About Heroes

This Review was submitted by Joshiebear!

Well, it started with what looked like an innocent Ultimate X-Men /Ultimates crossover, and turned into something more Sinister. The mis-spelling (however correct pronunciation) of one of Marvel's biggest baddies. Gah-Lak-Tus. Wooo! They even debuted Ultimate Vision too! How could they mess this up? Here's the short version of what started cool and slowly became what it ended up being. Stupid sub-mediocre crap.

Ultimate Nightmare.

Well this is where it started. We have the X-Men on one hand responding to these world-broadcasted Telepathic-Imagery that consists of death and aliens and dying and lots of alien-ish deathy dying doomy doom. Everyone in the world is freaking out, but only two groups decide to do anything about it. The X-Men and the Ultimates, whose Psi-Operatives have pretty much done the same thing as Jean Grey and Prof. X has done. They pinpoint the source of the Psychic broadcast to the Tunguska Wasteland in Russia. Both teams (X-Men: Jean Grey, Colossus and Wolverine. Ultimates: Black Widow, Captain America, Nick Fury, and Falcon) book it (unaware of each other) to the site to see what's the hizz-haps, and hero vs hero goofy-ness ensues, but not to Marvel's usual (ridiculously silly) extent. The source of the broadcast was found to be a long-forgotten Russian Military Do-Hickie, which conveniently allowed for both teams to encounter their own obstacles, be it in the form of mutated russian commies who've been eating each other for the past few decades, or Russia's answer to Captain America. Yup, you guessed it, Captian Russia. (Btw, I think what Ultimates is doing about every country making a Captain is retarded. America. Britain. NO MORE.) What makes the deal even sweeter is that Captain Russia has constructed a sheild with the pelts of his former comrades, who, I suppose, he finally ate. Anyway, as mentioned earlier, the two teams do bump into each other and have a bit of a tiff, but it is, thankfully, short lived. For what they find at the core of the facility makes them put any cookie-cutter differences aside. The remains of Ultimate Vision are hanging in a lab, and it's babbling about the end of the world and some honkie named Gah-Lak-Tus.

All in all, I DID enjoy this series. I mean, I'm always a sucker for throwing heroes together, and I'll admit, even though the idea of Captain Russia is gay, the fight was still pretty neat. Cap Ruskie really had a hard-on for stomping Cap, and Cap had a hard-on for....well being American, as usual. All in all, I would probably give this 5 issue run a B-.....

BUT THEN THERE'S MORE!

Of course they wouldn't mention Galactus...er...Gah-Lak-Tus....y'know what? I'm just saying GLT from now on, and you're just gonna have to understand that I'm talking about a Planet Eating Uber-Villain (which it didn't end up being) instead of a sandwich, ok? So, onward and DOWNward we go!

Ultimate Secret.

Man, this whole thing is kinda fuzzy in my head, cuz this is where the suck really started to seep in, but I'm gonna do my best. Basically, this is where we find that all this GTM crap is really a setup for what we know would come eventually. Ultimate Kree-Invasion. Well, in all probability, I can't see them not attempting an Ultimate Kree-Skrull War. Anyway, back on topic, We're at a U.S. military base in New Mexico, where we find a Carol Danvers working with Captain Mahr Vell, who is secretly spying on us lowly humans as part of a mission from his Kree buddies to keep us grounded and out of the stars until GLT comes along and makes a entre of us. He is exposed as an alien when an invisible Kree warrior attacks a revolutionary space-shuttle embarking on a test-launch. Now that Mahr Vell is outted, Fury questions him and finds out about the whole plan for the Kree to keep it's thumb on us to keep our violent habits out of the solar system. Fury calls in the Fantastic Four Thor, and Iron Man. Once they arrive, Fury catches them up on the events of Ult. Nightmare and what's happened with Mahr Vell. Reed nerds out because of the alien factor, and then the aliens invade in order to finish the job the single Kree was supposed to do earlier, since NASA had another ship up and running in no time. Thor, Nick Fury, Thing, Johnny Storm, and the Black Widow take on the Alien Army and thwart them, while Iron Man, Mahr Vell, Reed, and Sue take the ship up to a Kree ship, kick it's ass, steal it's data, and blow it up (in so many words). Now they have some intel on GLT. DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN. C-

So. Carol Danvers and Mahr Vehl is a plus, but all in all, this didn't even have much to offer. Basically it's just the Segway into the final battle. Sigh Let's just get it over with...

Ultimate Extinction.

This is where the whole sha-bang goes down. GLT is coming and it seem as though we have very little chance of efficiently doing anything about it. Throw in a Misty Knight, what looks to be kinda sorta Silver Surfer (referred to as Paul Maitreya), but only he has these weird angular wings. Anyway, the story opens with our heroes (including a newly reconstructed Vision, who has taken a female form) learning all they can about GLT from the Kree ship's data. They find that GLT isn't some huge guy sporting a purple helmet like he is in the 616, "he's" a ton of huuuge space-ships that kill all life on the planet they target and then suck the energy from the planet's magnetic field, thus efficiently killing the planet. Meanwhile, Misty Knight has a run-in with our "Silver Surfer" as the leader of a cult. We find that he (and a lot of others like him) were sent to earth by GLT to inspire mass suicide in an attempt to expedite the killing of all living things on the planet. They end up fighting, which is kinda fun. She throws him out a window after he tries to electrocute her like the Emperor in Star Wars. When he lands, she throws a fire extinguisher out the window at him, and just before it hits him in the noggin, she shoots it and blows it up, but alas, to no avail. He just juices her with more electricity. By now, Captain America and Falcon are on the scene, and they have some punches to throw as well. Maitreya retreats and the heroes go back to camp, this time with Misty Knight in tow. They go back to the Triskelion, where Prof. X and Jean Grey are ready to try and make psychic contact with GLT to see what's up. GLT gets pissed at the thought of having an organic thing inside it's head and gives Prof. X a nose-bleed. Meanwhile Reed Richards is making a suped-up version of the inter-dimensional thingamajigger that gave the F4 their powers in the first place to use against GLT. There's a weird sub-plot thingie with all these clone people that are bald being in another cult and bum-rushing the Triskelion, but basically, Prof. X, Jean Grey, and Vision all decide to try and really garble GLT's head while Reed fires off his ultimate weapon (which is to open a portal to a baby universe, launch a nuclear weapon into it, start a 'big bang' and then redirect it to the GLT units that are hovering above earth. Reed executes his plan, destroying 20% of the GLT's and Xavier gets the entire human race to think fuzzy thoughts with him and then hurls a big old Love-Bomb at GLT, which repels it away. End 'o' story. The kicker? Nick Fury, says he's greater than God. A-burr? He didn't really do anything! He just fought and barked orders and played Samuel L Jackson! ARGH! D

Ok, so here's why I think this sucked. There was no big confrontation with GLT! The 'FIGHT' at the end of the whole thing was just a bunch of weird, somewhat unrelated bald cloney people that a few of the heroes took care of at the Triskelion! I mean yeah, they did bring in everybody (cuz the x-men swoop in at the last minute to help out) but it wasn't for more than a few pages, and then it just kinda resolves. No big bang! I mean....this whole thing can be compared to War Of The Worlds. The thing that defeats the impossibly strong and oppresive alien force is plain old human buttwipe. Where's the fun in that? I always thought it was at least somewhat excusable in WotW just because it's an old story and it has a message to it, but man, GLT shoulda been more of a physical threat in my book. This whole thing was a bland dish of mediocrity with some Ultimate Debuts added in for spice The official count is 8, I think. Sam Wilson/Falcon, a prototype for Crimson Dynamo in the Tunguska base, Vision, which had 2 types, the torn up giant male version, and the human-sized reconstructed female version, GLT, Jessica Drew, Captain Mahr Vell, Misty Knight, and a Quasi Moondragon in the form of cloned Heather Moons. Although Ultimate debuts are kinda fun, they can't be used to drive stories, and I feel they were here. So once again I have fallen prey to Marvel's Hype. This series was a completely isolated event (because it doesn't have any effect on X-Men or the Ultimates core titles), and they ship the vision off to warn any planet GLT next approaches of what GLT is and how to beat it. The only thing that came out of this series was Vision v.2 and Ultron, which are briefly seen in one issue of Ultimates 2. The rest is....rubbish. Oh well. SOP for Marvel in my book. I'll continue to buy Ultimate mini-series' just cuz I'm that crazy about Ultimate Marvel. All in all, I give this series a D+ because although it had a somewhat good start, it fizzled out like crazy and made me feel like the whole thing was an empty venture.

PS: the art in ultimate nightmare was pretty good in my opinion. the art in ultimate secret was ok, but nothing to marvel at, and the art in ultimate extinction was a little cruddy if you ask me.