Customer Reviews

Ultra: Seven Days

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This trade paperbacks collects all eight issues of the Ultra Limited series from Image Comics. Ultra: Seven Days is a unique look at the superhero genre presented by Joshua and Jonathan Luna who plotted, scripted, drew, inked, colored, and even lettered this book. Ultra is one of the greatest female superheroes in the world. Superheroes in this story are roughly akin to professional athletes in our world. They endorse products such as soft drinks, cosmetics, and perfumes. They are represented by large public relations firms such as the Heroine Agency and they are the stuff of tabloid gossip.

We meet Pearl Penalosa AKA Ultra. She is one of the most popular heroes in the world with millions of fans and admirers, a female version of Superman if there ever was one. She's even been nominated for Heroine of the year in a red carpet event as illustrious as the Oscars. She puts her duty before her own personal life. Pearl is out on the town for a night of fun with her friends Olivia and Jennifer (Also heroes known as Aphrodite and Cowgirl respectively) The trio pay a visit to a local fortune teller who looks every bit like a charlatan to get their fortunes told. It's there they learn that Ultra, always unlucky in love, will meet her true love within seven days.

Pearl thinks the whole fortune-telling thing is pure nonsense, until she meets a regular guy that she falls head over heels in love with. Taking him into her confidence, although her real identity is out in the open as most heroes are, she has a steamy night of passion with him, only to find that he was a paid stooge, selling his story to a sleazy tabloid publisher, destroying Ultra's untainted reputation in the eyes of her legions of fans. Her agency immediately goes on damage control as her boss gives her the "I told you so" speech when it comes to watching who she associates with.

Pearl now finds herself ostracized by the public and subject to taunts and insults from the people who once adored her. This leads to an ugly verbal fight between her and Olivia. On top of all of Pearl's personal problems, a new and very deadly villain has hit town. A superhuman pyro-kinetic who is using his powers to set devastating fires all over the city and taking a number of superheroes down who try and stop him. Ultra now has to pull herself together and forget her personal troubles to try and take down this threat before more people are killed.

Ultra is a Superhero book, certainly, but the Luna brothers have constructed a Superhero book with dysfunctional characters that would make Stan Lee green with envy. Pearl is a workaholic hero obsessed with her clean image to the point of virtually having no private life. Olivia (Aphrodite) is an admitted nymphomaniac, unable to commit to a stable relationship. Cowgirl is naïve and insecure, always following the lead of others. Throughout the book the Luna brothers gives readers great renditions of faux advertisements and newspaper/magazine articles featuring their heroines doing ads for products like "Levy's jeans" and other well-known product parodies. This helps bring the reader into this world of heroes as media shills and it's very well done.

The plot is not action-packed...there are only a handful of fights. This is not a superhero tale about action but rather the flip-side of being a hero. In many respects, the real lives of these heroes are the masks they hide behind and they escape into their super personas to get away from their troubled, and often mundane private lives. This was my first exposure to the work of the Luna brothers and I am very impressed. Despite the lack of action, they pace the story well and it's never dull. Their minimalist art was also a welcome reprieve from the typical in-your-face, splash page-heavy art of many of their contemporaries.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

This work is rather brilliant in many ways. It sneaks up and grabs you with its characters. You feel like you know these women after only a few panels of conversation--the dialogue being some of the best natural dialogue I've seen. It fleshes out each character without heavy exposition. And when they converse you hear the characters, not the author(s), which actually is (unfortunately) a rare talent in comics. By far the dialogue and characters are reason enough to buy this book.

However, another good reason is the humor! I laughed out loud so many times reading this book... It's a mature humor, often sexual without being crude. Certainly not something for younger readers, so be aware of that if you're planning on buying it for someone else. But it truly is some of the funniest, smart humor I've seen lately. The "ads" are hilarious. The "articles" on the superheroes are hit and miss, but mostly hit. Aphrodite's interview is by far the best of the lot and a brilliant piece of writing, which harkens back to the obvious strength of the Luna brothers--their dialogue.

The art is modern, computer fair, but gorgeous just the same. Probably one of the best examples of what modern techniques can do. It has a photorealism as if there is a camera filming with some shots of the foreground in focus and the background not, and vice versa. It works most of the time, and where it doesn't isn't a big deal. If that look isn't a favorite of yours, I would still suggest giving the book a try. It's that good, and it might even win you over.

The plot is interesting, and comes with its own twists, which are well done. It moves along at a good pace. I read it all the way through when I got it, which to me means it has that reader quality of wanting to find out what happens next. Some of the plot elements don't exactly break new ground, but the characters are so convincingly real and sympathetic, it adds a new dimension to the story regardless.

I would have liked to see more of Ultra doing her job as superhero, but what is shown is great.

Overall, I can tell you I'm very pleased I bought this work and hope more people do. It's a great value on Amazon, and these guys are far too talented to not be read more widely.

Ultra is a superhero in a world more real than that of standard superhero comics. Here superheroes are celebrities and subject to all that our film and television celebrities are. Many heroes work in agencies that hire them out to work with the police and others. I found this very refreshing. As the story opens, Ultra and two other heroines are hanging out when one decides to check out a fortune teller. A little time and a lot of dollars later they have their fortunes and expectations. Each will experience their fortune sometime in the next seven days.

Ultra has been told that she will find true love. At the urging of some of her friends she tries to enter the dating scene while managing her civilian and hero life. She must deal with criminals both ordinary and super, public opinion and yellow journalism, trust and betrayal. Somehow she manages to get through it all.

By the end of the story we see how each fortune has worked out while learning a lot about this interesting world and its all too human characters. The reader is left wanting to read more and I hope more will be forthcoming. The art is excellent with a film-like feel with foregrounds or backgrounds being unfocused. I really liked the characters and the world they live in. Definitely one of the better comics out there.

No nudity or actual sex is depicted but the dialogue. and smooth, slick art is perfect for depicting the idealized super women, and thier "Sex and the City" type frank discussion of sexual topics, the obligatory lesbian sub-theme will ensures a thread of sexual tension through out the reading experience. Predictable shots are also taken at a Batman and Robin-like pair. Scenes of battle are surprisingly gory. Lovely art and design are the selling point for this revisionist super hero book that does not tread any new ground but is enjoyable if ultimately nothing special.

The short version of this book is Sex and the City meets superheroes.

In Ultra's world, superheroes are high profile celebrities represented by powerful companies like Olympus Inc and Heroines Inc. They have their commercial endorsements, their albums, their luxury cars and endless relationship problems. Fighting crime is an afterthought.

Ultra, along with her two best friends Cowgirl and Aphrodite, is among the top-tier. She is a successful single woman stalked by tabloid reporters, pestered by her mom and unable to meet a normal guy. Her world is turned upside down when a fortune-teller predicts she will find true-love within 7 days.

The script by Jonathan Luna is clever, the characters manage to sound like human beings rather than comic characters. The art by Joshua Luna does a good job with facial expressions, environments and action. The women actually have difference faces (rare in American comics) and he can do more expressions than the usual heroic grimace. Unfortunately he falls back on the lazy trick of repeating panels but only changing a minor detail like which ways the eyes point. After a while this becomes quite annoying.

But the final product is a good take on superheroes with likeable and very human characters and a different take on superheroes.

After reading this and the equally compelling (but completely different) "Girls," I have become a die hard Luna Brothers fanatic. Not only is the book stylish and cool, but very insightful, human, and FUNNY. My only complaint about this series is that it didn't run for five years, because I grew to really love the characters.

From Jonathan and Joshua Luna, Ultra: Seven Days is a surprisingly innovative and mature look at the super hero genre. The story takes place in a world where super humans walk with normal people in everyday life, and it revolves around three super heroines. There's the title character, also known as Pearl Penalosa, sex-crazed Aphrodite, and insecure Cowgirl; all of whom make a fateful trip to a fortune teller one night for fun as Pearl is told that within seven days, she'll find the true love she's always seeked and yearned for. After a while, she hooks up with a normal guy, only to have her heart broken, and what follows is an examination of not just what drives these women to do what they do, but just what kind of people they really are underneath the capes and spandex. Though it has plenty of tongue-in-cheek moments, Ultra is frequently sharp and witty and the art by the Luna brothers is nothing short of awesome. Though it doesn't reach the lengths that it was striving to go towards, Ultra: Seven Days is still a graphic novel that is better than you might think, and deserves to be checked out.

Someday the Luna Brothers will be household names, at least in those households inhabited by comic book fans. For now they're establishing a beachhead in the field of awesome independent comic books. I love the hell out of the epic SWORD series, and I thought GIRLS was amazing - freaky, but amazing. ULTRA: SEVEN DAYs happens to be the Luna Brothers' take on superheroes, and it's an unconventional perspective, sir.

ULTRA: SEVEN DAYS is different and original and will appeal to those who normally don't read comic books. It centers around Pearl Penalosa, a Hispanic career girl, her career that of being a superhero. Pearl Penalosa patrols Spring City as the mighty Ultra, and this is the sort of universe where flashy crimefighting will land a vigilante a deal with a prestigious PR agency. Her contract with Heroine, Inc. has garnered Pearl heaps of glossy media pub and enviable celebrity status. I mean, Ultra is the main spokeswoman for name brands like Cool Cola and Levy's ("ridiculous low jeans").

Heck, even the fake magazine articles and adverts are a hoot. Not to mention, they flesh out the characters even more with some much-needed back stories.

There's something very appealing about Pearl who is very down-to-earth and a workaholic. She hasn't let fame and fortune go to her head; her nomination for "Best Heroine of the Year" isn't a distraction. She's a fine role model. Pearl for sure isn't as extroverted as her two best friends, sexy model-turned-superhero Olivia Arancina and adorable blue-blooded debutante Jennifer Janus, also known to their adoring public, respectively, as fellow superheroines Aphrodite and Cowgirl. Our story begins with these three girls on a night out on the town. On a whim, they visit a fortune teller who divines a different fate for each girl, each prophecy to come to pass within seven days. For Pearl, the soothsayer promises true love. Pearl Penalosa - level-headed and practical - brushes it off. And then the Luna Brothers work their magic.

ULTRA: SEVEN DAYS isn't your typical superhero story, no. Even though there are the occasional fighty fights. Mostly it focuses on Pearl's personal life. But it's interesting how the Lunas depict Pearl's superhero gig as her actual day job as opposed to, say, a night hobby. In this world, there's pretty much no such thing as secret identities. And so there's nothing to stop the media from digging into a hero's past and airing out the sordid dirty laundry. Pearl, a high profile superhero, merits her own fickle paparazzi. And then comes one moment in which Pearl lets her guard down.

I hope the Luna Brothers blow up big soon, because the world is really missing out. The narrative has this wonderful organic flow to it. Joshua Luna has an impeccable ear for dialogue, funny and clever, honest and on point. It's a pleasure to observe these characters interacting with and among each other. I like that Aphrodite and Cowgirl are also written with depth. Even Pearl's ex - who only shows up for a mo- is a three-dimensional person.

As mentioned, there are fighty fights, and there's even a last minute nemesis. But all that's just lip gloss. The Lunas don't really even bother to go into detail regarding our heroines' power sets (we quickly learn, though, that Pearl's friend isn't the actual goddess of love). I was more concerned about Pearl's personal dramas. She does meet a guy - a normal guy - and begins to foster a relationship with him. She even begins thinking that the stupid prophecy may be true after all. Except the Luna Brothers aren't about to dole out obvious answers or easy resolutions. That may be what I like best about the Luna Brothers. They guide you down unexpected pathways.

The Luna Brothers, with a satiric eye, have created a vivid, intriguing world in which sanctioned vigilantism and glitzy celebrity can go hand in hand. And don't sleep on Jonathan Luna's deceptively simple yet evocative visuals and the effectively muted color palette he applies. The man's art-fu, it is strong.

Source: Over the past 5 years I've read 5000 comics / mangas and I must say this is one of the best.

Plot: Fresh New Intriguing
Script: Simple yet filled with Intellectual Humor anyone can understand
Art: Passable but the script and storyline more than make up for it

Conclusion: Regardless of where you are in the comic book reading life (start = your amazed by everything, end = you require something more than just action) you will love this book.

On the surface Ultra seems targeted to young women and a guy can't get anything out of it. But you'd be wrong. Ultra tells the tale of the titular character and an eventful week in her life. it begins with night out on the town with her friends Aphrodite and Cowgirl, both heroines in their own right. and an visit to a fortune teller who gives each woman a prediction. As the week goes on a the predictions seem to come true. Ultra finds herself in situation after situation which pushes her to her limits. The story while a book about superheroes has little superhero action as story is more of what happens behind the cape. This was best written story I have read in a long time. If you are looking for change in the cape and cowl set and looking for break from the next big company wide story arc. ULTRA will fill that void and let you believe in original comics again.