Ultimate Origins s/c back

"I don't think we're going to get our day in court."

Oh, the revelations!

Written and drawn with absolute authority, this is the first Ultimate book in a very long time to live up to the line's original promise as a tightly structured, disciplined and politically engaged package with the ability to stun you. Almost everything you will have taken for granted is savagely twisted here as we're reminded exactly what man is capable of doing to man in the name of science. You know that Wolverine AKA Logan AKA James Howlett was old enough to fight as a Canadian soldier in the Second World War, right? Bet you didn't know Nick Fury was as well, or that the pair of them were legitimately arrested as looters in the Allied invasion of Sicily. Nor can you conceive of what the Allied military did to them next. Project Rebirth, Project X...? You know don't know the half of it. As for Project Rebirth II, when Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, Hank Pym, Dr. Franklin Richards and Richard Parker first attempted under Colonel Nick Fury's command to recreate a super-soldier similar to Captain America, well, the words spoken by a fugitive Banner to Spider-Man as far back as ULTIMATE MARVEL TEAM-UP which kick off this book... they're going to have a much nastier bite by the time you've finished this, and help explain the father/son connection felt by Peter Parker towards Fury:

"All of this -- it's all connected. You - me - They don't want you to figure it out. They don't want you to know."

Split between the past and the present, the Fantastic Four are called to Project Pegagus where SHIELD keeps all the weird shit they've discovered over the years and can neither identify nor explain. There an ancient stone totem-like stucture has either been turned on or turned itself on. And it's not the only one. All over the planet and back across the last century it has been watching, observing the critical moments which are about to converge in an unholy Armageddon. And if you want your first clues as to the Ultimate universe post-ULTIMATUM, they're here.

A nasty number whose scope I've only hinted at, Guice never fails to convey the horror and heartbreak and unendurable physical pain on a wide-screen scale, his facial expressions every bit as subtle as his figure work is impressive. He's right up there with Steve Epting. They should have let him do the original comicbook covers. And they should never have left Nick Fury in that other dimension. Oh, the shit that man's seen:

"Burn it. Everything and everyone."
"You sure?"
"If the world ever finds out what went on in this place... If mutants ever find out... If the world ever finds out that *** ******** *******... The entire Earth will burn."

Never, ever saw that coming.

Next: the entire Earth drowns.