You might be surprised to learn that here are Comics Daily, we don’t take any pleasure in reading a bad comic. Far from it. If it seems like we’re having fun when we rip apart a particularly horrible issue, it’s because we’re taking pleasure not in how bad the comic is, but in the idea we might be able to prevent other people from having to discover for themselves. Every time someone is convinced not to buy a bad comic by a well-written review, the whole industry takes another tiny step towards getting better.

If I do my job correctly, by the end of this review, the comics industry will have just gotten a little better. As a reviewer and a fan, I’m smart enough to tell the difference between a comic that I don’t like, and a comic that is badly written. Ultimatum falls firmly into the latter camp.

In the opening sequence, every character refers to the other by name in a stilted, unnatural fashion. This is an attempt at exposition. Maybe writing for TV has confused Loeb, but in comics, there’s absolutely no need for sentences as clunky as “At your age, Johnny, your sister Susan was already…”. I mean, think about it. Johnny already KNOWS Susan is his sister, so why say it? In comics, there are a variety of devices designed to deliver information. Caption boxes, for example. Or even visuals! A photograph in the panel showing “Johnny and Sue” as children. Hell, put a family tree on the recap page if you really, honestly think that anyone buying Ultimatum will need reminding that Johnny and Sue are siblings.

But no. Instead, Loeb chooses page after page of wilting, expositionary dialogue where everyone labours to include the name of the person they’re talking to. I understand what’s going on, I really do. The idea is to set the scene, remind readers who everyone is, and how they relate to one another. I’m just not sure why it had to be done in such a painfully prosaic and literal way.

Another way Ultimatum fails is that even the logical content of its exposition fails to be convincing. Dazzler tells Angel that of the 4 of them (Beast, Angel, Dazzler and Nightcrawler) he is the most “passable.” As in, can pass for human. The problem is, looking at the lineup, only Nightcrawler is visibly a mutant. In fact, if you stripped them naked, Dazzler is the only one of the 4 who WOULDN’T be recognisably mutant, and that’s assuming you attribute Beast’s large hands and feet to mutantcy, which is a stretch. The reason Dazzler is clearly a mutant? Well, she has lots of tattoos and piercings!

Except, from looking at the artwork, SHE DOESN’T. At best, you can see 4 earrings, an eyebrow ring and a tattoo on her wrist. That’s not even enough to make most people blink twice. Now again, this is where comic technique comes in. I could perhaps buy Beast and Dazzler claiming they look less “human” than Warren… as long as it did actually LOOK that way. But it doesn’t. The art and dialogue have failed to synchronise, as they repeatedly do. The “teenaged adventurers” in the Fantastic Four are drawn like buff, mid-20s athletes. Ultimate Spider-Man’s physique completely changes once he gets into costume. Everyone keeps mentioning “all the dead bodies” but the reader sees nothing.

And still there’s more. Loeb’s “characterisation” from Ultimates once again rears its ugly head, with characters are reduced to one note stereotypes. Valkyrie is sex-obsessed. Iron Man is alcohol-obsessed. Cap is, in a development ripped from the pages of the Ultimate Cap Annual, inexplicably Wasp-obsessed, even though that wasn’t remotely touched on in Ultimates 3, which occurs BETWEEN this story and that one.

Even the continuity is fried. Thor talks like Stan Lee’s “King James” Thor even though only Loeb himself ever had him do that. Hawkeye somehow feels the need to mention that Hank shot Jan with ant spray as if it were an important, recent event rather than a minor thread in the tapestry of their relationship that happened well over a year ago, chronologically. Magneto is using his floating base from the early days of Ultimate X-Men – presumably they just left it there while he was incarcerated?

You could just… you could really go on and on about all the ways in which this comic is bad. It’s a complete mess. It has its moments – to its credit, it does feel like big events are happening and that the ramifications will be far-reaching, but the thing about any fiction is, if you’re only involved so you can find out “What happens next?” then you really shouldn’t be involved at all. it’s not “Ultimates” bad, but it’s still far, far from being worth reading.