This review may not contain spoilers but it might be boring to those who haven’t read Ultimate Hawkeye or Ultimates #1. It might be boring anyway.

The dictators of the Asian continent have historically been to the those of the “Middle East” like the first world war has been to the second. Lost from the public’s notice for lack of a sexily easy-to-stereotype villain like Nazis or jihadists, both WW1 and countries like North Korea, Burma, and Thailand have rarely received the recognition deserved for their importance in historical and recent events nor for their potential in a compelling spec fic narrative.

The iFanboys often joke about the ubiquity of Nazis in comics but the only comic that touches on WW1 I can think of is a single issue of Promethea, which by the way, succinctly and beautifully sums up the uselessness and stupidity of that conflict while being respectful of the lives lost. Likewise the media’s eye is never far from the land between Tunisia and Pakistan but juntas and totalitarians in North to South East Asia rarely get coverage proportional to their crimes.

So I was treated to a long overdue and well deserved look at the potential danger stored in SEA (South East Asia). Hickman has created a vastly detailed country, the South East Asian Republic, and a scarily logical villain for its leader (both fictional as far as I know but clearly a proxy for N. Korea and Kim Jong-il). I’m not an up-to-date Ultimate universe reader but between Ultimates #1 and this issue, I immediately became intrigued for Hickman’s take on the world, real and ultimate. He is notably more, let’s say, iffy about the uprising in the Arab world, understandably concerned about secular strongmen being supplanted by conservative religious parties. If I can be so bold as to assume the riotous uprising in the SEAR in Ultimate Hawkeye and the Ultimates is comparable to or inspired by that of the Arab Spring, I think Jonathan Hickman is trying to figure out how it would turn out by winding up his own jarred planet and watching it burn. I’ll be watching raptly along with him.