Massive Nerd

Okay, Marvel realized their Ultimate universe was growing a bit too complicated, so they blew it up. Relaunch time!

Ultimate Comics: Avengers, along with Ultimate Comics: Spiderman released last week, following in the wake of Ultimatum.

To make this quick, apparently Mark Millar has lost all comprehension of plot pacing and character development.

On Page 6, Hawkeye tells Nick Fury that Captain America has found out about BIG SECRET. Okay, cool. BIG SECRET will be the focus of the next few issues.

4 pages and 1 unnecessarily ludicrous action scene later, BIG SECRET shows up. Alright, gotcha. Important issue, let's move the plot along a little bit.

Very shortly thereafter, BIG SECRET whispers EVEN BIGGER SECRET to Captain America and throws him out of a helicopter.

This still halfway makes sense. The point of revealing BIG SECRET so soon was to dangle the plot thread of EVEN BIGGER SECRET.

A couple of pages later, after another, even more unnecessarily ludicrous scene which serves no point other than to show how cool Hawkeye is, Captain America reveals EVEN BIGGER SECRET to the readers.

Wait, what? Did they really just cram several issues of plot development into about 20 pages? Some like this, "more story for your dollar." Well, if Millar can maintain that pace for the next dozen or so issues, absolutely. But, no, it feels to me like he tried to cram as much hype into one issue as possible, just to make this issue a big deal. Now, the story will slow down with absolutely no point to it. Captain America will punch Nick Fury in the face, possibly cry a bit, and then tie everything together just in time to publish everything in a nice Trade Paperback.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the first two volumes of The Ultimates, even if it did take forever to get them on shelves. Then Jeph Loeb took over with Ultimates 3 and I lost all interest.

As Ultimate Comics: Spiderman #1 showed, a pure, simple story is perfectly fine for a relaunch. All the theatrics of Avengers was completely unnecessary and really turned me off on the future of the title.