The End of an Era

Last Thursday, I picked up issue #13 of Ultimates 2, which marks Mark Millar's and Bryan Hitch's final issue on the series before they pass the baton on to a new creative team.

Since it first launched in January of 2002, The Ultimates has come to redefine comics as readers know them, as most vividly exemplified in Marvel's recent Civil War event. Grim and gritty comics may have had their heyday in the 1980s with Frank Miller and Alan Moore leading the way, but it was only with Hitch's 21st century take on Marvel's Avengers that comics achieved such remarkable verisimilitude. Comics had a real world feel and a "widescreen" scope. Thus was Millar's and Hitch's legacy to the world of illustrated storytelling clearly etched into history.

It's been 26 issues of mayhem, wall-to-wall action interspersed with scathing political commentary, presented in some of the most stunning artwork ever seen in a mainstream comic book publication, and as the curtain falls on one of the most visually arresting creative collaborations of all time I cannot help but feel a little empty inside.

Issue #13 wraps up Millar's "Grand Theft America" storyline, which has a number of the world's Eastern powers such as Russia, China and Middle Eastern nations such as Syria conspiring to overthrow America, the "new Roman Empire" by throwing together their own assemblage of superhumans. This politically-charged scenario, which has the coalition's team known as "The Liberators" violently taking over both Manhattan and Washington D.C. in a lightning strike by issue #9, ends with an extremely violent confrontation between Asgardian half-brothers Thor and Loki (who worked with the Liberators) and their assembled forces.

That Millar and Hitch wrap up their tenure on the most successful 21st century reimagining of some of the comic world's most recognizable superheroes to date is saddening, but what is more disappointing is how they seem to drift away, at the eleventh hour, from the controversial realpolitik approach that has made this book so memorable, towards more conventional superheroics. Thor is revealed to be an actual god and not the lunatic he was set up as in the first five issues of Ultimates Vol. 2. The Ultimates break away from the U.S. government and are funded by Tony Stark instead. Sound familiar? Yes, it sounds a lot like Millar is trying to make the series a lot more like its mainstream counterpart, the Avengers, who themselves have gone in the other direction, with one half of the team becoming civil servants and the other half going underground.

Millar's change in direction, whether intentional or not, seems to perfectly accommodate succeeding writer Jeph Loeb, who is not exactly the left winger Millar was.

Still, at least all plot points are tied up quite neatly, with nothing left to the imagination, and at least, even after all the set-up for the next creative team has been established, Millar and Hitch manage to sneak in at least one nicely dark scene as one of the team members, the lone traitor in their ranks, is murdered in cold blood. This is a character whose mainstream counterpart features quite prominently in the Avengers titles, and so the death is a nice way of asserting the independence of the Ultimate universe from the Marvel universe proper.

I don't know what Millar's and Hitch's next project is, but if, as Millar once boasted, they can make Superman as interesting as they've made Captain America and company, I'd definitely start reading the Man of Steel books quite regularly.