The incredible cross-pollination of Marvel's post-Battleworld team books shouldn't work as well as it does. Two different teams feature two different Star-Spangled Avengers (Sam Wilson is flying in All-New All-Different Avengers while Steve Rogers is slumming it with Uncanny Avengers). For a quick hit of relevance and sales, Marvel even had Hyperion snap Namor's neck over in the pages of Squadron Supreme. All of these teams are fighting violent threats. They are all built using major characters from hit movies (except for the Squadron). After the death of the Sub-mariner, they have all failed dramatically. There's a distinct feeling that these books are, for the most part, coloring inside the lines.
One reason for this is that many of these teams exist for the purpose of existing. Books with that arrow-shaped "A" on the cover, like some kind of super-powered scarlet letter, are bound to sell a bit more than the average issue of Ant-Man. Now that these teams are meeting up and fighting, it makes me all the more grateful that Al Ewing and Kenneth Rocafort were allowed to take the Ultimates to space.
In Marvel's newest comic titled The Ultimates, published now after the title has been stripped of all 1610-baggage, a team of Marvel's MENSA nominees have seemingly banded together to take on problems and threats too large for other forces...but truthfully, what Ewing and Rocafort have done with this book is annotate parts of the Marvel canon that, to this point, have gone mostly untouched. A great alternate name for this book would be Challengers of the Unquestioned.
The book collects genius-level characters like Adam Brashear, Black Panther, Miss America, Captain Marvel, and Spectrum to not only think outside the box, but to ignore that one even exists in the first place. The first 2 issues focused on the team "solving" the Galactus problem, not by banishing/fighting/killing/stunning him, but by altering his nature itself. Now, Galactus is the World-Seeder of the Marvel universe. In issue #3, the Ultimates agreed to leave the fabric of the universe entirely, in order to seek out whatever is powering the cosmos themselves.
With a scope that huge, it's a relief that issue #4 has been a bit of a breather, but even more dramatically tense than past installments. In it, Brashear goes up against the Anti-Man, a villain with a connection to Brashear so personal that this issue feels as big as the team appealing to the hanger within Galactus. It ends on a cliffhanger that refocuses Ewing's eyes on the universal prize, but it never betrays the intense focus on character introduced in this issue.
Ewing and Rocafort usually focus on small groups within the team, which is good because Rocafort's strong, clear pencil work gives you great facial detail while also illustrating the beauty of the universe at large. Miss America and Spectrum haven't quite gotten their time in the spotlight yet, but I trust Ewing to balance his stories throughout the run of this book. One of the more amazing things that Ultimates gives us is a quietly diverse and interesting team, without Marvel bending over backwards to celebrate its own diversity.
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If you can only read one team book right now, make sure you're picking up The Ultimates and savor every page. I know that my pull has been reduced to just this one, and not just because it's the best on the shelf, but because it's challenging what I thought Marvel team-up books could be about in the first place.
BUY IT, WAIT FOR UNLIMITED, OR SKIP IT: Buy it!
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