I’ve had a long-standing soft spot for the Ultimate Universe. In the main, that’s due to my affection for Ultimate Spider-Man, the most consistently great superhero book of the last ten years. But between 2001-2008 (or thereabouts), I was a fan of pretty much all the other titles, too – I was a bit slower getting onboard with Ultimate X-Men, really disliking the early Millar issues but enjoying the latter part of his run immensely, but I lapped up Ultimates 1 & 2 along with everyone else in comics, bought just about all of the Ultimate Something miniseries, and even stuck with Ultimate Fantastic Four past its initially stuttering beginning.

Those early issues had struggled to make an impression, with Bendis and Millar’s writing styles never really clicking together (something that doesn’t give me great confidence for their upcoming Death of Ultimate Spider-Man arc or whatever it’s called) and the very creation of the characters giving rise to all sorts of internal continuity issues within a universe that at the time was less than five years old. But things took a dramatic upswing with the arrival of Warren Ellis – at the time, a huge surprise, as it was arguably the first time Ellis that had shown that he was more than capable of writing entertaining stories with the mainstream superheroes that (so the common perception went) he so despised. His two arcs on the book were nothing short of terrific – energetic, loaded with his trademark tech-idea-splurges (and thus a perfect fit for exactly what a modern-day FF book should be), and at times downright hilarious (the riffing on “Fantasti-car” in Doom, or the reveal of Johnny’s name for the shuttle in N-Zone); plus, although the second arc suffers from having lacklustre art from Adam Kubert, the first has got Stuart Immonen at his most sprightly.

After just those two arcs, though, Ellis was gone – and after a two-part fill-in from Mike Carey, original co-writer Mark Millar was brought back to try and inject interest back into the series. His first arc, a three-parter called Crossover, hinged on a pretty neat idea – teasing a potential crossover with the 616 universe for the first time – but quickly lost interest when it turned out to be a universe of undead zombies instead (and yes, if you didn’t know, it was this one humble little storyline that led to the existence of the entire relentless Marvel Zombies thing. So, yeah, thanks for that). But aside from providing an anticlimactic end to an intriguing build-up, there was something far more dangerous threatening my continued buying of the series – as joining Millar on the book as artist was the one, the only, Greg Land.

The name didn’t mean much to me when he arrived on the book – I didn’t really have pre-existing knowledge of just what he was capable of – but it didn’t take long to find out. There’s enough ranting about Land art on the internet already, of course, so I don’t need to go into great detail about just why I immediately found the book so unappealing visually – but two immediately obvious reasons would be the ever-changing hairstyles of Johnny Storm (depending on whom the traced image happened to be of at any given time), and the turning of Sue into Pamela Anderson (coupled with an immediate, erm, trimming of her usual wardrobe). It’s just tasteless, classless, soulless craftless nonsense – surface gloss without any sort of character, storytelling or depth behind it. It can be overlooked if the writing is good – but while Millar is capable of great comics from time to time, this was just him on autopilot.

The tipping point came, finally, with issue #24. Part one of “Tomb of Namor”, a story about… well, about Namor. And there are few characters in the entirety of both the DC and Marvel universes that interest me less than Namor. And few tedious, overblown, pointless stories that interest me less than the love triangle between him, Sue and Reed. Seeing the story redone yet again in the Ultimate Universe, with art by Greg Land to boot (“A story set underwater!” he must have thought. “I won’t even have to paint over the bikinis from Sports Illustrated this time!”), was simply too much. I gave the first issue of the arc ago, but it did nothing to inspire – and even, in what may just be one of the greatest meta-jokes of all time, gave Land the excuse to draw a panel showing a website called “Cheerleaders Gone Wild”. From that point, I was out – #24 would be the last issue I’d buy, and by the time Millar left a short while afterwards, even his replacement by Mike Carey wasn’t enough to tempt me back. When the team were ripped apart by Ultimatum a few years later,  I had a twinge of regret for Reed – killed off before anyone had really managed to do anything with the vague potential shown by his character early on – but the end of the series as a whole was hardly something I mourned.

This week! Because no-one else will talk about X-Men with me: Chapter Eight of our look at the current X-Men crossover, Second Coming. Click behind the cut to read more!

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Slightly delayed due to the ash-cloud, but here’s the next instalment of our series of Second Coming features – Chapter Four of the Book of Hope, which covers X-Men Legacy #235, as well as “Second Coming Revelations”-branded spin-off, X-Factor #207. Meanwhile, the X-Force #26 instalment (featuring a SURPRISE death, Honest.) will be rushed through this weekend.

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This week saw the release of a charming, if far from perfect, issue of an intriguing series. Unfortunately, Seb has beaten me to the punch on Joe The Barbarian, and so for the second month in a row, Comics Daily is going to take a look at events off the coast of San Francisco. Then again, there are worse fates than being forced to dwell on an engaging and thoughtfully-characterised, if well-established, book…

Matt Fraction’s assembling of a distinctly oddball cast continues, with Wolverine, Psylocke and Colossus’ trip to the big apple turning up another of the franchise’s misfits as the continue to pursue what’s superficially Nation X’s a-story. Meanwhile, the remainder of the cast continue to cope with life on their artificial island one day at a time. The writer does a good job of retaining the high0flying tone of the book from his more sci-fi initial issues, while still doing justice to the ‘trapped in exile’ scenario. As with last month’s outing, it’s a slid grasp of the iconic core cast, stripped of the superficial irony of the SFX arc, which provides the backbone of the title.

If there’s one part of the book which isn’t quite ringing true, it’s Magneto’s rebirth as an altruist. Previous issues struck a nice balance, with the character’s admiration for Neo-Cyclops managing to square the circle and deliver a compelling reason for Erik to take up residence in the book. Here, however, Magneto is depicted as being somewhat put-upon, with his good intentions distrusted by the other inhabitants of Utopia. Fraction is presumably seeking sympathy for the anti-hero, in order to gain the readership’s acceptance of his addition to the cast, but even considering the retconning away of Grant Morrison’s take on the character, it’s hard to buy him being as completely selfless as is shown here. The solicits have made clear just what his grand gesture of redemption will be, but while the revelation hasn’t spoilt the story in the same way as recent Buffy publicity materials, it calls for a further suspension of disbelief. The other misfortune affecting the book is artistic inconsistency, with the need to give Greg Land and Terry Dodson both prep time for the forthcoming Second Coming event sadly forcing a breakdown in the hitherto-successful policy of rotating the pencillers on alternate arcs. The material frankly deserves better than the resultant relay approach.

With his introspective character arc completed, Matt Fraction returns to the style of “SFX”, moving several plot threads forward in addition to the highlighted “Sisterhood” strand. Despite the hype behind Madelyne Pryor’s major strike, the Sisterhood of Mutants appear to be taking a rather indirect approach, with a grab & snatch raid in Tokyo being followed by plotting behind closed doors in San Francisco. Meanwhile, the “X Club” plotline continues to trundle along, and Fraction’s determination to compile the largest X-roster imaginable continues. One of the joys of such a long-running team book is seeing each new writer dusting off their favourites, but Fraction seems to be so busy collecting X-Men that he has little time to actually do anything with them. Here, Northstar threatens to join Dazzler as making a loud comeback, but without any actual plan for the character. Fraction does admittedly have a more secure hand on his villains, with each member of the Sisterhood already displaying a distinct manner of relating to her colleagues. Hopefully the explanation for Pryor’s reappearance will come sooner rather than later- the character was last seen being ripped apart by Warren Ellis about a decade ago, and a bit of backstory would be welcome.

Strike a pose! Greg Land’s back on art duties. Most reviewers diplomatically despite the penciler’s work as “controversial”, but the schism between readers appears to really break down into those affronted by his constant photo referencing and those who don’t see the problem. At Comics Daily, we tend to fall into the former camp. The problem is that his work feels too static and forced as a result of its compilation from so many sources. To be fair to the man, this is his strongest art for the book to date, with a density of background that’s sometimes reminiscent of Chris Bachello. His stylistic tics, however, continue to irritate. Given his insistence on having every character grinning, he’s curiously reluctant to actually draw any teeth, with everyone appearing to sport white gum shields throughout.

All in all, it seems to be business as usual for Fraction’s Uncanny, with the dazzling delivery of a somewhat average plot. The returning of Psylocke to her original body is unexpected, but rather pointless, as the character could have been revitalised just as easily by discarding the Jim Lee costume in favour of something more practical. It’s a solid book, but the absence of the solicited Simon Trask story is keenly felt.

This week: the usual selection of capsule reviews, including Amazing Spider-Man #573, Captain Britain and MI:13 #6, DC Universe Decisions #3, Titans #6, Ghost Rider #28 and Uncanny X-Men #503. Enjoy!

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