ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR vol. 2 HC
Collecting issues #13-20 and Annual #1
Published by Marvel
UFF has unfortunately come to be regarded by some as the red-headed bastard step-cousin of the Ultimate Marvel line. ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN is the flagship title, ULTIMATE X-MEN is the only place to get the classic soap-opera team dynamic with the ol’ mutants, and THE ULTIMATES has carved out a blockbusting niche for itself. UFF came later, without a great deal of demand, anticipation, or fanfare, was hindered from the get-go by continuity problems thanks to previous mentions of the team in the other books (most notably the short-lived ULTIMATE MARVEL TEAM-UP series), and is already onto its fourth creative team (fifth if you include Grant Morrison’s involvement at the conceptualization stage). As things stand it is most well-known among the fanbase not for being a particularly great comic but for giving the world the shockingly popular MARVEL ZOMBIES mini-series by proxy.
Still, things are holding up well, with Mark Millar’s recent return prompting a substantial spike in sales for issue #30. Perhaps things truly are must-read once we get that far. Being a trade-waiting sunnuvagun, I cannot say. Heck, if only things were so easy. Being classy enough to be a hardcover-waiting sunnuvabiscuit just delays things even more. I’ve no regrets though. I got into this collecting lark with ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN vol. 1 HC and have proceeded to defer all things Ultimate to hardcover ever since. The only real dissent comes from my straining bookshelves but, hey, they’re just cheap and nasty and flat-packed, mass-produced Swedish guff, so it’s not as if their opinion counts.
Anyway, having read the first hardcover volume, which collected the “The Fantastic” and “Doom” storylines, I can tell you that the reading experience left me entirely nonplussed. Not significantly bad, not particularly good, just flat and readable. That is to say, capable of being read – not eminently so. Do things pick up in the second volume? We-hell, let’s find out…
Just for the record; no, I wasn’t bothered by Ultimate Dr. Doom’s goat-legs. Well, maybe a little jealous, but that’s all.
Onwards:
“N-Zone”
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Adam Kubert
ISSUE #13: I feel strangely uncomfortable seeing a scene in which Sue Storm wears a crop-top and low-cut jeans, making her pubic bone oh-so-anything-but-plain-to-see. It’s like seeing an old photo of your best friend’s mother in a bikini. Leaving aside my rather peculiar sexual hang-ups about a fictional character, this is a decent beginning to the story arc. Reed and Sue continue their research into the titular N-Zone, which Reed inadvertently discovered years ago during his home-made teleportation experiments but has only recently been able to transport material into and out of. Dr. Storm, the team’s adult supervisor, sets up a meeting with General Ross, who is in charge of the Baxter Building and apparently quite giddily and moustache-twirlingly crazy, and Reed demands that he be allowed to transport himself into the N-Zone. He sweetens the deal with some of those new patents that we are always told the Marvel Universe Reed Richards makes but that we never get to see. We certainly see them here and they include new tiles for space shuttles that are 150x more effective, new applications for the Stark-designed lifter engine used on the Triskelion, a new unpacking application, and a new thrusters design for NASA probes. It’s a wonderfully deft touch by Ellis to have Reed working on these devices throughout the issue, almost as an afterthought, and then bring them back into the fold at the end. It actually makes the proclamation of Reed as the keenest intellect on Earth somewhat believable for once. Meanwhile, there’s a funny fart joke with The Thing. Can’t go wrong with those.
ISSUE #14: This is where I start to get irritated. There are certainly things to appreciate in this issue, which consists largely of the team dithering over whether or not to actually go to the N-Zone and then promptly arranging a swift launch out of Nevada, but then there’s the decompression factor beginning to creep in as well. Really, do we need to have six splash pages showing the team’s shuttle being prepared for launch? Kubert’s work is certainly very impressive but that’s no excuse to waste so much page-time. He’s equally capable of making low-key character scenes work, with special mention going to the look on Reed’s face when Sue reminds him of the military operations that General Ross will carry out with the new technology he just gave him. Her words pierce the eardrums to his soul, which Kubert captures exquisitely. Not to be outdone, Ellis gives Johnny Storm his moment of glory by getting to name the shuttle and choosing to call it “The Awesome”. That even trumped the fart joke. If it was up to me I’d have probably called it “The Touch”. What were you listening to in the summer of ’86?!
ISSUE #15: Again, precious little plot progression is made but Kubert steals the show. Check out the look of uninhibited pleasure on Reed’s face when he begins to make contact with the alien life The Awesome detected in the N-Zone. The last time I seen anybody looking that happy who wasn’t opening Christmas presents in the wee hours of the a.m., they were doing something illegal. And that’s not to mention the breathtaking splash pages showing the alien ships and constructions strewn across the N-Zone space. See, things like that deserve extended page-time. Sadly for Johnny, as the rest of the team prepares to meet the alien, he begins to come down with something. It ties into the concerns Reed raised about how Johnny’s flagrant use of his flame-powers might actually be damaging his health. I should probably have mentioned that back in the #13 part but, hey, sue me. No, don’t Sue me… oh, no, it’s happening again…
ISSUE #16: T’Four meets with Annihilus, known as just good ol’ Nihil in Ultimate Cadence. First contact goes fairly well as Nihil and Reed talk science shop about the nature of parallel universes and how the N-Zone is so much older than their universe that it is experiencing heat death and has only a few hundred million years to go. Not so drastic a problem for you and me, but for someone with a lifespan as prolonged as Nihil, it’s a bit of a headache. Johnny collapses and enters a kind of cocoon state, so Sue takes him back to the ship as Nihil starts getting testy. Considering the guys name, it wasn’t really much of a surprise, as Ben points out in painstaking detail. Ultimately (ha!), Nihil smashes up the boys’ protective shields so he can nick their ship and live in a universe that will, well, let him die first.
ISSUE #17: Nihil starts rubbing his hands together and cackling. Then Ben finds out that he can breathe just fine in this atmosphere, so he promptly delivers the Ffwaacko treatment to our tetchy alien compadre. Seriously, Ffwaacko. Says it right there on the page. There’s even a Wraaammmm for good measure. Nihil fights back with an Eeeeeeaaaaaaaaaa but to no avail. They make it back to the ship, where Johnny’s condition has not improved, but Nihil gives chase in his wacky pseudo-pterodactyl ship, ever-hopeful of having soft, stupid people to squish to his heart’s content. The Awesome makes it back home… but they are not alone…
ISSUE #18: Basically a prolonged fight scene, but quite a spectacular one as both ships trash Vegas as they crash. Nihil’s minions are dispersed with in short measure by the Three, which conveniently becomes the Four again just in time for Johnny to, um, do nothing out of the ordinary. Weird. Nihil falls to Reed in the end, of course, and the day is thoroughly saved. However, there’s no way the military can keep something this big quiet, not when it’s surrounded by quite so many tourists and neon crap, and so the Ultimate Fantastic Four are outed as superheroes.
All in all, a perfectly decent story, which could have been tremendous had it occurred in just one or two issues. Stretching it out to six was just taking the piss.
“Think Tank”
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Jae Lee
ISSUE #19: “Better think fast Richards this is a think tank isn’t it think fast think deep think hard lover boy harder harder harder” There are examples-a-plenty of dialogue as generally nutty and allergic to syntax throughout this storyline. It comes from Rhona Burchill, who is indeed generally nutty and allergic to not killing Reed Richards. See, she was turned down for entry to the Baxter Building on the day that Reed was accepted and didn’t exactly take it well, so now she’s back, having hijacked the building while the N-Zone escapade was going on, and took out the team’s chopper with an EMP as they were returning home. Oh, and we meet Ultimate Willie Lumpkin. He’s a lieutenant now, not a postman, and charged with keeping the Four safe at all costs. However, those costs were never expected to match Rhona’s weird robot murder-slave, crowd control gel and modified Doom drones, so they are all left in a rather sticky situation. Cos, you know, gel is sticky. Do you see what I did there? Oh, I kill me…
ISSUE #20: Rhona begins auctioning off the various Baxter paraphernalia to various baddies, including representatives of Latveria, while the Four are incapacitated. However, a purely random moment of chance disrupts her meticulously-planned operation and allows Reed to free himself and the others, spooking her enough to make her run away. It might sound like bad writing but it does actually work in this context, with the notions of intelligence as the be-all and end-all humbly disrupted by the chaotic probability that Reed can tolerate and Rhona cannot. Also, the origin story of Rhona is exceptionally tight and effective, as we trace her increasingly twisted growth from an innocent birth to the horrific fate of her brother and beyond. Thank goodness Carey wrote this, because if it was Ellis then there would be four superfluous issues tacked onto the tale. We end with Reed receiving a distress call from what appears to be an adult version of himself…
“Inhuman”
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Jae Lee
Yep, they collected the story from the annual – you know, the Ultimate Annuals that they said weren’t going to be collected? Hmm, who could possibly have foreseen this stunning development…
Anyway, this is the debut of the Ultimate Inhumans in a rather flat, listless manner, not particularly helped by Lee’s traditionally dour art style. What worked well for the unease and abnormality running through “Think Tank” does not give a repeat performance when asked to make Attilan seem like a true paradise, or Crystal seem like the potential love of Johnny’s young life, or truly capture the spectacle of the other Inhumans.
It’s a decent, brief, contained story, even if it doesn’t really go anywhere. The throwaway scene about Reed performing surgery on Dr. Storm whilst inside his bowels as Sue takes care of business outside looked far more interesting than the main story, but then I did really like Innerspace, even with Martin Short’s involvement. After this, things get back to standard with Johnny meeting a girl, getting beaten up after doing something rash, the Four rallying together to try and save the girl against Johnny’s assailants and their cohorts, before stumbling across the finish line in a rather clumsy fashion. Really, would Johnny Storm even know the word ‘inhuman’, let alone use it in that situation?
And that’s it for the second hardcover collection. No Cross Over till next time. I’ll be there, but then I’m a glutton for Ultimate punishment. That’s not to say that reading UFF is a harsh penalty of sorts, just that I’m rapidly becoming as intent on continuing to collect these Ultimate oversized HCs as those sad, unkempt, more-often-than-not sweaty men “of a certain age” that just can’t bear to not buy FANTASTIC FOUR or UNCANNY X-MEN or AMAZING SPIDER-MAN but haven’t actually shown any appreciation for it in decades.
Things are not quite that bad yet. However, the UFF still lack a certain purpose. USM works because it’s simply a welcome and well-made rehash of something we all know and love, topped up with contemporary trappings. UXM works by offering the contained soap opera with a sensible cast in a single series that the regular X-books have long since lost sight of. UFF is just the same old, same old but with the cast arbitrarily made into teenagers, even though for the most part they don’t really act any differently from their 616 counterparts. Despite sound fundamentals and the occasional high-pint, by and large it’s all rather hollow and in need of a tight direction.
Grade: C
