Comic Review - Ultimate Doom 1-4

Title/Storyline

Ultimate Doom 1-4

Publish Date/Year

2010

Creative Team

Story: Brian Michael Bendis

Art: Rafa Sandoval

Publisher

Marvel

Story

Continuing directly from Ultimate Enemy, Ultimate Mystery takes us to Ultimate Doom where the heroes bring the fight to evil Reed, who has now become the new Dr Doom!

Sue, being the remaining resident genius after Reed, has pieced together a way for the heroes & SHIELD to reach Reed who was now operating from the Negative Zone! Despite having the heroes together with added fire-power from Rick Jones' Nova & Capt Marvel, they had their behinds handed to them and just barely managed to escape the Negative Zone back to Earth.

Not long after, Reed launches his 2nd wave of attacks. This series shows us the ruthlessness of Reed turned evil. He destroys the Baxter Building (Fantastic Four's HQ), Stark Industries, the Triskelion (the Ultimates' HQ), Castle Doomstadt among others.

Meanwhile, Spider-Girl was infiltrating Roxxon and was caught by Dr Octopus. Spider-Man shows up just in time to save her before all the insanity from Reed's attacks on the nation come crashing in on them.

With all the devastation all around them, Dr Octopus sees to need to help the heroes stop Reed and the bring everyone (this means the Ultimates) to the Negative Zone to stop Reed.

Art

Rafa Sandoval

At times, his art reminds me of Stuart Immonen & carlos Pacheco, at times a little of Ryan Sook (BTW, what has happened to him? I really miss his work!) and a bit of Olivier Coipel & Steve McNiven thrown in for good measure!

Not bad but a little unpolished but you can see his talent. However, having said that, there are some panels that appear to be rushed (not sure if that's his fault or the inker's)

Overall

Having read Fantastic Four since the John Byrne days, I personally found it difficult to read a story where Reed had seriously lost the plot and had become a villain. What I didn't like so much also was that Ben and Sue end up being together.

Well, as this IS the Ultimagte Universe, it needs its different elements to make it separate from the Marvel Universe proper. It's just that I don't quite like this version. How about you? Did you like it?

My verdict is that this is not among my favourite Bendis or Ultimate Universe stories.

Comic Review - Ultimate Mystery 1-4

Title/Storyline

Ultimate Mystery 1-4

Publish Date/Year

2010

Creative Team

Story: Brian Michael Bendis

Art: Rafa Sandoval

Publisher

Marvel

Story
Continuing directly from Ultimate Enemy, Ultimate Mystery takes us to the Project Pegasus (in the deserts of Wyoming), a super top secret facility where the US Govt keeps all the super-powerful artifacts such as the Cosmic Cube (which made its silver screen debut in the Thor movie!), Wand of Watoomb, etc safely locked away.

As a result of the earlier attacks, SHIELD had assigned Capt Marvel, the KREE alien there to provided a super-powered protection but before long, the have a strange visitor - Rick Jones, now called Nova - coming to warn of something really bad that's about to go down. Suddenly, Capt Marvel transforms into a familiar looking alien strike team attacker we had seen before in Ultimate Enemy! Nova teleports them from Project Pegasus to the Baxter Building. The combined heroes manage to take down the transformed Capt Marvel but the ensuing chaos causes the entire Baxter building to collapse. To save Rick Jones/Nova, Sue erects her force fields around them but seeing the strain on Sue, Nova teleports them back to Project Pegasus where Sue finally discovers the villain behind all of this - Reed Richards!

Meanwhile, fearing further attacks on his family a-la Reed Richards, Peter Parker (Spiderman) leaves his home & Aunt May until he can discover who the attackers are. He teams up with Spider-Girl to infiltrate Roxxon to see how they are linked to the recent attacks and had her cover blown by the Roxxon Brain Trust (a team of young super-geniuses under Roxxon's employ, incl: Misty Knight, Nathaniel Essex, Arnim Zola, etc.)

Spiderman intervenes in time to save Spider-girl from them but Reed had already started the his 2nd wave of attacks.

Art
At times, Rafa Sandoval's art reminds me of Stuart Immonen & Carlos Pacheco, at times a little of Ryan Sook (BTW, what has happened to him? I really miss his work!) and a bit of Olivier Coipel & Steve McNiven thrown in for good measure!

Not bad but a little unpolished but you can see his talent. However, having said that, there are some panels that appear to be rushed (not sure if that's his fault or the inker's)
Marvel Universe's Nova. Way cooler looking than the Ultimate version's Human Torch Wannabe. 
Overall
I have not much else to say as it is basically a continuation of the same story, only marketed as a separate mini series title. Pretty sneaky of Marvel to do this! The story isn't fantastic despite the Fantastic Four's members being an integral part of it. 


However, that being said, they are introducing more of the Marvel Universe elements into the Ultimate Universe in various new ways which older fans may either love or cringe at. Personally, I quite like the introduction of Project Pegasus in the Ultimate Universe but I didn't like the fact that they made Rick Jones the Nova of Ultimate Universe. He looks so much like the Human Torch that there's virtually no difference visually (I don't blame you if you thought the fiery character on the covers of #1,2 &4 was the Human Torch but is in fact Nova). 

Comic Review - Ultimate Enemy 1-4

Title/Storyline

Ultimate Enemy 1-4

Publish Date/Year
2010

Creative Team
Story: Brian Michael Bendis

Art: Rafa Sandoval

Publisher

Marvel

Story
Ultimate Enemy is part of a 3 part trilogy to be read in the following order:
- Ultimate Enemy
- Ultimate Mystery
- Ultimate Doom

Ultimate Enemy takes place right after the previous Big Ultimate Universe event - Ultimatum (I have not read that as yet, so, it may have a bearing on my judgment of this story)

Spider-Girl, when patrolling the corporation that created her (as she is Spiderman's clone), is suddenly faced with a giant explosion with a colossal blob montrousity!

One by one, the heroes seem to be under a coordinated alien attack by some super-powered armored alien black-ops powerhouses - Reed Richards,Nick Fury, Ben and Sue (the Baxter Building), etc.

The heroes consolidate and manage to capture 1 member of this alien strike team fro interrogation.

On top of that, there are other major developments as well - such as Reed Richards being killed in the alien attack(!!) and the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing shedding his rocky skin to become something that looks like the Ultimate version of Capt Universe (anyone remember him?) among other things (no pun intended ;)).

Art
At times, Rafa Sandoval's art reminds me of Stuart Immonen & Carlos Pacheco, at times a little of Ryan Sook (BTW, what has happened to him? I really miss his work!) and a bit of Olivier Coipel & Steve McNiven thrown in for good measure!

Not bad but a little unpolished but you can see his talent. However, having said that, there are some panels that appear to be rushed (not sure if that's his fault or the inker's)

Overall
OK, it's my fault that I have not caught up on what's happened in Ultimatum, but I still maintain that Bendis seems to have lost his touch somewhat as I found it a little hard to relate to the characters - not Fury, Sue Storm, Carol Danvers, Capt marvel, et al. I say this because I really enjoyed his work in Daredevil & Spider-Woman (see http://tiny.cc/8vdny). Well, I hope he bounces back soon! The other reason could be due to the fact that the differences between the Marvel Universe proper and the Ultimate Universe can get downright confusing sometimes.

I mean, in Ultimate Mystery, even Bendis himself (plus his editors as well) got so confused that he wrote the Roxxon Hiring Manager referring to Spider-Girl's infiltration ID (Dr. Julia Carpenter) as Jessica, which is her real name, instead of Julia.

No explanation is given for the Thing's transformation or how/why Rick Jones had been made into some sort of Universal Protector (OK - I later found out that he's the Nova of the Ultimate Universe chosen by the Ultimate Watchers and given super-powers).

Anyway, I personally think that having a cover price of USD3.99 per 22-page issue is too steep for a story that spans 12 issues (despite the clever marketing ploy to segment them into 3 separate 4-issue mini-series)