Ultimates 3

[shooshoomanjoe]

I slowly started buying Ultimate titles a few years ago and finally completed my collection earlier this year (minus current issues of course). Last month, I started reading them in publishing order. Two series I was looking forward to reading were Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum, mainly because I wanted to see what people were talking about. I enjoyed Ultimates 3 #1 very much so I figured the quality would drop in following issues. It did drop but not to what I was expecting. I found it to be a fun read (except Black Captain American Panther).

My one question is, why is this series consider to be so bad?

[Plawsky]

The biggest thing has to do with the departure from Ultimates 1 and 2. The characters read nothing like the characters from Millar's Ultimates. At best, they're odd parodies of their former selves; at worst they're just completely wrong. Thor has completely abandoned what made him great, and it's given a hand-wave explanation in the 3rd or 4th issue. Cap is shown to be a terrible leader, a bad team mate, and his "man out of time" shtick just feels weak here. The culturally relevant political atmosphere was entirely gone, too -- Loeb just turned the Ultimates into wholly generic action book.

Beyond that, the plot is all over the place. The Cap/BP subplot makes less than zero sense. Valkyrie showed up out of nowhere with powers, not to be explained (until like 3 years later in New Ultimates). Hank is addicted to drugs now, for... reasons?

It could have been a decent book if it wasn't called Ultimates 3. But as it was, it was Ultimates-in-name-only, a hollow attempt at continuing a series that managed to miss everything that the characters and story had been before it. But even without bringing continuity into it, there were just so many story flaws that are hard to look past. Art was pretty great, though.

[wyokid]

Millar started it as a generic action book, Loeb continued it. The only thing is more comics were like Ultimates so it didn't stand out as much. It's honestly not that bad and most of the glaring plot holes are filled by the same writer as far as TU3 goes which is expected in a serial format. He made it fun instead of the "guise this comic is for adults. Seriously guise! Stop laughing! Hank just beat up his wife! Comics are serious business guise!" that Millar made it. I honestly don't know how anyome can stand his work from 2002 and up. Even when he quit adding edge for edge sake his books were incredibly boring. Starlight started great, but by issue 3 I was done. Even my favorite of that period, Superior, has aged horribly.

EDIT: I recently started reading Garth Ennis comics, before that I had never really seen edge done properly and even then sometimes he does it for the sake of being edgy. My point is Ultimates isn't a very good comic to begin with and has aged even worse.

EDIT 2: I apologize, I didn't mean to be so negative

[Wolverine12]

And to complicate the responses to your question even further I would say I fall solidly in between Plawsky and Wyokid in terms of my opinion on the book. I agree with Plawsky that the characterizations weren't spot on but Hank becoming a suicidal drug addict to me made sense after he watched his family obliterated at the hands of one of his former partners. I also agree with Plawsky that Thor was way off, I don't think Loeb got the memo on how UU Thor was supposed to talk/act etc, Millar's version was similar to 616 in only that he swung a big ass hammer and could control lightning. Loeb just made UU Thor into a clone of 616 with a better costume and a better arsenal. It was certainly an action packed book and the art by Joe Mad was perfect for all the fight scenes so that helped it tremendously for me. Cap posing as BP was what threw me off the most. I read Ultimates 3 before I read the Cap annual where he met BP so it extra didn't make sense to me. I certainly didn't hate it, it was better than Ultimatum as well as Humphries and Fife's run. To me personally Fife's run on Ultimates was the farthest the book ever got from being an Ultimates title. When someone says that a book is something in name only that is what I think of.

[UltimateTy]

Millar started it as a generic action book, Loeb continued it. The only thing is more comics were like Ultimates so it didn't stand out as much. It's honestly not that bad and most of the glaring plot holes are filled by the same writer as far as TU3 goes which is expected in a serial format. He made it fun instead of the "guise this comic is for adults. Seriously guise! Stop laughing! Hank just beat up his wife! Comics are serious business guise!" that Millar made it. I honestly don't know how anyome can stand his work from 2002 and up. Even when he quit adding edge for edge sake his books were incredibly boring. Starlight started great, but by issue 3 I was done. Even my favorite of that period, Superior, has aged horribly.

EDIT: I recently started reading Garth Ennis comics, before that I had never really seen edge done properly and even then sometimes he does it for the sake of being edgy. My point is Ultimates isn't a very good comic to begin with and has aged even worse.

EDIT 2: I apologize, I didn't mean to be so negative

I kinda liked Ultimates for the edginess you wouldn't find in an Avengers book.

[wyokid]

I kinda liked Ultimates for the edginess you wouldn't find in an Avengers book.

I think that's why it was popular, but the Transformers films are also popular so that's not saying much.

[Immortal Weapon]

The other posters covered most what was wrong with with the book. I'm not a big fan of Joe Mad's art but the coloring on Ultimates 3 was ugly. Everything looked like mud. Also, Wasp went from being Asian to Caucasian. It's like Mad forgot Jan's ethically in the Ultimate books.

[wyokid]

The other posters covered most what was wrong with with the book. I'm not a big fan of Joe Mad's art but the coloring on Ultimates 3 was ugly. Everything looked like mud. Also, Wasp went from being Asian to Caucasian. It's like Mad forgot Jan's ethically in the Ultimate books.

She looked more Asian than ever...



And everything looked like mud in the first two installments. I don't get the appeal of Bryan Hitch.

[UltimateTy]

Funny enough its Joe Mad's art that I thought looked like mud lol.

[Red Z]

I slowly started buying Ultimate titles a few years ago and finally completed my collection earlier this year (minus current issues of course). Last month, I started reading them in publishing order. Two series I was looking forward to reading were Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum, mainly because I wanted to see what people were talking about. I enjoyed Ultimates 3 #1 very much so I figured the quality would drop in following issues. It did drop but not to what I was expecting. I found it to be a fun read (except Black Captain American Panther).

My one question is, why is this series consider to be so bad?

I would say the main reason is that it's a mindless mess. The characters' actions make no sense, and it has serious continuity problems that make it feel like Loeb simply didn't care.

[Plawsky]

And to complicate the responses to your question even further I would say I fall solidly in between Plawsky and Wyokid in terms of my opinion on the book.

For the most part, I actually agree with you. I really don't hate it that much, I was just explaining why people didn't like it. I appreciate some aspects of it, but overall it's full of bad storytelling moments. The best part of the book -- the Doom reveal at the end -- ends up being completely wasted, which kind of hurts the book in retrospect.

To me personally Fife's run on Ultimates was the farthest the book ever got from being an Ultimates title. When someone says that a book is something in name only that is what I think of.

Well that's certainly true. But it was never meant to be a "real" Ultimates book by any means; it was designed to just be "Spider-man and His Friends Calling Themselves Ultimates," but that title was a bit too long.

She looked more Asian than ever...

Wasp had a lot of looks over the years, and most of them were more accurately Asian than Joe Mad's design, who looks more like Scarlett Johansson than anything.




(Apparently there were no Asians available to trace the day Land was drawing Ultimate Power, though.)

Funny enough its Joe Mad's art that I thought looked like mud lol.

Also, this. His pencils are outstanding, but the coloring is so bad for most of the book.

[SpeedofLife]

Wasp doesn't become Asian until Ultimates 3 #3.