Ultimate Power

Collects Ultimate Power #1-9 written by Brian Michael Bendis (#1-3), J. Michael Straczynski (#4-6) and Jeph Loeb (#7-9) and drawn by Greg Land.

This is the first crossover involving all major Ultimate titles and I'm assuming that what happens in this book will have some sort of influence on this year's big Ultimate crossover, Ultimatum, written by Jeph Loeb.

While the FF are minding their own business, the Squadron Supreme shows up out of nowhere and accuses Reed for unleashing a weird organism on their universe that is killing millions of people. They take it out on the street and a big battle ensues, over the course of which Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Ultimates join in. The battle ends as the Squadron escapes with Reed as their prisoner. The Ultimate heroes, not taking no for an answer, follows the Squadron in the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and another big battle ensues. After lots of battling, a Squadron Supreme from a third reality shows up and joins the melee. After lots and lots of battling it is revealed that the culprits behind the whole affair is not Reed Richards, but rather some Emil Burbank (of the Supreme Universe) and Nick Fury and the Ultimate heroes all agree that they didn't really like Mr. Fury in the first place, and so decide to hand him over to the Squadron Supreme to do with him whatever they like. Even though his involvement really didn't have anything to do with the killer organism, but hey, who's to know?

I should note that this book is my first encounter with the Squadron Supreme, and I know absolutely nothing about them. I've read and thoroughly enjoyed the two Ultimates series, and they were basically the reason I decided to get this one.

This book actually starts out pretty well. The story is interesting and draws the reader in as more and more is revealed and the art is absolutely gorgeous, although there's a bit much posing for my tastes. But it seems that as the story progresses, in fact each time a new writer takes over, the story drops a notch or two in quality and the level of the art slowly degrades as well. When we get to Loeb's part, we're pretty much left with a mess of a run of the mill superhero megabattle that's far too confusing to let the actual plot get anywhere. There's page and page of brutes in capes and babes in bikinis taking it out on each other, and all of a sudden it's all over and everybody shake hands and go home. After finishing it I was surprised of how little plot the three writers managed to squeeze into 9 issues of comic books! The art, although showing a drop in quality throughout the book, never gets worse than good, and so the book does have that going for it at least.

With two and a half super star writers (I don't personally consider Loeb a super star writer, but I know the industry does) and a super star artist, I would say that I had expected more. The Ultimates is some of the best Marvel I've read in recent times and, although Ultimates was written by Mark Millar, I guess I expected something similar to that, but Ultimate Power is nothing like Ultimates. It just features the same characters.

So if you're in the mood for a well drawn and really long super hero battle, this might just be the book for you. But if you're looking for something similar to the Ultimates don't bother. In my opinion the story never really gets better than average, and considering the creators, that is a shame.

5/10