All-New Ultimates #2

All-New Ultimates #2 Written by Michel Fiffe Artist Amilcar Pinna

Picking immediately up from All-New Ultimates #1, the ensuing 11 page fight between the Ultimates or “teenie boppers” according to Diamondback is a mess for both team and reader. The inconsistent panel flow and art by Amilcar Pinna turn reading the first half of this book into a chore. The brawl between Ultimates and Skull gang starts out well enough, big splash page from the get go showing where everyone is. After Bombshell blows something up the smoke begins to waft in to the frames further building the location. All of this continuity is thrown out the window in a matter of pages as things just begin to happen to the Ultimates.

It is the flow of panels like on page 6 in which Miles webs Diamondback into a couple of fellow gang members that turn this brawl into a mess. The first two panels flow as you would expect Panel 1: Miles webs Diamondbacks hip Panel 2: She is sent into a couple of gang members. One action with the major movements illustrated creating flow. Panel 3, the biggest in the center of the page is suddenly Diamondback leaping forward and punching Miles. There is too much out of frame movement for that to visually flow from the first couple of panels well. The final two panels read like their own continuity with Miles suddenly grabbing Diamondback only to be rebuffed by some sort of splits kick. The next page contains more moments of odd flow with Bombshell seemingly beat down by Black Racer only to be suddenly found in combat with Death Adder out of nowhere. This failure of flow is a major breakdown of how comics are consumed and ruin the majority of this book.

The art thanks to the coloring in the back third of this book takes a pleasant step forward as the book becomes series of 24-esque pages simply checking in with the three plots. As the posin slowly works its way through Jessica the art becomes psychedelic in pop pastel colors with a hint of hallucination ending on a final image that is beautiful and freighting. The spatially disjointed nature of these final pages does nothing to effect the flow like with the brawl.

Rebooting the Ultimates into a street level team of teenage heroes is a refreshing change of pace from the world ending super heroics of the books analogues like The Avengers. Better yet they are currently a team that is in no way unified and still trying to figure out this whole vigilante as team thing. It’s an eclectic group with no character really standing out, Bombshell gets perhaps the most attention in this book. The book is still clearly in opening act/stage setting stages meaning nothing of real import happens, which wouldn’t be a bad thing had the brawl been good. All-New Ultimates could be an interesting book once it gets into things but with the way it is released, issue 2 should scare people away not draw them in.

Bits At The End

Was it explained in some other book why Jessica Drew decides to take the name Black Widow all of a sudden?

The absurdity of the Skull Gang attire is novel enough and certainly makes most of the officers unqiue but having a text box introducing a character seemed like it was overdoing it.