Cataclysm - Ultimates' Last Stand 4, Revolutionary War - Knights of Pendragon 1, Night of the Living Deadpool 2

Cataclysm - Ultimates' Last Stand 4
Bendis (w) and Bagley and Hennessy (a) and Keith (c)

The Ultimates have recruited the X-Men in the fight against Galactus and their newest, perhaps most desperate, plan revolves around Kitty Pryde. Their hope is to use Pym Particles to allow her to grow to near-Galactus size (or at least nearer-Galactus size) and get her close to the cosmic entity before she phases through him and, if all goes well, disrupts all of his technology inside. It's a gambit but it's the best they can do on such a short schedule. They inject Kitty with the particles but can't actually get her moving just yet as Jean Grey, who Stark had trying to probe Galactus' mind for any useful information, is noticed by Galactus and he turns his attentions towards the helicarrier. While they start to abandon ship, Captain America jumps into a jet and flies straight at Galactus, ramming the jet into Galactus' mouth as Cap attempts to bail. The helicarrier goes down, hopefully after a number of people were able to escape with the distraction Cap provided, and Galactus remains.

The cover would have you believe that Cap doesn't make it from his jump out of the jet but the pages inside don't indicate anything specific and, with comics, specifics are everything. Without a body, you can almost guarantee an alive body will turn up sometime soon. This event is still interesting and still worthy of, it would appear, the possible conclusion of the ULTIMATE line (by the way, I think we've covered but it's not the conclusion as they've already solicited and talked about new parts of the all-new Ultimate line or whatever they're calling it) but I think, for how small and contained the Ultimate Universe feels compared to the main universe, the sheer volume of books about this event has hurt the tension of it. With so many books and an entire universe tied to its outcome, it's starting to feel, even amidst all the action and all of the big set pieces, that the event is dragging. Almost every event at this point seems to reach that threshold, an invisible line where the reader's interest inevitably begins to wane. I do wonder if there are readers out there who are just reading the Ultimate Universe stuff and have been following this event with bated breath. Do you, mysterious reader, feel like it's still moving really well? Am I tainted because I've read every major Marvel book in between all of these CATACLYSM books? I don't know but it's the inherent problem (or one of the inherent problems) with these events and I think this whole event would be wise to start reaching its conclusion.

Revolutionary War - Knights of Pendragon 1
R. Williams (w) and Sliney (a) and Gandini (c)

Dai Thomas and Kate McLellan go to investigate an old underground Mys-Tech base while Pete Wisdom and Union Jack go to Avalon to warn Albion about Mys-Tech's re-emergence. Both pairs run into problems as Dai and Kate run afoul of the zombies of King Arthur's court, intent on returning to run Britain. Wisdom and Jack find that Mys-Tech beat them to Avalon and overran the Green Knight and possibly Albion. The stories converge as Albion falls out of Avalon and into the underground base (they were together the whole time, practically!) and manages to lead the Knights of Pendragon again. However, it's short lived as their overrun again fairly quickly. Fortunately, Wisdom snags zombie Excalibur and uses it to awaken the Green Knight, turning him into a knight for today (something like a marathon runner that's PROBABLY a British reference but I'm not about to understand it) and saving everyone, even resurrecting Dai, who had kind of died during the battle.

I was rather looking forward to this part of REVOLUTIONARY WAR because, on top of continuing the plot that I'm having a bit of trouble really getting into, it was bringing in characters I like and know a bit better in Pete Wisdom and Union Jack. It, instead, didn't really end up working for me and I found the whole thing something of a headache and often more grating than entertaining. It does a lot of the "clever, too-cool-for-this" captions thing I've taken such issue with over the last year or so and goes SO FAR out of its way to make sure we know the key points of these characters. Pete Wisdom calls himself a cynical guy, like, a hundred times in this issue (I didn't actually count but it FEELS like a hundred) and there's nothing I like LESS than a sarcastic or cynical person constantly asserting how cynical or sarcastic they are. UGH. Anyway, the plot doesn't clear up at all here as we only tangentially see what Mys-Tech is up to and the issue serves as just a way to show off a couple more characters and to point out who's Welsh and who isn't (?).

Night of the Living Deadpool 2
Bunn (w) and Rosanas (a and c)

Check it everyone, I can write this review SO FAST and you'll still get a PERFECT sense of this book. Deadpool and his team of humans travel through the zombies and typical zombie stuff happens, with the one person in their group who was already bitten turning and going on to turn someone else before Deadpool kills them both, then the other three people with him get bitten one after the other after Deadpool and company visit a slew of classic zombie-media locales (ie Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, oodles of Walking Dead, others I'm less familiar with, etc). Deadpool, now alone, finds himself near a human commune ready to be invaded by a group of other humans.

This series is a loving homage to zombies and everything zombie in media and, as such, straddles a fine line between nostalgia, hamfisted reference, and Deadpool. The art is really the standout of the book, particularly as we already have something sort of this nature with Headpool from MARVEL ZOMBIES, but it still can't really cover the fact that this book is only going to be for the true Deadpool fans out there and MAYBE for the true zombie fans out there. The problem is that zombie Marvel was already done better in the aforementioned MARVEL ZOMBIES and zombies in general have already been done better in...well, everything they mention from Night of the Living Dead to the amazing Shaun of the Dead to The Walking Dead. So every beat is predictable in some fashion, meaning that the allure of these Deadpool-centric series, the draw of seeing some new idea, is kind of gone. I liked DEADPOOL KILLUSTRATED best of all of these little series and that one introduced the most original ideas. After a turn through Deadpool fighting Deadpools (and at least the neat idea of a Deadpool alternate-costume for every hero they could fit on the page), we get to this. I don't know. I think the most I can say is that you'll probably know if you'll like it right from the get-go and if it's not for you in its design than it's not going to ever be for you.