The Ultimate Universe version of Tony Stark has had a confusing history, with creators undoing one another’s previous stories in order to tell their own. First was the simple origin given by Bendis in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up–which may or may not still count–and it was fine, albeit generic. The second origin was Orson Scott Card’s Ultimate Iron Man and Ultimate Iron Man 2, both took crazy liberties with the character in the way that the Ultimate line is best used for. Loeb decided to undo that origin in New Ultimates, although there was no particular reason for this as far as I can tell. No replacement story was given, and it was a waste of Card’s interesting work, but for the sake of staying positive I assumed that someone would eventually re-do his story once again, and perhaps it would stick.

I don’t know if this will be that story or not, but this #1 does flashback to Tony’s young adulthood, which was apparently characterized by a short-lived rebellion against inheriting his father’s company and position. While I think this angle works for the character, it doesn’t do much to help us understand why Tony is the self-destructive rake that Miller first depicted him as.

The art is solid and in particular I enjoyed the panel sequence of Tony suiting up while getting out of bed–the rest of us put our pants on one leg at a time, but Tony Stark’s pants are automatic. The impact of metal on metal during the opening scene where Iron Man stops a runaway train is also illustrated well.

I was not exactly impressed with the story so far, but the source material is so muddled that it’s difficult to contextualize what is going on. This could end providing readers with a solid stand-alone story, but in this issue I often felt like I wasn’t the only one unsure of what was going on, as the chronological placement of the various scenes was jumpy and somewhat confusing. If you are wondering what the Ultimate version of the Mandarin turns out like, wait for the next issue because this one merely teases the fact that he/it/they exist, which was done perfectly well and for free by the issue preview summary, “Who or what is Ultimate Mandarin?”