Ultimate Origins
written by Brian Michael Bendis
Whenever I read Marvel Comics, I felt that the characters and stories are a little too constrained by the endless revival of heroes and villains, as well as the fact that no matter how bad the villain becomes, he always get away through jail time. Add on to that is the fact that most characters no longer has any surprises left in them, all of them explorer throughout decades of comic publishing and repeated revamps.
Ultimate Comics related characters are another story entirely. Even though the familiar characters are present in this universe, they no longer share the same background. To add on to the suspense, certain familiar characters have been cast in different light, taking on the role of another character when you thought they couldn’t be related in any way.
And to add more suspense onto even that, your familiarity with the Marvel universe will surprise you even more, when it was revealed that a certain famous person X is also the reason another certain famous person Y is born. The more you know, the more you will be surprised. You like it? Then read Ultimate Origins.
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| Image taken from Comic Art Community |
Origin of Species
The Ultimate universe had recently undergone the event of Ultimates 3 and Ultimate Power, where Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were killed and the universe saw the lost of Nick Fury to another universe. Much of the characters had been explored from years of publishing, but much more remained unknown to the readers.
As an obelisk which remained untouched in Project Pegasus base, where all items unknown were thrown into, became active suddenly, S.H.I.E.L.D. was concerned. To add onto the suspense, such obelisks appeared in major characters’ vicinity, their intent and purpose veiled.
But all these seemed to be related somehow to events decades past, extending far back to the World War II era. Coiled in the midst of it all was the project to create a Super Soldier, a powerful soldier as well as a powerful symbol for the soldiers fighting in the front lines for the Allied powers. And while I am familiar with the creation of Steve Rogers as the Super Soldier known as Captain America, other events were related to that incident as well.
With some spoilers thrown into the mix, here are some questions which the series will answer:
- How did Nick Fury remain so young even though he had already been involved in WW2?
- Is Steve Rogers the first Super Soldier?
- What had the Canadian created from their Super Soldier project?
- How did Wolverine get himself involved in the Canadian Super Soldier project, and how did he escape?
- What did the mutants have to do with the Super Soldier project?
- How were the Hulk, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four related to each other?
- How are all these events related to what will happen in the coming series of Ultimatum?
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| Image taken from Comic Art Community |
Reading back this series after the events of Ultimatum suddenly makes a lot of sense to me. Events which originally seemed unrelated was revealed to be intertwined, and characters unrelated to each other in the Marvel universe were not so in the Ultimate universe.
Art and Dialogues of Origins
The colorings and sketches are supreme in this series, each panel a gritty and no-nonsense image of the events to come. And considering how dark and sad the events are, this turns out to be rather appropriate as well.
The other thing which I like most about the Ultimate universe is how the dialogues, and sometimes one-liners and monologues, could be very funny. Compared to the other series though, there are less of these funny lines in Ultimate Origins. This is one item which I wouldn't mind having a lot of in a comic, as long as it is ingeniously funny.
