Customer Reviews

Ultimate Galactus Trilogy

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Warren Ellis is a man of many mad ideas. His most recent work at Marvel has involved making the Ultimate Fantastic Four one of the best titles in the Ultimate lineup, and he lends his talents to re-vitalizing the planet devouring Galactus with the Ultimate Galactus Trilogy. All three mini-series'; Ultimate Nightmare, Ultimate Secret, and Ultimate Extinction, are all collected in this handsome hardcover edition. Ultimate Nightmare is undoubtedly the best of the trilogy, as Ellis sets up the trilogy as images of the genocide of an alien race is broadcasted on Earth out of the clear blue. Nick Fury, Captain America, Black Widow, and Sam Wilson (with Falcon wings in tow) are sent to Russia to investigate; unbeknownst that Professor Xavier has sent Wolverine, Jean Grey, and Colossus to do the same. What they discover only sets the stage for Ultimate Secret, which introduces us to Kree warrior Captain Mahr-Vell, who teams up with the Fantastic Four, the Ultimates, and Nick Fury as alien attacks are launched. Ultimate Extinction wraps the series up as the Gah Lak Tus is revealed, along with his herald the Silver Surfer, and the Ultimates, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four all band together to save the planet. Ellis' penchant for science facts, mad ideas, and poppy dialogue are peppered throughout the entire trilogy, with the only downside being Ultimate Extinction. The story iself isn't bad one bit, but the ending is so abrupt that it's kind of disappointing considering everything that was crafted to set it up. Not to mention that some may not dig Ellis' new takes on the Silver Surfer, Vision, and Misty Knight, but they all work well nevertheless. Negatives aside, there is great art throughout as well from Steve McNiven, Steve Epting, Brandon Petersen, Trevor Hairsine, and more besides, so the overall result is better than one might think. All in all, the Ultimate Galactus Trilogy isn't excellent, but Ellis' style shines through, and if you missed out on the single issues or single TPB's, this hardcover is worth picking up.

I don't understand the resistance to Kirby's classic Galactus. Re-imagining the classics is the fashion right now, and there have been three major efforts at re-imagining Galactus. The most conservative is John Byrne's effort, which he never completed, but which was most faithful to Kirby's original, building on the myth in some interesting ways. The other extreme, if you can even call it a re-imagining, is the absurd cloud in the latest FF movie. That cloud is actually evidence of a severe lack of imagination. It is also proof that Tim Story is the wrong director for these kinds of movies. He has made it well-known that he will have no giant robots in his films, and so has squandered the enormous potential of the FF in Hollywood. The irony is the relative success of the Transformers movie coming out right after the FF flop. (The FF movie fails for more reasons than the Galactus let down, but most of the problems can be blamed on the director's lack of understanding or respect for what makes comics great. The studio deserves to lose money for putting him at the helm, but it's a shame for the franchise.)
SPOILER ALERT! But this review is about Ellis. This is not his first re-presentation of Galactus. He works him into his version of the evil FF in Planetary. But there the world devourer, though dead himself, is still recognizable as Kirby's creation. In Ultimate Galactus, Ellis has gone much further, into the realm of the barely recognizable. The cover image exploits the famous Galactus helmet, but now instead of Galactus' dead body lying like an enormous whale carcass on some distant planet in Planetary, or a big storm cloud in the movie, we are left with his ghost merely. Yet, what power even the ghostly suggestion of Kirby's creation still has! Like Tim Story, Ellis wants to give the effect of enormous power. Tim Story does it by not ever letting us see Galactus at all. Rather, his presentation is weirdly Judaic, implying that either Galactus cannot be seen, like the invisible God of Judaism, or that he must be hidden by a cloud because his glory is too awesome, also like the Judaic conception. (Story's lack of imagination keeps him from idolatry at least!)
Ellis' take is more clearly materialistic. Ellis is a consistent materialist who re-imagines things along the lines of scientific explanation. Thus, Galactus turns out to be a swarm of machines with a shared "mind" sort of like the internet in space. The threat it poses is basically a kind of virus. This materialist conception of things extends to the conception of the Silver Surfer as many silver men who form suicide cults to lessen resistance to the incoming strain, rather than one harbinger of doom torn by his desire to save. Kirby's messiah figure is answered with the cynical cult leader stereotype.
Ellis shows his awareness of the shift he is undertaking by having Captain America muse over the good ole days when everyone believed in God. This is of course a pretty naive view of the early 20th century when Cap. was turned into a super soldier in the first place. And Ellis' obvious lack of sincerity makes Cap's speeches fall flat. Finally, Cap comes to the materialistic conclusion that his only value is in his fists and that he is only effective against what he can hit. So this is a Brit's. take on what makes (or made) America great. This lack of depth is the result of Ellis's materialist philosophy. Because he dismisses the paradoxes inherent in Kirby's more religiously based conceptions, his entire idea "ultimately" falls flat. This happened with Planetary, too, which he seems unable to conclude to this day. What conclusions he comes to are typically quick and unsatisfying.
This is the most common complaint about the Ultimate Galactus, that it is such a lot of build up for so quick and unsatisfying a conclusion. But that is what can be said of the entire materialist worldview! Though religion can be maddening, it at least attempts to recognize the paradox of a material world with apparently non-material qualities (soul, spirit, virtue, values). Without that, all we have are machines fighting machines. And that's about all Ellis's Galactus trilogy offers. Humanity's saving "virtue" is its cleverness rather than any really abstract heroic qualities to speak of. Granted, vaunted speeches may not inspire us much anymore, but what we get here is the much praised Warren Ellis "style" of clever quips and constant sarcasm. It's amusing, but in the end quite hollow.
You might say that it's only a comic book after all, but the power it has to amuse us on a deep level is borrowed from the very ideas it undermines. It is the ghost of Kirby's Galactus, a combination of mechanics and humanity and quasi-religious associations in the form of a giant man coming down out of space that makes Ellis's idea seem more interesting than it would be without it. By itself, a swarm of robots attacking from outer space is a pretty hackneyed scenario. Materialist notions are only interesting in juxtaposition to the notions they seek to challenge. But those notions, like Kirby's original conceptions here, are the fuel they run on. Without them, they just run out of gas. We owe Kirby our thanks and respect for having the guts and the imagination to envision and body forth such awesome characters as Galactus, and I would like to see the myths built on rather than avoided, or their power undermined by a one-sided and merely reactionary materialism.

For anyone who who loves to read modern graphic novels and has an opend mind and never listen's to negative opinion about what they want to read find out for your self and then make your own opinion. Let tell you mine this was an ULTIMATE fantastic read and the artwork was no slouch either. This a must have and read if your a Marvel fan.I loved the new take on the Galactus methos not to say the old story were bad but I for one love and am always interested on a new angle or take of an old story. Very smart and captivating a mature read no holds bard type of writing it had me on edge to turn on to next page. I truly recommend this graphic novel to anyone who will read with an opened mind. Please support writers and artist of this caliber because if weren't for new material this industry would not thrive.

It took Marvel a long time to complete this trilogy when it was in comic form, and just as long to finally collect it into one large hardcover edition. I had waited to read any of the series until I got the hardcover. Was it worth the wait? That's difficult to answer. Is any comic worth two years wait to read? I don't know. What I do know is that Mr. Warren Ellis is a great Sci-Fi writer, and I enjoyed this as much as I've enjoyed much of his other Sci-Fi-tinged work. The Ultimate Marvel Universe became my preferred universe of the two Marvel playgrounds long ago. While it features many characters with the same moniker who have similar adventures to the the characters in the "616" universe, the characters and stories in this universe seem more real, less dorky, and more unpredictable. Death is common, continuity is much more cohesive, and the new looks of the characters are usually much better than the originals they are based on.

This storyline introduces many new characters to the Ultimate universe, including the ultimate versions of Vision, Captain Mahr-Vell, the Kree, Silver Surfer, and, of course, Galactus. The new look of Galactus is, in particular, far removed from the origianl, but I liked it and I think new readers will like this version, too. Though the first part of the trilogy has little impact of the overall story and serves as little more than an opportunity for a small battle between a few of the Ultimates and the X-Men, the other parts of the story are very fresh and interesting and a compelling read. The artwork by Steve McNiven is the best of the artwork supplied by the pencillers for this book, though it is really above average throughout.

Overall, a worthwhile purchase for any fan of the Ultimate universe or of Sci-Fi in general.

So this is my first exposure to the Ultimates which is basically an out-of-continuity universe (with its own continuity, natch) where writers can re-envision great Marvel characters any way they see fit. This is not at all dissimilar to how the Marvel films work and I think UGT is a great blueprint for a film and as big and thrilling as any "proper" event from the main Marvel-U. Someone on here complains that that there's too little Galactus and while that's literally true, man, Ellis really plays off the specter of Galactus so well that it doesn't bother me. Everyone is bugging so hard about his imminent arrival that it creates this tense, menacing vibe. Get this whole collection because you will blaze through it. I force myself to put it down between chapters. Highest recommendation.

This graphic novel is quite a decent read. The collected comics are presented here and form a complete story.

The plot outline is good - Galactus, the devourer of worlds is heading for Earth and a bunch of superheroes must band together to drive him off. The leader is the black Nick Fury, who puts together a core team comprising Cap America, Iron Man, Thor, Falcon, Hawkeye etc calls in help from the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. The execution of this story is not so brilliant.

In conceiving this and (presumably) lengthening the plot, this starts off as an introduction to Mahr Vell, the grade B Captain Marvel who is really a Kree surgically transformed into a humanoid. Mahr Vell reveals that he is an agent sent to observe Earth's demise. Why he is merely an observer is not clear, nor the reason for him wanting to be accepted as an Earthling. The supposed love interest between him and Capt Danvers is poorly executed. Nick Fury then leads a team into the Russian hinterland to battle monsters and then discovers a robotic "vision" which had been recording Earth's demise. Somehow, this vision transforms into a female android Vision.

Meanwhile, Reed Richards, in between obvious flirtatious scenes with Sue Storm, is building a machine that will shoot a bolt of energy at Galactus from another universe. Meanwhile, Misty Knight stops a silver winged Silver Surfer and then the real Silver Surfer appears to battle it out with Cap America and Mahr Vell. There is reference to multiple female clones of Moon Knight who go on the rampage and they have to be stopped with the help of the X-Men. How they all relate to the Galactus storyline is unclear.

Finally, Galactus turns out to be a hive of interplanetary bees, sort of like a collected intelligence. This is not an original idea, obviously borrowed from the space locusts which first came out in Dan Dare "The Red Moon Mystery".

So, a 3 star for this, nice drawings brought down by the overly wrought and unoriginal plot.

Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's Silver Surfer: The Coming of Galactus (Fantastic Four) from the 60's Fantastic Four is certainly one of the most iconic super-hero adventures of all time. For a fan of the early Marvel comics, it is somewhat odd how these are often criticized as corny or camp. The grandeur of Galactus and the Watcher, the stakes raised by their landing on Earth, the agonizing suspense of the devourer of Worlds' planet-digesting machines being built before powerless New Yorkers, everything conspired to make the reader feel puny, making it clear that mankind's only hope would lie in the inventiveness of the Fantastic Four. And they delivered - the solution to this dire threat an insignificant and yet Universe-shattering gadget. These were the times of the The Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection, and The EC Archives: Weird Science Volume 1 still fresh in the memories of young FF readers.
This volume collecting the modern-day, Ultimate Marvel Gah-Lak-Tus saga compiles the 2006 reimaginings of this legendary tale. It does have a lot to go for it. There is indeed a certain freshness to this saga. The threat of Gah-Lak-Tus looming yet unseen throughout the storyline, the focus is mainly on the attempt by a group of heroes - orchestrated by a very self-confident, Samuel-Jackson-like (depending on the artist) Nick Fury, to understand and defeat the threat.
Nothing here can erase the memory of the awesome Kirby-Lee saga, yet everything feels very professional, very modern and hip, but the grandeur is fairly gone, leaving room for a brand of efficient thriller-like race against time. The dialogue and pace are good and the overall rhythm that of a decent run-of-the-mill Tom Clancy novel and/or movie. In the end though, this is light fare, with solid turns from the Ultimate er... Ultimates and X-men (appearing mostly there as filler). The Ultimate Vision has little to do, seeming mostly to fulfil the role of the orignial's Silver Surfer and ending up as a marginally hot female robot - leaving Earth, then coming back (?). Why the new herald? Difficult to say, especially when the Surfer itself, whose earlier classic adventures were serialized in this great melodrama of a space-faring alien trapped on Earth, ends up a slightly psychopathic shape-shifting mute bad guy with no actual mind of his own.
To cut things short - this Ultimate Galactus saga is a fun, relatively cheap, read but it does lack the truly space-operatic feel of the original. It never leaves you pondering the questions raised by its earlier incarnation, with its awesome, unstoppable force from space, nor does it convey the love that one might feel for Earth (and her ladies!) in the way the original, somewhat less sophisticated, Galactus and Silver Surfer adventure from the sixties did.
Note to European comic book fans: do use Amazon US for your trade paperback needs: delivery is a bit longer but no one yet in Europe can beat those prices!

In a very different and unique way, the ultimate world brings Galactus into the pictures. One thing the ultimate world was heavily avoiding was bringing in a lot of the 'space' characters. In this story we are introduced to a few of them as well as getting more ultimates fun (and that's always a good thing).

Very entertaining for me. I enjoyed the reimaging and they did a nice job of giving a proper prologue to the conflict. A bit short on the epilogue, however. The imagery of the helmet was worked in nicely. I'm all for giving Kirby his props, but in this day and age it's just a little difficult to take the image of a really tall guy floating through space and eating planets. This made the story exciting for me again.

First off I'd like to say that I do recommend this for fans of the Ultimate universe. Since you're here you probably know what this book is about, the Ultimate re-telling of Galactus. I'll keep it short since there's plenty of long winded reviews out there.

Everything leading up to Ultimate Extinction is great. They do a wonderful job of building the suspense and tension. Then once the climax arrives everything just kind of ends and we're left going "huh."

For me at least, the ending was a bit too abrupt and definitely leaves the window open for another visit from Galactus. It also looked like we may have not seen all that the "Un-creator" has to offer.