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Whenever Jeph Loeb took the reigns from Mark Millar for the new “Ultimates” story, I was less apprehensive than a number of my peers. Jeph Loeb, to me, was still the man who wrote The Long Halloween, Dark Victory, Hush, and Spider-Man: Blue. Great stories that I still read every chance I get. Stories that help, for me, better understand aspects of characters I wouldn’t have otherwise even considered.

But somewhere along the time something happened I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. I had, earlier, complained about how “Ultimates 3” was basically a sham, and a disgrace to the Ultimate Marvel line. Poor storytelling by means of blending 616 Marvel aspects and Ultimate into something that wholly failed to resemble anything and everything I had considered to be part of the continuity of the story. It was something that felt so unlike what I had read before that I was fairly certain (which was perpetuated by rumors on the Comic Book Resource forums among other places) that “Ultimates 3” was essentially a 616 story that Loeb had manipulated into Ultimate Marvel.

I had hoped, following that, Loeb would leave. I wanted to make sure that my image of Loeb hadn’t been tarnished. It wasn’t, completely, tainted by the story. After all I still had the stories I read first, back when I thought he had decent stories to tell. And the rest of the Ultimate Universe, barring inclusions of Greg Land and similar people, was a more or less peaceful situation with stories that were genuinely interesting, as well as surprising takes on different aspects of the 616 continuity– such as the Ultimate Clone Saga.

Loeb, of course, didn’t leave. And, in the end, I’m not surprised or disappointed or outraged or anything. I knew he was tapped to do the Ultimate Marvel event titled “Ultimatum” and, following my disappointment in the “Ultimates 3” book, I simply decided to not read the story through. I read the first issue and stopped.

Well, recently I decided to go back and actually read the story, since it has finished, and I wanted to see what happened to the characters I had grown fond of, and the actions that led to the creation of the books under the title “Ultimate Comics”.

Ultimatum is, itself, almost a direct sequel to Ultimates 3. It is the result of the previous book– the deaths of both The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver– that prompted Magneto to decide that everyone is a bunch of dicks and should be killed in a horrific way. Not really entirely in line with Magento’s thoughts, if you have ever kept up with Ultimate X-Men, has Magneto all but hated his children, and was nothing short of someone who would be disqualified for Father of the Year because he was trying to set his children on fire.

But, eh.

Ultimatum: The Ultimate Price

Ultimatum opens with everyone hanging out and being groovy. We see The Fantastic 4, The Ultimates, Spider-Man and his gang, as well as various X-Men. Then suddenly rain comes and a giant wave decides that it’s going to go ahead and sweep in over New York.

It starts killing a lot of people, including Dazzler, who dies in a really insignificant way– drowning.

Spider-Man is helped by Kitty and told to go Help People Like You Do, while Sue Storm gives herself an aneurysm trying to push back THE GIANT TIDAL WAVE. Everyone is scrambling, to say the least, in an effort to both figure out just what the hell is going on, and how they can help as many people as possible before any more giant waves come and kill everyone in this city.

We’re then cut to Latveria, where a non-goat-legged Doom notices his kingdom is covered in ice and snow.

The first issue ends with Charles Xavier telling everyone, ever, that this is all Magento’s fault, and Magento is a man who is all but pissing evil. And the issue ends with Magneto saying “For what they have done, they will pay the ultimate price!” And we’re told “Next: It Gets Worse” which is a vaguely amusing statement considering how many people I’ve been told don’t like this story.

The second issue kicks off with Spider-Man trying to help lift things, and utterly failing, while a bunch of Giant Men are busy helping clean up everything. Also, Hulk decides he wants to help Spider-Man.

Tony Stark shows us that Captain America is unconsciously, more or less dead, possibly having drowned when the wave hit.

While that’s going on, Hank Pym is looking for Jan, and Hawkeye reminds me him that he knows what it’s like to lose someone you love, since Loeb’s Hawkeye has not been able to shut up about anything other than his dead family since Ultimates 3.

Sue is still out like a light, and Reed has taken to working with Namor in an effort to better understanding things. They end up seeing Doom, working with Zarda in an attempt to get Nick Fury back.

Meanwhile, Thor is off rambling in iambic pentameter only to find that Valkyrie is somehow dead by the Statue of Liberty. Thor proclaims vengeance and whatnot, like you do. He goes to Valhalla, meets up with Hela, to tells him to leave. He decides to tell her no, and starts fighting zombies to be “rewarded… for a price.” Interesting thing to note is that somehow or another Captain America is in this Valhallan situation and he doesn’t seem to know why.

We cut back to Hawkeye and Pym, and we see The Blob eating Jan. Because he totally eats people. Because he’s totally Ultimate Hulk.

Suddenly, in the X-Mansion, Mangento decides to break Xavier’s neck. And that closes out issue two.

It gets better.

Issue three opens by letting us know a bunch of deaths through The Scarlet Witch, so is supposed to still be dead: Dazzler, Beast, Nightcrawler, “The Academy of Tomorrow” in Chicago, Emma Frost, Sunspot, and a number of other mutants including Longshot and Forge in the Savage Land.

Also, Madrox has decided to be a suicide bomber.

We learn, though, that the Scarlet Witch we see is actually Mystique.

Magneto does his half-soliloquy about things and I honestly didn’t read the pages because it’s losing my interest. But, rereading them now, it looks like they’re basically the same crap he’s been spouting since the first issue about how he’s great and so on and he has control.

Suddenly, Hank Pym bites of The Blob’s head.

We then cut to the X-Men finding all of their dead friends. Angel says he’s going to go after Magneto, Jean finds out Xavier’s dead… and then suddenly we’re back with Thor and Captain America fighting zombies in the afterlife. They win the challenge, and Thor and Captain America are presented with Valkyrie– but they are told that the agreement is that one of the two of them must stay in her place.

Cap, ever the gentleman, offers himself.

More Madroxes are blowing shit up, in other news. Hank Pym and Hawkeye show up where they are, and decide to beat them all up. The Madroxes gang up on Pym, who walks out into the water and lets them blow up him. Hank Pym, now, is dead.

We then see a living Valkyrie, talking with Tony Stark. Thor has sacrificed himself in effort to bring her back. She’s now decided she’s going to kill Magneto. Cap wakes up, finds out Jan is dead, and then announces that “It’s time to save the world.”

So, if you’re following at home, still. Several major players, most of them mutants, have been killed. Along with members of the Ultimates. And, thus far, all we’ve really had is people dying and saying “I’m going to kill Magneto” with no real action otherwise.

Issue 4 opens with Hulk, from an issue of, I believe, Ultimate Spider-Man, blowing up mystical shit– which happened after he found (in the USM issue) Daredevil just hanging out, dead. We then see part of Peter Parker’s mask, and are left to assume that Parker is dead in an effort to fuck with Dormammu. Dormammu, it should be noted, is using Johnny Storm as some kind of conduit.

Dr. Stephen Strange decides to try to attack the dude, only to be killed via having his head explode. I wish I was kidding by this point.

The X-Men and Hulk work together (with a bit of telepathic coercion) to find some more of the X-Men. In the hopes, I assume, that they aren’t dead.

Meanwhile, Doom, Zarda, and Richards are all in the Supreme Power universe (because we have to keep referencing THAT crap) trying to get shit done with Fury. Fury decides to agree to go back to his universe.

Suddenly people attack Magneto following a brief emotional moment with Kitty Pryde and Wolverine that feels kind of half-assed compared to all of the obnoxious amounts of violence that have been spent on these issues.

Angel jumps down and hits Magneto, and his prompted attacked and killed by Sabertooth, who is shot in the eye a crossbow by Hawkeye.

Valkyrie attacks Magneto, wanting Thor’s Hammer, and cuts off his arm before being killed by Mangeto himself. Captain America crashes down into the scene and declares that “[He's] death with would-be tyrants like you all [his] life. Small men trying to make up for their inadequacies.” Now, the placement of the boldface text in the second sentence is on “small men” and “inadequacies”. I can only assume here that Loeb is having Cap imply Magneto has a small penis.

The issue ends with Magneto standing in front of everyone looking cool and quoting the Bible and saying he’s gonna blow up everything.

Issue Five, the final issue of this mess, opens with Wolverine being cool and attacking Magneto because the metal in his body so doesn’t put him at an extreme disadvantage to everything. However, everyone seems to forget that Iron Man is there, and Magneto somehow manages to use his powers to make Iron Man’s suit shoot a big laser at Wolverine and turn him into something really gross. We look, to see that Wolverine is basically an animated skeleton at this point, and manages to stab Magento in the chest in a very dramatic way.

Magneto, in revenge, uses a nice blast of energy to apparently tear the adamantium off of Wolverine’s bones and leave him a pile of blackened bones. Apparently, Wolverine has actually managed to die.

We then cut to a bunch of people in the basement areas of Magneto’s base. Including Sabertooth, Mystique, Collosus, and Hulk. Sabertooth and Mystique escape on a hang-glider as that part explodes.

We then go BACK to Magneto, bleeding and being indignant, when Nick Fury shows up with his posse and decides to be cool because his character looks like Samuel L. Jackson.

Fury uses Jean Grey’s powers to shove the knowledge that mutants are actually just genetic experiments (something I believe that came up from Ultimate Origins) into Magneto’s head. Magneto, extremely distraught, decides to undo the damage he’s done by shifting the magnetic poles and returns them to normal.

Cyclops then uses his optic blasts to blast of Magneto’s head saying “There’s no one left to forgive you. And no one ever will.”

After that, we jump to eight days later with a giant No More Mutants protest/press conference thing in Washington, D.C.– which is ironic considering someone at the Comic Book Resource forums referred to this as “Ultimate M-Day”. But, of course, Magneto was a mutant, and Magneto fucked up a lot of shit up. Cyclops, at this protest, decides to give a speech and is shot in the head by a sniper.

In Latveria, Doom has captured Namor, and the Thing walks up and crushes his head, killing him.

We then cut to a little cabin with the bullet that killed Scarlet Witch in a gloved hand, being told that it was that bullet that killed Cyclops and that “you’d appreciate the irony”. We then see Pierto inside that cabin with Mystique and Sabertooth, along with a woman who we only see a silhouette of, but based on what he just said, I’m assuming is Scarlet Witch.

So, in the end, the two people whose deaths were responsible for it aren’t really dead, and apparently, at the very least, ONE of them is actually just as malicious as his father, despite nothing else in the entire history of Ultimate Marvel declaring that. Yeah.

That’s Ultimatum. The issue ends with a list of all of the people who died. Well, not all, but a rather large portion of the important people.

Ultimatum: Requiem

Now, as follow-ups to this story, Spider-Man, X-men, and the Fantastic Four have supplemental stories called “Requiem” that detail Life After Ultimatum. Spider-Man’s deals mostly with him actually not being dead. No surprise there. As such I’m not really going to talk about it.

However, let’s talk about Ultimate Fantastic Four’s Requiem. Obviously, the team has disbanded. They aren’t having a book come out with the new imprint. But why are they not back together? Surely Sue and Reed, as they should in every continuity ever, get married and so on.

Well, no. Not this time.

UF4′s Requiem is narrated by Reed story deals with Dormammu taking Johnny Storm and using his fire to help make him more awesome and huge, as well as just kind of detailing bits of the universe in general. It revisits Strange’s death at the hands of Dormammu (god, I’m tired of typing that name).

Sue and Ben attack, and they overload Dormmy who ends up reverting into some random guy I can’t recall ever seeing before.

Back at the base, Reed shows up after the fact, and Sue walks off like he’s killed a baby. Ben talks with Reed, and finds out that Reed was, in fact, with Doom and Reed has gone through numerous calculations and found no possible way for anything to be different. Doom is a douchebag, etc. And bad things are going to keep happening because of Doom.

We then cut to Latveria because of Doom.

Then, at the funeral for the late Dr. Storm, Reed proposes to Sue, who turns him down saying “You left. You had to choose between saving me and saving the world and you left.” To which he responds, “You’re part of the world. It was the logical thing to do. Wasn’t it?”

“I used to think our love defined logic,” she responds, “Maybe it was just beholden to it.”

Turning to bed, Reed thanks him for carrying the weight of the team on his shoulders. Ben says his shoulders hurt.

Next we see Ben signing up for the job offered by S.H.I.E.L.D. while Johnny is in a bar in France, Sue is back in the Baxter Building working, and Reed packs up and leaves before going back to his parent’s home.

The issue ends with each of them, separate. Thus ends the Fantastic Four with a simple “To Be Continued?”

So that’s it for them. But what of the X-Men, who were all but brutally massacred at the hands of Loeb for the previous event? Do they get any justice in this? Well, if you’ve seen what’s happened so far, you can safely assume that I’m not going to think so.

It starts with Kitty Pryde, in costume, snatching the skeletal arm of Wolverine– for some reason having rather metallic looking blades still attached despite all of the adamantium being blown off of him. Maybe the artist didn’t realize this, or is just assuming his claws are naturally metal and shiny.

We see Bobby Drake, Jean Grey, and Rogue making a place of remembrance for all of the people who were killed, lining then up on what looked like a baseball diamond.

Bobby destroys the X-Mansion.

Suddenly Rogue is taken out by Gambit, who was actually killed back in Ultimate X-Men Annual 2. She is, apparently not dead, though.

We cut back to Jean, who is now with Kitty. Kitty explains that, through some files at the base, Magneto killed “all of [Wolverine's] cells.” Which roughly means there’s no way possible to ever bring him back, based on that logic.

Suddenly Mystique, Sabertooth, and a guy named “Assemble” who looks like Cap, Hulk, and Iron Man if they were a robot show up and start making fun of the remaining X-Men. They explain that THEY knocked out Rogue, as opposed to Remy actually being alive (And with everyone being dead right now, that would certainly be surprising). Bobby, in a fight with Assemble, does some wonderful exposition explaining that “Assemble” is actually Cap, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Giant Man all rolled up into one robot.

Kitty stabs Sabertooth in the chest with Wolverine’s arm. Which is still entirely too metallic.

Mystique attacks Jean, flipping between various people who have died saying “if only you’d been faster” and so on before Jean is knocked out. Captain America takes out Assemble after Rogue regains herself.

Everyone is buried, and then Jean erects a stone memorial to them all.

And then there were no X-Men.

Of course, I didn’t read Ultimate X-Men 100, so maybe something helps that along through there. But in the end both of these issues were resoundingly disappointing.

And so, Ultimate Marvel is over.

Ultimate Comics

But what of Ultimate Comics? The new imprint that features Spider-Man and other people who are cool, but not the X-Men because they clearly suck.

Well, there are, as of this writing two issues: Spider-Man and Avengers.

Let’s get started. I know you’re excited.

Ultimate Spider-Man picks up six months after Ultimatum, after, apparently in Requiem, J. Jonah Jameson finds out Spider-Man isn’t a huge dickface who doesn’t eat babies. Because he thinks Spider-Man is dead.

The issue opens with Parker soliloquizing only for us to learn that he’s working in a fast food place. And Ultimate New York basically looks like nothing’s ever changed.

And really… nothing happens in this issue. Kingpin is suddenly back in America, Gwen Stacey is living Parker again and apparently he’s dating her instead of Mary Jane. But nothing’s really explained. Johnny Storm shows up and passes out.

Then Ultimate Mysterio shows up, and pushes Kingpin out a window. And that’s basically the entirety of the issue. I might follow this for a while, just to see where it goes, but ultimately I’m still kind of frustrated by Marvel.

I’m also a little iffy on the art. It feels off somehow, and Spider-Man’s head is almost a perfect circle in his mask.

Ultimate Comics: Avengers, on the other hand starts off with the cover being filled with basically everyone who’s still alive, and even someone who isn’t (Daredevil). The issue starts three weeks after Ultimatum with Samuel L. Fury hanging out and being cool with Hawkeye (who seems to be less morbidly depressed). Turns out that, apparently, Cap has gone rogue and Danvers is trying to find him.

And they’re introducing The Red Skull, which is an interesting villain to FINALLY BRING IN.

Cap and Hawkeye are fighting people– and even Cap feels a bit more like his old Ultimates 2 self, uttering the phrase “What kind of GIRL gets stopped by a BOMB?” whenever they get into a Helicopter and we find the new Red Skull, who looks more like someone just dipped his head in red wax, and proceeds to be the ever-loving shit out of Captain America.

It’s an interesting sight to see, to say the least.

The issue is left with this message: The Red Skull is Captain America’s son.

Yeah. I almost feel compelled to follow this story just because I have to know where they’re going with The Red Skull. I mean, it’s THE RED SKULL. I’ve never been a huge fan of captain America until I read Brubaker’s run on the character, and then I determined, quite simply, that he was awesome. It’s good to see Millar writing him again, too.

But, on the whole, these stories seem to be all but ignoring, at the moment, what happened in Ultimatum, and that’s upsetting. They’re also almost stand-alone stories, instead of the universe that Ultimate Marvel was.

I am going to, however, keep reading them for a while to see if the issues actually are worth noticing. After these first arcs, though, I’ll make my judgement.