Ultimatum #3 (OF 5)

It has been awhile since I have written a review. I may have a comment here or there about a book, but usually it takes something either truly wonderful or absolutely abysmal to motivate me to write an actual review. Ultimatum #3 was the latter.

Whether it is in comics, books, television or movies, there are usually only three reasons to kill a character. Either to evoke a reaction in another character, to have the deceased character make amends for some past wrong, or because you just ran out of ideas. Ultimatum #3 was, again, full of the latter.

Beast, Nightcrawler, Dazzler, Blob, Wasp (carry over from #2) Thor, Hank Pym, Emma Frost, Sunspot and all of the other students Emma had at her school

All of those characters were killed.

An argument can be made for a few of them for story reasons. Wasp will become Jocasta and that's feasible. Blob was killed by Hank to avenge Wasp and that's understandable. But biting his head off? I could have seen crazy ass Hawkeye doing something like that, but Hank? Maybe you could eventually convince me grief made him do it, but my final acceptance of that fact would probably have to involve some "enhanced interrogation techniques."

And then he kills himself? Self-centered Hank? Instead of hanging around and fixing his wife into Jocasta he trusts Tony Stark to do it for him? Nevermind, just get the board and water hose ready.

It seems Loeb, and Marvel editorial, feel none of these characters could contribute anymore to the Ultimate universe alive. Killing off a few people is expected in a series like this and I welcome it. But deaths need a reason. Angel and Hank seemed to be the only ones even mildly affected by all of the death around them.

This is not one of those "they killed my favorite character" rants. They could have lined up every ultimate character and put a bullet in their brain for all I care as long as it served a purpose.

Ultimatum seems to only be around to kill off characters and change the status quo of the universe because everyone except for Bendis ran out of ideas on their already existing ultimate series. They are doing the etch-a-sketch end of the world scenario and shaking everything up just because they didn't like the way the houses window looked.

I am not blaming Jeph Loeb for this shoddy series either. While he is certainly the hand actually making it all happen, he is only one part of the body. The brain trust that decided this was the best course of action is going above and beyond creating a new jumping on point or status quo. Instead of canceling the ultimate series in their own right they have come up with this half assed excuse for a mini to wipe the slate clean.

They might as well have had Wanda say "No more Ultimates." At least that would have only been one issue. Instead we get a five issue mini that is taking as long as an eight or nine issue event.