ULTIMATES #6

By: Tony Whitt
Review Date: Monday, August 19, 2002

Watching the marriage of Hank and Janet Pym disintegrate back in the 1970s was pretty traumatic for those of us of a certain age. Since the 1940s, we'd been shown that marriages involving superheroes could and did work (look at Jay and Joan Garrick, Ralph and Sue Dibney, Reed and Sue Richards), but Hank and Janet were the first truly realistic look at a marriage in turmoil, in a decade which would show such troubled comic-book marriages more and more (look at Barry and Iris Allen pre-CRISIS, for instance). But if we'd gotten a taste of the problems the ULTIMATES incarnation of this couple would have, we'd all have sworn off marriage altogether.

The issue begins innocently enough - if you can call the aftermath of the Hulk's rampage through the Triskelion, a scene with terrifying echoes of September 11, "innocent." It's the first time the Ultimates have gotten major media attention, and they're making the most of it. Unfortunately, Hank Pym's insecurities are getting the better of him, especially when he thinks Jan's getting too much attention from both Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. As Stark, Rogers, and Thor all meet for a quiet dinner, it's anything but quiet at the Pym household - though for one of them it may end up quiet in the most final way...

There are few images in comics more disturbing than the final page of this issue, not because of what you can see but because of what you can't. Rarely do comics do so well at suggesting horror as Millar, Hitch, and Currie have done here, and never could those '70s comics we talked about before have gotten away with it. Even before we get there, though, Millar has made a script which has only one action sequence in it - if it's proper to call a domestic fight "action" - far more tense than one which has several such sequences. Make no mistake, this is a dialogue-heavy issue, but every single word is necessary to build up the tension. Contrasting Hank and Jan's fight with the relatively relaxed affair at Tony Stark's place builds it even more, even though both scenes have their share of surprise revelations: Jan, a mutant? Stark, with a brain tumor? Don't worry- even knowing these things ahead of time does nothing to ease the uncomfortable feeling this story gives that something truly bad is about to happen. Only this time, it's going to involve green-eyed monsters from the inner psyche rather than green-skinned monsters from the outside world.

Pity Brian Hitch and Andrew Currie, though - they've got the daunting task of not only fitting all these startling images in amongst all those many dialogue balloons, but also making it all believable. The scenes in the Triskelion work beautifully, especially the shocking full-page opening image, but the scenes at Tony Stark's place are a bit sparse. It's almost as if the artists themselves are reading the script, wanting to know what happens next with Jan and Hank, and they're in such a rush to draw those scenes that these get slightly less attention. Just look at the bookcase in the Pyms' apartment and compare the detail there to Stark's more minimalist digs - there's no doubting which scenes these guys want to draw most.


The next issue blurb promises the beginning of "Book Two," implying that this chapter is closed, and what a cliffhanger to close it on. It also implies there's going to be a significant passage of time between this issue and the next, and while that may provide some interesting possibilities storytelling-wise, let's hope it doesn't translate into a real-world wait. THE ULTIMATES is one of the few books Marvel's producing worthy of that name, and the more twists they take on established Marvel continuity - as with this issue - the more "ultimate" it's going to be.

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