The craziness continues with Ultimate: Avengers 2 as the horror story of the Red Skull is revealed along with some other surprising revelations.
Captain America reeling from the shocking revelation of who the Red Skull is leaves S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Ultimates to do his own investigating. Meanwhile S.H.I.E.L.D. brings Nick Fury to deal with the rogue Captain. While with S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury tells the shocking orgin of how the Red skull came to be. He is not like the Marvel Universe Red Skull in that he was a Nazi and Captain America's nemesis. In the Ultimate Universe the Skull was fathered by Captain America and raised by S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury by the end of the issues tells the everyone to relax and begins assembling his team of Avengers to take Captain America down.
The writing in this issue by Mark Millar reads as a finely honed action movie, with bad ass dialogue, action, and one liners galore. However, Millar is able to keep himself in check never going over the edge to make the story or the characters for that matter seem to cheesy or too unbelievable. All the characters seem grounded in this surreal world that Millar writes and everyone fits into it astonishing well. The orgin story of the Red Skull is well told and Millar isn't afraid to completely change the Skull's orgin from that of the regular Marvel Universe. The one fault or possible hole in the story to me felt like the motivation for the Skulls actions in the issue seemed to come out of nowhere. It's a minor complaint, but I feel like this could have been better done. Yeah Millar establishes the Red Skull as a badass, but why hes a bad ass or his motivation for being a badass is a bit mysterious. This complaint aside the issue reads very well and I turned each page with anticipation of learning more. The issue for its one flaw has very solid writing.
The art in this issue is done once again by Carlos Pacheco and I simply love his clean sleek style of art. It just seems to fit Mark Millar's writing and the Ultimate Universe so well. His action scenes are clean and precise and he seems to place the action in the panel in a way that the reader doesn't feel like they are missing a thing. The only dislike of his art comes from the way he draws elderly people in the book. They just look he drew regular age people, distorted their faces slightly and then put a bunch of oddly placed lines on their faces to emphasize their age. It's a small complaint, but I must admit it threw me off when I first saw it. Even with this small hitch that art is very good and is wonderful to look at.
This issue is a fun read. While it doesn't move the story very far along the foundation for big things continues to be set up. I highly recommend this series to new comic readers and I will definitely be picking up the next issue. |
