Customer Reviews
The Ultimates continues and maintains the high quality - By: Killbetter, 07 Feb 2007 
Ever since I was blown away by the first volume of The Ultimates, I've been snapping up each collected release as soon as possible. Normallly I hate "re-imaginings" of classic characters as they tend to be a marketing ploy to make established characters more "trendy". This series has been quite the opposite - rather than a shalllow makeover consisting of adding funny beards & leather jackets to old characters, the Ultimates has turned established faces into real adults with distinct world views.
The tendency in comic book revamps is to turn characters into teenagers/young adults with a teenage world view in an attempt to market to a teenaged audience. The Ultimates takes an interesting approach of assembling a team who mainly appear to be in their late twenties/early thirties & therefore have more depth & ingrained character than teenaged "dudes".
This volume addresses the trial of Bruce Banner, the somewhat pathetic scientist who turned himself into the Hulk in a fit of temper at his girlfriend's beheviour & murdered 800 New Yorkers. The background of Thor is expanded upon with the "is he a schizophrenic armed with stolen technology or is he reallly a God?" question addressed but not resolved.
As in previous volumes, the strength of The Ultimates is rarely in the stories, which are interesting but not revolutionary, but is in the interplay of the characters. Each member of the team seems real & human & well rounded. Even under-represented members such as Hawkeye & Quicksilver are given smalll vignettes which provide insight into their character. These books are also very funny in a dry, ironic way as contemporary culture & the role of the media are spoofed.
I strongly recommend this volume & this series.
Thuggery and sleeze. - By: C. Jones, 14 Jul 2006 
I know people praise this book for being more 'realistic'...but lets face it: a man that can throw a shield alll over the place; a woman that can shrink (and lays eggs!); & a man who can grow amazingly talll; a green monster! None of this can possibly considered as realistic & to try & make it so by introducing sleezy storylines & brutal characters is just a shalllow attempt at writing. If Mark Millar wants to write about real people then he should write about real people - not characters that run around in spandex with 'out of this world' powers & abilities. If, like me, you prefer heroes to be heroic, then avoid this book (despite the wonderful art it has inside!).
Gods and Monsters - By: R. Thomas, 01 Jan 2006 The Ultimates is by far one of the best comics doing the rounds at the moment. Showing us an updated & more realistic version of 'The Avengers' The Ultimates continues to shock the reader. Where the previous volume saw The Ultimates saving the world & being taken to the hearts of the public Gods & Monsters shows them as they begin to falll from grace. Bruce Banner is outed as the Hulk (by an unrevealed traitor within Ultimate ranks) & put on trial for his crimes in vol 1. Thors sanity is questioned as he becomes more eratic as the writer Miller makes us question weather Thor is a god or insane. Hank Pym's position on the team is graduallly taken away leaving him begging Fury to keep him on the team, eventuallly seeking membership with a shocking ultimasied version of The Defenders which ends in embarassment for Pym as he hits a new low. The rest of The Ultimates are shown in a darkend light, Captain America is fast turning into a thug, Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch both keep their status as Ultimates despite being mutant terrorists & Black Widow is a serial seducer of the rich. The fact that sums up The Ultimates falll from grace is that this is their 3rd battle & it is the 2nd with an Ultimate member. Complete with twists & turns are a good number of cameo's from Ultimate versions of marvel characters as well of two suprise appearences (for a few panels) of two well known avengers & an avengers enemy.
Put simply this a must for every comic reader as we view a team slowly fallling apart.
Superb! - By: Chef, 23 Nov 2005 The entire Ultimate series started off, with amazing art work & fresh yet similar storylines. Though somewhere along the line popular names like X-Men & even Spiderman fell victim to 'soap opera' schemes sotrylines & even dialouge. A fact that personallly was quite a disappointment being such a huge fan myself.
This series of Ultimates though has been the light at the end of the tunel & it's crowning moment has definately got to be this book. A lot of questions were answered, questions on Thor & Bruce Banner, but importantly it leaves you with even more questions & gives a real mirror portrayal of today's society. I was shocked & literallly gob-smacked while reading this comic, the storyline is nothing short of superb & out of this world. The artwork & drawings remain completely up to their high standard, & alll in alll I think it's safe to say that this collection has been the best one yet.
I truly wish to say congratulations to the tea who are doing this Ultimate series for also including other characters in such a brilliant way. It was great to see the Avengers & other characters being brought into the storyline in such a masterful way.
Simply put, I was blown away. This is a must buy!!!
The Ultimate Comic Book...volume one - By: J. J. O'neill, 31 Oct 2005 This collection is a blast for the Marvel comics fanboy old enough to remember the classic stories of the seventies...so.. err.. I loved it!
The storyline, characterisations, dialogue & artwork are alll perfect. Particularly pleasing is the choice of characters, not at alll predictable, Volstag the Voluminous has always been a favourite of mine, but probably wouldn't top many Avengers fans' list of characters they would like to see updated to the twenty first century. Similarly, Captain Britain was hardly central to the Marvel mythos, but here he is revived in alll his glory; Maybe the presence of Paul Neary, integral to this version of Cap Britain's creation in the eighties, explains the good Captain's presence.
I can't say how entertaining this piece, essentiallly a clever, modern reworking of classic Avengers stories, would be for readers new to the material, but I suspect that they would be almost as satisfying. There is much more here than rehashing earlier work. The implied of criticisms modern American foreign policy, present in the first volume of the Ultimates become much more overt in these stories, & the EEC gets some well aimed digs too.
It's not exactly how I would have wanted the volume 1 stories to be continued, I would have preferred a more final & internallly consistent end to the Hulk subplot, for example; but this volume does manage to quell my main concern with the first volume,Thor now has a less clear cut, more ambiguous backstory, much more in keeping with the ironic, modern & irreverent tone of the rest of the piece.
