After the horror of Ultimates 3, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at Ultimate Iron Man II, a book which also arguably illustrates the troubled status of the Ultimate imprint.

Once upon a time, the Ultimate imprint had a vaguely coherent identity.  It was a universe in which big-name creators could tell stories about top Marvel characters, working from scratch.  This meant they could tweak the bits that didn't work, get rid of the clutter of accumulated continuity, home in on the central ideas, and write about characters who weren't as jaded as their Marvel Universe counterparts.

Whether this was a viable proposition in the long-term was always slightly debatable.  Still, at least it was at least an idea. 

But then they started getting confused.  Ultimate Adventures was nailed onto the side of the imprint, and everyone ignored it.  Tie-ins to the Daredevil movie were awkwardly published as Ultimate titles, on the grounds that they could be made to fit.  And somebody thought it would be a good idea to let Orson Scott Card reinvent Iron Man as a little boy with blue skin, superhuman intelligence and healing powers, in his Ultimate Iron Man miniseries.

This was just weird.  It wasn't much like the Iron Man of the original Marvel Universe.  Nor was it much like the urbane genial drunk that Mark Millar was writing in Ultimates at the time.  Nor did it have much to do with any core theme of the character. 

As a story about some people squabbling over nanotech inventions, it wasn't bad.  But as an origin story for Iron Man, it seemed to have completely lost sight of the traditional function that such a story is supposed to perform.  It was light on defining moments.  It wasn't much on big ideas.  Instead, it was a thriller about corporate espionage, running to several story arcs.  Quite how any of this was helping to define the character - let alone the character that Mark Millar was writing - was less than clear.

Still, it meant that Marvel got to publish a comic by the novelist Orson Scott Card, which one suspects is about as far as the "what is this book for?" discussion reached.  Mind you, the rate of progress has not exactly been blistering.  The first miniseries came out in 2005, and ran late by five months.  It has taken a further two years for the second volume to appear, and we still haven't reached the stage of Tony Stark becoming a superhero. 

As we pick up the story, Tony has made one public appearance as Iron Man, and everyone assumes it's a robot.  That's actually a neat angle, and it's the sort of thing you can only do in a Year One series, so we're off to a good start.

The actual plot involves government spooks trying to enlist the aid of Tony's expendable robot, and Tony deciding to play along.  It's one of those stories that J Michael Straczynski likes to write, where the genius with integrity runs rings around comic-relief mediocre officials.  But it's done quite entertainingly, not least because Tony's judgment is shown to be fallible.

A more dubious decision is to have Jim Rhodes as a second Iron Man right from the outset.  That just seems to make the character less unique, and to focus attention on the weird bits that Card has added to the character - such as that odd healing power.

We then head off to some unspecified corner of the world for our heroes to charge into a terrorist training camp and kill people.  There's a reasonably successful bid for moral ambiguity, as our heroes try to figure out whether "just go in and kill everyone in sight" is the sort of order they should be following.  But it has to be said that once we get into the camp, the rest is a bit hackneyed.

Still, there's actually quite a bit to enjoy in this issue.  It's well constructed and it's fairly witty.  It's also got art from Pascual Ferry, an artist who is perfectly suited for robots and technology, and who really deserved to be a bigger star than he is.  If we're judging this as a free-standing comic, this is perfectly good stuff.

But as an origin for Iron Man it's a little weird, to put it mildly. And as a spin-off from Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's Ultimates - which is what it's supposed to be - it's downright bizarre.  Clearly you couldn't do this story in the mainstream Marvel Universe, because it would drive a coach and horses through continuity.  But that doesn't make it a good idea to do it in the Ultimate imprint. 

Ideally, this would just be a free-standing series in its own continuity.  Of course, if they'd done that, it wouldn't have sold as well.  That's the dilemma.  But it dilutes the Ultimate brand when you start shoving any old stuff in there just to boost sales.  This isn't about getting back to basics, and it's wildly at odds with the established Ultimate Iron Man.  But here it is anyway, confusing the brand identity.

None of this alters the fact that it's an enjoyable comic, of course.  Still, at the same time, it shows Marvel's apparent confusion about this whole imprint.

Rating: B+

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