Several weeks ago, I did a piece for my blog & Blogcritics, discussing some of my favorite ongoing genre comics. I received several responses (not to mention, a nice plug in Journalista!), but the most insistent comments came from a reader who thought I should've included Marvel's The Ultimates in my personal survey.

I hadn't read the book at the time and said so. I'd gone through some trade reprints of Ultimate titles featuring Spider-Man & X-Men - and as handsome as they looked, there wasn't much in 'em to prod me into digging more deeply into the Ultimate Marvel Universe. I know it's standard to re-tell and reinvent comic book characters for a new generation - how many reboots has Superman seen, for instance? - but neither parallel universe series seemed sufficiently different to justify a whole line o' Ultimates.

Dude, I was told, after I'd made this point to my interlocutor, the Ultimates are nothing like Marvel's old Avengers series! So I acquiesced and picked up a copy of the recent trade reprinting the book's first six issues. My reader was right. This is a major revisionist job on Marvel’s longstanding Lee-&-Kirby superhero creation, The Avengers.

The book starts out promisingly: in the European Theatre, circa 1945, super soldier hero Captain America is on a mission alongside a group of convincingly tough-talking grunts, including journalist Bucky Barnes. The soldiers are understandably skeptical about Cap, ("Dressing some clown in a circus costume. . ." one of 'em says. "What age do you think we are?") But their skepticism vanishes when they all venture into battle.

Scripter Mark Millar and artist Bryan Hitch establish a strong tone at the outset: hard-bitten, gritty, w./ lots of obscure rain-drenched battle imagery. Hitch (who's also worked on The Authority & Justice League of America) has a flair for big group battle scenes, so he's in his element here. The whole first chapter/issue leads to a moment that long-term Avengers readers know is coming: Cap's struggle to disarm a launched rocket that'll wind up in his getting dumped & frozen in the cold Atlantic waters. So far, so good.

Unlike Marvel’s original Avengers - which only took one issue back in 1963 to establish its basic team (though Cap America didn't appear 'til issue #4) - Millar's Ultimates are a bit slower getting out of the gate. For one thing, where the original series was built around characters who already had their own established titles (Ant/Giant-Man & Wasp, Hulk, Iron Man plus Thor), the core cast of Ultimates is introduced as the series progresses. Next three chapters in the book are primarily devoted to presenting this crew in presentday surroundings - it isn't 'til the series' fifth issue that we see 'em fight as a team. This makes the bulk of the book more character-driven, even if the characterization is more than a bit dubious at times.