All-New Ultimates #1 Review

Michael Fiffe Picks Up the Bendis Torch on All-New Ultimates #1

I wanted the All-New Ultimates to be awesome. I really did, but I just think that the art is so rough, it's really hard to overlook. I think that Bendis and Marquez did a great job in team building leading into the All-New Ultimates, but picking up the story without those creators is a pretty rough transition.

I think the harshest offense is the redesigning/rebranding of Jessica Jones from Spider Woman to Black Widow. There really isn't a good reason for this change and at the same time it makes the bigger Marvel universe even more confusing to the casual reader.

So, Jessica Jones is Spider-Woman, but she's a clone of Peter Parker, but only in the Ultimate Universe, but now she's Black Widow, but not Natasha Romanov... WTF Marvel...!!!!

And then this costume is realllllllly fucking awful. It's like as if "grunge" as a fashion finally weaseled its way into super hero design about 20 years too late.



The cover art for All-New Ultimates #1, including the variant by David Marquez, is really pretty awesome. (Check it out here: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=20645) But once I got inside the book, the art is really lack luster and very 80's mutant-post-apocolyptic... I'm just not digging it.

I think that having Michael Fiffe writing this book has a ton of potential. And as many other reviews I've read have already noted, the dialogue between this gang of teenagers is much more nuanced and natural than much of Bendis's angle on this team. But in the end, Amilcar Pinna is really what kills this book for me. The anatomy of the characters is off enough to be disturbing at times. The consistency of the figures also varies wildly just within this one book. On top of that, the mutant goons who initiate the first real conflict of this book are so out of line with the overall world building of the Ultimate universe that it's nearly criminal.

While only a month ago I was afraid that the Ultimate universe was coming to an end, I'm not quite reassured that this future is better than an "Ultimate ending." I will give All-New Ultimates a few more issues to get its momentum, but more than that, I'll be looking forward to Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man for the continuation of the Bendis/Marquez teamwork.