Really? If I say I enjoyed this book, people are going to think less of me, aren't they?
I really enjoyed this book. I was a big, dumb, nasty fight scene. The fight scene we'd waited 11 issues for. I honestly was expecting fuck-all in the way of character development or subplots. I got what I expected - big macho men beating the living shit out of each other, with some quite nice splash pages (but boy, Hitch has really starting losing it since the start of this 'season', hasn't he?), some big dumb dialogue. All the boxes checked.
I think wehen reading these books, you have to keep in mind that they are totally written for the trade. You've had issues and issues of build-up, this is the bit where there is a big fight, a-la the conventions of superhero comic books. Imagine this arc was one 23 page comics. This fight would be three pages long, that's how much it counts in terms of the whole story. I'm sure that reading it as part of the trade rather than in-between the rest of this weeks' comics, the pacing will make a lot more sense.
That said, there were some great sequences in the issue, if only from a visceral perspective - Quicksilver running with the evilspeeder until she burst, Hulk punching the top of the Abomination's head off (and ripping the arms off, lovely), a drunken Tony Stark showing up in an obscene orbiting weapons platform, Cap's ambiguous and slightly stomach-turning fight with Abdul along with the 'victory line'.
I think, as Falc and Papers have mentioned, Cap's anti-muslim stance is a purposeful decision on behalf of Millar, and I think it works really well. I think one of the main reasons people don't like this issue (as well as their problems with art/dialogue) is because the Ultimates have been asking for this for the whole season, they've become the aggressors, taking missions in Iraq and generally toeing the neo-con line. I think Millar is doing this on purpose, and using it to create a story with some very odd reasonances. It does raise an interesting question of how/why you should use (real) international politics in comic books, but I don't think it was nearly as bad as the Joker being the Ayatollah in A death in the Family. That's just fucked.
That said, it was the best Hollywood-summer-blockbuster comic I've read for a while (since Wanted, I think), and left a big dumb grin on my face.
Also, to whoever asked how the Hulk won - he's the Hulk! He got blowed up by a nuke (!!1!!2) and he's still kicking arse. What's some half-assed pointdexter mutation going to do against someone that skull-fucks the chitauri? He is the unstoppable, completely amoral character on the Ults, and I love his OTT representation, and I love him for it, he cracks me up. |
