IRON MANTINI – SHAKEN NOT STIRRED

Spoiler Warning – The grand finale of The Ultimates 3 is all just set-up for Ultimatum. Yup, a five-issue series that merely serves as prologue. Complaining starts now:

Jeph Loeb stinks, he just plain stinks. I’ve heard people talk about this book and that book, but if The Ultimates 3 and Hulk are any indicators, my 13 year-old can write better stories. I think everybody knew who The Panther was by issue #2, we never find out anything about the changes in Thor and Valkryie, and Quicksilver all of a sudden is a total dickwad. On top of that, we get a literal Duex Ex Machina to resolve the entire story. Nothing really happened between issues #1 and #5, so Loeb gets everything to wrap up before sticking us with the catalyst for the upcoming Ultimatum story.

It also seems that half of the people we saw on the cover of #1 were just around as window dressing. Venom, Spider-Man, Sabretooth, Blob, Hulk and even Ka-Zar barely get any screen time this entire series. Not that we can expect a ton of character development with SO MANY people, but then why include them all? Oh, yeah – to sell books with the promise of super-powered battle scenes. Gotta give Loeb credit for one thing, though. I laughed out loud when Wolverine said “Me and him (Ult. Hulk) got unfinished business”, an obvious slam against the super-delayed Ult. Hulk vs. Wolverine. Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. The second time? Seeing Tony Stark in Ultron’s lab like a big pickle in a jar.

Lame story, but at least Joe Mad’s art make the book 50% less a waste of money. It’s very much improved since issue #1, so I guess the art team got the fans’ message that it was all coming out too dark. Very stunning visuals, so I might actually look at this again in the future, just not reading the words next time.

Story: Jeph Loeb – 1
Art: Joe Madureira – 4