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Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates (Collected Editions)
Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates: Disassembled
The search for the Infinity Gems brings disaster to the Triskelion's doorstep! Is this the end of the Ultimates? A new dark force has taken the reins of the world.
Collecting: Ultimate Comics: Ultimates 25-30
Collecting: Ultimate Comics: Ultimates 25-30
136 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 2013
4 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Joshua Hale Fialkov
445 books140 followersJoshua Hale Fialkov is the creator (or co-creator, depending) of graphic novels, including the Harvey Nominated Elk’s Run, the Harvey and Eisner nominated Tumor, Punks the Comic, and the Harvey Nominated Echoes.
He has written Alibi and Cyblade for Top Cow, Superman/Batman for DC Comics, Rampaging Wolverine for Marvel, and Friday the 13th for Wildstorm. He’s writing the DC relaunch of I,Vampire, as well as debuting the new Marvel character The Monkey King. This fall sees the launch of The Last of the Greats from Image Comics with artist Brent Peeples.
He also served as a writer on the Emmy Award Nominated animated film Afro Samurai: Resurrection, and as Executive Producer of the cult hit LG15: The Resistance web series.
Elk’s Run, Tumor, and Alibi are all currently in development as feature films. He has written comics for companies including Marvel, Wildstorm, IDW, Dark Horse, Image, Tor Books, Seven Seas Entertainment, Del Rey, Random House, Dabel Brothers Productions, and St. Martin’s Press. He has done video game work for THQ, Midway Entertainment, and Gore Verbinski’s Blind Wink Productions. He also wrote a Sci-Fi Channel movie starring Isabella Rossellini and Judd Nelson. Unfortunately, at no point in the film does Judd Nelson punch the sky and freeze frame. Joshua grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, went to college in Boston, where he got a BFA in writing and directing for the stage and screen, and then worked in the New England film industry, until finally deciding to move to Los Angeles to do it properly. He lives with his wife, Christina, daughter, Gable, and their cats, Smokey and the Bandit.
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/joshfialkov
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/joshuahalefia...
Photograph by Heidi Ryder Photography
He has written Alibi and Cyblade for Top Cow, Superman/Batman for DC Comics, Rampaging Wolverine for Marvel, and Friday the 13th for Wildstorm. He’s writing the DC relaunch of I,Vampire, as well as debuting the new Marvel character The Monkey King. This fall sees the launch of The Last of the Greats from Image Comics with artist Brent Peeples.
He also served as a writer on the Emmy Award Nominated animated film Afro Samurai: Resurrection, and as Executive Producer of the cult hit LG15: The Resistance web series.
Elk’s Run, Tumor, and Alibi are all currently in development as feature films. He has written comics for companies including Marvel, Wildstorm, IDW, Dark Horse, Image, Tor Books, Seven Seas Entertainment, Del Rey, Random House, Dabel Brothers Productions, and St. Martin’s Press. He has done video game work for THQ, Midway Entertainment, and Gore Verbinski’s Blind Wink Productions. He also wrote a Sci-Fi Channel movie starring Isabella Rossellini and Judd Nelson. Unfortunately, at no point in the film does Judd Nelson punch the sky and freeze frame. Joshua grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, went to college in Boston, where he got a BFA in writing and directing for the stage and screen, and then worked in the New England film industry, until finally deciding to move to Los Angeles to do it properly. He lives with his wife, Christina, daughter, Gable, and their cats, Smokey and the Bandit.
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/joshfialkov
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/joshuahalefia...
Photograph by Heidi Ryder Photography
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
October 19, 2022
LIke a tsunami, they came, they saw, they disassembled the Ultimates... the Dark Ultimates! Actually a great piece of storytelling ruined by abysmally poor and confusing art by Carmine Di Giandomenico. A must-read for Ultimates lore, a strong Three-Star, 7.5 out of 12 even though the concept is a complete rip-off of Brian Michael Bendis's Avengers: Disassembled!
2022 read; 2017 read; 2013 read
2022 read; 2017 read; 2013 read
May 24, 2019
Terrible day, unable to put this down... Happy in that it is a wrap on most of the Ultimates adventures. Sad, that it is a bit shark-jumpery.
November 6, 2013
Thankfully, this book wasn't by Humphries at all. Instead Fialkov arrives to return Ultimates to his past heights. His writing isn't quite the same as Millar. There isn't the same slightly vacuous big-screen experience, but Fialkov gets the big adventure right, and he also does a marvelous job of bringing together a lot of threads and characters from the past of the Ultimate adventure.
I hope to be reading a lot more from him based on this effort.
I hope to be reading a lot more from him based on this effort.
April 26, 2020
I hated this. The Ultimates never could find their place, almost no matter who was at the helm, compared to the Ultimate Spider-Man. Here, a dozen ideas were thrown at a wall. None stuck. The art was sketchy and characters were unrecognizable and downright ugly. Overall, an enormous miss.
August 17, 2023
It's really dumb, but even that's an improvement over boring. I think there's actually a basically good story here but the awful pacing, mediocre art, and messy characterization all prevent it from being what it could have been.
October 22, 2015
This is fun, with lots of unexpected twists!
(hope i didn't give nuthin' away there...)
(hope i didn't give nuthin' away there...)
May 11, 2019
The Ultimates line is dark, violent, and generally more twisted and brutal than the other lines from Marvel. I strongly dislike most of the ones I have read. This one, however, I greatly enjoyed. It helps to know a lot about these characters and have read a little before this volume, but is not entirely necessary.
Reading from the ‘what to read after Endgame’ list. People who don’t read comics at all the picked this up because of Endgame might be disappointed. There isn’t a lot that coincides with the MCU.
Reading from the ‘what to read after Endgame’ list. People who don’t read comics at all the picked this up because of Endgame might be disappointed. There isn’t a lot that coincides with the MCU.
October 15, 2017
I enjoyed the gauntlet and gems showing up, but they didn’t seem powerful enough? Tony Stark has kinda become a god of sorts and while Reed doesn’t want to kill Sue and Ben because he loves them, he should be able to stop them better.
Also Kang is revealed to be []!! But how did she get those time travel powers? They don’t explain it. Boo.
Also Kang is revealed to be []!! But how did she get those time travel powers? They don’t explain it. Boo.
February 26, 2025
The Maker really becomes something of a Saturday morning cartoon villain here, working with three other villains and doing dumb villain stuff. Seems off compared to his characterization when hickman was writing him. These things happen though! There was some pretty gross stretchy Reed body horror stuff and a cool reveal about Tony’s tumor. I’ve read way worse comics.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 13, 2022
A pretty satisfactory conclusion(?) to the Ultimates run. I loved how creepy and twisted some things got and I was in such a good mood from how cool things were that I was willing to look past some of the convenient writing.
May 20, 2019
The Ultimates faces a worldwide crisis when Reed and Hulk is freed by Kang and the last of the infinity stones surfaces.
March 14, 2022
Excellent arc. A real return to form.
June 12, 2014
Though I have been a reader of comic books since the 1980s, my enjoyment of them in the past few years has been infrequent. While I miss out on a lot because of this, the silver lining is that when I DO pick up a comic book or a graphic novel it has the ability to be a lot more surprising to me. This helps to explain why I enjoyed the collection as much as I did, as I was experienced Reed Richards the megalomaniacal villain for the first time. It's quite a logical development for a character who has often been high-handed and manipulative even in the regular FF run, and that he sees himself as being so for altruistic reasons only highlights the costs of his actions.
Of course, this is an Ultimates title, and not an FF one; Reed even isn't the main villain (that would be the Ultimates version of Kang, which as with many of the best Ultimates characters is depicted with a twist). Joshua Fialkov starts things out abruptly, as events go from calm to crisis in just the first three pages. Once the pace is set Fialkov doesn't let up, keeping events going at a rapid pace). What drives events isn't really the plot (which is ill-defined even by the end) but an entertaining intellectual pissing contest between Reed Richards and Tony Stark, which is just the sort of thing that two arrogantly brilliant adversaries would obsess over (the more noble depiction of Richards in the regular FF series is what prevents such exchanges taking place there between him and the oddly insecure Doctor Doom). The verbal and intellectual sparring between the two makes for a highly entertaining conflict, one that I hope to see again the next time I pick up future collections in the series.
Of course, this is an Ultimates title, and not an FF one; Reed even isn't the main villain (that would be the Ultimates version of Kang, which as with many of the best Ultimates characters is depicted with a twist). Joshua Fialkov starts things out abruptly, as events go from calm to crisis in just the first three pages. Once the pace is set Fialkov doesn't let up, keeping events going at a rapid pace). What drives events isn't really the plot (which is ill-defined even by the end) but an entertaining intellectual pissing contest between Reed Richards and Tony Stark, which is just the sort of thing that two arrogantly brilliant adversaries would obsess over (the more noble depiction of Richards in the regular FF series is what prevents such exchanges taking place there between him and the oddly insecure Doctor Doom). The verbal and intellectual sparring between the two makes for a highly entertaining conflict, one that I hope to see again the next time I pick up future collections in the series.
September 30, 2025
Read this review or all of my reviews on my site!
Who would be the absolute worst person in the Ultimate Universe to get the Infinity Stones?
Worse than that.
Now… both at once.
It’s a pretty crazy volume with some interesting twists and some big action pieces.
But really, it’s just the beginning of the end. Cataclysm is coming.
Onward!
Notes. Spoilers.
Awesome.
I mean. Terrible. This Hulk isn’t even close to being a Hero. He just straight up are people in his introductory story line.
But a dark Hulk with the stones v got potential.
And then to turn it up another notch?
Reed also makes a better villain I think.
Huh. That’s an interesting point.
How do you define life to include what he’s become?
That’s a neat trick. Poor Stark. And Anthony. Whatever he was/is.
And now Stark is only the armor. That’s actually a fascinating concept. We’ll see how long it sticks.
May 14, 2016
Aaah, here's those bellicose Ultimates I remember! I must say I laughed out loud at Monica Chang yelling at Hulk, "You've killed 500 people!! Again! You happy now??!" Pre-MAN OF STEEL book, this one!
Kudos to the artist for making Reed Richards legit gross and fully realizing the stretchy abilities of his body in a way I'd personally never seen (such as splitting half his face to go check a monitor while the other half talks to Tony Stark). Another cool thing they did was make the chest lights on Reed's Herbietron robots light up in such a way that they formed an Ultron face in the dark. Nifty!
Book marks the welcome return of Ben Grimm, too, and thankfully still hooked up with Sue (who is a full-fledged Ultimate now? I like!) in non-related but equally fulfilling careers. Take that Reed, you dumb geek wish fulfillment bunghole! If there's anything I like about the Ultimate U besides Miles Morales, it's the out-and-out vilification of toxic nerd Reed Richards, Sue's independence and the full-on statement that sometimes the jock can be the better person.
Kudos to the artist for making Reed Richards legit gross and fully realizing the stretchy abilities of his body in a way I'd personally never seen (such as splitting half his face to go check a monitor while the other half talks to Tony Stark). Another cool thing they did was make the chest lights on Reed's Herbietron robots light up in such a way that they formed an Ultron face in the dark. Nifty!
Book marks the welcome return of Ben Grimm, too, and thankfully still hooked up with Sue (who is a full-fledged Ultimate now? I like!) in non-related but equally fulfilling careers. Take that Reed, you dumb geek wish fulfillment bunghole! If there's anything I like about the Ultimate U besides Miles Morales, it's the out-and-out vilification of toxic nerd Reed Richards, Sue's independence and the full-on statement that sometimes the jock can be the better person.
December 15, 2015
I've read better Ultimate stories: the role and powers of the Infinity Gems are not so clear (there are 8 gems, don't know why and don't know their powers - must admit, I didn't read the previous issue), Tony Stark's speaking brain tumor is becoming ridiculous (but explains things from previous issues) but at some point the story becomes a good introduction to the main Cataclysm event. So I enjoyed reading it.
November 25, 2013
While reading this I bounced back and forth between feeling like the old, good ultimate universe was back and hating the utter shit it had become. By the end I wasn't really sure which I walked away with, I guess a little bit of of both. above all I realize the Ultimate universe is coming to an end and I'm kind of glad, and I at least it has a better end than Ultimatum was.
January 9, 2015
Pretty good read, it made me glad I kept up with the Ultimate Universe again. I especially enjoyed the plot twist on Kang's identity, and on the matter of Iron Man's "tumor". I felt bad for seeing Anthony's death, but I saw that coming. I can't wait until I read the continuation of this setup, Cataclysm: The Ultimates's Last Stand.
August 3, 2015
What's this? Another Ultimates book where I sympathise with and root for the bad guys?!? Go figure!!!
That said, Bad Guy Reed Richards is probably the best thing ever and I'm really sad the Ultimate Universe ended, because Ultimate Reed is amazing and I want to read more of his amazing schemes to save the world despite the idiocy of America and the Ultimates.
That said, Bad Guy Reed Richards is probably the best thing ever and I'm really sad the Ultimate Universe ended, because Ultimate Reed is amazing and I want to read more of his amazing schemes to save the world despite the idiocy of America and the Ultimates.
February 3, 2014
Honestly, I feel like this is a Ultimate rerun...it feels like every major Ultimate Storyline is a major crossover event and this arc is a repeat of past arcs.
Maybe they should have let Galactus eat this universe!
Maybe they should have let Galactus eat this universe!
June 24, 2014
No es el Ultimates de Millar, pero Fiakov se asegura de darle a este volumen una buena dosis de seriedad y trama oscura al casi-final del universo Ultimate que seguirá unos cuantos números mas antes del Cataclismo. Una lectura bastante entretenida.
September 13, 2014
Lovely art and not a confusing story even though it is obviously somewhere in the middle of some other version of the Ultimates than the graphic novels I've read previously. I'll spare you my rant on American graphic novels lack of clear order.
April 30, 2015
Ahora sí... ¿Qué vendrá antes? ¿El divorcio de los Ultimates o el fin de su universo? ¿A quién le quedan mejor las joyas del infinito, a Reed desquemado o a Hulk grisoso? ¡Un tepeterremebundo tomo que enlaza con Cataclismo!
January 11, 2016
It seems like the Ultimate Universe swirled around the same drain a lot. I feel like I've seen this story a bunch of times even though I didn't read all the Ultimate stuff.
And that this was a prelude to Cataclysm doesn't do much for except make Cataclysm more confusing.
And that this was a prelude to Cataclysm doesn't do much for except make Cataclysm more confusing.
December 20, 2013
oh please make it stop.
October 27, 2014
The Ultimates give their best showing since Ultimates 2 by Mark Millar. The title's been a hot mess since the unforgivable Ultimates 3 by Loeb but this collection gives us at bit better attempt.
March 2, 2015
Infinity Gems. Fun. Everyone always likes Infinity Gems. Also Reed Richards is legitimately terrifying.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews