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It's a quiet week for new launches, but we
do have Marvel's latest Ultimate imprint miniseries,
Ultimate Power. The high concept here is to have
the Ultimate heroes meet up with the characters from J
Michael Straczynski's Squadron Supreme title, since
they're effectively the Ultimate Squadron Supreme.
The story is scheduled for nine issues,
which seems a touch excessive for a gimmick story.
Especially considering that it's the Squadron Supreme,
characters who have never exactly had a fan base of their
own. The Squadron were created simply as
copyright-dodging analogues of the Justice League of
America. They're basically novelty guest stars.
Decent stories have been done with them, largely by
exploring areas that DC can't go themselves, but it seems
safe to assume that people generally buy their book for the
creative team rather than for the characters.
The Squadron's regular creative team
aren't involved here; instead, we have Brian Bendis and Greg
Land producing a fairly stock first issue. The
Fantastic Four are unsettled when the Thing loses one of his
scales, and Reed starts investigating interdimensional
travel again, in search of a cure. The Squadron don't
actually show up until the very end. It's a perfectly
decent story in its way, and the FF's discomfort about the
implications an essentially very minor injury is played very
nicely.
But at the end of the day, not enough is
achieved for a first issue. The big revelation at the
end is... the Squadron Supreme appear. That's not a
cliffhanger! They're the co-stars of the series, for
heaven's sake! It's not as though their appearance
comes as any sort of surprise.
Greg Land's art has the usual issues.
It's very smooth, often very attractive. But there's a
sort of airbrushed quality to it that sometimes looks off -
especially when he throws in a figure like Black Mamba who
plainly hasn't been drawn from photo reference and puts her
next to somebody who looks practically traced. It's
rather obvious that he's using the same model for several of
his female characters, too.
Taken on its own terms, this isn't bad.
But it really needed to make more headway with the actual
concept.
Rating: B
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