Comic: "The Ultimates 3, #4"
Published by: Marvel Comics
Written by: Jeff Loeb
Artist: Joe Madureira

Reviewer: Max Burbank
Posted: 7/20/2008

Plot: Ultimate Wolverine and half of the Ultimates are in the Ultimate Savage Land with Ultimate Kazar, Ultimate Sheena and Ultimate Zabu fighting with the Ultimate Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Meanwhile the other half of the Ultimates are back in New York fighting each other because Iron Man turns out not to have any Tony Stark in him and has become an evil robot.

Review: Seriously, all of you collectively owe me $2.99, which is exactly two dollars and ninety-nine cents more than this horrible, horrible, horrible book is worth. We open with a flashback which we know is a flashback because it’s in black and white and also the text says it’s ‘years ago’. Ultimate Chuck Xavier and Ultimate Magneto are in a plane with Ultimate baby Scarlet Witch and Ultimate baby Quicksilver that is going to crash because if you see a plane in an X-book there’s a 99.999% chance it will crash. Here’s some career advice if you live in a Marvel comic book, don’t sell flight insurance to Mutants. They all live because nobody ever dies in any of these plain crashes, seriously, the average X-man has walked away from like 75 plane crashes which must really piss off the ghost of the Thunderbird or whatever the hell the name of the Native American in (count ‘em) two issues (Giant sized X-men #4 and X-men #94 if memory serves) dies in his very first plane crash (okay, mid-air explosion, but it still counts). Anyway, the happy travelers soon run into Ultimate baby Kazar, Ultimate baby Sheen and Ultimate kitten Zabu which I guess means Saber tooth tigers live way longer than regular tigers. Why did I spend this much time on this painfully stupid three-page flashback? Because the rest of the book is worse. I’m serious.

For the entire rest of the book we flip flop back and forth between a pretty much unfollowable fight in the Savage land and an equally unfollowable fight at Avengers mansion. There’s no plot motion, no new information, just super people hitting each other for page after page telling you stuff you already know. Ultimate Hawkeye still has that death wish he had last issue, Ultimate Panther is still not saying anything, Ultimate Wolverine is still almost but not quite spilling Ultimate Panther’s secret. Oh, also it was at this point that I first realized that in the Ultimate universe, Kazar and Shana each have their own saber tooth tiger. Which is pretty much the only thing Ultimate Jeff Loeb does in this issue that lets you know Ultimate marvel is in any way at all different from regular old Marvel. Unless you count Ultimate Pyro’s thinly veiled suggestion that he and Ultimate Mastermind rape Ultimate Valkyrie while she’s hypnotized. If you’re reading this, Jeff, I’m going to suggest that there might be more you could do with a whole alternate universe version of characters that already have books than giving them extra tigers and exposing your rape fantasies. I’m just saying. All of this wasting of my time is too set up two big shocker reveals, so again, should you actually be subjecting yourself to this book without getting paid for it like me, spoiler alert. Ultimate Magneto asks Ultimate Quicksilver if his Ultimate sister is ‘safe’, which I guess means she’s alive, (gasp!) unless Mr. Loeb intends to add necrophilia to the incest and rape he’s already treated us to in his run on this title. Meanwhile it turns out that not only Iron Man, but also all the Ultimates except Ultimate wasp and Ultimate Ant Man are robots which I’m pretty sure means Ultimate Yellowjacket, who you see in the second shocking reveal is Ultimate Ultron.

Honestly, I wish Mark Millar and Brian Hitch would take a break from the excellent job they’re doing on Fantastic Four to beat the stuffing out of Jeff Loeb for pooping all over the groundbreaking work they did on Ultimates volume One and Two. They could take pictures and make a little photo comic book and it would be way, way better than Ultimates volume three.

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)