Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: Persons of Mass Destruction
Written by: Mark Millar
Penciled by: Bryan Hitch
Inked by: Paul Neary
Colored by: Paul Mounts
Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Publisher: Marvel Comics
SPOILERS AHEAD
Welcome, oh welcome to this review of “The Ultimates” #12, as we FINALLY get a new issue of this chronically late series. By now it’s common knowledge that the book will be rebooted with a new #1 next year as a means to try and undo the foul stench the book has developed do to its lateness. But if Marvel REALLY wanted to bring something to get Ultimates back on track and purge it of the stigma it has, they should fire Hitch and Millar and bring in a new writer who is NOT named Brian F-ing Bendis. God knows that the Ultimate line has become so incestuous with just Bendis and Millar writing the books that fresh blood is needed desperately for the line. I mean, when you got BOTH guys writing Ultimate Fantastic Four you know that things have gone too far and fresh blood is needed for the line…
The Skinny
The book open with a laughing stock of a “Previously” synopsis as we the readers are immediately greeted with Hippy Thor and Funny-Drunk Iron Man destroying UFOs. Nice visuals, but it’s not worth the freaking long time it took Hitch to draw it. We then cut to Cap, who starts a multiple page brawl with the evil Chitauri leader. We get several pages of pointless brawling as Cap keeps screaming “SHUT UP” like he was the fat Eskimo girl from “Donnie Darko” as the two fight.
We then cut to the Ultimate Black Widow and Hawkeye as they say nothing of note and wonder why the hell they are trapped in this farce of a book, where they are written by a no-talent hack how who refuses to write them as compelling and complex characters like they are in the 616 Universe and drawn by a spoiled artist who doesn’t want them in the book because they don’t fit with the “ultra-realistic tone” of the Ultimates. As Ultimate Hawkeye ponders his hellish existence as a character under the pen of Mark Millar, he almost gets hit by a stray lightning bolt by Hippy Thor. Hippy Thor orders Funny-Drunk Iron Man to get out of the way as he zaps the ships with an EMP pulse in another pointless “money shot” double-page spread.
This leads to another example of Millar’s hack writing as he has Samuel L. Jackson ask why the hell Thor is killing when he’s supposed to be a pacifist. If Millar intends on making Ultimate Thor be a Greenpeace loving, hippie flower-child he should stick to it and not just introduce it as an alternative to Thor’s Asgardian background and then blatantly ignore whenever he needs Thor to inflict property damage. But hey, this is the same hack writer who gave Tony Stark incurable brain cancer only to later announce that he was dropping this revelation from the book’s cannon simply because he’s lazy and doesn’t want to follow-up on such a massive plot revelation.
We then cut back to Cap and the Chitari leader, who gets shot point blank in the head by an invisible Samuel L. Jackson. After yet another “money shot” in the form of a panel showing his half-blown off head, the alien leader KOes Jackson and regenerates the lost portion of his skull before the now naked Chitari leader turns his towards Cap and Jackson to beat the two up.
Meanwhile Funny-Drunk Iron Man slams another alien ship into a gas station and collapses to the ground do to a lack of power. We get the cliched scene of Iron Man not wanting to go on but getting convinced to go on by nearby soldiers as he goes flying off to rejoin the fight. Meanwhile we cut back to the Black Widow and Stepford WASP in the only worthwhile scene in this book. Black Widow kills a surviving alien who refuses to tell them how to disarm the cliched alien doomsday device, which is done at the same time WASP goes “Oh My God”. Black Widow as if WASP was shocked at her killing a man, but WASP explains that she was reacting towards the fact that the control panel for the doomsday device was in the alien’s native language.
We cut back to the Chitari leader, who KO’s Fury and mounts Cap as if he was going to have sex with him. After being asked to surrender and submit to him, Cap tosses the Chitari leader to the ground and uses his shield to chop off the bottom half of his torso. After Cap yells out an anti-France expletive, Jackson and Cap run off as they decide to implement “Operation Traumatically Abuse Bruce Banner” as we cut to the insides of a nearby helicopter. Inside a bunch of army grunts are brutalizing Bruce Banner on the orders to bring out the Hulk to unleash upon the aliens. When Banner doesn’t turn (do to the massive amounts of drugs pumped into his system by the US Government) the grunts decide to resort to “Plan B” and toss the straight-jacketed Doctor out of the helicopter.
