Review by Frank Plowright

Although not given a connecting volume number, this continues directly from the end of Blade vs. the Avengers, when the day was saved, but at the possible cost of Tony Stark’s life. That provides the tension for much of the opening chapter as Mark Millar stops us considering why the Ultimates would target Nick Fury’s Avengers team, a question duly answered at the end of that first chapter. The end of a clever second chapter reveals why the Avengers would have a grudge against the Ultimates.

Millar’s at the top of his game with the set-up, and while there’s been a tongue in cheek aspect to his previous Ultimate Avengers outings, this is delivered as a straight action thriller. He uses almost all the characters seen in the series, whether previously discarded or not, and Leinil Francis Yu delivers some amazing action sequences. He draws this slightly differently from Crime and Punishment, possibly aiming for the widescreen awe of superhero comics drawn by Bryan Hitch, yet while maintaining his own style. Page by page, it’s superlative art.

So what does the death of Spider-Man have to do with anything? Well, it’s brilliantly worked in, an almost incidental moment in the drama being played out, yet Spider-Man disappears as rapidly as he appears, because he may be used to sell the story, but he’s barely relevant to it. More than anything else since his return to the Ultimate universe, this resembles Millar’s Ultimates, a game-changing landmark for superheroes lest we forget. Much of what fed into the Avengers movies is here, most prominently the idea of how a team of superheroes might be used in the real world, what the consequences of that might be, and who might try to manipulate such a situation. Ask yourself what Donald Trump might do if he had the Avengers at his disposal.

Every chapter ends on a phenomenal cliffhanger, and Millar doesn’t provide any easy answers. There are readers who’ll believe the villain did the right thing. That ambiguity ensures this is so much more interesting than the standard plot of pitting one team of superheroes against another, and in the end you won’t be sure it was the right outcome.

Ultimate Avengers by Mark Millar, contains all four of Millar’s Ultimate Avengers outings.