Ultimate Comics Avengers: Next Generation by Mark Millar is set in the Ultimate Universe where, instead of the Avengers, the heroes that are the Avengers on most Marvel Earth’s here call themselves the Ultimates. The main difference is most of the heroes of this earth are jerks and very flawed people. The main exception to that is Spider-Man.
In this tale,
Captain America is on the run from a capture squad led by Nick Fury who seeks
to stop him from getting to the Red Skull first. The capture squad includes
various new “heroes” alongside Hawkeye who is a friend of Captain America and
teammate on the Ultimates. They do not want him to catch up to the Red Skull
for reasons detailed in this tale and which would be spoilers. The Ultimate Universe’s
Red Skull identity is not the same as the main Marvel Universe.
The Captain America in this tale is what a good man from the 1940s would be if transported into the modern day with sensibilities from that time. So, this Captain America is a bit racist towards the French because of their surrender in WW2, calls people names related to cats, and is not generally the nice guy you would expect. Hawkeye is a killer who was forced to work for the government and now is a loyal government agent. Nick Fury is a womanizer, schemer, and should not be trusted to do the right thing. Iron Man. despite being on the cover, spends the whole series drunk in a bar with available women in skimpy outfits as he is not dealing with the fact that he had to murder Magneto in a previous series to prevent him from killing everyone on the planet. In a regular workplace, a coworker/friend going through the issues would be helped by their teammates, and offered psychological help. Instead, this is the Ultimate Universe where he is called a loser, a drunk by his boss, and more.
As I said, even the heroes of this universe are not good people for the most part. This is an adult tale with violence, sex, rape, baby murder, and more. This is a dark tale. While entertaining, understand that the characters in this universe may initially be familiar to you, but these are not the heroes you know. The ultimate universe is not a pleasant place to live.
This is an old book as this takes place in the original Ultimate Universe which ran for some time before the line was discontinued. It is now being collected on Hoopla where they have started adding a lot of the various series of Ultimate Universes, because a second Ultimate Universe is supposed to be released this summer.
That new series will only share some similarities with what has gone on before. Not much is known about this new Ultimate Universe at this point. The other main thing known is legendary author Jonathan Hickman is the mastermind behind the plan so one knows it will be ambitious.
My reading copy
by way of the Hoopla App and the Dallas Public Library System.
Scott A. Tipple ©2023
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