Mark Millar
The Ultimates

Anyone who wants to delve into reading Marvel comics and DC inevitably has to deal with the decades of continuity that weigh on the stories. To complicate matters, in recent decades there have been dozens of mega-crossovers with events that affect the general structure of a publishing universe, and so, between "Infinite Crisis," "Final Crisis," "Mortal Crisis," "Universal Crisis," "Secret Avengers," "Avengers Disassembled," "Avengers Reassembled," "Angry Avengers," the poor novice doesn't know which way to turn and is faced with two choices: open a mortgage to recover the mountain of stuff to read or download it for free from the web. Or more simply dedicate themselves body and soul to mutual masturbation with their friend, who is also a failed comics reader.

DC attempted a drastic solution in 1985, the famous Crisis on Infinite Earths, while the more cautious Marvel renewed itself step by step with the various House of M and One More Day, which nevertheless made many fans frown (American readers are obsessed with continuity: better than a naked woman for them).

So, it was thought, or rather, Joe Quesada, Mark Millar, and Brian Michael Bendis thought, that it was better to have an alternative project to the classic universe, which could be developed without compromising what had already been written in sixty years. That's how in 2000 Ultimate Spiderman was born, retelling the life of Peter Parker from its origins in a way that made it more enjoyable for the modern reader.

It was an incredible success with critics and the public, and the Ultimate brand expanded enormously with Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four, and the like.

But among them all, the series that will be remembered as an indestructible masterpiece of sequential literature is undoubtedly "The Ultimates" (Vol. 1 and 2).

Written by the excellent Mark Millar and drawn by Brian Hitch, the series is a retelling of the Avengers: so we have the characters we think we have always known. Only we see them in a completely different light, analyzed in depth in their psychology.

Captain America, the super soldier created by the government to fight the Nazis, is lost in 1945 during a mission. He will be brought back to life sixty years later by the same government, represented by General Fury (inspired by the badass Samuel L. Jackson), to lead a team of superhumans born to fight threats that the normal army could not handle. But good old Cap was the emblem of America of the past, where you went to church every Sunday in your best clothes, where good boys did military service and sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" still convinced it meant something, where records were listened to on vinyl. The great super soldier will have to get used, like it or not, to the new reality; his dearest friend Bucky and his ex-girlfriend Gail are now very old but are also the only link to Cap's lamented past from which he cannot detach himself.

But he knows well that he is a hero, that he must be an example for the nation in which he grew up, no matter how much effort it costs him. And then, headlong into his new job as a government agent, alongside other characters to rediscover: Iron Man, that is the billionaire playboy and alcoholic Tony Stark, determined to become a hero to do something good before dying of a brain cancer; Henry and Janet Pym, scientific spouses but with big couple problems to solve that will result in violence; Thor, charismatic no-global prophet who claims to be the son of Odin and at the same time thunders against US imperialism, but suspected of being crazy; and finally, last but not least, Bruce Banner, unlucky scientist, scarred by failures and taunts from his colleagues, who finds his outlet in the monster Hulk, violent, cannibal, and even a sexual maniac.

In the first series, the group will face an alien invasion, responsible for the World Wars, and whose leader is an old enemy that Captain America must defeat to symbolically cut ties with the past. They seem to find a precarious balance, but in the second series events precipitate, hatreds and disagreements emerge, Thor and Hulk hit rock bottom and countries like France, Russia, and Germany organize their own team of Ultimates led by Loki, the god of lies and brother of Thor. For each protagonist, there will be the opportunity for redemption they have long sought.

The cynical and dark tone of the narrative, the fine psychological detailing reserved for the vivid characters that populate the pages of Ultimates, the inevitable involvement of the reader and their identification even with the less noble characters, and the beautiful panels by Brian Hitch make "The Ultimates" one of the best, if not the best, among the publications at Marvel.