Revolutionary War - Alpha 1, Cataclysm - Ultimates' Last Stand 3, Cataclysm - Ultimate Spider-Man 3

Revolutionary War - Alpha 1
Lanning and Cowsill (w) and Elson (a) and Fabela (c)

Geez that's a long post title with just a whole bunch of hyphens. Anyway, Marvel UK is back on the map with REVOLUTIONARY WAR and this is our opening shot to the series. Of course, plenty of these characters haven't been seen for a while so we're due for a bit of recap and character summarization which the writers provide in excruciating detail. On top of that, we learn a bit about our plot; there had been an organization of techno-wizards (it's always wizards in Britain) from around 1000 AD who had made a deal with Mephisto to grant them immortality. Somewhat recently, though, they had established a corporation called Mys-Tech and fed Mephisto more and more souls in exchange for keeping their own alive. Of course, they got to a point where they wanted to stay immortal but break from their contract. To do so, they found a great deal of artifacts and alien tech to help them and realized that they could get out of their contract if they sacrificed Great Britain's entire population to Mephisto. They tried and everyone fought at the Battle of London Bridge (covered up, of course, by MI-13). Plenty of heroes died in the battle but Mys-Tech was stopped. OR SO IT SEEMED. Colonel Tigon Liger (yes, that's a real Marvel UK hero's name. I know, I rolled my eyes too) has been a drunk since the battle, where he was forced to make the decision to close Mys-Tech's portal to hell before they could bring hell to Earth even though several of their fighters were on the other side. Now they're all coming back to make the world burn.

There's an interesting story in here but I'm a little nervous about the writing of this first issue alone. There is a lot of ground to cover to establish our characters and our history here, which is undoubtedly why the first heroes we see and the ones who we spend the most time with in this issue are our biggest current UK characters in Captain Britain and Pete Wisdom. Conveniently, Wisdom wasn't around for the Battle of London Bridge so he needs as much catching up as we do. I watched the first 15 minutes or so of the pilot for CBS' new drama Intelligence the other day and had to shut it off because it was very clear that the series wasn't really aiming for subtext anywhere (I have plenty of problems with CBS and this is definitely a recurring one). Characters were constantly fully defining other characters so we didn't actually have to learn about a character, we could just be told ("you DO need a handler even though you're a great asset! I know you need a handler because your last mission was to find the location of the nukes in Mongolia, and you went off mission looking for her. I know you don't want to hear this again but your wife, Amelia, is dead. She was captured long ago and we lost contact with her and she's definitely dead" is pretty much the gist of it). That's a little how this issue feels and it's not how you want to dive into a book, with all of this unnatural exposition and dialogue. I'm hoping that now the first issue is out of the way things start to feel a little more natural but we'll see. The story seems good enough to hold up the series, let's just hope it has the chance to.

Cataclysm - Ultimates' Last Stand 3
Bendis (w) and Bagley and Hennessy (a) and Keith (c)

Under Tony Stark's instruction (and armed with one of his repulsors), Spider-Man is going into the 616 with Reed Richards to ensure that he stays on mission and comes home with the right answer to stop Galactus. Despite protests from Sue and others, Reed and Miles set off and quickly make it to the 616's Baxter Building. They break in with relative ease (you'd think Reed would program in security to stop alternate dimension F4s from getting in, considering how frequently it comes up, but apparently not) and download the data on Galactus without being spotted. However, Valeria shows up as they're about to leave and recognizes that Reed isn't her Reed and the security turns on them. Reed, who had copied two different flash drives with Galactus info and given one to Miles and kept one in case they got separated, tells Miles to go and to get back and deliver the information. He does, ditching the security robots on the other Spider-Man who happens to be swinging by (don't TOTALLY understand how that works, their costumes aren't that similar and there are pretty obvious size differences), and he makes it back to the Ultimate Universe to deliver the info. Before they can question him too long about Reed, Reed makes his way back through the portal. He apologizes to Sue for ruining their life, now that he's seen what they could have had and how beautiful the world really is.

Really cheesy ending and I guess I don't totally buy it? I don't know. This Reed is very strange and it's hard to pin down his personality, exactly. Sometimes he's an aloof psychotic genius and sometimes he's just a psychotic 616 Reed. Look, either way he's pretty psychotic. I get that seeing the way things turned out for an alternate dimension you would change things, potentially, and even meeting your potential daughter could change things but this seems like an abrupt turnaround. Of course, it could all be a lie and he could be playing them but who knows. Anyway, this is a super weird event for me. It's interesting enough and all the books are focusing on interesting parts of the event but I've never had an event that is so hard to distinguish book from book. Characters appear in several books at once, plot seems to move in every book but it's hard to tell which plot is the main plot, etc. I know some of those issues may seem petty, but it's been a little weird to read an issue then see it advertise the next issue of CATACLYSM (the main series) and be surprised that that wasn't what I was reading. It's melding together, which is kind of a good thing but also kind of weird to actually see happen. I guess we'll just have to wait for this one to end before I can tell if the layout worked for me.

Cataclysm - Ultimate Spider-Man 3
Bendis (w) and Marquez (a) and Ponsor (c)

A plane from Great Britain didn't understand in time not to go to Newark because there is no more Newark (I get that no one is anticipating anything like Galactus but I imagine pilots are pretty well-trained to go to a different airport if the tower is telling them to go to a different airport) and, as a result, flies directly at Galactus. It comes crashing down in pieces including right at the foot of the Morales' apartment while Jefferson yells at Miles for being Spider-Man, who Jefferson decides is responsible for the deaths of both his brother and his wife. He says a lot of horrible things and is generally horrible until Miles has to leave him to go help with the plane wreckage, asking him to wait until he can come back and save him. With the help of Spider-Woman, Cloak and Dagger, and Bombshell, they manage to save the survivors (including a very strange J. Jonah Jameson) and teleport them to a Pittsburgh hospital. Miles returns home to find that Jefferson has left as Cap calls him in to help with the Galactus business (as seen in CATACLYSM - ULTIMATES' LAST STAND).

That Jefferson guy is a real jerk. There's a sense, as there has been throughout Miles' story, that we're supposed to find Jefferson as aggressive and quick-to-anger and particularly against Spider-Man, obviously unjustly but with limited information that we can all supposedly understand. It doesn't always read that way, though, and this is no exception. Not to say that he wouldn't act this way in this moment but I can never get a real feel for the character. Sometimes he seems tolerant and like love of his family conquers all (particularly love and pride in his son) and sometimes it seems like he's just gone crazy. I had problems with him earlier in this series too, as he suddenly became a freedom fighter or something. That was pretty weird. Anyway, nice little team-up for the five teenage superheroes we've seen dominating this book recently and presumably a turnaround on this Spider-Man from J. Jonah Jameson (all it takes is for every Ultimate Spider-Man to save his life individually, it seems). More good Marquez art and solid Ponsor colors help the story along.