written by Jonathan Hickman
penciled by Bryan Hitch
inked by Andrew Currie
colored by Alex Sinclair
"Ultimate Invasion" wrapped a couple of months ago, but I wanted to weigh in nonetheless, along with some comments on how it was shipped.
So the man who ended the Ultimate Marvel Universe (Jonathan Hickman) teamed up with one of its creators (Bryan Hitch), to bring it all back, and in a very interesting fashion, too. Essentially, this miniseries consisting of four pricey, extra-sized issues tells the story of how the Maker (aka evil Reed Richards) re-molds a new version of the Ultimate Universe (Earth 6160 and not the Earth 1610 he had come from) to his liking, removing superheroes from the equation by preventing them from ever becoming super in the first place and trying instead to create an ideal world, one that he, with the aid of several select super-powered individuals, can control. Of course, experiments aimed at controlling people never really work out, and when Howard Stark and his son Anthony discover the horrible truth about the world that the Maker has refashioned, all hell breaks loose.
I'll readily admit that I had stopped buying the Ultimate line of Marvel Comics even before Mark Millar left in 2007. As a result, by the time Jonathan Hickman came along and erased the line from existence, with the exception of the emergence of Miles Morales, I knew next to nothing about the Ultimate Marvel Universe, so I knew little about the Maker, who was basically evil Reed Richards.
I'd like to credit Hickman for not leaning heavily into nostalgia with this story; rather than giving readers straight up reboots of the Ultimates from the Millar/Hitch glory days, he moves his story forward rather than looking back. The Maker has made a new world, one without the heroes he knows, and the landscape is strikingly different.
My problem with this story, however, is that Hickman's chosen protagonist, Howard Stark, is not a particularly compelling one. He doesn't have any of Tony Stark's pathos, and basically serves little purpose other than to be the reader's window into this strange, new world. Sure, he's got a lot of clever dialogue to spout out, and he even has a friend to avenge before the third issue, but at the end of the day Howard Stark is basically just a swapped out Tony Stark, who in this world, and I am not joking here, feels more like young Bruce Wayne, possibly because of the lack of facial hair.
Without an especially compelling hereo on whom to anchor the story, it becomes that much easier to remember what these oversized, overpriced issues are really about: setting up a new Ultimate Universe. Does Marvel at least do a good job of that?
Well, I can't say for sure because I missed the crucial epilogue to the series, which, annoyingly was apparently down to Marvel undershipping the series overseas, something I found genuinely annoying. The seeds for the new Ultimate Universe are planted throughout this series but apparently a lot of the major payoffs occur in the epilogue.
The good news, though, is that Bryan Hitch brings his A-game to the book. There is actually a very brief reference to the first few pages of the Ultimates #2, which is about as close as the book gets to nostalgia-baiting, but other than that Hitch marshals his considerable talent to elevate what would otherwise not be a particularly remarkable story.
In the end, this miniseries was basically just a mechanism to kick start a new iteration of the Ultimate Universe, and as an unfortunate result it doesn't feel especially compelling as a story in its own right.
7/10
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