Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 - Review

Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 - Review

Story by
Mark Millar

Art by
Carlos Pacheco, Danny Miki

From the start I’ve never been a fan of the Ultimate Universe, I’m not sure why but the idea just never appealed to me, and even though I’m a fan of most of Mark Millar’s work, I thought his and Bryan Hitch’s Ultimate’s Vol. 1 & 2 were a bit over rated. After the critically panned Ultimate’s Vol. 3 and Ultimatum (both by J. Loeb) the whole line was to get a reboot and I thought I should give the line another go.

Leading up to this relaunch all the things I was hearing about Ultimate Comics: Avengers really grabbed my attention. Firstly Millar was this time being joined by fantastic artist Carlos Pacheco, secondly this was to be a stripped down Ultimate Avengers, focusing on the Ultimate’s Nick Fury, Iron Man, Hawkeye & Captain America, with the lead story focusing on Cap’s world being turned up side down by a big reveal at the end of the first issue. So I had to pick this issue up.

(SPOILERS ON!)

We start a few weeks after Ultimatum. Fury is asked to rejoin the Ultimate’s by S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Carol Danvers and Hawkeye for a Black Ops mission to bring in an AWOL Captain America. We then flash back to find out the reason Caps gone missing; Hawkeye and Cap are on a mission to stop A.I.M breaking into the Baxter Building, the action that ensures is great, Cap and Hawkeye engage a couple of A.I.M Helicopter as the villains try to escape, the banter between our heroes is written really well by Millar and the splash pages of art make this feel like a big action movie (think True Lies, only a lot cooler). Both our heroes come across as no non-sense, military bad-asses, and it suits the feel of the book and the action perfectly.

After taking out the first chopper, Cap leaps to the second, only to be confronted by Ultimate Red Skull, a fight ensures and Steve gets taken out bad by the new villain, and is thrown to certain death only to rescued by Hawkeye at the last minute who leaps to aid Steve by pulling his parachute open just before they crash land. The last page reveals the shocking truth that Red Skull had revealed to Cap on the Helicopter, that Ultimate Red Skull is in fact Ultimate Cap’s son! Fucking awesome.

All round this is a great read and a really good looking book, lots of action with great characters and an awesome last page reveal to keep me coming back for more. The only negative comment I will say is that with all the splash pages the book reads a bit too fast for my liking and for a $3.99 price tag, bet hey, I definitely recommend this book, and if you are interested in the new Ultimate Universe, this is a great place to start.

Hex's score: 4 out of 5

Whoah! That's a lot of previews!

Cover to Deadpool #13, gotta be a contender for cover of the week

Over at CBR we have the following Marvel previews for comics on sale 12 August.
Click the links below to be taken to the preview of your choice.

Cable #13
Captain America Theater Of War: To Soldier On One Shot
Deadpool #13
Dominic Fortune #1
Incredible Hercules #132
Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers #4
Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #14
Marvel Divas #2
Ms. Marvel #43
Pride & Prejudice #5
The Marvels Project #1
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1
Uncanny X-Men #514
Uncanny X-Men: First Class #2
X-Men Forever #5

Ultimate Avengers #1 preview can be found over at IGN here.

I’m looking forward to this. I haven’t liked any of the previous Ultimate titles that much but the art looks great and I’m a fan of Millar’s writing, most of the time. Plus the story sounds good (spoilers on!). From what I know Cap goes AWOL after finding out the Red Skull is his son! The rest of the Avengers then have to hunt him down. Sounds really cool to me, and I love the Red Skull twist.

IGN also has a nice 8 page preview of Daredevil #500. Including a back up story with art by David Aja, as seen above! That makes me very happy. Check out the full preview here.


Over at Newsarama they have a preview (art only) for the upcoming mini-series NOMAD: GIRL WITHOUT A WORLD #1 here. I know Flips the Page will be dying to see that if he hasn’t already.

Finally over at DC’s The Source you get a preview of Batman #689 here. Great cover by Andy Kubert as always. It’s a shame he’s not doing the pencils instead of Mark Bagley.

You also get a preview of Red Robin #3 here.

I’m not a fan of the artwork on this title so I was please to also find out at the Source that “Starting in November with RED ROBIN #6, Marcus To (Aspen’s Soulfire) will step in as the new ongoing artist on RED ROBIN, taking over for Ramon Bachs, who steps over to launch AZRAEL with writer Fabian Nicieza.”

So the good news is that Red Robin gets a new artist, the bad news is that Bachs steps over to Azrael, a series I’m looking forward to. Hopefully I’ll prefer his work on that title.

That’s wraps up previews day I think. Thanks for all your comments this week, they’ve been great. Seems I’m getting around 300 hits a week on my site and that is fantastic. I’m really glad people like to keep coming back to my little blog and I love chatting with you all and reading your comments.

Please also check out the other site I write for; A Comic Book Blog if you get a chance. There are lots of great writers and articles over there and is definitely worth a look.

Have a great weekend guys. What will you be up to? I’ll be reading loads. I've got the Ghost World tpb to read, I’ve also bought lots of old Detective Comics issues really cheap this week. Ones written by Alan Grant, who is one of my fav Batman writers, so I look forward to reading them and trying to catch up with my other huge stack of comics I haven’t got round to reading yet, all the while trying to avoid doing work in the garden that my girlfriend wants me to do!

-Hex