Ultimates 3, still ultimate?

Not so much, no. Not really feeling The Ultimates 3, the third series featuring the Ultimate version of the Avengers.

I was pretty pumped when I heard Joe Madureira would be penciling Ultimates 3, even if his art style was a large departure from that of Bryan Hitch. Marvel needed big guns on this book, and going in a totally different direction seemed OK to me. Ironically, it was during Joe Mad's run on Uncanny X-Men (back when I was buying one book a month — ha!) that I first saw Hitch's art in a fill-in issue, and really disliked it. I came to appreciate it during his runs on Stormwatch and The Authority, and definitely on The Ultimates. But with Joe Mad out of the game for years, I was down to see him in action again.

And for the most part the art is pretty sweet, aside from two issues. The digital painting over the pencils (I'm assuming that's how they did it) give the art an unfinished feel at times. More importantly, however, the flat, washed out colors don't complement Joe Mad's art at all. I want to see vibrant, full-on cartoony goodness popping off the page. I feel like they dulled down the colors in an attempt to keep things gritty and realistic. But if you're gonna sub in Joe Mad for Hitch, go all the way.

But the art's hardly the problem through issues 1 and 2 of Ultimates 3, it's the story from Jeph Loeb.

I mostly agree with Blair Butler's points on the first issue. In issue 2 we have some interesting things, Magneto and The Brotherhood on the scene (cool), Cap vs. Sabretooth (hell yeah). But the issue starts with an annoying, comic book cliche battle between Hawkeye and Spider-Man. And before that Spidey, swinging through the Manhattan night, enters the fray when he hears of a shooting over the police radio, which must have been pretty loud as it's clearly snowing, so the police car's windows are up, but Spidey hears the call while swinging through the air. He doesn't have super hearing, does he? Yeah, it's a comic book, but previous Ultimates series stood out for their realistic vibe. This silly stuff wouldn't fly previously. And where the hell's Black Panther? We're told he's on the team in issue 1, but he gets thrown into a park and we don't even see him in issue 2.

Ultimates 3 has generally been getting panned, and while I'm not loving it to date I can hang in for three more issues of the five-part series to see how it develops.