#ultimates2

That time Galactus was inspirational and vulnerable, part 2

Damn good finale, even if I’m pretty sure Ewing had to skip a step or three in getting there what with the time crunch, and that it wasn’t the event book it was clearly crying out to be. In that regard, it’s pretty perfectly symbolic of how badly Marvel’s fucked Ewing over in this phase of his career. And I know I harp on it endlessly, but they fucked him so bad. Dude is an A-lister in the making if ever there was one, and right after seeming to hand him the keys to the kingdom - letting him do a team book with Kenneth Rockafort with a popular title using two major characters, two he’d already been developing, and a fan-favorite on the rise - they didn’t push the thing for shit, kicked the rug out from under him making it impossible to build traction like he did with Mighty Avengers, gave it a weird new title that shouted right out to any prospective new readers “don’t start here”, made him cross over with Civil War II and Secret Empire even though the premise has everyone in space, and swapped out Rockafort at the height of his growing popularity for Travel Foreman (who actually worked out phenomenally, but as talented and respected as he’s been for awhile now, before this I don’t think he’d have been anyone’s first choice for “crazy abstract cosmic Marvel book starring a bunch of traditional superheroes”). Right around the same time they were demoting New Avengers to U.S.Avengers and presenting him with the ultimate indignity of doing an Inhumans spin-off title.

But for all that shit, boy was it a fun weird cosmic superhero book, exactly my jam in a way that shouldn’t be so uncommon with Big Two superheroes. High-concept philosophical adventure shit supported by a meaningful moral backbone, with cool-ass art in both volumes and a sizable if subtle impact on everything going forward. Definitely the best Justice League ongoing of the decade. And as it’s ending, I feel totally justified in bringing up my pet theory one last time: this was totally a Justice League book. It’s a guy whose own creator described him as a Superman analogue, a rich genius billionaire warrior in black whose definitive modern run under Christopher Priest directly compared him to Batman at one point, a star-spangled warrior from a utopia of women protected by magic whose writer in her breakout book described his usage of her as him riffing on Wonder Woman (Gillen also being the one who recommended using her to Ewing), a pilot turned space-cop, the one who’s defined in the very first issue as “the fast one,” and the alien last survivor of an extinct people who mostly hangs in the background but is actually the most powerful of all of them. And in the climax of their first volume they fight comics’ most prominent Darkseid ripoff in an issue that directly homages the New Gods’ most iconic fight with the JLA in Rock of Ages. It was absolutely in part Ewing doing the Justice League.

As for its legacy, it won’t be as a team; I don’t see Marvel signing off on their return anytime soon given how poorly I understand it sold, and honestly the team reestablished in #100 would I think themselves be far more likely to get a title of their own again. Other than its impact on Blue Marvel (expect him to show up wherever Ewing solidly plans his feet on the ground at Marvel), the biggest ramification is what it’s done to Marvel’s cosmology itself: not to spoil too much, but across this series Ewing defines time in the Marvel universe about as concretely as Morrison just defined the Multiverse over at DC, with a coherent explanation of how it works both on a cosmic scale of multiverses dying and reborn, and how it functions for individual characters in a way that redefines Marvel’s entire back catalog in relation to the present. I doubt any of it will play out right away, but sooner or later someone’s going to want to play on a Crisis scale again with these characters, and when that time comes it’s going to be pretty much impossible to disregard what Ewing did here.

Also, in terms of what legacy Ultimates leaves behind, this punch:

Gabriel Luna & Brett Dalton Q&ASunday at Starfury Ultimates 2 - Blackpool

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Photos by Me June 2017

That time Galactus was inspirational and vulnerable, Part 1