Ultimate Nightmare finally grinds to a halt, months behind schedule.

The good news is that something actually happens in issue #5.  The bad news is that it doesn't excuse the failure of anything to happen in issues #2-4.

The Ultimates finally reach the creature which is transmitting the nasty signals.  It turns out to be Ultimate Vision, an alien robot who's come to earth to warn as about impending nastiness, but has been waylaid all this time by a Soviet supersoldier programme.  This is actually quite a good idea.  It's a strong payoff which, properly written, could have filled a whole two issues.

Unfortunately, it's been stretched to five, in an attempt to milk it far beyond its natural lifespan.  God only knows what the X-Men are doing there.  They show up halfway through to get beaten up in a few pages, while Ellis' pet characters complain about the stupidity of writing them into the story in the first place.  Well, whose fault is that, Warren?  If there's no good reason for them to be in the story, blame the writer, not the characters. 

It reads as though Ellis is so busy sneering at the cast that he's started to see the story's glaring weaknesses as symptomatic of poor quality characters, rather than poor quality script.  I suspect Ellis would really rather be doing something else.  I know how he feels.

One good idea is nowhere near enough to redeem this slow and ponderous series.

Rating: C

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