It’s easy and fashionable to trash Jeph Loeb.  And with good reason.  It has been a long time since I’ve enjoyed his comics.  Ultimatum had promise that he unltimately (pardon the pun) squandered.  But most of his work has been hacky from page one.  I intended to start this review imploring you not to buy this comic if you haven’t been enjoying Loeb (if you have been enjoying Loeb, please continue to do so, as is your right).  Marvel doesn’t care if you trash Jeph Loeb on the Internet or say something snarky to him at a convention.  If you’re buying his books, then he’s making them money whether your enjoying his work or not.

As a superhero story, this book bored me.  Bored me to the point where, for once, I stopped reading the dialog, and focused on the narration boxes.  Because, there, in the guise of Tony Stark’s internal monologue, Jeph Loeb explains why he’s been insistently working on The Ultimate Universe.  And while I’m likely not going to pick up issue two of this series, I do advise picking up this one.

There’s no Grant Morrisoning himself into the story here, it’s more the story of a frustrated writer using his protagnost to explain why his work is so frustrating to read, but why it’s so important to him.  While I wouldn’t call it heartbreaking, it is very emotional.  And it’s easily the most honest, well-structured thing I’ve ever read from Loeb.  I wish he’d trust himself to write like that more often.  I feel like a creator owned non-superhero book might be the shakeup his head needs to push his writing in a more challenging direction, instead of pushing out bucket after bucket of stale popcorn hero fare.

Cho’s work stands as Cho’s work usually does.  Excellent.