THE ULTIMATES #2

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Despite a violent rampage as the Hulk several months ago, Bruce Banner has been offered a chance to continue working on the Super-Soldier Program that led to his transformation in the first place. Only one catch: he's now number two after Dr. Hank Pym, who's working with his wife Janet on new ideas for the superhero team that S.H.I.E.L.D. is trying to build. Meanwhile, millionaire Tony Stark signs on board, allowing the government to use his Iron Man suit in the hopes that he can make his money make a difference. And in the midst of it all, a soldier is found frozen in ice in the Arctic ocean.

Sound familiar and yet not familiar at the same time? That's the basis of the Ultimate line's first superhero team, named (appropriately enough) the Ultimates. The concept of a government-funded superhero team isn't necessarily new, but the fact that Marvel's doing it-and that the team in question is the 21st century version of the Avengers-is. Mark Millar pulls out all the stops to make this idea as believable as possible, though readers may be put off by the sheer amount of exposition this requires. There are no action sequences in this issue, apart from a few of Banner's flashbacks to his Hulk attacks-for real action, see the first issue of this series-but the set-up for future action is all here. The original Avengers series sure as hell never spent this much time with the preliminaries.

Millar has also taken the liberty of taking each of our heroes and tweaking them just a bit. Hank Pym is a bit more like his arrogant Yellowjacket persona here as he plays the role of hotshot researcher to the hilt-though the bottle of Prozac at his desk leads us to wonder if this Hank will eventually end up as conflicted as the "real" one. Janet Pym is...Asian. Interesting, though not much of a change. Perhaps later issues will bring it out more-though if her "Ready To Rock" t-shirt is any indication, this is a Jan Pym who doesn't play strictly by the rules any more than her husband does. Tony Stark's new persona is the most welcome one: he's like Dudley Moore's ARTHUR, complete with droll and disapproving British butler (Jarvis!), only he's younger. much more of a ladies' man, and not quite so alcoholic. Well, not yet, anyway. This is the sort of playboy millionaire that "our" Tony Stark only wishes he could be, the sort that Bruce Wayne only pretends to be. And he's brilliant enough to have designed the Iron Man, of course.


The biggest changes are to General Fury-now a black man in the mode of Samuel L. Jackson in SHAFT-and Bruce Banner, who's probably the most unsympathetic character in the whole cast. Looking like a cross between an ailing Tim Robbins and an ailing David Duchovny, Banner is uncomfortable with people, strung out on uppers to keep him from falling asleep, and living in constant fear of becoming the Hulk again. Millar introduces us to all these character in the course of this one issue, by the way, so if you're not happy with exposition, come back later.

Bryan Hitch and Andrew Currie's artwork will grab you even if the density of the text doesn't. The layouts in this issue are cinematic and breathtaking, especially the view of Chelsea Piers after the Hulk's devastating attack and Tony Stark's test flight in the Iron Man armor. Iron Man fans will be particularly impressed by Hitch and Currie's take on him-the armor has never looked so good. It's sure as hell not the sort that a millionaire playboy could carry around in an attaché case. In short, reading this comic is more like reading a photonovel of a high-budget television series we'd all like to see made. And the brief mentions of what we haven't seen yet-a Thor who makes anti-corporate documentaries and carries a cell phone, for example-are enough to make us keep coming back for the next episode.

The attention to detail, both in the script and in the artwork, is astonishing. Who knew that sixty feet is the height at which the human skeleton can no longer support its own mass, and that this is the reason why Hank Pym can never grow larger than that? Sure, it may not be true, but did Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (bless them both) ever consider things like that? Or the need for Tony Stark to be covered in coolant while in the armor just so the heat of the machinery itself doesn't fry him? Ah, yes, little things do mean a lot-and in THE ULTIMATES, little things take on grand scale. And it's a damned good read, besides.

THE ULTIMATES

Grade: A-

Issue: No. 2

Author(s): Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie

Publisher: Marvel

Price: $2.25