The past and present writers of Ultimate X-Men - and the previous art team of Ultimate X-Men, for that matter - join forces to bring us Ultimate Fantastic Four.  (And aren't these Ultimate titles getting a bit cumbersome?)

Although Bendis and Millar are the two writers primarily responsible for the Ultimate line, the idea of them collaborating is a curious one.  They're drastically different writers, as was immediately obvious when the Ultimate line was launched.  Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men appeared to occupy completely different universes - Bendis writing a traditional superhero universe with a heavy focus on character, and Millar shoving character to the background in favour of cynical humour and violence.

So at first glance there are two ways this could go.  They might produce a horrible style clash, or they might complement one another's strengths.  Updating the Fantastic Four for the twenty-first century is not an easy task.  To be honest, I'm still inclined to think that the characters passed their sell-by date some decades ago.  Still, in order to make it work, you have to go for the proverbial sense of wonder.  Bendis seems a bit low-key for that; Millar has the scale, but too much darkness and cynicism for wonder.

In keeping with Bill Jemas' unconventional theory that stories should start as early as possible, the series starts 21 years ago with the birth of Reed Richards, and takes him up as far as age 10.  Get back to me in a few months and we can decide whether there was really any need to start quite so far back. 

Regardless, this is a story about Reed Richards, scientific genius, being bullied at school until he's delivered off to the government-sponsored Baxter Building to explore his ideas alongside geniuses just like him.  So it's really got more in common with that Alan Moore series about the kid building insanely advanced Kirbytech in his garage.  Bendis and Millar do manage to pull off the sense that Reed's science is somehow innocently wonderful, which is a promising start.

Obviously, when you've got Reed demonstrating teleportation at the school science fair, the book is being played tongue-in-cheek.  But it has to be, up to a point.  The point is that we need to be laughing with the book, rather than at it.  Adam Kubert hits the balance nicely, with a suitably low-key approach to the first issue.  It's meant to be a pleasant suburban world which Reed is disrupting by his home-made Kirbytech.  Kubert duly pitches the book more subtly than his work on Ultimate X-Men, and the result is very effective.

As for the collaboration, if I had to guess, I'd say this was 70-30 Bendis, and in particular that Bendis did all the dialogue.  In any event, thus far it seems to be a better mesh than I'd have expected.

Rating: A

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