ULTIMATE ADVENTURES #1 (of 6)

By: Tony Whitt
Review Date: Monday, September 23, 2002

Long-time readers of this column know of my love-hate relationship with Ron Zimmerman's work - that is, if you define a "love-hate relationship" as "I love to hate him." No other comics writer working today has done more to sink the level of discourse in the business to such a low, and no other writer has sprinkled his writing with so many ass-kissing, pseudo-"cool" pop culture references as he has. (Bill Jemas may have just moved into the number two spot with this month's MARVILLE, though.) Given my complete distaste for the man's work, you can imagine my shock and surprise when I picked up ULTIMATE ADVENTURES #1 and realized (gasp!) it isn't a complete waste of paper after all!

Mind you, it's still not the sort of book that could get enough votes to continue past its sixth issue when Marvel's "U Decide" gimmick draws to a close. (The newest incarnation of CAPTAIN MARVEL seems destined for that honor, if the first issue is anything to go by, while MARVILLE seems specifically written to turn the tide in that book's favor. It certainly wasn't written to entertain anybody.) But if this were the 2000 elections, with CAPTAIN MARVEL representing Bush and MARVILLE representing Gore, then ULTIMATE ADVENTURES must represent Nader: the somewhat worthy candidate who still hasn't a chance in Hell.

ULTIMATE ADVENTURES centers around Hank Kipple, an orphan from birth who's lived the typical "hard knock life" in one of Chicago's less prestigious Catholic orphanages since birth. Hank hasn't a chance of being adopted at his age and with his attitude and he knows it, but his life turns around when the Midnight Avenger, the crime fighter Hawk-Owl, saves him and his fellow orphans from a couple of crooks who break and enter into their home. The next day, millionaire Jack Danner, whose parents were killed when he was young (and if that doesn't sound familiar, your Comics Fan Benefits Card should be revoked), comes to the orphanage and takes a shine to the loud-mouthed little brat. And thus a team is born.

The plot isn't quite as derivative as one might think, nor are Hank and Jack anywhere near as annoying as one might expect. It's as if Zimmerman has taken his harshest critics (myself amongst them) to heart and has attempted to get rid of all the kow-towing references to media giants and downright stupid humor that plagued his previous scripts, most notably his failed attempts to write Spider-Man. True, the humor is still just this side of dumb, and the character twists that Zimmerman undertakes to ensure he's not sued by the BATMAN editors don't always work as well as they could. But overall, it's a neat little story that works surprisingly well, and without once resorting to the lowest forms of bathroom humor that Zimmerman usually dabbles in. (God, what an image. Sorry for that.) He even makes Hank, warts and all, a truly engaging character, while the Hawk-Owl ("Hawk-Owl"?) works far better than the typical Batman clone really should.


It may just be this issue, though. It may turn out that the second issue sees Zimmerman returning to those tropes (if such a barrel of nasty tricks deserves such a name) that made his previous works such execrable garbage. We can already tell that the wise-cracking orphan Hank will eventually become the equally wise-cracking sidekick Woody (don't go there), and that once Hank gets out of the orphanage and into Danner's millionaire pad, the sycophantic references to Jay Leno and other such non-talents will come bubbling out of the script once again. Or maybe not. I'm more than willing to be proven wrong about an author, especially if good writing eventually comes out of it - and Zimmerman is straddling that fence right now. Whether he falls into the muck on the one side or the flowerbed on the other, we've yet to see.

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