The remarkably boring Ultimate Nightmare series continues its glacial progress towards completion.

The book is slow enough to begin with; it's now also been plagued by delays.  Issue #3 shipped with unexpected fill-in art by Steve Epting.  With issue #4, the scheduled artist Trevor Hairsine returns to the book.  His last issue shipped in September 2004.  This one should have been out in mid-November.  And despite having a month's break from the book, and shipping this issue six weeks late, it still comes out with five inkers credited.

Now, let's be clear about this; the problem with this sort of thing isn't that the creators are slow.  Slow is not a problem.  Slow is fine.  You can be slow and on time, as long as you schedule the damn thing sensibly in the first place.  The problem is that the book is late.  And when you're selling a serial, you do so on the basis that future chapters will be appearing more or less when scheduled.  If they don't, then you've let down the reader.  This is meant to be a professional publishing industry, not a self-indulgent bunch of hobbyists, but god knows it's hard to tell the difference sometimes. 

It doesn't help that, even had it run on schedule, Ultimate Nightmare would still be a tiresomely dull comic.  The credits inform us that the book is "based on an idea by Joe Quesada."  The operative words are "an idea."  Not two ideas.  Not a story.  An idea.  And does the one idea fill five issues?  Does it hell.  Issue #1: something odd is happening in Tunguska.  The X-Men and the Ultimates decide to investigate.  Issue #2: They go there.  Issues #3 and #4: They wander around, and finally find something which is presumably the point, to be discussed next issue.

I can only assume that the creators think this is a slow-build exercise, with the tension gradually increasing.  They couldn't be more wrong.  There is no tension because there is no antagonist (the Russian supersoldiers are presented as animals or irrelevant relics), and no discernible threat.  It's just people wandering around a disused factory for months on end, and it's about as exciting as watching paint dry.  It's ponderous and self-important, as any level of dynamism or energy is sucked away by the terrible pacing and hopelessly murky art.

Horribly, horribly boring.

Rating: D

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