Ultimate Comics Divided We Fall, United We Stand

Ultimate Comics: X-Men (Collected Editions)

by Dr Brian Wood, Sam Humphries, Brian Michael Bendis

Washington lies in ruins. The president is dead. Sentinels rule the Southwest. But in America's darkest hour, its ultimate hero returns to lead its people back toward the light! Captain America answers his country's call to become its new president! But while Steve Rogers battles to reunite America, another leader embraces her destiny to defeat the Sentinels and save her own kind: Kitty Pryde! And with the nation crying out for heroes, Miles Morales is determined to prove he has what it takes to join the Ultimates!

COLLECTING: Ultimate Comics X-Men 13-18, Ultimate Comics Ultimates 13-18, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man 13-18

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, X Men, Graphic Novels Comics, Fantasy

408 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2013

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Ultimate Comics Ultimates: Divided We Fall, United We Stand the remaining Ultimates have no time to look at troubles overseas as America itself is under threat from itself with Washington gone and the country already splitting apart! Very much centred on Thor and Captain America character development, this is an OK Ultimates volume even with the way over the top, Second American Civil War! The art is fair to middling. The Ultimate version of HYDRA Is interesting. Overall not up to the standard of Mark Millar's earlier volumes but still a Three Star, 7 out of 12.

In Ultimate Comics: X-Men: Divided We Fall United We Stand Kitty and co. decide they can't just hide in New York when mutants are getting geno-cided in the newly formed South Western states area overseen by... the Nimrods! Before they can face the Nimrods and try and save their kin they have to travel through 1,000s of miles of a fractured America! Feels like a gap filler before Brian Wood really starts his run with his own plotting. The Nimrods look far more deadly than they turned out to be. A Three Star, 7 out of 12.

In only his third volume Miles Morales find himself in a fractured America in Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Divided We Fall United We Stand and as well as being worried he will be formally accused of killing the Prowler, as America is on a ledge, surely he should fight alongside the Ultimates? A true baptism of fire tethering on the edge of plausibility.. I mean a 13 year old boy partaking in war! As ever it's the characterisations that continue to place Ultimate Spidey, and now even the Miles version at the head of the Ultimate family. The like of Johan Jameson, Aunt May, Gwen, MJ, Ganke (yass!) are just so well constructed. 7.5 out of 12, a very strong Three Star read.

2022 read; 2017 read; 2013 read

[Sud666 · Rating 3 out of 5]

United We Stand collects Ultimates #13-18, Ultimate Spiderman #13-17 and Ultimate X-Men #13-18.

The First story about Captain America becoming President of the US was perhaps the weakest of the three storyarcs. It's not horrible but not great either. The whole thing is kind of confusing. The gist? There is a Civil War in the US. Different States are trying to secede and so Cap becomes President and then goes around punching people. Awesome. But um yeah-same old thing.

The Spiderman story arc was essentially him joining the Avengers. This was really good. I like Miles Morales and he is well done. Too bad more of this volume didn't include him.

The X-men arc was also not bad. It essentially has Kitty Pryde and has the X-Men fighting against Sentinels as they try to stay alive and fight off militas. It was nothing special.

Still overall the artwork was well done and it was entertaining enough. Would I rave about this? Nah. It's one of those you say "it's good" but you shrug. So since you can't see me shrug, I hope the brevity of my review showed my utter disinterest in wasting too much time about this banal story. But the three stars shows I was entertained at the same time.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I open the book, and the United States is broken up into a whole bunch of different territories fighting to secede.
??
No idea what happened. At all.
Texas is it's own country (like it's not already), and California and another state (Oregon, maybe?) are a new country as well. Most of the states have been taken over by various militia groups, and everything is in chaos.
Oh. And someone blew up DC, so the president and most of the country's leaders are dead.
Whoa. I'm guessing I really missed an important storyline somewhere...
Captain America comes back to save the day!
I had no idea he was gone...so (again) I guess I need to go back and find out what happened.

Alright. Even without fully understanding the backstory, I had a good time reading this. I love Steve Rodgers, and the first third of the book is dedicated to how he manages to swoop in and put things back together. Captain America has a low tolerance for bullshit politics, so it was fun to watch him trample all over the slimy leaders of these breakaway states.
They're holding elections for a new President, while Cap and the Avengers are battling various bad-guys. Unbelievably, he ends up getting elected the new Commander in Chief, due to a write-in campaign. Ok. That was a bit over-the-top, but this is the Ultimate line, after all. As far as I can tell, anything goes. I'm rolling with it, baby!

So Stryker was the old President.
Add this to the growing list of things labeled: Anne Didn't Know
So the second part of the story focused on Kitty Pryde and the mutants.
To me, this was the best story in the collection.
I'm not going to claim to be an expert on the X-Men, because there are so damn many of them that I've never been able to keep up. So maybe someone who has more experience with these guys will have a different opinion than me? For a dabbler (like me) though, this felt like a solid plotline with great characters.
Kitty decides to take a stand against the anti-mutant abuse that's happening all over the country. Mutants are being rounded up (or worse), and put into camps. And the bulk of this is happening in the southwest.
So Kitty killed Stryker?
Add that to the above mentioned list...
But evidently he downloaded his consciousness (or something) into a Sentinal. So...he's still hunting mutants. And Kitty.
I really liked this even without knowing what was going on half the time. I mean, that's got to count for something, right?

Last up is the new Spider-Man.
Miles jumps into the battle, and proves himself an invaluable member of the team. He's so cute! I just love that little kid!
Bowing to Sesana...and her awesome taste.
But does anybody know what's up with Giant Girl (or whatever her name is)?
Is she a good guy or a bad guy?
I. Am. So. Lost.
Again, great story, but I need to catch up on some of the older issues in this title.

I don't see many glowing reviews for this, but I liked it.
And when I picked it up, I really didn't think I would. It was just something I grabbed at the library because it looked newish.
I always thought the Ultimate line tended to be a crazy soap opera, and I could never really keep up with all of the madness. But this was fun, it held my attention, and it renewed my interest in this line.
I'm going back for more!

[Sesana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really only reading the X-Men issues. I'd read the Spider-Man issues separately, and I didn't care enough about the Ultimates to do anything but skim. More than a few issues ago, Kitty said this would be the story of how she became a mutant terrorist, and we're finally getting there. Largely, there isn't all that much going on here, but there are some great scenes, some great pieces of dialog, and the ending is gorgeously disheartening.

[Lost Planet Airman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good stuff in the Marvel Ultimate Universe timeline (which I am trying to finish up!)

Three collected story lines: First, the Ultimates battle on multiple fronts in a fractured America; mutants flee Nimrod and Sentinel robots intent on their eradication into the Southwest to free their imprisoned fellow mutants, and (Miles Morales) Spider-Man confronts his issues to the backdrop of a New York City under martial law.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seems even more relevant now than when it was first published. While Steve Gerber kind of predicted January 6 way back in 1974 (reprinted in The Man-Thing by Steve Gerber vol. 2 with a crazed man dressed as a Viking leading a group of conservatives in an attack on a public building, ths definitely feels closer to real-life in the Trump era and beyond than it did in 2012, with Hydra on the Ultimate Earth portrayed as crazed right-wing militia groups. From a technical standpoint, I'd have to say the editors made some mistakes in assembling this edition. First of all, they needed a better bookbinder because the two-page spreads are a mess, and you realize just how bad they are in the variant cover assemblage at the end, where Captain America's head is almost completely missing--the image pulled into the binding. Even worse than the technical construction of the book is the layout of the issues. All of the Ultimates issues are together, followed by the X-Men issues, followed by the Spider-Man issues. You jump in at the beginning and are kind of lost. I had already read the Spider-Man issues having read the first four volumes of Miles Morales and was intrigued enough by the story to want to read the entire crossover, and this layout certainly doesn't help.

This reading order list from comicbookherald.com was helpful:

Ultimate Comics X-Men #14
Ultimate Comics Ultimates #13 – #14
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #13 – #14
Ultimate Comics X-Men #15
Ultimate Comics Ultimates #15
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #15 – #16
Ultimate Comics Ultimates #16
Ultimate Comics X-Men #16 – #17
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #17
Ultimate Comics Ultimates #17 – #18
Ultimate Comics X-Men #18 – #18.1
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #18 (the back cover says this is not included, but it is, and the table of contents page is correct)
Ultimate Comics Ultimates #18.1

This volume does not include the 18.1 issues and does include Ultimate Comics X-Men #13, which is the best place to start even though some important plot points happened earlier, such as Kitty Pryde killing William Stryker. Until I reread the summary at the beginning of the issue, I thought I missed something because Kitty didn't appear to kill anyone during the fray in New York City, but it gets mentioned several times later that she did it, and it's not just an accusation--she admits it.

This reading order is also not perfectly chronological because Nick Fury clearly trains the young X-Men before he meets up with Captain America, but it still makes sense.

I would almost have given this five stars, but some elements are a letdown. First, rather than have Hydra simply be a mass organized hate group, they are ultimately revealed to be under the mental control of a superhuman. I'm being intentionally vague here too avoid spoiling too much detail even though this isn't near the end unless you read it in the order I suggest folllowing Comic Book Herald. This is not to say that there is no genuine mutant-hate in the story, but it does dump a lot off onto a scapegoat that kind of undoes the verisimilitude when large numbers of people are doing things they wouldn't normally do that we see from the news so many people would. Part of the reason people liked Marvel Comics so much is because the characters behaved like real people even though their powers had no basis in real science no matter how much The Official Handbook of the Universe was able to make them plausible. Perhaps if this were written more recently, the approach would have been different. I expect it sill would have involved a supervillain, but perhaps he wouldn't come off as influential as shown here. The mind control element also makes Jefferson Davis (Miles Morales's father--it's strange how Bendis never really got into how difficult it would likely be to be a black man with that name) seem worse that he kkilled a couple of Hydra agents. The mind control element was not referenced in any of the Spider-Man stories, which I mentioned having read previously, which leads me into my next narratve complaint. In the Ultimates issues, we see Cassie Lang put under the Hydra mind control, only to overcome it and save the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier she struck down under its influence in the space of a few pages, only to step away from the fray and get into a fight with Miles Morales, who under the influence of his mother doesn't want to hit girls, even one large enough to carry him like an action figure (in the mainstream Marvel Universe, she uses the code name Stature but is just called "Cassie" here--I kind of have to be careful with assumptions like this because Black Widow in these pages is Monica Chang, not Natasha Romanoff). I suppose she could have done this while Captain America was having his hallucination at the beginning of Ultimates #18, but this still stood out as a narrative problem.

Overall, despite the foregrounding I gave to these complaints, the stories interlock pretty well. Ultimates covers the public battle that would have largely been covered by the news, X-Men deals with people at the heart of the problem, fighting their own, less public war, finally fighting back against their oppressors once they have the right encouragement, and Spider-Man gives us the view of people on the sidelines trying to live regular lives. Miles is initially kept out by Captain America until he horns his way in, but, as previously mentioned, his parents are directly affected and forever changed (although Miles would lose hs mom in the next story arc), and Miles lives in a boarding school on weekdays, so we see them trying to carry on with a semblance of normality until they no longer can. I kind of wanted Kitty Pryde to go off more on Captain America at the end the way Gwen Stacy did, but perhaps it's not her style. Gwen, Mary Jane Watson, and May Parker befriend Miles Morales at this point, possibly trying to rectify the mistakes they made with Peter Parker, who is believed dead and buried. Over the course of the story, as noted on the cover, Steve Rogers, Captain America, gets elected President of the United Stares in a mass protest vote in a special election after designated survivor John Howard's succession to the presidency is declared illegitimate because he was only the acting Secretary of Energy. (The attack that led to this is not shown in these pages but presumably in earlier issues.) In his scene with Kitty, Cap recommends mutants expose themselves to a virus that obliterates their mutant gene and makes them normal. He basically acts like a useless politician and says he's not forcing it on anyone, just making it available. While I've never met a U.S. president, I've often felt that kind of uselessness in trying to deal with legislators at the city, state, and even federal levels (one can find me debating Rep. Carolyn Maloney on YouTube).

Despite my caveats, I highly recommend it. It's a good lens for looking at our current events.

[James DeSantis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically just three different stories but all the same result.

Ultimates focuses on Cap's view on Hydra invading and America asking him to step up. So much in fact he becomes the president of the United States. Ultimate Spider-Man deals with Miles scared out of his mind after what happened to his Uncle but also wanting to help people including Cap and the Ultimates. And last but not least is Kitty trying to become a central focus for the X-Men if you can even still call it that.

ultimates is the weakest story, with heavy exposition and news reports that take away from the overall message. Cap is written well enough, and the banter is decent, but the overall storyline drags on. X-Men feels the most disconnected but helps grow Kitty in interesting ways and the dialogue between the team is great, the action is okay. Miles is the best of the bunch, giving both great action and some really good character growth for the hero.

Overall a decent event, and one you can read by itself, but also the fact you must read each story after already finishing the entire first perspective story takes away the punch and surprise of the storyline.

A 3 out of 5.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimates. Humphries has improved since the previous volume, and thus this six issues of big-screen action-adventure doesn’t seem as ridiculous as his first few adventures. In fact, there’s a lot to be excited by. The downside is that there’s a sense of inevitability as the Ultimates reunify the country that makes us feel like there’s no alternative (and the sudden release of the Ultimates from jail seems like a rather abrupt reversal of the previous volume). The couple of surprises (the election & the appearance and fate of the big foe) aren’t enough to make it a great story. The artwork is a bit of a letdown too, running from poor to OK [6/10].

Ultimate X-Men. Wood faces the same problem that Humphries did: taking over for a superior writer who was in the middle of a plot. Fortunately, he’s a much better writer. We still lose plots wholesale (among them the SEAR plot, the Ororo in prison plot, and the dead people in heads plot), but he pays a *little* bit of attention to them, which hopefully means he’ll return to them. In the meantime the story of Kitty becoming the leader of the X rebellion is good, if a bit big picture at times [7/10].

Ultimate Spider-Man. This Spider-Man story isn't a very good Divided We Fall story. The first three issues are pure Spider-Man plot, and though they're up to Bendis' usual strengths, they have nothing to do with the nationwide problems. #16 integrates things well, but then #17-18 involve Miles in boring fights that don't advance anything: the good stuff actual happens at home. Fortunately, that all does result in a good Ultimate Spider-Man story. [7/10].

Overall, there’s some nice stuff here, but as a whole the big-picture story obscures a like of character moments and hurts the comics’ depth.

More generally, a flawed comic for its failed alignment with the individual series. It's missing Spider-Man #11-12, which were crucial to the UCSM plot. If you're buying the whole Ultimate universe, you'd actually be better off buying the individual Divided We Fall volumes of each comic, so you actually get everything.

[Nicx · Rating 5 out of 5]

The United States isn't so united anymore so Captain America stepped-up and did something about it. In return, the citizens of the United States elected him as the new president even though he wasn't even running for candidacy because after all, when your country is at war and the person currently leading the country doesn't seem to do much good, you'll suddenly feel lost. Until Steve Rogers, aka Captain America who's actually doing something about it gives hope to the citizens of America once again. So who wouldn't want him to be the president? At least for the time being.

Meanwhile, Kitty Pride aka Shadowcat from X-men leads a group of mutants to stand -up against the sentinels that are killing mutants which were created by William Stryker. With the help of Nick Fury, ex-director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Kitty and the group of mutant rebels successfully infiltrated the camp the holds up young mutants and together, they successfully defeated the sentinels.

And, there's a new spider-man in town. A thirteen-year old boy named Miles Morales who just started getting used being spidey and have joined the ultimates in protecting the country.

---
But, those are just some of the highlights of this volume. And to be honest, it was one of Marvel's best one yet. Of course I know that I'm not reading them in chronological order since I was caught a bit off guard that Peter Parker was dead and there was a new spider-man in town. Gwen Stacy is still alive and kicking and Wolverine had a son named Jimmy who's apparently have a thing with Kitty. But the storyline was pretty solid and a lot of interesting new characters as well as new arcs for old characters. Definitely a must read for any Marvel comic book fans out there.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first bit of Ultimates satire that actually aged gracefully. Well, second. Ultimates vs. Avengers was pretty good.
We have 3 stories from 3 comics here. You can try to read them in publication/chronological order (as I did), but I mostly would say don't bother. Ultimates and Spider-man intersect a lot, but X- men is pretty separate.

Ultimates tells the main story of the event; America is fractured and at war with itself, shield is still crazy and a militia group called Hydra is gaining power.

Ultimate Spider-man is basically the ground level version of that story. Miles is living in a New York that is increasingly becoming a police state. After arguing with Cap about his readiness, Cap drafts him and all the unaffiliated heroes into combat. (Side tangent: Did Bendis forget that Ben still had powers? This is the second time now that Sue has shown up, and Ben hasn't. Give me more Ben Grimm, Brian!)

Ultimate X-men is my favourite of the three. Seeing the escalation of anti-mutant hate in the south, Kitty, Bobby, Rogue, and Jimmy pretend to be refugees so they can make their way across war zones and far right anti- mutant militias to the southern United States where they can get to mobilize the disenfranchised mutant population.

This comic, and most post ultimatum ultimate, is taking advantage of the imprint in a way that they hadn't truly until now. We have a comic here that can veer in wildly different directions and have real long-lasting consequences. I'm sad that this, one of the most exciting periods of Ultimate, also marked its end.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Siege, but this follow-up is just plain awful all around. Can't believe that the new Spider-Man, who is just a kid after all, got mixed up in this crapfest (or that this volume basically reprints everything from Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Vol. 3--talk about double-dipping by Marvel!). Hopefully things can rebound from here, or else the Ultimate line should just be discontinued.

[Daniel Butcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

America's in shambles!

I really enjoyed the Mutant storyline the best.

[JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this review or all of my reviews on my site!

Things are … slightly more broken then I realized.

In the X-Men, we have Kitty Pride leading a very small band to war in the southwest. Things get hairy and they have to grow up fast…

In the Ultimates, Cap is back! And it’s up to him and some old friends to see what they can do to hold the country together. Both by force… and politically?

It’s certainly interesting to see politics by force … from the good guys. Not sure there are really any good options though.

And Spider-Man. Miles Morales. He’s so young. But apparently he’s going to do this one way or the other. So might as well have him on the team.

It’s a lot. And I’m sure we’re missing a bunch going on just outside of these stories. But I’m really enjoying it for the time being. Quite a ride.

It’s also interesting that we get really nothing about Xorn/Zorn or the People, given how large a shadow they’ve cast over the rest of the series thus far, but it’s the local(ish) fallout from that, so it makes enough sense. I do appreciate the slight reduction in scope for a moment.

Onward!

[Adam Stone · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a story about a major event that has fractured The US into several territories, there was a lot of treading water until the next storyarcs.

I just can't get into the Ultimates or X-Men stories from this era. They're so bland. They keep building up the idea of Kitty Pryde as a terrorist but she hasn't done anything interesting since she stood up to the FBI and ran away from school way back in Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Vol. 2: Chameleons. Spencer hasn't actually done anything during his run except give her a new name and outfit.

I didn't read the Ultimate Spider-Man storyarc this time, as I was pretty bored of the overall story, but I think I remember enjoying it when I read it a few years ago.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super cool concept--I was actually drawn in by the Ultimate Spider-Man (Miles) issues, which I read as part of a Miles Morales binge. I really enjoyed the Ultimates portion of the crossover, but had some issues with the X-Men part. Story-wise it's fine, but some of the dialogue seems stilted and tropey...and it's really a stretch to think of a 17 year old as capable of doing what she does as Kitty is in these issues. Well, not so much what she does, but how she talks about it. She is not written like a teenager at all. All of which is strange, because I hold Brian Wood's writing in high regard. I'm currently working through the rest of his run on Ultimate Comics X-Men and it's similarly puzzling with regard to the sub-par (sorry, but it's honestly how I feel) writing. I still gave the volume 4 stars overall because the concept and the other two crossover titles were excellent.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

The biggest Ultimate Universe event is huge in scope but had many pitfalls. First, I liked that these big events affect the entire line of books but editorially there were some hiccups. I think it might have been better to have these events been the theme but have the books less connected. The Spider-Man centered plotline was clearly the best and that's due to Bran Michael Bendis. He handles teenage drama better than anyone. Miles Morales is a treat. The Ultimates were a letdown. The X-Men were good but it still feels like a Ultimate Spider-Man spinoff with these choices in characters. Overall, a good read but could have been streamlined.

[Trevor Dailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great event that builds upon Hickman's work on Ultimates. A fun read.

[Gen Giggles · Rating 2 out of 5]

The format of these compilations from multiple lines sucks.

[Chris W · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Keegan Schueler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of messy and all over the place but it has some interesting stuff for the Ultimate universe to deal with.

[Luana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, Ultimate Marvel!

Following an idle LEGAL PURCHASE of a big collection of Ultimate Marvel books somewhere around 2004, my immature ass was smitten with these BOLD and DARING new reinterpretations of 1960s comic book characters, free of decades of continuity, and perfect for that legendary creature called "a new fan" to jump into after mayhaps seeing a Marvel movie and being interested where these Hugh Jackmen and Tobey Maguires came from originally.

I kept following the line through its ups and (many) downs until about 2011, until keeping up with monthlies became too much of a hassle. In 2015, Marvel made its biggest shake-up to the comics in ages, bringing everything more in line not with any Bryan Singer or Sam Raimi movies, but with their own in-house produced cinematic universe. One of these big changes was to be the destruction/cancellation of the Ultimate line.

Hell, I thought, with a clear end-point in sight, I might as well give the remainder of the books a shot! So here we are, having read "Ultimate Comics: Divided We Fall, United We Stand", a collection of the Spider-Man, X-Men and Ultimates story arcs that were wrapped up in that event. America is being torn apart after an attack (I can't remember who or why... maybe some sort of mutant North Korea? It's been years, man!) destroyed Washington and killed most of the nation's leaders, leaving some Iowa rando in charge. States are seceding, anti-mutant sentiment is at peak levels, and an army of Sentinel robots led by the consciousness of bigot William Stryker occupy the Southwestern regions.

The book starts off with the X-Men (or what's left of them) led by Kitty Pryde taking the fight to the Southwest, freeing mutants from the Sentinel death camps and building an army. They are aided in this by a disgraced (for what? I dunno -- maybe this wasn't the BEST pick-up point) Nick Fury who was hiding in some old Arizona military tunnels. This arc is pretty good, as it pretty much cuts to the core of what the X-Men oughta be about, and there's a lot of boots on the ground time with refugees and poor oppressed mutants. It's also pretty good at throwing up doubts on whether Kitty will end up more of a Xavier or Magneto type figure.

Next up is an arc of the hilariously/unfortunately titled Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates, where we learn about who exactly is behind all this strife: Thor's mischief son Modi, holding a grudge against his father after he trapped him in the World Tree along with all the rest of Asgard for... reasons (again, it's been a while). The art in this arc is quite iffy, and definitely a major step down from Bryan Hitch in the Ultimates' first volume back in '02. While the surprise appearance/introduction of Hydra is handled well, the re-imagining of the terrorist organization as simply an American anti-government militia is rather uninspired, even if they do have evil Asgardian backing. Why would a bunch of hicks adopt that whole thematic octopus thing? If nothing else, reacquainting myself with Ultimate Captain America really made me appreciate Chris Evans' portrayals in Marvel's movies. Despite being a perfect human specimen on the payroll of the most powerful government (?) on the planet, Evans still makes you believe his Steve Rogers is "the little guy". Not so here, where he's almost the platonic ideal of The Man. Note that I don't necessarily dislike this or think it's an invalid alternate portrayal, but it is an easy one.

Miles Morales, the Latin-African-American Spider-Man (and only remnant of the Ultimate U to hav survived the Secret Wars shake-up editorially speaking), probably has the best looking and written story out of the three presented here, though that probably depends on how high your tolerance for Brian Michael Bendis' "naturalistic" dialogue is. Unsurprisingly, this also had the least head-scratching moments in terms of prerequisite knowledge of events that happened before this story. Coincidence? Je ne think not!

Follow along friends, as the Ultimate Universe and I march merrily towards oblivion! Next up? Ultimate Iron Man!

[J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I appreciate the willingness to leave aside the standard 616 tropes, and, since I'm reading this early in 2021 immediately after a group of insurgents stormed the capital, it certainly seems relevant, it just really isn't very interesting, and I was having to constantly make myself keep reading.

[Blake Bouza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so I think The Ultimates is literally the best cinematic-style comicbook series in the medium. I got every thrill out of reading this as I would watching it on the big screen.

The X-Men plot was kind of a throwaway. Kitty and her story seemed so disjointed from everything else going on in the country. Plus, I haven't really cared for this current lineup of Ultimate X-Men. The characters have appeared kind of weak.

Spider-Man continues to be fresh. Miles Morales, though incredibly new at the job in-universe and on the page, is starting to make the role his own. While he's been involved with a lot of the things Peter would have been involved in, Miles definitely does his own thing. His wide-eyed wonder at the battles he's thrown in lets us see the events unfolding in this story through his eyes, the eyes of a citizen and relatively normal person, as opposed to the government/SHIELD mentality we see with The Ultimates.

All in all, a good story. Loving how cohesive the writers are making the stories in this new "Ultimate Comics" line.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the art immensely, and the main story of Cap taking on all comers to reunite the USA was good. There are some great smack downs and some touching moments. This graphic novel puts together some random X-Men characters in an arc to fill pages I guess. It shows how Nick Fury fit in. The story was good, but not really worthy of joining this compilation. It felt like there wasn't enough to the main story? It also includes Miles Morales' Spidey, which works since he joins the Ultimates team and helps win the war. Some of the story parts should have been cut and spliced to make it seamless. The son of Thor storyline was cool, but again, really should have been much bigger. It was too quick and easy. He's the last Asgardian for crying out loud, with an ultimate weapon! Overall, an enjoyable read that could have been put together better.

[N!V3K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although it had a very interesting plot, I think they could've just divided the event into two separate events: one for the X-Men's war against Stryker and one for Spider-Man and the Ultimates trying to keep America from falling apart after the destruction of Washington by Reed Richards. Of course I found the X-Men story line way more interesting than the Ultimates', but I still wanted more. I wanted to know more about the liberation of the other mutant camps and what the hell happened after Storm rebelled, but I guess I'm gonna have to just take it as it is and move along.

But still I found myself enjoying both conclusions.

Not as good as Doomsday, but I'm sure the Ultimate people did their best.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This hefty Ultimate Comics collection features 6 issues each of UC Ultimates, X-Men & Spider-Man, all grappling with a destroyed and divided America, and it's a very uneven book. The Ultimates stuff is mostly fighting, but I did enjoy the Thor subplot and the Cap as President idea. The X-Men issues were somewhat bland and uninteresting with too many sketchy characters I didn't know. But the real highlight for me was the Spider-Man story. I had no idea how charming and engaging Miles Morales was. This bit was massive fun and extremely entertaining, with some very funny moments and great characterization. The only drawback was that the story began midstream and took awhile for me to get up to speed. The Spider-Man stuff elevated this collection by an extra star.

[John (JP) · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this novel we enter a world where America is a divided nation. Divided between those who want mutants to be treated as full American citizens and those who think mutants should be exterminated or exiled. Mutant hunting Sentinels roam the land . There is a civil war going. Washington has been destroyed by forces unknown, Asgard is no more, and only Thor lives. Into this chaos Steve Rogers aka Captain America is elected President. Can one super hero inspire the remnants of SHEILD, and the Avengers to reunite a shattered country? Read and find out.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was quite good! A brief warning, this is the a compilation of stories and it is in the middle. The endings are abrupt at best and there's a bit of a curve when starting, although it's not that bad. However, this is still a greatly enjoyable compilation. The neat thing is that the three different story lines take place all around the same time. You can use the maps at the beginning of each sub-section to figure out the timing.

[Willow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good crossover. I like that things have lasting consequences in the Ultimate Universe. Ultimate Cap is still a douchebag, but now he's president douchebag? I guess? Still, really liked the story.

That said, I still have problems with the overall assumption that America as it currently exists is a good thing... but, hey, that's what comes with reading books about a government sponsored superhero team.

[Alexandria · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was really interesting to see the comic roots of the upcoming movie, but a lot of the conflict didn't make sense without a wider sense of context. Even with that drawback, the stories were engaging and often heartbreaking. I strongly recommend this volume to every Marvel fan, preferably before they see the movie!