Monday, May 4, 2015

Comics - Ultimate FF

So I have been sitting on a backlog of comics here and there, mostly stuff I've purchased out of discount bins, in this case the short lived book, Ultimate FF. Now this is obviously an Ultimate line book, in case anyone is uncertain the Ultimate line of books was started in the early 2000's as a fresh start and continuity clean versions of classic Marvel characters interpreted for a new age. Since then throug being around for almost 15 years itself, is has become very different from when it started, not in a bad way, not always in a good way, but its definetly its own universe. Still most of the Ultimate books I would consider good or worth reading, especially Ultimate Spider-Man and the first 26 issues of the Ultimates. But we are not talking about any of those books today. The line has gone through many changes, first Ultimatum, Doomsday, Death of Spider-Man, Divided We Fall. This book takes place after Cataclysm. Cataclysm seems totally bizzare when you write it out, but due to Age of Ultron where Marvel Universe history was torn apart, that caused a rip in reality where Galactus from the regular Marvel Universe was sent to the Marvel Ultimate universe, where he merged with his Ultimate counter part the Gah Lak Tus swarm, becomeing even more powerful. Galactus then made his way to earth and wreaked havok before he was stopped.

After Galactus was defeated, aparently further rips in reality kept appearing, and this book follows the Future Foundation (FF, get it!)which has tasked themselves to close the rifts as they appear. Led by Susan Storm(Invisible Woman), and main operatives Tony Stark(Iron Man), Sam Wilson(The Falcon), and Danny Ketch(Machine Man), and finally Victor Van Damm(Doom). Danny is actually a human consciousness surviving inside a robot body made from salvaged tech from Gah Lak Tus, which if the book lasted longer would have panned out into a story or two.

The book only survived for 6 issues, and while not a bad book, definetly a bit off kilter. It seems to tangentially relate to the story occuring in Hickman's Avengers/New Avengers leading to Secret Wars, where reality and the multiverse is broken, and some the realities that are opening up on their earth are coming to an end. Though at the time the full scope hadn't been revealed yet. They pull in some Ultimate Universe leftovers that havn't been seen in a bit like Namor, they of course have a check in with Reed who had become a bad guy in their universe, as in he did some stuff so bad he can never be forgiven, he is someone we will be seeing a lot more of in Secret Wars. We see him a couple times, but the big thing is bringing Doom in the fold, I mean literally they hate Reed so much they would rather goto Doom for help. They come accross the Spider-Ham version of Miles Morales, who stumbles through one of these portals, we even see what is effectively a whole Ultimate Universe but with animals, that part is kind of fun.

I like this book, it tries really hard, but the art is switching hands seemingly every other issue and not always with ones I liked. It seems like they need to explain the team more, they are together at the start so we dont' really see why/how this group came together, and its extremely reliant on knowing a lot of the Ultimate stuff that has come before which becomes a tall order at some point. That dependancy on knowing more of the history makes it hard to recommend to other people. But it does have some cool scenes and sequences. So if you read Cataclysm I think this is worth a read if you can find it in the discount bin like I did, or in Trade...if they made one.

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