The Good

Rick Jones returns to Earth and finds that some major changes have happened there, like the death of Spider-Man. He joins up with the Silver Surfer and Captain Marvel to stop Galactus from destroying the universe!

Galactus, who is combined with the Gah Lak Tus swarm, seems pretty dang unstoppable in this mini-series. Galactus has always been a formidable foe. Many times, he needed to be reasoned with in order to be stopped. This version of Galactus is more powerful than ever before, and by the looks of the end of the issue, having a "chit-chat" with the big guy in purple won't stop him from destroying planets, which he does a lot of in this issue.

This is the first time Rick Jones has been on Earth in quite some time, and he's missed out on a lot of stuff, including the death of Peter Parker, Rick's neighbor when he lived on Earth. It's a brief scene where Rick Jones learns all this, but it's powerful nonetheless. He's been gone for so long to do "big things" in the universe, but sometimes it's the small things that bring you back down to Earth. Please, ignore the pun for that one. Later, we return to Rick in front of the Parker's house and Mary Jane sees him. Again, it's a nice scene where the reader is reminded that while there's a battling raging in space, things are still happening on Earth.

The Bad

This book feels so far removed from the rest of the Ultimate series. Sure, it takes place in that universe, but the Ultimate line has been a bit more Earth-centric. The book jumps around a bit to different planets and even into space, so it can get a bit dizzying.

There's a lot of high expectations here, for numerous reasons. The first is that this may all be leading up to the end of the Ultimate Universe (or not, but seriously, this feels like the end). The lead up to that should be this amazing, thrilling ride, and the issue at hand is ok. Secondly, Joshua Fialkov has been doing an amazing job with ULTIMATE COMICS ULTIMATES, and because of this, fans may be expecting a bit more.

The Verdict

So far, HUNGER has been interesting. It's been a pretty solid mini-series and a good follow-up to the events of AGE OF ULTRON. Issue #3 of HUNGER was ok, but it was a bit of a let down. The over-powered Galactus is very cool and Rick returning to Earth was also a very nice moment, but the book feels a bit jump, and there's a lot of high expectations going into this and readers may feel a bit let down. Overall, I say continue on with the book if you're a fan of the Ultimate universe, just to see how this all plays out.

Yeah, I have to say that this issue really let me down too. I'll still read the next issue but there were things in this particular issue that irked me.

No real spoilers here, but Captain Marvel is in the issue. He doesn't know who Rick Jones is? They were introduced to each other and spoke to one another in the Ultimate Enemy Trilogy. They fought together to stop Ultimate Mr. Fantastic, but in this issue they talk to each other as if they never met. Ultimate Captain Marvel and especially Ultimate Nova don't have a lot of history. I don't know if it was Fialkov the writer, or the letterer, or the editor, but there's no reason why anyone should of missed that recognition. It ended up feeling pretty lazy.

Another thing that kinda irked me, is they apparently retconned the Ultimate version of the Kree to look more humanoid. The Ultimate Kree appeared more like lizard type creatures than anything else in all of Captain Marvel's appearances before this issue. I just didn't like that.

There really is a lot of cool stuff here, but there's just some stuff that really messed with me while I was reading because I'm such an avid Ultimate Marvel reader that took me out of the experience. It's still an okay issue, just not as good as the others. I'd give it a 3 out of five too.

Hope to read this later.

Yeah, I like Fialkov, but unfortunately he doesn't seem to have looked too far into the history of the Ultimate Universe (and if you're in charge of something this big, you really should) and often gets finer details wrong, he did the same thing during his run on Ultimates. It really brings his work down.

It wouldn't be a problem if he were creating new things to work with, but he isn't, he's decided that he wants to work deeply with the history of the universe (by bringing back long-dormant ideas, like Gah Lak Tus, tying that in with the oft ignored Rick Jones, arguably making Reed Richards going insane believable, bringing back Sue Storm and Ben Grimm and inexplicably changing how his transformation works, numerous character inconsistencies, etc), a universe who's history he's oddly opted not to study too closely.

I liked it

I don't follow the Ultimate Universe much, but what I have been able to glean as a 616 fan does mesh well and is not very confusing for me. Perhaps the writing is aimed more at an audience like myself than at Ultimate Fans exclusively.

That said, I've been enjoying this series, and if Ultimate Universe does end, I may finally be able to catch up on all that's transpired at least!

@noteworthington:

If the Ultiimate Universe does end, I think they should just flop fan favorites like Miles and....whoever else, into 616.

I am glad I dropped this series. My comic store got shorted on #1 of the series so I read it in digital format and wasn't impressed with issues 1 or 2. Honestly, I don't see why Galactus couldn't eat tons of planets as its been established 99% of the universe is empty opposed to something like 616 where the biodiversity of the universe is actually rich.

@baron_bj: The weirder parts are that his editors let it by. The same for DC with their even 2 week inconsistency with Bane and Forever Evil. I'm always surprised when they get big stuff wrong as you'd think they have people for that.

Yeah, I'm often more inclined to blame editors for screw ups like this, their job consists heavily of controlling what and how the writers do their job, crap this major slipping through really isn't acceptable.