Review: Ultimate Origins #1

Story by

Brian Bendis

Art by

Butch Guice

Colors by

Justin Ponsor

Letters by

Chris Eliopolous

Cover by

Simone Bianchi, Gabrielle Dell'otto, Dean White

Publisher

Marvel Comics

In 2000, the release of Marvel Comics much-hyped ‘Ultimate’ imprint, under the helm of newly designated Editor-in-Chief Joe Quasada and Marvel President Bill Jemas, promised innovation and greater creative liberty for artists and storytellers charged with the colossal task of re-imagining comics’ most celebrated and loved characters.

Concieved as a ‘reset’ to their longest running titles to attract teenage readership, the ‘Ultimate’ titles lifted the yoke of narrow fan expectations and forty-plus years of elaborate continuity, giving scribes Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar, the architects of the Ultimate Universe, freedom to take fan favorite names and familiar plot devices into new – and sometimes taboo – directions.

With their counterparts’ safe in the original Marvel Universe and continuing in perpetual status quo, the modern-world reboots of the Ultimate brand, Spider-Man, X-Men, and Ultimate ‘Avengers’, face indefinite futures and an unfamiliar narrative plane. It’s a world where dead characters stay dead, there are no sure bets, and anything could happen.

Origins tale

As the series’ title suggests, Ultimate Origins tells the beginnings of the super-human in the Ultimate Universe, and as readers might expect, it all goes back to WWII, the Americans first experiments with super-soldiers, and the program that gives birth to Captain America.

Penned by Bendis, perennial Ultimate Spider-man writer, this month’s Origins, the first issue of a five part mini-series, fuses several on-going plots that have lingered in the background into a single thread, showing that in the Ultimate Universe, as Doctor Bruce Banner states in the opening page flashback to an issue of Ultimate Team Up, “..It’s all connected.”

Unusual for a Bendis read, this book has a swift pace, jumping from character to character in a sequence of tightly woven, efficient scenes, proficiently illustrated in the subdued, real-world style of artist Butch Guice. Hints delectably dropped throughout, like puzzle pieces, tease a glimpse of what the grander picture might be, and while some mysteries exposed here might not surprise Ultimate faithful, Bendis delivers two twists that surely will polarize readers.

Looking to the future

Eight years later, even with all its financial and critical success, the Ultimate line has begun to lull; after Origins #1, it feels things are getting exciting again. Even if this issue is more set up than plot, it works as a starting point and sets up some intriguing variations on old Marvel mythos for future creators to play with.

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