There’s little point reviewing Jeph Loeb’s Ultimates by now.  If you’re still buying it, then you deserve all you’re getting, frankly. If you want to read about the real Ultimates, well, go and buy Ultimate Human instead, because it’s MUCH BETTER. Now, while we take the fairly healthy line that in comics, continuity is merely a tool that can be used to help or hinder a good story, that doesn’t mean that we’re ignorant of it. It also doesn’t mean we can resist shooting fish in a barrel. Today, rather than a review, Seb and I have compiled a list of all the ways in which Loeb has screwed up in another exciting issue of Jeph Loeb’s Ultimate Ultimates!

PREVIOUSLY: A whole bunch of unreadable shit happened! The Scarlet Witch is dead! Quicksilver left with Magneto! Wolverine turns up at the Ultimate Avengers Ultimate Mansion! And then the problems begin, as he starts to investigate what’s been going on here, generally rubbing everyone up the wrong way.

Three Kids. Hawkeye had THREE KIDS. This mistake so upsets Hawkeye that rather than noticing, he initiates a double-page spread with Wolverine! Luckily Captain America is available to intervene. But he doesn’t like what he’s hearing!

You might have noticed that Ultimate Cap has been reduced to a single note of characterisation. For you see, he is from the Ultimate 40s, and back then, no-one swore or had sex, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to allow a single instance of any of that sort of thing pass without comment. For instance, last issue:

Or the issue before that: 

It’s not quite as subtle as when he was trying to reassemble his record collection, is it? Additionally, check that first panel again. It’s fairly amusing that after years of forgetting to draw Wolverine as a shorter man, artists are now forgetting that Ultimate Wolverine is not short like the 616 version. Or perhaps you missed his previous, ooh, hundred appearances?

Luckily Thor is around to stop the fighting. As established last issue, in order to prove that he was a genuine Norse god, Thor had taken to talking perfect English, but now he doesn’t have to pretend! Er, sure. Presumably, this is because Thor recognised that a Norseman talking in King James English is a completely bonkers idea best left in the 60s, and if he’d done that in front of Millar’s Ultimates team they’d have thrown him in the crazy house immediately. It would have been stupid then, and hey! IT’S STUPID NOW.

And what’s worse, it appears to be catching on. Wolverine then tries to explain, using “logic”, why everyone should’ve seen this coming, relating the time he had sex with the Scarlet Witch’s mother, Ultimate Magda:

It’s not surprising he’s staring so hard. Either she’s got some kind of adamantium-laced breasts, or gravity has taken leave of its senses. Either way, when the room you’re having sex in appears to be entirely on fire, it’s probably not worth worrying about. Before the whole place can burn down, though, Logan experiences a severe turn of Coitus Interruptus when Magneto bursts through the door!

“First you sleep with my wife, then you misspell my name in flashback!”

Having been kicked to the curb, Logan narrates the first time he met the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, when he joined the brotherhood.

This may just be Loeb responding directly to criticisms about the Scarlet Witch’s slutwear costume (in much the same way as the issue’s RECAP PAGE *finally* tackles both the reason Hank isn’t in the Triskelion, and why Valkyrie has powers…) but why does Logan say “Didn’t ANY of you notice what she was wearing recently?” Why would it be significant to them? No-one in the Ultimates would have ever seen anything besides her Shield uniform, would they?

And let’s get this straight. This scene happens post Weapon X, pre-Ultimate X-Men. That is, during the period where Wolverine had his brain wiped, and didn’t know his own name. He only found it out when (a) Captain America recognised him from the ’40s and called him it, and (b) when Cyclops gave him a wedding ring with it engraved on (er, in a non-gay way). There is absolutely NO conceivable way he would have known it at this point, and even less reason for Wanda to.

Magneto is so upset by this whole state of affairs that he takes the only reasonable action:

Magneto hates his son, sure. But he’s still his son, and Mags has more morals than that (when it comes to mutants, anyway). Unfortunately, Wolverine fails to carry out his test of loyalty when Wanda intervenes, and presumably, the whole matter is dropped forever. You see, deciding to kill your son is the kind of issue you can really flip-flop over. If at first you don’t succeed, forget you ever tried, right? Surely, if Magneto ever wanted to kill Pietro, he’d have done so when he shot him through the kneecaps?

Luckily for Wolverine, Jeph Loeb has never read an Ultimate Comic. Wanda, as written here, is so far removed from the way she was as introduced in Ultimate X-Men that it’s hard to know where to start. Where’s the smart, sensual, confident women who attempted to seduce Cyclops and was a major part of the Brotherhood’s plotting? All we’ve got here is a wet, soppy, poor, whinging excuse for a character. “Oh, I don’t WANT to conjure that! I don’t LIKE dinosaurs! These clothes are too restrictive!”

Just in case it’s not clear, it seems that this entire plot is setting up, god help us, some kind of Ultimate House of M. At the very least, we seem to be getting Ultimate Avengers Disassembled right now. Sounds to me like Ultimatum might just involve Wanda “rewriting” the Ultimate Universe…

Back in the future, nobody is really sure what Wolverine was trying to tell them, but Jan decides that some of them will go and find Magneto, presumably to ask him to clarify this confusing sequence of events. She forbids Cap to come along, because for some reason, she thinks that Captain America - a man from the 40s, lest we forget - is best placed to deal with the media interest on this story. 

Speaking of which, remember when Janet was the most damaged of a damaged group of individuals, battling a severe case of self-loathing that kept driving her back to an abusive husband? Loeb doesn’t, so instead she’s the leader, perfectly “normal”, and utterly devoid of anything resembling “character”.

The team going to find Magneto, however, does include the “Black” “Panther” - a strange mute character with an unexplained, mysterious connection to Captain America. And hey, where had he been just now? And where did Cap suddenly disappear to? Why, it’s almost like we’ve never seen them in the same place at once! And Wolverine appears to know the man wearing the costume! But guys, don’t worry - we figured it out. The Black Panther is actually Ultimate US Agent in disguise. I’ve got a good feeling about that prediction.

Seriously, it’s so blatant, it’s hard to tell whether this is some genuine, sound misdirection, or if Loeb has totally taken leave of his senses and thinks that this kind of thing counts as “subtle foreshadowing.” Time will tell.

On her way to the jet, the Wasp encounters Iron Man!

Honestly, Mr. Madureira, we know you draw everyone like they’re from a Japanese cartoon, but when one of the characters actually is Asian, please at least try to acknowledge that somehow.

Unfortunately, it’s not Iron Man, but a robot of some kind, who delivers a piece of critical exposition, before electrocuting Jan. Meanwhile, in the Savage Land, we get the final-page reveal the fans have been clamouring for since the Ultimate line was launched.

Oh yeah! Ultimate Zabu! Just when you think Ultimates can’t get any stupider, something like this happens. AND TOTALLY REDEEMS IT! ROLL ON ISSUE 4!

The Ultimate universe is in such a state at the moment that it’s quite suprising to see a series like Ultimate Human come out – given that it actually fits in much better with the original Bendis/Millar era than it does the current Dark Days Of Loeb, and almost washes the nasty taste of Ultimates 3 out of the mouth. Almost.

After all, while the Ultimate line wasn’t exactly supposed to be “superheroes in the real world” in a Watchmen sense, there was certainly a movie-esque, let’s-attempt-to-justify-the-superhero- weirdness-with-actual-theoretical-science feel to the original triad of Spider-Man, X-Men and The Ultimates that has sadly been lost amid crossovers with Supreme Power and zombie universes. Warren Ellis later brought quite a lot of it to his run on Ultimate Fantastic Four – a title to which he was far better suited than he’d probably care to admit – as well, and he does exactly the same here. So we finally get to see a Banner/Hulk transformation happen (instead of conveniently cutting away), and we get lots of trademark Ellis technobabble making it all sound as if it might actually be possible, kinda.

A dichotomy that The Ultimates has never really examined in any great deal is thrown up here – Banner and Stark as two geniuses at completely opposing ends of the superhero game – and this should hopefully give a bit of dimension to the eventual slugfest between the two characters that the series is being pushed as. In the meantime, though, there’s not a great deal of action in issue #1, but it builds nicely, and throws in a secondary plot layer involving Ultimate versions of the Leader and Pete Wisdom (er – as the same character). Cary Nord’s art comes off quite like a painted version of Stuart Immonen, but for someone new to Ultimate he does a good job – even if his Bruce Banner is a little inconsistent with and without glasses.

The last Ultimate miniseries to start this promisingly was the ill-fated Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, a book that shares a lot in common with Ultimate Human – both stories that expand upon Banner’s character and nature, and which feel like they could be actual issues of The Ultimates rather than a spinoff series. Where they differ, though, is that Ellis’ story should at least see it through to the finish – and for an imprint so badly in need of a shot in the arm, that can be no bad thing. It’s not going to rescue the whole mess, not by a long shot, but at least it’s a reminder that good stories can still be told within this framework.

Let’s get one thing clear right from the off – despite what it says on the cover, this comic is not The Ultimates. To call it that would suggest that Jeph Loeb had even the slightest inclination towards following the continuity, characterisation or style of the first two volumes – when in fact what he’s done is write a regular Avengers story with some tacked-on shagging in an attempt to make it seem “edgy”.

If I were to rattle through a shopping list of the glaring inconsistencies between this issue and Millar’s run, we’d be here all day – but suffice to say they range from little details (Thor using words like “wouldst”) to baffling plot holes (Valkyrie turning up with super powers and described as the same age she was a year – if not more – ago in the series’ timeline). The strongest feeling is that Loeb simply isn’t aware that the Ultimate universe is distinct from 616 – how else to explain the switch to that universe’s costumes (aside from wanting to have Scarlet Witch’s tits hanging out), everything about Venom, or the fact that the Wasp has transformed from a dark-haired Asian to a white redhead?

Alright, so perhaps the book shouldn’t necessarily be judged on how well it follows on from Millar and Hitch. But if you’re writing a sequel series and you want to piss about with the continuity so much, you at least need to write a good comic into the bargain. Ultimates 3, however, can’t stand on its own merits, because it doesn’t have any. It’s a catastrophic failure of a book. The characterisation is paper-thin, the dialogue is lousy, and there’s nothing whatsoever that makes me care about the characters’ fates. The issue-opening scenes involving a Tony Stark / Black Widow sex tape were probably supposed to be funny, but are in fact pathetically immature. And the less said about the ham-fisted lack of subtlety over Wanda and Pietro’s “relationship” the better – although I will just stop to wonder how in blazes Janet Pym could ever be quite so happy about the idea.

A lot of hype surrounded Joe Madureira’s appointment as artist, but I have to say, his work here leaves me wondering what all the fuss was about. It’s very pretty at times – but it’s also hampered by a muddy colouring job, some poor storytelling (particularly in the action sequences), and the fact that his cartoony and expressionistic style simply isn’t suited to a title that once thrived on his predecessor’s sense of tangible detail.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to fathom exactly what role Marvel see the Ultimate universe as playing – and, indeed, hype around the forthcoming Ultimatum crossover suggests they may be close to sticking a bullet in the whole thing. While Bendis’ consistently excellent Spider-Man deserves to survive in some form, all Loeb manages to prove with Ultimates 3 is that ditching the rest of the line really wouldn’t be such a bad thing.