All-New Ultimates #3 Review
Better late than never, here’s my review of All-New Ultimates #3!
Our story begins with Jessica being treated for her poison. It turns out that that mixture was meant to be lethal if her body wasn’t different from another person, so it was a close call in the end. Good thing Jessica knew someone willing to help an ex-SHIELD member. As she and Kitty make their way back, Kitty agrees to go patrolling with her next time.
While this is going on the masked dude from the last time goes out to buy a newspaper to see if he made the headlines putting bullets into gangsters. When the newspaper gets it wrong and assume it’s gang-related he decides that everyone would know his name, one way or another. Ego maniac on top of everything else does not make a good vigilante.
Meanwhile school’s out and Lana goes about asking around for her boyfriend, Poey, who should have been killed in Cataclysm or Lana was dating Sid at the same time she was dating Poey. Leaving the plot hole aside, it turns out he’s a drug dealer and Lana manages to sweet talk him into bringing her along for a re-up while Miles looks on.
At a coffee shop two of the minor characters who I didn’t pay much attention to are discussing the Skulls and the fact that Cloak and Dagger have been taking them down around the Westside Church. The only other thing of importance to note is that someone who supposedly got killed apparently walked out of the autopsy room.
Jessica and Kitty are out on patrol in the rain when they encounter the skull dude from before spray painting his name, Scourge, at the site of a kill. Jessica is still woozy, so she’s in no condition to help, leaving Kitty to go after him while she calls for back-up. Unfortunately the call comes in while Miles was spying on the deal with Lana there and grabs their attention. I’d like to point out how it was both stupid of him to have his phone on and question why he wasn’t in his camouflage mode. Did the writers just forget this or what?
Cloak and Dagger arrive to help Kitty chase the guy after he blinded her, but the sneaky bastard gets away. At the same time, Miles pretty much solos the drug bust, although he does get knocked around when some dude gets on his back because he seems to have forgotten his Venom Strike. Lana has to get her boyfriend out before she gets involved and helps him wrap things up before leaving with Poey to maintain her cover.
The comic ends with them all meeting up again and resolving to stick together.
Okay, review time….
So far I can’t really say I like the comic. The art is… stable, so I won’t take points off for that. But at times the characters do things that they should know better on and continuity errors. Poey, for example, should know about her powers since he was the one who wouldn’t let her come over when she was being chased by Cloak and Dagger in Ultimate Spider-Man when Miles got back in the game.
It gets a 3 out of 5.
All-New Ultimates #2 Review
A bit late, but here’s my review of All-New Ultimates #2.
The story starts with the battle still underway and the New Ultimates are in their first dust-up gone wrong and turned into a mess. It quickly turn into the Serpent Skulls versus everyone else and they’ve got numbers on their side. I see a lot of issues in the fight alone, namely Miles getting hit by an opponent who isn’t faster than him while he has Spider-Sense. He shouldn’t be touched at all in this fight, although he’s still inexperienced, neither should Jessica have gotten jabbed by a needle. They been in goddamn war and came out better than this.
Anyway, the fight ends abruptly when SWAT shows up. Diamondback, who seems to have a thing for younger men in spider outfits kisses Miles goodbye as Cloak pulls the rest of the group out of there and back to their base in Hell’s Kitchen, where Cloak is down for the count because of Styx’s touch while Lana flat-out quits because apparently her powers weren’t working during the fight properly and she nearly got killed. They seemed fine to me, but she knows her body better I guess.
Back with the police in the alley, they’re summing up the situation with the only causalities being Styx and the police he grabbed, while someone wearing a hobo mask kills Stone out of what they claimed was justice. Given his experiments led to this, the guy is probably another victim. The Serpent Skulls themselves also note just how big a mess that brawl was and decide to move things faster and quicker since the police and the super kids are working at different angles, but because some other gang is knocking off their own they‘ve decided to just kill all the other gangs to show them what a kill sweep is.
We then go through a series of panels showing that Jessica was poisoned and tells Kitty, who decided she would join in, to call someone for help as she passes out, Miles is recovering from his own ass-whipping with an ice-pack while Cloak seems to be having trouble with his powers, Dagger is stretching, the guy who killed Stone is killing more people in the name of justice, the cop who got hit by Styx died and Lana’s boyfriend stood her up… again, didn’t her boyfriend get crushed by a car?
The comic ends there.
Okay, review time.
I’m not going to lie. This comic isn’t meeting my expectations, but since it’s the first arc I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. But, while Miles is technically still a rookie, Jessica shouldn’t have gotten her ass-kicked like that. Kitty joining the team felt forced.
Issue gets a 3 out of 5.
All-New Ultimates #1 Review
All New Ultimates has arrived, the series that takes the teen heroes from the Ultimates line and makes them into a unit of ass-kicking vigilantes. Here’s hoping they aren’t as dysfunctional as their predecessors as I review the first issue.
Our story begins with a group shot as they discuss their units name shortly after the end of the Cataclysm: Survive and, immediately after, we go to Hell’s Kitchen in the morning. This place is a nightmare in the regular continuity, so it should come as no surprise Ganke Lee is promptly mugged by some gangbangers with superpowers until Cloak and Dagger pop up to save him. It seems like they’ve been doing this for a bit since this is the third time this week they’ve had to kick ass and take names according to them. They try to get him to go to a hospital, but he declines so they take him to their home.
Like their counterparts they reside in an abandoned church and are soon joined by Miles, the new Spider-man, since Ganke is his BFF (their caption, not mine). It turns out Ganke came to get some Legos, which leads me to think that his obsession is unhealthy, but Miles claims not to judge so why should I? Anyway, they leave as we skip to the Lower East Side, where some cops have busted into a Poor Man’s Roxxon-lab only to find a half-melted corpse as the two suspects have run away.
Back in the Church Lana has arrived after talking to her parole officer and immediately bags on Cloak and Dagger’s home and they exchange phone numbers using SHIELD tech since the organization has been scrapped for failing to stop Galactus. Then they get down to business. Since Roxxon was no longer under SHIELD’s protection, for the reasons listed above, a local gang seized one of their labs and has been giving out what amounts to untested Mutant Growth Hormone. Naturally this ends with a high rate of fatalities and they want to resolve this. So they go the vigilante route, although I think Lana’s parole officer might have something to say about that.
In Chelsea Kitty Pryde is staying in Jessica’s place. She’s having second thoughts about everything. First she was hated as the leader of the mutants, now everyone loves her for punching out Galactus while hopped up on Giant Man Serum until Thor tossed his ass into the Negative Zone. She doesn’t want to be in the spotlight and doesn’t want to go back to Utopia for some reason, so she crashes with Jessica who asks her for a haircut.
Lana makes it to her government housing just as the two suspects from the lab, Stone and Styx, try to break into an old Roxxon outpost. The Serpent Skulls are already there and Lana hears the resulting squabble and gets her new team involved…and gets their butts kicked by Styx and Stone until the cops show up and decide to try and arrest them all. So it’s back to people getting ready to shoot at Miles already.
Things go pear shape as Styx melts the skin off one of the cops trying to get Miles and the other cop shoots him dead. Then the Serpent Skulls pop out of the lab intent on beating the hell out of everyone without a tattoo. The comic ends with the leader of the game, Diamondback, telling them to get started.
Okay, review time.
I’ve got to say this isn’t exactly a strong start for their new series. Leaving aside the artwork being inferior to the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man and the characters looking awkward at time, some of their dialogue seems out of character and there seems to be some continuity errors.
For example, Poey was the nickname of Lana’s boyfriend, Sid. He was crushed to death in Cataclysm by a random car to spur her into the hero scene. Now, while I’m all for retconning that meaningless death, I need some sign prior to this that he made it.
Then Jessica’s combat abilities seem to have been downplayed. Let’s be frank, she has training and Spider-Sense (and it’s not the weak version Miles has). She shouldn’t get hit by someone without super powers or extreme circumstances like war.
All in all, I can’t give this more than a 3 out of 5 and hope they do better next issue.
Twilit Dreams Circle 