Comic Book Guy: The Ultimates

Thanks to the success and added controversy of the Kick Ass graphic novel and its near hundred million dollar grossing movie counterpart, Glasgow-based Mark Millar has become a recognisable name. He’s also continually touted as one of the highest selling British comic book writers of the 2000s and is a huge success stateside.

This success throughout the last decade may be attributed to the brave assignment Millar was handed by Marvel in the early 2000s: reinvent the Marvel wheel, The Avengers. In a rather audacious move, the concept was to keep the core Avengers team (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, etc.) and wipe clean the forty years of continuity that preceded them, rebranding them The Ultimates. This new incarnation would be a more relevant UN sponsored team in a world all too familiar with terrorism. It would serve to introduce a new set of fans to a series of comics that didn’t require a wealthy knowledge of back story. In fact the Ultimate universe would include most major titles such as Ultimate Spiderman and Ultimate X-Men, essentially creating an alternate universe to that of Marvel’s already bursting back catalogues.

Millar’s Ultimates were redesigned in a far more grounded fashion, with Captain America’s costumes becoming a hybrid of military fatigues and Iron Man’s a far more cumbersome, yet believable robotic suit. Though when it comes to making characters more believable, there’s only so much one can do with gods and monsters, like Thor and Hulk. Still, Bryan Hitch’s artwork encapsulates the cynical view of the Ultimates world. Everything is kept dark, with most of the action uncannily happening at night, preferably under a good soaking of atmospheric rain. The pacing of the book runs very differently to the action packed panels of most comics. Millar’s incredibly well scripted arc runs out through long pages of dialogue making the action scenes far more visceral reactions. These characters break bones and bleed, though the more subtle shocks come from scenes such as superhero lover quarrels and implications of domestic violence.

Re-released as a collection last week, this is a more mature title for anyone new to the Marvel universe who wants an ounce of realism within their reading. It is intelligent and carries a wealth of social commentary, but the question does loom as to how many times you get to wipe the slate clean…