. He fights for freedom, justice, the American way, and yadda, yadda, yadda.

I have mixed feelings about this ULTIMAN business. I'm as big a fan of the Silver Age as anyone, but when someone writes a story that tries to recreate that era, I want them to either go balls-to-the-wall and do everything exactly right, or I want them to mercilessly expose everything that was silly about that era in an amusing way. DC's SILVER AGE line from a few years back tried (and mostly failed) to do the former; Evan Dorkin's WORLD'S FUNNIEST COMICS, in those sections set in the Silver Age, tried (and succeeded enormously) to do the latter. ULTIMAN seems to be doing the former, with occasional lapses into the latterand because it can't make up its mind, it does neither. (Does that make sense? If it does, maybe you can explain it to me when you have a few spare hours.)

There are a few features in this oversized (and overpriced) book that really do recapture the spirit of the SUPERMAN comics from the '50s and '60s. In "The Day Ultiman's Powers Went Wild," for example, artists Mark Spears and Bob Rivard do a wonderful job of recreating the early Curt Swan's no-nonsense artistic style, while writer Odie Bracy comes up with a cute solution to Ultiman's problem of being able to hear everything in the world when he's trying to get some sleep. But even here, the story ends with a punchline, not with the sort of resolution that Mort Weisinger or any of his cronies would have used to cap the story. "The Human Lightning Rod" combines elements from the first Supergirl story and the first Earth 1/Earth 2 crossover without really innovating or even commenting on them in any interesting way. The artwork just about recaptures the era, but that's it.

Two stories in which the art works to the story's detriment are "The Curse of King Tut's Tomb" and "The Secret Origin of the Great Pyramid," both drawn by Daniel Reed. Some people should never be let out of art school. And whether intentionally or unintentionally, Jeff Austin's artwork on the Thundergirl story in this volume recreates the terrible artwork that plagued Supergirl's stint in ADVENTURE COMICS in the late '60sand given the title, "The Beatnik From Outer Space," I'd say it was intentional. Gotta love scriptwriter Gary Carlson putting the difference of two decades between "Earth A" and "Earth B" to interesting use, though, as well as peppering Thundergirl's dialogue with such vocalisms as "sob" and "choke." (The Silver Age heroes did spend a lot of their time in tears, didn't they?)


An odd addition to this volume, Blackjack and his Flying Aces just doesn't cut it as a BLACKHAWK homage, though fans might enjoy "The Thing from Zugan" anyway. In short, the entire collection comes oh so close to recreating the spirit of DC's Silver Age, but the stories all fall just shy enough of the mark to be noticeable. If you're not expecting much, you may enjoy this. Otherwise, go spend your money on books from the real Silver Age. It may cost more, but you'll have a good bit more fun.

ULTIMAN GIANT ANNUAL

Grade: C+

Issue: 1

Author(s): Gary Carlson, Jeff Weigel, Odie Bracy, Mark Spears, Bob Rivard, Mike Roberts, Jeff Austin, Daniel Reed, Nat Gertler, Mark Lewis

Publisher: Image/Big Bang

Price: $4.95