Ultimate Origins

Ultimate Origins #1-5

by Brian Michael Bendis, Jackson Guice (dibujo), Julián M. Clemente (introducción)

Contiene Ultimate Origins 1-5.
¡La conspiración detrás del Universo Ultimate sale a la luz! La primera vez que se encontraron, Bruce Banner dijo a Spiderman que “todo está conectado”. Ahora, ha llegado el momento de descubrir los secretos que algunos hombres han protegido a costa de sus propias vidas. Desde los oscuros días de la Segunda Guerra Mundial hasta el presente, viajamos a través de la historia para conocer la verdad detrás de héroes como el Capitán América, Nick Furia y Lobezno… ¡Tienen en común mucho más de lo que pensabas! Además, El Vigilante entra en escena para marcar el incierto futuro que aguarda a la vuelta de la esquina… ¡Ultimatum cada vez está más cerca!

Autores: Brian Michael Bendis y Butch Guice

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book, Fiction

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 21, 2009

About the author

A comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics. For over eight years Bendis’s books have consistently sat in the top five best sellers on the nationwide comic and graphic novel sales charts.

Though he started as a writer and artist of independent noir fiction series, he shot to stardom as a writer of Marvel Comics' superhero books, particularly Ultimate Spider-Man.

Bendis first entered the comic world with the "Jinx" line of crime comics in 1995. This line has spawned the graphic novels Goldfish, Fire, Jinx, Torso (with Marc Andreyko), and Total Sell Out. Bendis is writing the film version of Jinx for Universal Pictures with Oscar-winner Charlize Theron attached to star and produce.

Bendis’s other projects include the Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Award-nominated Powers (with Michael Avon Oeming) originally from Image Comics, now published by Marvel's new creator-owned imprint Icon Comics, and the Hollywood tell-all Fortune and Glory from Oni Press, both of which received an "A" from Entertainment Weekly.

Bendis is one of the premiere architects of Marvel's "Ultimate" line: comics specifically created for the new generation of comic readers. He has written every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man since its best-selling launch, and has also written for Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, as well as every issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six.

Brian is currently helming a renaissance for Marvel’s AVENGERS franchise by writing both New Avengers and Mighty Avengers along with the successful ‘event’ projects House Of M, Secret War, and this summer’s Secret Invasion.

He has also previously done work on Daredevil, Alias, and The Pulse.

Reviews

[Baba]

Like all the truly great super powered being universes Marvel looked to create a realistic origin of the Ultimate universe, but they tried to do it in a five comic book issues' series and incorporate Captain America, Nick Fury, the mutants, Ultimates and the Parkers, yes plural; too much in too short a space left me with an interesting and plausible origin, but one chock full of exposition.

The upside is that the Ultimate universe makes sense and a reality with super powered beings is shown to be plausible. The downside, all that exposition! 6 out of 12. Of course the huge plus if the further underlining that the Ultimate Nick Fury, hashtag Samuel L Jackson lookalike continues to be the best ever iteration.

Image source: Fresh Comic Stories YouTube
2022 read; 2017 read; 2011 read

[Chelsea 🏳️‍🌈]

I hate when great art happens to bad comics.

So... this was not good.

It appears Bendis was granted the opportunity to create (?), revamp a lot of origins here. I haven’t read the entirety of the Ultimates Universe but even if Bendis inherited some of this bullshit, he didn’t take the opportunity to make any of it better.



Let’s get right down to it: this book is racist. It is a historical fact that black men were forcibly experimented on by white scientists during past war times. That is an incredibly terrible fact about our history. Marvel 616 used that to explain how Isaiah Bradley was the first super soldier. Bendis, or whoever decided to give this idea to him, wrote it so Fury was a criminal that got arrested and experimented on to become a super soldier. It could have been an interesting twist but there’s 2 fucking terrible facts about this choice:
1) once again, Bendis is making a black man a criminal or associated with black criminals. Miles’s version of Uncle Ben? A criminal. Miles’s dad? A former criminal. Nick Fury is now a criminal. I’m sure Bendis must have been over the moon when he was given the chance to write Luke Cage because FINALLY he’d been given a black man who already had a past criminal history.
2) The most fucked up bit: Fury blames himself for being experimented on. He explicitly says that, instead of blaming the government and racist white people in general, this is all HIS fault for getting arrested. This is such an incredibly fucked up concept. It’s so INCREDIBLY fucked up. This character was victimized by a group of racists perpetuating some Nazi mentality that black lives were worth less and, therefore, okay to experiment on and eventually kill. This character did not deserve that, criminal or not. To have Fury say such a thing is just deplorable.

So, once again, I do not and will never trust black characters with Brian Michael Bendis. Dude has some serious fucking issues.

[Bookishrealm]

Whew this book was straight filth. Complete and total filth. While this was a new way to look at the origin story of the Ultimates, I loathed the way that Bendis dealt with Fury. Naturally, this could have been quite intriguing to know and understand that Fury was technically the first Captain America. However, Bendis utilized the disgusting history of experimentation on Black individuals as a plot twist that left Fury blaming himself for being a criminal and for it being justification for the experimentation. Bendis could have done anything in the world, but this was the narrative he chose. Let me tell you something, it is both disgusting and wrong to use such a tragic aspect of American history only to turn around and blame the victim—make them the criminal. This really had potential to be a great story with amazing artwork and quite frankly I loved seeing how everyone was connected especially Dr. Storm, Dr. Parker, Pym, and Dr. Banner but that one storyline ruined it for me completely and I’m so disappointed.

[Sesana]

So long ago that I forgot he'd ever said it, Ultimate Bruce Banner told Ultimate Spider-Man that everything was connected. And, apparently, he meant what he said. I'll be honest, I don't find the explanation that mutants were created in a lab, and that Wolverine was patient zero, terribly convincing, largely because there still hasn't been a satisfactory, or indeed any, explanation for how a genome could spread. But it does pull everything together, and Bendis makes the sequence of events almost entirely plausible. Plus, I just really, really like his writing. He's great at writing believable characters and conversations, and this conspiracy theory needed that terribly.

[Bookwraiths]

Origins sounded cool. Bendis tying everything and everyone in the Ultimate Universe together was a good idea, especially since I imagined some huge revelations. Problem is this book didn’t live up to my high expectations.

The book is a jumbled bunch of stories about most of the important Ultimate characters. Fury has a huge role, surprising origin and uncovers the biggest conspiracy. Banner and Pym appear. Peter Parker. Xavier and Magneto. Wolverine and Weapon X. All these guys caught up in this concept to make “Everything connected.”

Now, I’m not saying this a bad book. It is entertaining at times. The art is good. The problem I had is that nothing much happens other than a couple revelations which obviously are just setup for the coming event. Even the ending of this story isn’t really an ending but just a stopping point with no resolution to anything. So this earns the dreaded okay rating.

[Mike]

I happen to love Bendis' writing - nearly all of it. It feels natural *and* compelling - sometimes just wising off, sometimes cracking jokes, and sometimes speaking truths of hard-won wisdom.

Which is why I enjoyed this book. Not only for the trademark Bendis interplay between characters, but also for the unifying, revisionist theorem of Marvel superheroes he came up with. Seems like a much more satisfying way of threading together an explosion of "powers" than the original Stan Lee randomness (due respect to the all-father). The book is much more exciting the first time through, and soberingly interesting the second (at least for me). Bringing together so many pivotal moments into a single storyline, especially with the dread that comes along with those silent Watcher devices just...glaring at these moments of human risk-taking and hubris.

I love the redemption angle that Bendis gives Fury - makes me really believe why he would be so single-mindedly devoted to his work. I found the Parker/Storm/Banner/Pym event especially thrilling - seeing all these super-minds thrown together for the first time, it's almost cruel to imagine just how much creative genius would've been there on display. I especially like Hank Pym as a punk smartass - nice edge to give to a character who's a little more sad and weak in the classic Marvel universe - though this version of the guy is no less tragic.

The story's not earth-shatteringly epic, but it weaves together so many moments of importance so fleetingly that it must be understood to understand what comes after.

The art's good, but not Guice's best - seems like he was rushing (maybe he squeezed this into an already-full workload?). Some nice visual moments tho - like Banner changing back from Hulk.

Here are my plot notes because i can never remember who when and what, when I'm reading later books:
Nick Fury, James Howlett & Wilson Fisk all served in WWII as soldiers. Caught stealing, Fury was taken for experiments by Erskine. The Canadians created a mutated strain of Howlett's genome and made him "mutant zero". Steve Rogers is recruited into Erskine's Project: Rebirth.

Erik Lehnsherr frees Mutant X (Wolverine) from his mother's care (who is trying to find a cure for all mutants). (Erik killed his parents.) Later, Erik introduces himself to Xavier and they build the Brotherhood in the Savage Land (where another Watcher device appears).

In Kuwait, Nick Fury was a soldier of fortune, turned black ops commando. There he lost his eye, then met General Thaddeus Ross. Fury brought Storm, Parker, Banner and Pym together on Project: Rebirth Two, which led to Banner experimenting on himself and creating the Hulk - who killed Peter Parker's parents.

Fury and commandos invade Weapon X facility, discover they created mutants, and killed everyone and destroyed the facility. Discovered T'Challa Udaku was one of the subjects and liberated him.

Xavier was speared (crippled) by Lehnserr for going against him.

Present day, the FF was called in by Carol Danvers (acting director of SHIELD) to investigate the Watcher device at Project Pegasus. Then Watcher devices show up at: Tony Stark's mansion (Ultimates home), the Triskelion (SHIELD HQ), Xavier's school, Baxter Building, Daily Bugle, London, Hell's Kitchen, & Peter Parker's attic. (They'd already appeared at Mutant X's first manifestation of powers, Captain America's creation and the creation of mutant haven in Savage Land.) The Watcher Uatu spoke to FF of a coming devastation, and chose a herald to help us with our new world order, then all Watchers disappeared. The herald was Rick Jones (whose story gets told in Ultimate Spider-Man).

[Chris Greensmith]

"It is a Watcher. It is part of a hive culture that is here to observe and record the significant events that shape our civilization. It is here now to witness the most significant event of this generation. It just told me--It is here to witness the coming devastation"
I love the Ultimate line of Marvels, it is amazing, everything is connected, it seems really well thought out and I love how they have re-imagined the whole universe. I love the art, the vibe, the style everything. This Origins TPB was good, you got to see how they have all been connected from the beginning. Ultimatum is upon us and is one of the greatest literary events ever! I cannot wait to get stuck in...4 🌟

[Adam Stone]

This series connects the origins of Captain America, Nick Fury, Wolverine, Hulk, Professor X, and Magneto, while also showing us The Ultimate Universe's version of The Watcher.

It's really stupid.

When Bendis writes too many titles, which happens frequently, some of them suffer from having a one issue idea expanded to a six or seven series arc, and the results are always dull. This is one of those books. Skip it.

[Lost Planet Airman]

Read again December 2017. Ties together the origins (Ultimate universe) of Captain America, Wolverine, Nick Fury, Hulk, and mutant kind. Introduces the Watchers and sets the stage for, I believe, the Gah-Lak-Tus trilogy.

[Gavin]

One book which explains the whole interconnected nature of the Ultimate Marvel world, this is a great story. Great because it pretty much lays out all the major players in the Universe and how things end up as they do. Bendis does a great job, and it's very cool to see the slightly tweaked versions of everyone, from Hulk to Nick Fury to Wolverine to Magneto. Enjoyable with good solid artwork, probably a good place to start before entering the Ultimate Marvel world.

[María Ferre]

¿Cómo nacieron algunos de los personajes Ultimate más icónicos de Marvel? ¿Cómo se entrelazan sus historias? En este tomo compuesto por cinco grapas, Bendis y Guice intentarán contarlo todo sin omitir la crudeza de los acontecimientos.
Cuando digo "intentarán" no lo digo como forma de rellenar el resumen, sino porque de verdad que lo han intentado. Intentarlo, sin embargo, no es lo mismo que conseguirlo. Sí que es cierto que han conectado todas las historias de manera coherente y con sentido, pero, la verdad, personalmente no me han gustado todos estos cambios de lo que teníamos ya asentado. No estoy muy familiarizada con el universo Ultimate de los personajes de Marvel, aunque, si no me equivoco, creo que la idea de los mutantes se mantiene fija a través del multiverso; los mutantes son un tipo de homo, homo superior, con cualidades genéticas NATURALES diferentes a las del homo sapiens sapiens que les dan unas habilidades extraordinarias. Los mutantes nacen siendo mutantes y no se hicieron en un laboratorio ni eligieron serlo. En este tomo, este concepto se elimina completamente y se crea la idea del gen X como invento humano. Me parece que, haciendo esto, se le quita todo el peso de crítica social y cultural que siempre han tenido los mutantes para pasar a ser una historia de superhéroes más.
También está la trama de la especie de vigilantes rocosos, que la verdad es que está bastante cogida con pinzas y tiene más bien poco sentido.
El apartado artístico, sin embargo, me parece muy bueno. El dibujo, entintado y coloreado son buenísimos.

[Jacob A. Mirallegro]

This was cool, maybe more of a 3.5 but I really liked the ending. It's just a really fun concept and I think it did a good job at clearly developing it. Some of the stuff was strange, mainly just the Nick Fury characterisation put me off but the Hulk serum stuff was also weird just because of when it happened in this vs when I thought it happened from the context of other Ultimate books.
Overall this is definitely worth a read if you're a fan of the Ultimate universe.

[Quentin Wallace]

3.5 Stars

As the title suggests, we get to see the basic origins of the superhumans and mutants of the Ultimate Universe. There's really not much else to say without getting into spoilers, but this was a pretty cool story with good art. Interesting origin story, and at least it didn't feel like a letdown.

[Timo]

I do enjoy Ultimate comics. Feels refreshing and innovative take to old familiar characters.

[Kemper]

*spoilers*

One of the things I've liked best about Marvel's Ultimate line is how they've hinted that a lot of the rise of superpowered people is directly linked to the origin of the super soldier formula that created Captain America.

This collection expands on that idea to the point where we find out that the creation and efforts to recreate the super soldier formula were the origin of the mutants, the Hulk, Wolverine, Nick Fury and was even linked to the death of Peter Parker's parents.

I like this idea because it gives the entire Ultimate universe a common explanation as to why and how they super powered people appeared in the first place.

Cool ideas and good stories, even if the rewriting of the Ultimate Universe history stretches some points we already knew.

[Kenneth Clark]

Backstories galore

I chose this as my entry point to the Ultimate Universe and interspersed these issues with other issues that occur at the same time. Rather than reading the comics in order of publication, I'm reading them in order of continuity. It's an amazing way to enter this universe. It feels like it's rife with flash-forwards, like a cinematic experience.

[Christian]

I hate prequels. I hate the instinct that hits people during prequels to explain everything, connect everything, and make the world really small. Harrison Ford happens to have a small scar on his chin? Well, obviously, the 10 minutes of prequel nonsense at the beginning of the third indiana jones film will have to explain how he got that scar, his hat, his jacket, and his calling all in the same afternoon.

This explains how everything that has happened in the Marvel universe all goes back to two men, Nick Fury and James Howlett. In Ultimate Spider-man, Nick Fury tells an emotional spider-man that, of course, he wasn't resonsible for how his parents died; he was in college at the time. Now we learn that actually he's 100 years old, the first super soldier experiment, and was present when Peter's parents were killed by Banner in his transformation into the hulk when Peter was a baby. Forget that we have constantly seen that they died when he was six in a plane crash that may or may not have been an assassination. This kind of nonsensical retcon seems to feel logical to people as soon as they start writing a prequel.

Nick Fury, by the way, is back in the military because he realized that it was his own fault for being experimented on because he broke the law. This is a good example of the awful politics that saturate ultimate marvel. You could argue that this is just what the characters believe, but the book never really suggests any of these people are wrong.

This is without getting into the revelation that mutants were created by the government, nor that Fury knew and murdered an entire lab of scientists, prisioners and test subjects to cover it up, only freeing the one who reminded him of himself.

This is why I generally avoid non spider-man ultimate titles.

That's all without getting into the quality of the story telling itself, which feels very perfunctory and plot summary-ish.

[José Ignacio]

Not Bendis' worst

It’s fine I suppose. It’s a bit less of a structured narrative and just a series of flashbacks that explain a bunch of stuff from the Ultimate Universe that didn’t really need explaining, and as a matter of fact the retcons that are introduced regarding mutants kind of undermine and miss the point completely of how mutants had evolved as a narrative device within the Marvel Universe.

I get Bendis wanted to try something different but ehh… I’m not a fan of it. I will say it is at least fun to see how Ultimate Nick Fury sort of "rose up" in the world as it were. The present day plot with the Fantastic Four though… it’s not really a plot and more just a framing device with a lot of foreshadowing for Ultimatum, but aside from that, nothing much else.

Butch Guice's art is mostly pretty good though there are some sequences that feel a bit discombobulated and hard to follow, but it’s mostly pretty good like I said.

Overall, not a bad story, not a good story, it’s just perfectly cromulent even if I disagree with the decisions made.

[Nick]

This is a grim and dark version of the origins of superheroes in the Marvel universe, but I had trouble with Nick Fury's origin and his eventual actions. Also, too many plot threads are left dangling by the end of the book, in the apparent expectation that the reader will simply have to read all of the other Ultimates books. That's more than a tad annoying.
Still, the artwork is gorgeous, with Butch Guice doing a very good grim-and-gritty rendering of the various characters. The writing is often good, but more than a bit depressing.

[Al]

Com o objetivo de conectar as histórias dos heróis pré-mutantes, o autor modifica suas origens de forma a concentrar todas no desenvolvimento dos super soldados, unindo Hulk, Nick Fury, Capitão América e Wolverine na maneira que obtiveram seus poderes e amarrando, também, os futuros do Quarteto Fantástico, do Homem-Aranha, dos X-Men e do Capitão Mar-Vell. Não me agrada novel com muitos diálogos explicativos ou descritivos dos pensamentos, me soa artificial, pois existe o adjetivo graphic antecedendo o nome do gênero.

[Shannon]

Decent story about the origins of the Super Soldier(s), and mutants in the Marvel Ultimate Universe. Features glimpses of Nick Fury, Captain America, Bruce Banner/Hulk, Wolverine, Magneto, and Professor X in their early days. Had this story happened earlier, been expanded and used more in the creation of the Ultimate Universe, I feel like it would been a much more solid foundation to build on, and maybe the UU would have lasted longer. The art was pretty good.

[Grant]

So in this mini-series, we finally see how the Earth 1610 is coming together. We get the origins of Captain America, Nick Fury (which seems to be a bit racist, not sure why Bendis did that) Magneto, Wolverine, and Hulk. I'm guessing they're all about to tie into Ultimatum. I liked the exposition presented, especially since it's hinting towards a larger threat, but knowing that Ultimatum is regarded as one of the worst events ever, I can't really get my hopes up. Solid 3 stars. It was decent.

[Fouad Abd Elazeem]

It's not the best work of Bendis. It has some continuity issues. The biggest one for me was the death of the parkers. I also didn't understand how the mutant genome spread if it was man-made. Other than that, it was a big effort to try and tie the origins and the rise of super powers in the ultimate universe.

[Harrison603]

I think that the core idea of this book, that everything in the Ultimate Universe ties back into the super soldier program, fits beautifully into the universe’s core idea of genetics and that being the face of the next war. However, almost everything the book does to convey it makes no sense and contradicts previous stories like crazy

[Ushnav Shroff]

A brief little read before one delves into the the actual Ultimates Universe, Ultimate Origins serves as a stepping stone into a much larger picture - one where Nick Fury is Captain America . Seriously, that boggled with my mind a little.

[Nathan Guetteville]

Meh...

Ça ne m'a pas intéressé plus que ça, pas fan de l'idée que les origines de chaque perso de l'univers ultimate soient interconnectées.

Un volume ennuyeux avec une très grosse révélation sur l'univers Ultimate qui est la seule à se démarquer parmi les autres, avec des dessins moyen +...

[Josh Patton]

You would think that this collection is about how the origins of the characters in the ultimate universe.

You'd be wrong.

[Paxton Holley]

Ultimate Marvel book about the origins of the super soldier program. A little disappointing. Lots of good artwork and the potential is there, but it seemed to fall a bit short.

[Frans Kempe]

The watchers makes their entry into the ultimate universe. We also find out about Furys, Cap, Banner, Wolverine and Black panthera origin

[Ian]

This and other Brian Michael Bendis books reviewed here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.com...