{"id":1336,"date":"2009-12-12T00:12:22","date_gmt":"2009-12-12T06:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=1336"},"modified":"2009-12-29T00:16:03","modified_gmt":"2009-12-29T06:16:03","slug":"ultimate-annuals-volume-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=1336","title":{"rendered":"Ultimate Annuals Volume 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know this is supposed to be a review of the second (and I suspect final) volume in the\u00a0Ultimate Annuals<\/a> series. But it\u2019s not so much a series as it is a collection of the oversized annual edition of each of the four major Ultimate serieses, and unlike last time, I\u2019ve read most of these recently. Like, the X-Men story is I think\u00a0the most recent thing I\u2019ve read in that run<\/a>, in which Nightcrawler goes from an unfortunately prejudiced dude who needs to have a good lightbulb moment to a disturbingly broken kidnapper who is probably on the verge of defection to evilness, over the next storyline or two. Or the Fantastic Four story in which Mole Man returns with a new plot to kidnap geniuses and harness them for his own uses. Okay, that one was pretty good, but I\u2019ve already reached the end of the Ultimate FF run (save for the Ultimatum stuff), and it didn\u2019t actually have the payoff it seemed like it should have had later on, so I am retroactively a little disappointed in it. Plus, the only story that\u00a0isn\u2019t<\/em> collected in another book I\u2019ve already read, in which Captain America and\u00a0that Falcon guy<\/a> from Ultimate Galactus head into the post-war American landscape[1] to fight an old Nazi menace? It kind of bored me. I think I blame this on it being the first Ultimates story I\u2019ve seen that wasn\u2019t written by Mark Millar. He\u2019s good at those!<\/p>\n

So, okay, yeah. Pretty disappointing book all in all, though I have given unfairly short shrift to the FF story. Except, y\u2019know, Spider-Man. His story, which you may recall me choosing not to review when I read Deadpool earlier this week, is another clash between Peter Parker, Daredevil, and the Punisher. Except, right,\u00a0I never read the original such clash because it was somehow left out of the three\u00a0Ultimate<\/a> Marvel<\/a> Team-Up<\/a> books in which comics-run it occurred.\u00a0Luckily<\/em>, someone eventually released a giant collection of that entire run\u00a0in one book<\/a>, making my three individual volumes obsolete. So, I read the three comics in question out of that, just to feel caught up. In short, across pages of annoyingly impressionistic artwork, we\u2019re introduced to the Punisher, cop-turned-vigilante who hunts and kills dirty cops and dirtier criminals and spends most of his time in jail for said vigilantism, and Daredevil, blind lawyer with super-heightened alternate senses that allow him a better grasp of the world than any civilian and most superhumans. And Pete puts the Punisher back in jail while annoying the snot out of Daredevil for his happy-go-lucky attitude and his penchant for jumping into the middle of things first and asking questions later. (Which is I guess why Nick Fury is annoyed by him too. Also Blade.[2])<\/p>\n

So, anyway, in this follow up meeting (Also including the Moon Knight (who I still have no kind of handle on), the Kingpin (still a magnificently realized bastard), and Kangaroo (uh\u2026)), Daredevil still finds Spider-Man annoying and the Punisher still finds him detrimental. But none of that is really the point. The point is this: there\u2019s been a long-term piece of plot involving the new[3] police captain, Jeanne de Wolfe, that I haven\u2019t ever mentioned partially because it\u2019s been largely in the background and partially because, well, any amount of detail places us squarely in spoiler city. But the thing is, as much time as I spend talking about how great the USM series is, right? This is just on a day-to-day basis. In the meantime, there are these deep undercurrents spanning something like half of the series to date that I\u2019ve never even felt the need to mention. And of course there\u2019s an inevitable huge payoff, that leads me to have to jump back into two paragraphs of review material just to explain how even an oversized single comic in this series is still so very cool. This is why I can\u2019t stop gushing,\u00a0no matter how hard I try to hold myself back<\/a>. Because it\u2019s just\u00a0always<\/em> this good.[4]<\/p>\n

[1] Yeah, for serious, I really really need to do a quick reread of\u00a0the<\/a> four<\/a> Ultimates<\/a> titles<\/a> that have been released so far, \u2019cause I barely have any idea what\u2019s up in that quadrant of the Ultimate universe anymore, and I\u2019m starting to reach the point where everything really does tie together. Maybe I\u2019ll do one mega-review? Maybe not, depends on how it strikes me I guess.
\n[2] Yeah. The half-vampire guy. Seriously.
\n[3] The old captain was Gwen Stacy\u2019s father, up until\u00a0he was shot and killed by a guy in a Spider-Man costume<\/a>. Good times!
\n[4] And the last page or two, in which Daredevil has a conversation with the Moon Knight guy? I\u2019ve learned my lesson and mention it now, as I expect it to be the next major undercurrent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know this is supposed to be a review of the second (and I suspect final) volume in the\u00a0Ultimate Annuals series. But it\u2019s not so much a series as it is a collection of the oversized annual edition of each of the four major Ultimate serieses, and unlike last time, I\u2019ve read most of these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,38,40],"class_list":["post-1336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-graphic-novel","tag-marvel","tag-ultimate-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}