Nothing Really Ultimate Going On Here
After a good second issue, Mark Millar's third volume of Ultimate Avengers goes back to being underwhelming. It's a case of neither Millar's writing or Steve Dillon's art being up to delivering what is actually a really good concept for a story.
It's hard to tell what Millar is trying to do with this story. Nick Fury is becoming particularly unlikable. There's a moment where he automatically assumes Vampire X is Tony Stark, which just makes him seem like an idiot. Later, he's blatantly throwing his weight around in the Triskelion. It has come to the point where I'm not sure who in this story we the readers are supposed to root for. The only character who is remotely likable is probably the Nerd Hulk, and he has joined the vampire horde.
However, Millar does actually do a better job writing Blade this issue. There is a funny gag about him running out of tranquilizer darts, and what he attempts to do does show the ruthlessness fans love about him. How he waltzes through Triskelion security is pretty silly though and does kind of undermine the scene.
Dillon is just not a superhero artist. It's really as simple as that. This story calls for a lot of exciting visuals that Dillon's style isn't able to deliver. The interior art is a stark contrast to the pretty awesome covers this volume of Ultimate Avengers gives us. A vampire Hulk has no business looking as plain and unimpressive as Nerd Hulk does in this book. The extremely dull coloring doesn't do Dillon's art any favors either.
So far, Ultimate Avengers 3 is a story that fails to live up to its premise. It is hard to take the vampires' scheme to infiltrate the superhero community seriously when they only really have Kid Daredevil and Nerd Hulk among their ranks. It is hard to root for the protagonists in this story when the Avengers here are made so unlikable. And it is hard to be interested in Blade and Kid Daredevil when both feel so phoned in and one has faded into the background since the first issue.