DOUGLAS: On to Ultimate Avengers 3 #1. Wait, so this is the vampire story that Mark Millar was having a hissyfit over the possibility of the new X-Men series duplicating?
Getting Steve Dillon to draw a story involving jerky dumbass fashionista vampires cannot help but recall Les Enfants du Sang from Preacher–the last word on pretentious vampires, you know? Except I suspect Dillon spent a lot more time and effort on Preacher; this looks like an “okay, I’ve drawn some close-ups of the characters’ faces, am I done now?” job. It’s also interesting to see Millar’s version of Blade a week after the non-Ultimate version turned up in Paul Cornell and Elena Casagrande’s entertaining little Spitfire one-shot–with a much more complicated (and much more interesting) relationship to the idea of hunting vampires.
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MIKE: Speaking of Dillon’s work, I couldn’t count how many panels had zero background art to speak of. Those first few pages of Blade fighting vampires looked like they took place in the staging area of the Matrix.
At the end of that sequence, though, we got a two-panel glance at what looked like an old school Mark I Iron Man armor. The person inside was just watching the fight, presumably. It’s never revisited or explained in any way. Dillon’s sparse style just might be perfect for that particular set of armor, whereas I’m sort of dreading what he’s going to do with the new War Machine armor.
DOUGLAS: Mostly, though, this issue’s about setting up the new Ultimate Daredevil. The Ultimate line has the advantage that creators get to break the toys if they want to, and the disadvantage that other creators might want to use the toys again later. And so Millar gives us his “what if Kick-Ass were Daredevil?” scenario, trying to construct a new version of the character who got killed off-panel a year and a half ago for no particular reason. This read like a dashed-off, phoned-in comic; relaunching it with a new number for every storyline makes it seem even more like a direct-to-video tie-in. (And, really, the only series I think that works for is Marvel Zombies, where being off-brand is kind of the point.)
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MIKE: Can we even call him the new Daredevil? His origin story seems precisely the same. I can only assume that this new kid’s father is a washed-up prizefighter. This all smacks of the Spider-Man totem animal story line that I groaned at. There must always be a blind acrobat crime fighter in New York City? Is that the lesson here?
Mark Millar may be right about X-Men. A team of Avengers squares off or teams up with Blade because vampires are targeting super humans? They sound pretty similar to me. If anything I would bet that Millar is angry that he can’t resurrect Dracula because Victor Gischler is doing that over in X-Men.
Oh, and that final splash page of Cap clenching his fist and proclaiming that Nick Fury puts teams of bad-asses together, oof. That was an eye-roller, and I had steeled myself for some Millar-isms.
GRAEME: This issue read, to me, like it was some meta-parody of Millar’s tics and cliches; it’s as if he hadn’t had time to write it himself, but gave it to someone and said “Make it sound like me.” From the unconvincing “cool” of Blade – Hey, those vampire chicks fucked him so he’d be too tired to fight, but HE’S NOT TIRED AT ALL AFTER FUCKING THREE WOMEN OMG HE’S SUCH A MAN – to the narration of the “new” teenage Daredevil – and Mike’s right, he’s EXACTLY THE SAME as the first Daredevil, to the point where it’s just surreal, and cheapens not only this character (who was, it seems, created solely to be turned into a vampire) but also the original – to the scene of the Ultimates at the end, it’s… what’s the stage beyond “Millar By Numbers”? It’s almost comically bad and overfamiliar.
Agreed about Dillon’s art, as well; I don’t know if he was rushed (he only does pencils here, which suggests that he was), or bored, but he’s done so much better almost everywhere else.
I actually bought the second issue of the new X-Men series yesterday as well, and as bad as it is – and it is pretty bad – it’s way above Ultimate Avengers 3 #1 in terms of execution.
MIKE: Agreed on execution, but reviving Dracula? This is what Cyclops is going with? It’s like a Treehouse of Horrors episode. When Wolverine says that sometimes a Hail Mary play is the only play, I don’t know if he’s ever been more out of character. (End rant.)