When I was a kid, I remember visitng my sister in hospital (I think she was having her tonsils out). I must have been 8 or 9, and I stole a copy of an Avengers comic from the waiting room.
This Avengers comic had a bunch of the Avengers, including Tigra, Thor, Iron Man, and Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider was causing some sort of trouble, and I recall that it seemed to be the last issue of a story arc. The characters seemed interesting, but I didn't really get the story.
I didn't read another Avengers story for 20 years - a silly Byrne story with USAgent, Iron Man, Dr Pym, the Scarlet Witch, the Wasp and others. The story was soem continuity stitching: Byrne got rid of the Scarlet Witch's children through some inexplicable stupidity. It turned me right off the title and the concept.
And so, I didn't read another Avengers story until last week, when on the back of the considerable on-line controversy that erupted over the title, I bought the Ultimates tpb.
Millar has stripped down a lot of the concepts to their bare bones, or even altered them dramatically, and the distilled versions of the characters really appeal. Removing the continuity from the characters was like brightening diamonds. At their bare concepts, the characters have become very interesting and indeed compelling. A lot of the superheroics is missing, and where it is still there, Millar pokes fun at it (Wasp tells Giant man that he looks like a gimp in his leather suit!). Iron Man's armour looks like its straight out of a Japanese manga, and I really liked that contemporary update. Same goes for the references to Freddie Prinze Jr, George Bush, and Shannon Elizabeth. Thor looked like the lead singer of Metallica, and was clearly an anti-globalisation protestor. It made the story seem very "now": I concede that it may mean that the story will date terribly in thew fullness of time.
Two stand out things for me:
1. Captain America. Captain America's origin because truly poignant, more so for Bucky's survival, rather than his death. Cap is now also a soldier, not a goody two-shoes. Kicking Banner in the teeth was not the action of the in-continuity Cap. This was a soldier, knocking the crap out of the enemy. In that regard, Millar has taken Cap back to his roots. (I also liked the fact that they corrected Cap's hair: it stopped being 1930s slick, and became 1940s cropped.)
As an aside, one of the more moving moments arises when Fury tells Cap that not all things he loves has moved on, and points to the American flag. I showed this page to my wife, as part of an effort to get her to write a review for this board. She thought it was pure cornball revolting patriotism, and told me to become an American citizen. Its interesting that Millar, who is Scottish, was able to tap into and decently write American patriotism. It reminded me to an extent of Ennis's work on Preacher, with his "Proud Texans".
2. The core friendship of the team - Cap, Iron Man and Thor. Millar believably welds together an improbable friendship based on the few common values shared by the three very different men - a desire to improve the world. I thought the dinner party at the end of the book was very very well done. In a very human fashion, the three men find that they have something fundamental in common. I thought the attention Millar gave to Stark stole the show, in that regard. He is an eccentric playboy billionaire with shades of Richard Branson (the guy who owns Virgin Airlines), yet he has spiritual urges and, ultimately, a very human motivation to improve the world.
Other tweaks to the mythos - making Wasp Asian and a mutant, making Fury an integral part of the team and making him black, Jeeves a homosexual, Bruce Banner a jealous and petty geek, and Hank Pym a prozac-popping wife beater - have all been subject to criticism by old school fans. I didn't find them objectionable at all, and only prodded my interest in the story. They added an interesting, realism-orientated diversity to the cast. Other elements lending realism to the story included the tinted glasses for Giant Man to prevent his enlarged pupils from taking in too much light, the green glop in Iron Man's armour (suggesting a coolant for a high temperature device) and the cyborg jacks in Stark's arms, the all too human problems with Iron man's armour (the launch chamber's doors jammed and his firing sight was out)and the fact that Giant Man and Wasp did not have clothing made of unstable molecules (a necessary if silly plot device in the puritan world of comics) and were frequently naked when they changed shape.
Another thing is that the Ultimates have a huge staff: medics, guards, firefighters. I don't know of another superteam that has its own personal army, but it meakes sense in a contemporary world for a project which is funded by the US government to have a massive number of personnel.
I thought it was odd that the Ultimates have their headquarters in the "Triskelion", rather than the old mansion. I guess they could hardly have used the SHIELD helicarrier - with Millar's and Hitch's involvement, a Carrier would have drawn criticism that they had simply re-done the Authority for Marvel.
People have accused Millar of being the shock-jock of comics. I think there is some truth to that, but I also think that he's also a very capable writer, who can imbue his characters with very human personalities and meaningful interaction. Its not poetry, but its very entertaining. I see reading back through this review that I've repeatedly used the word "human", and I think that's the essence of the story. These characters are not untouchably superhuman, as the in-continuity Avengers have always been: they have very human qualities and I think this is the very thing which is special about the story. I give Ultimates a respectable 7 out of 10.
