Book of the Week 12/5/07 Ultimates 3 #1
Written by Jeph Loeb
Art by Joe Madureira
Colors by Christian Lichtner
Letters by Richard Starkings
I've been waiting for this book for a long time.
I was very sad when I heard that Hitch and Millar were not going to continue The Ultimates because it's been one of my favorite books in the last couple of years. I always loved the book, no matter how late it was and in my head you can't have the Ultimates without Hitch or Millar.
Now I felt a little better when I found out Jeph Loeb would be writing it because I've always been a fan of Loeb's work(we'll disregard his Wolverine run), he's done some great work lately on Heroes and I was touched with the Fallen Son series.
But the icing on the cake is when I found out that Joe Madureira would be doing the art for the book. I've been a huge fan of Mad every since the Deadpool mini-series in the mid-90's, which led to his great on the X-men in the Age of apocalypse and ended with his run on Uncanny X-men in the late 90's. Sadly Mad left Marvel shortly after that to do his own indie book and then left comic books altogether.
Now I love Jeph Loeb and I think he did a great job of taking some stories that Millar had worked with and expanding on them while adding his own touch, but this review will be dedicated mostly to Mad's art because I've missed him so.
I truly believe there isn't another artist out there with his style. It's extremely anime influenced, with it's simple design, hard edges and vibrant colors but somehow it's toned down enough that it's not too in your face and it works on a regular superhero book. I'm so glad to see him back in comic books, even if it's only for a while and he hasn't lost his edge at all.
This is definitely a new Ultimates team, led by Wasp and with a slightly different roster and with this only being a five issue series, I'm excited to see with Loeb and Mad are going to take us. Ultimatum is an ultimate event set for 2008 and apparently Ultimates 3 leads into that so I'm along for the ride.
