I'm glad you're covering The Ultimates. It was on my lengthy list of stories I wanted to see reviewed, and with you doing this, I can comment and still do something else. So, win/win!

The first issue got expanded into a whole film for Captain America: the First Avenger. That was a good call, rather than just making Cap's WWII escapades a prelude, as they were in The Ultimates. But in either case, the gritty "Saving Private Ryan" war scenes ground the story in reality before people start flying around, visiting space, etc. Check out this double splash to do Kirby and Kubert proud:



Or this beauteous scene that introduces Tony Stark at the end of a six week fast in the Himalayas. Not your usual Tony!



Note that Cap's facemask on the cover is the traditional cowl, not the Nighthawk-style helmet he sports in the interior.

Issue #2:

The Baxter Building makes an appearance in the lower right of this cityscape.



Jarvis is not as debonaire as he could be; he ought to be trimming his bald head or even shaving it entirely. Instead he has a comb-over.



Bruce Banner is a nerd, with posters of Star Wars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in his apartment. Also two of his graduation pictures on the walls.



Judging by his mouse being on the left side of the keyboard, Hank Pym is left handed. This is often code for a character being "sinister."



Janet Pym is depicted as a sassy, pixie-cutted S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. This was just before the similar size-changer Shrinking Violet got a similarly sassy makeover into the assassin Atom Girl in Mark Waid's Legion of Superheroes "Threeboot."

Issue #4: A few minor questions. What unknown grafitti artist misspelled "perseverance" as "preseverance"?



Why did a word balloon get placed over Freddie Prinze Jr.'s face?



Whose scanned-in photo graces the wall of this anonymous Manhattan apartment? Hitch's daughter perhaps?

The Ultimates
Volume 1

Story by Mark Millar
Art by Bryan Hitch and Andrew Currie, colours by Paul Mounts

Chapter five : Hulk does Manhattan

Marvel comics’ Hulk has mostly been described as a misunderstood creature.From time to time writers would emphasize the danger he paused to society, but that aspect of what remains a comic-book hero never stuck for very long. I believe that it was even explained at some point (decades after I stopped reading Greenskin’s book) that Banner subconsciously prevented the Hulk from causing someone else's death, and that the several instances of Hulk rampaging through a city had resulted in lots of physical damage but not in massive death tolls.

Well, that’s not the case here. The Ultimate Hulk is a monster. A hostile, selfish, horny, violent and murderous creature. One with the strength to topple buildings. In the Jeckyll and Hyde relation between Banner and Hulk, this version of Hyde is pushed to eleven. But then isn’t that a recurring theme in the Ultimates? Many aspects of this or that character are pushed to their limit, as in Jan's and Hank's marital problem involve life-threatening abuse, Tony drinks all the time, Pietro and Wanda really sound like a pair of incestuous siblings, etc. As mentioned at the beginning of this thread, the script doesn’t read as if we’re keeping things in reserve for later, with a property meant to last for decades… this is like a movie, where everything can be brought to an end after two hours (or three, judging from recent Avengers movies). I must say, it makes for more kinetic storytelling!

Hulk has been loose for ten minutes but has already ravaged a New York neighbourhood; the death toll revealed later will mention 300 plus deaths.

The Ultimates take charge, and I love the way Giant-Man is carried by a chopper. Why didn’t he wait to get there in his normal size and then grow? My guess is that unless he wants to fight the Hulk naked, his costume (which doesn’t grow with him) would have had to be delivered anyway, and he still would have had to put it on on front of everyone… which is kind of embarrassing, and also dangerous if the Hulk decides to attack him while he’s struggling with his pants.

At this point of the series, it also isn’t clear whether Hank can now change size at will; at the time, I thought he required all the gizmos from the lab to grow to 60 feet. (I wish that had remained the case, too... that sounds more sciency than magical).



There was a method to Banner’s madness: yes, he took his own serum to become the Hulk because he wanted to matter again, but his plan involved more than becoming big and respected; he also wanted to provide the Ultimates with a threat to fight, and left them instructions and an adamantium-tipped needle with which to inject him with an anti-Hulk serum. That way, they get to be heroes in the public's eye, and he would have been useful. 



The crisis is such that SHIELD has asked Thor for help, despite his earlier rejection of their offer of employment; only he asks that the U.S. government double its international aid budget before lifting a finger.

Hulk is climbing the building where Betty was having dinner with Freddie Prinze Jr., and Betty wonders how he could have found them (she didn’t mention it during their earlier phone call). Perhaps Banner knows her favourite places and just took a chance. As he approaches, he makes lewd and pretty scary remarks… This Hulk is more than the expression of Banner’s rage, he truly embodies all that can be evil in him! (Or is it all fake locker-room talk from a frightened little boy really trying to sound bad? Later protestations from the Hulk will suggest that it's also a possibility).

The monster is temporarily stopped by Giant-Man, who pins him to the wall. This scene, drawn with a neat perspective giving it a lot of realism, reminds me of that “WOW!” moment in Captain America : Civil War when we saw Scott Lang grow to giant size. There is a lot of visually stunning material in those superhero comics, even if we readers have grown so used to them that we hardly notice anymore. The helicarrier in the first Avengers movie is a good example: while the ship itself hadn’t done anything for me in the books for many years, it looked awesome on the big screen. Same with such a simple thing as a Giant-Man.



Hank may be tall, but Hulk is way, way stronger… and Giant-Man is brought low. I find the way Hulk goes for the inside of his opponent's mouth particularly scary, for some reason: Hank seems to be as defenceless as we are in the hands of an evil dentist with his drill!!!



The threats made by Hulk are particularly graphic, too. He clearly expresses his hatred for Pym because of the way he treated Banner, and claims that he will use his head for a toilet bowl. Help, somebody?

It is Tony who saves Hank’s bacon by flying the Hulk away and slamming him into Grand Central Station (and wasn’t that featured in the first Avengers movie too?)

The battle continues, and in a somewhat embarrassing scene (no, make that an embarrassing scene, period), Jan exposes her breasts to grab the Hulk’s attention and get him to follow her. That it works is neither here nor there; if the Hulk is feeble-minded enough to be totally distracted by a pretty woman (as he clearly is, if we judge by his idiotic look), then it should be simple enough to calm him down with a Playboy magazine. Plus, I seriously doubt that had the super-villain been the Savage She-Hulk, Cap would have dropped his trousers to get her attention.



But anyway… adolescent sex jokes are part and parcel of most action movies too, so…

Jan leads the Hulk to a spot where Captain America can drop a tank on his head. The creature wrecks the vehicle, but then gets clobbered by its driver… and yes, clearly, this Captain America is way stronger than his MU counterpart! In hindsight, considering that both Cap and Hulk came from similarly-conceived serums, perhaps this shouldn't be as surprising as it is to us long-time fans. It's just that Cap is clearly unable to topple buildings, so he shouldn't be able to clean the Hulk's clock like that, even fighting dirty.



Before Steve can inject the Hulk with the antiserum, however, the monster shakes off his daze and starts pummeling the sentinel of liberty. The needle gets broken too, which isn’t supposed to happen to adamantium (unless it’s not the same in the Ultimate universe). Time for a deus ex machina, and that’s precisely when we introduce the team’s resident god! Kaboom!!!



Kaboom and CLUNK!!! (That’s an awesome shot of Mjolnir hitting something). Props to Paul Mounts whose colour palette is just perfect for this scene.



(SHIELD technicians mention that GWB has just doubled the foreign aid budget… Now *that’s* what I call efficient lobbying!!!)

The fight goes on, and a Freddie Prinze Jr. (whose face we still haven’t seen) has a pretty brave word balloon as he and Betty are being evacuated. One almost wonders if the character wasn’t used without permission, but in such a positive light (and without his likeness being used) that the chances of people objecting were small. Does anyone know? In any case, the actor doesn’t hold any grudge today. Or does he???

Betty and Prinze are airlifted with the Hulk in pursuit; one of the option is for the chopper to head out to sea if a nuclear option becomes the last one left on the table. Luckily, as the Hulk reaches the helicopter, Janet manages to enter his ear canal and zaps his brain from inside his skull; this causes the monster to fall back to Earth and revert to Banner.

Then Cap vents a little by kicking Banner in the face. I don’t think that scene went well with all readers back then; I suppose it depends on one’s views on the proper way to treat criminals (in make-believe universes where super-heroes beat people up all the time, that is). Perhaps this book’s realism made this scene more than just an opportunity for a one-liner and for super-heroicky catharsis.



———

All action, and even a bit of destruction porn worthy of a Michael Bay film, but even in the midst of the flying debris we are planting seeds that will give poisoned fruit in the near future. We also get to understand how much Betty means to Banner, despite all the fake bravado of the Hulk.

A few more notes :

- Jan has two Ph.D.s, but we don’t know in what disciplines.
- Hulk drank a truck-full of beer. That’s a funny throwaway line, but it also shows how Hulk is really Banner doing all the things he wouldn’t normally. (We’ll learn in a few issues that Banner is a vegetarian, but the Hulk eats people on occasion).
- Captain America makes a point of thanking "the little guys” doing their job well (here, SHIELD technicians) whenever he can, but he still kicks a prisoner in the face. He's like those fathers of old, well-meaning and all, who'd take the strap to their disobedient kids because that's all they had ever known as far as education approaches went.

Superheroes need to stay hydrated.  Really, though, i think Cap would find a Camelback more practical.  Bigger question is what does he have in the other pouches?  He isn't using a sidearm, so they aren't ammo pouches.  I would assume at least one would be a survival kit; maybe the rest have the vitamin pills, pep pills, nylons, chocolate bars, Russian rubles and all of that other stuff that Major Kong listed off.  I'm sure Cap is up for a good time in Vegas, just like everyone else.

The triangular shield is sometimes called a Templar shield, after the Knights Templar. The round one is a Buckler.

I meant to comment on this one earlier; when Cap wakes up, he thinks Fury is a fake, because he knows the highest ranking African-American in the US Army and he isn't a general. Millar must not of done any research, at all, or we will have to pass it off as wonky Marvel alternate history. The highest ranking African-American in the US Army, in WW2, was Benjamin O. Davis, who was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, in 1940, before the US entry into WW2. His son, Benjamin O. Davis Jr commanded the 332nd Fighter Group, aka The Tuskegee Airmen (as a colonel), and was later promoted to Brigadier General, in 1954 (temporarily, but it was made permanent in 1960). He was ultimately promoted to 4-star General, in 1998, while retired.

I remember reading that issue, the day I picked it up from my LCS and growling out loud, "Gen Benjamin O Davis! Read a book, Millar!"

A back of the envelope calculation, assuming that Hank is 6 feet tall and weighs 200 pounds, would have his weight increase cubically while his height increases linearly, which would put him at about 90 metric tons when he’s 60 feet tall. 

That’s heavier than a humpback whale... and I seriously doubt that normally proportioned human bones (even giant ones) could stand that kind of weight! They’d break like twigs! As for a helicopter, I really do not know.

Of course, the matter of mass with the Pyms has always been a little vague in the comics... Maybe Giant-Man’s body isn’t as dense as a real 60 foot human body would be (if a 60 foot human body was at all possible).