Ultimatum #1-5

Ultimatum #1-5

Originally released in 2008

Written by Jeph Loeb

Art by David Finch

This might possibly be the worst comic that I ever read.  Avengers #200 infuriated me, One More Day damaged the perception of Spider-Man for over a decade, but by my understanding, this one five issue series basically killed an entire universe. (If there's one thing that this week has taught me, it's that 2005-2008 was a rough time for comics)

It becomes clear from the first few pages that this event was intended to be a line-wide crossover, as they are dedicated to showing what Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Ultimates, and the X-Men are doing on a random Tuesday before disaster strikes.  As someone who's generally avoided the Ultimate universe, it serves as a good way to catch me up on the status quo - Peter is friends with Kitty Pryde, Gwen, MJ, and his former bully Kong; Reed is preparing to propose to Sue; the Wasp is back together with Hank Pym, who's now going by Yellowjacket...

Hawkeye points out that this last part makes no sense, given how badly he abused her; we don't get an explanation. (Also, Valkyrie is part of the team now, and she openly wants to have sex with Thor) Oddly enough, the Fantastic Four are explicitly only teenagers in this universe - all things considered, that feels more than a little weird. Despite Reed wanting to propose to Sue, Sue seems more annoyed by him than anything; I'm not sure if it's the artwork, or if they lack the chemistry of their mainstream versions.

All of this happens at 4:12 - less than a minute later, New York's streets are underwater. The artwork showing this is detailed and haunting, and we see various heroes reacting to the effects. (Such as the Thing trying to fend off a whale that bursts into the Fantastic Four's headquarters) However, this is the first example of a major problem with this event: senseless deaths for the sake of having a bunch of senseless deaths.

In the initial flood, Beast, Dazzler, and Nightcrawler are killed, leaving Angel as the only survivor of the group of four X-Men that were initially shown.  Only Dazzler is even confirmed dead on-screen - we only find out that Nightcrawler and Beast died off-screen through Xavier.  The Ultimate universe has a "dead means dead" policy to contrast with the main line of Marvel comics - it was trying to make the Ultimate line more realistic, but it also meant that if someone decided to slaughter half of the characters for the sake of an event, it would be much harder to tell stories going forward when a large portion of Marvel's iconic characters are unusable.

Reed believes Namor is responsible, and hunts him down after Sue uses a barrier to force the water back but knocks herself unconscious in the process.  Namor insists that he has nothing to do with this because he'd never harm Sue, which leaves Reed questioning who could have done this and why.

Asking a question like this is often an invitation for a creator, whether it's subtle or not, to answer that question with the next person who appears, and this is no exception. We cut to Latveria, which has been frozen by the incident that flooded New York.  It makes it seem like Doctor Doom was responsible for this happening, but it got out of his control. Charles Xavier knows who was responsible for the massive devastation, and informs New York's superhero community.

Somehow, Magneto has gotten control of Mjolnir, Thor's hammer.  All of this was only issue 1 - the next issue is described as "It Gets Worse," which isn't promising. So far, the art is great, but the plot is awful, and as that preview suggests, it's only going to get much worse from here.

In the aftermath of the destruction, there are a few good character moments - the Hulk and Spider-Man helping to save people, Hawkeye wanting to help Yellowjacket find the Wasp after she goes missing during the flood - but then we're back to our regularly scheduled program of death and misery. Valkyrie drowned, so Thor travels to Hela, the Norse god of death, to bring her back. Thor fighting an undead horde is a great visual that's wasted on this story.

As if to remind us about what kind of series this is, we next see Hawkeye and Yellowjacket finding the Wasp... Or what's left of her.  In one of the most infamous panels of the series, the Blob managed to find the Wasp first, and, well...

This is downright mean-spirited, incredibly disturbing, and continues the Ultimate universe's long-standing and inexplicable obsession with cannibalism. Getting to this page is a point where I considered dropping this series and choosing something else, and the issue isn't even done yet.  Magneto visits Xavier, and when Magneto acts as though he's better than God, Xavier says that Magneto will only be remembered as a madman, like Pol Pot or Hitler.

For that, Magneto effortlessly snaps Xavier's neck, with Xavier not even making an effort to defend himself.  It's not even like there was some plan to transfer his consciousness into a new body - he's just dead in an incredibly anti-climactic manner.  Issue 2 is done, and I'm already hating this, even though I don't have the connection to the Ultimate universe that the people who picked this up back in 2008 would have had.

Issue three kicks off by establishing that about a dozen named mutants, including Emma Frost, died off-screen, in a way that feels both pointless and spiteful. It also establishes that Ultimate Magneto lacks even the tiniest bit of complexity that makes the main version such a compelling character - he has no problem with killing or sacrificing mutants, whether it's letting all of these mutants die or using his own henchman Multiple Man as a suicide bomber.

After he kills the Blob, Yellowjacket is swarmed by the Multiple Men, telling Hawkeye to activate something called the Jocasta protocol that will presumably revive the Wasp as a robot. To my knowledge, this is never mentioned again. Then the Multiple Men blow up, killing Yellowjacket. This could be tragic, but Ultimate Hank Pym is an unrepentant domestic abuser, so he won't be missed.

Oh, and Thor's also dead, having sacrificed himself off-screen to bring Valkyrie back. The various teams, or what's left of them, are gathering their forces to take the fight to Magneto, so I was hoping that the pointless death parade would slow down a bit for issue 4.

Issue four opens with the Hulk and Spider-Man smashing into Dr. Strange's home, freeing Dormammu and seemingly killing both of them. However, I know that Spider-Man doesn't die (yet), and the Hulk's later shown to be alive.  I wasn't even aware that there was an Ultimate version of Doctor Strange, but I don't have long to think about that because Dormammu immediately and effortlessly kills him. From what I can tell, the Invisible Woman and the Thing defeat Dormammu off-screen somehow.

Reed and Doom track down Nick Fury in another universe, where Doom admits that he orchestrated this but didn't realize that Magneto would be able to go so far. The Ultimates and X-Men launch an attack on Magneto's base - Angel is effortlessly killed by Sabretooth, while Hawkeye shoots Sabretooth in the face. (Given his regeneration, this likely doesn't kill him) Magneto can lift Thor's hammer (not sure if it's lacking the worthiness requirement of the main universe), so Valkyrie chops off the hand that Magneto is using to hold it and gets her throat slit for doing that. (Making Thor's death completely pointless)

By the start of issue 5, the remaining X-Men and Ultimates are facing down Magneto, and yet for some reason, they brought Wolverine (who has a metal skeleton), Iron Man (who's covered in metal), and Cyclops (who relies on a metal visor to control his powers) to fight a guy who controls metal. (And Colossus, who is made of metal, complains that he doesn't get to fight Magneto and is stuck with smashing parts of Magneto's floating island) They weren't very smart in planning this out.

As a direct result of this, Wolverine is killed when Magneto forces Iron Man and Cyclops to blast him down to a skeleton, and then Magneto tears Wolverine apart.  Wolverine gets a few good stabs in, forcing Magneto to retreat - I'm surprised Loeb didn't take this opportunity to pointlessly kill Iron Man and Cyclops as well. Magneto is confronted by... Nick Fury, holding an ordinary metal gun.

With Jean Grey transmitting Fury's memories into Magneto's mind, Fury reveals that mutants exist as part of a lab experiment to create super-soldiers that happened within Fury's lifetime, rather than a natural change in genetics, and that every single mutant is just a normal human being.  I get that this reveal shows that Magneto's actions were all for nothing, and it's meant to break his spirit, though it also seemingly makes it impossible for Apocalypse to exist as we know him, and raises the question of how Wolverine could be a mutant when he was about two hundred years old. (unless he was captured, experimented on, and was the first mutant)

Cyclops proceeds to kill Magneto for what he's done, in an unnecessarily gory display. (though that sums up this comic as a whole, really - I'm doing my best to cut around most of the gore, but it's unpleasant)  Oh, and a little over a week later, Cyclops is shot in the head, killing him instantly.

On top of this, the Thing tracks down Doctor Doom and crushes his skull unceremoniously.  In a baffling decision, the comic ends with a dedication to the people who started the Ultimate universe, when the people behind this comic seemingly did everything that they possibly could to destroy it.

The final page is a list of characters who died throughout the event, revealing even more off-screen deaths out of sheer spite, including Daredevil, Juggernaut, Psylocke, and Captain Britain, who were nowhere to be seen in the story. (Valkyrie's name isn't on the list of the dead, so I guess she survived having her throat cut)

This comic was an awful, spiteful, mean-spirited mess from start to finish, and it effectively killed the entire Ultimate line of comics - it managed to last until Hickman's Secret Wars roughly six years later, but this definitely tainted the brand, with only Spider-Man escaping the worst of it. (and even then, it feels like if Loeb had his way, Spider-Man would also be dead)  The X-Men's core cast was killed off so thoroughly that I'm surprised that Loeb didn't have Mystique murder Storm or have Jean Grey killed by a mugger in the final few pages, and it feels like it would be almost impossible to continue the Ultimate X-Men line with most of the major characters dead and the entire premise of the series being proven to be a lie.  I'm so glad that I'm just dedicating a week to bad comics, because if there are comics out there that are worse than this, I don't want to read them.