Comic Book / Ultimate Comics Avengers

The next generation

Ultimate Comics: Avengers is an Ultimate Marvel comic book series written by Mark Millar, with art from Carlos Pacheco, Leinil Francis Yu, and Steve Dillon. The series is told through three miniseries, concluding with a crossover with Ultimate Comics: New Ultimates.

In the aftermath of the Ultimatum Wave, Nick Fury is brought back to working for S.H.I.E.L.D. after an unexpected turn of events: Captain America has gone rogue.

To deal with this, Fury reactivates plans for a black ops superhero team known as the Avengers. The recruited members are Hawkeye, James "Rhodey" Rhodes" aka War Machine, a clone of Bruce Banner codenamed "Nerd Hulk", Red Wasp (formerly Swarm of the Liberators), and Monica Chang aka Black Widow II. Other later members include Bruce Banner's former mentor and the first Hulk Leonard Williams aka Tyrone Cash, Frank Castle the Punisher, and Perun also formerly from the Liberators.

With financial and tech support from Tony Stark's twin brother Dr. Gregory Stark, the Avengers are tasked with handling off the books operations that the Ultimates are not allowed to publicly tackle. In the series' final arc, the two teams would clash in an epic battle instigated by a deep conspiracy within S.H.I.E.L.D., which also happens to indirectly cause the death of Spider-Man.

Provides examples of:

• Adaptational Villainy: The Avengers of Earth-616 are Earth's Mightiest Heroes. The Avengers of Earth-1610 are a band of ruthless black ops soldiers and Boxed Crooks who don't care for civilian casualties in the name of fulfilling their duties for the United States Government. And even then, it's In Name Only as the Ultimate Avengers are separate from the Ultimate Universe's true Avengers counterparts the Ultimates.
• Ambiguous Situation: In the final issue, Monica sends Fury an email congratulating him on getting reinstated as director of S.H.I.E.L.D., but also voices her suspicions about whether or not Nick somehow manipulated events just so he could get his old job back.
• Anti-Hero: All the Avengers are willing to murder and torture to complete their missions. What separates them from pure villainy are some bursts of humanity that pop up on occasion.
• Bait-and-Switch: A Giant Man named Scotty appears in the third story arc, making it seem as though we've been introduced to the Ultimate version of Scott Lang. However, it turns out that this is Dave Scotty, and Scott Lang is properly introduced and promoted to be a member of the Ultimates.
• Boxed Crook: Red Wasp, the Punisher, Tyrone Cash, and Perun are all criminals and even former enemies of the Ultimates who are conscripted into the Avengers' ranks.
• Call-Back: Captain America's opinions on the French is brought up again, with some French soldiers who are keeping him in custody not taking kindly to his words. Though, they quickly beg for mercy and try to surrender when he breaks out of his cuffs.
• Cain and Abel: Tony's twin brother Gregory introduced, shown to be a smarmy, arrogant, condescending jackass who, while he doesn't engage in the hedonism Tony does, is not as charitable or friendly as his brother.
• Continuity Nod:
  • It's shown that Thor had officially started a relationship with Jane Foster, with whom he's had a Ship Tease in The Ultimates 2 but had spontaneously begun dating Valkyrie instead when Jeph Loeb took over for The Ultimates 3.
  • In the final issue, Fury and Carol Danvers meet up in the same restaurant he and Bruce Banner ate at in The Ultimates (2002).
• Covers Always Lie:
  • Played With. The wraparound cover of Issue #1 shows the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Blade, Perun, and Daredevil. All of whom don't appear in the issue or the first story arc, and some of whom aren't even members of the Avengers. However, the MacGuffin of the first story arc was stolen from Reed Richards, an unofficial member of the Avengers is shown to be a sociopathic clone of Spider-Man, and Blade, Perun, and Daredevil's appearances are actually Foreshadowing since they later appear in the third storyline, though Daredevil is actually a Legacy Character.
  • Despite the "Death of Spider-Man" graphic plastered all over the Ultimate Avengers vs New Ultimates miniseries, it doesn't actually tie in that much to the titular storyline going on in Ultimate Spider-Man. One of the final covers is of the characters mourning Spider-Man, but he's actually only mentioned briefly in the ending and the entirety of the issue is disconnected from his death.
• Deal with the Devil: A gang of bikers murdered Johnny Blaze and Roxanne Simpson as a sacrifice for Satan to grant them power, which turned them into some of America's most powerful men including Vice President. However, Satan made another deal behind their backs with Johnny, who forfeited his own soul to resurrect Roxanne and enact revenge on his murderers as the Ghost Rider.
• Decoy Antagonist: "Anthony", the leader of the vampires, gets immediately decapitated when he agrees to Nerd Hulk's challenge for leadership. From then on, Nerd Hulk effectively takes over as the Arc Villain.
• Decoy Protagonist: Ray Connor gets plenty of setup as a Legacy Character to Matt Murdock as Daredevil, but then quickly gets killed and turned into a vampire.
• Deus ex Machina: Spider-Man comes out of nowhere to save Captain America from the Punisher's sniper shot. This unfortunately leads indirectly to his death while fighting the Green Goblin.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • A S.H.I.E.L.D. staff member was convinced by the Spider to commit suicide after just a few exchanges.
  • One of the Ghost Rider's targets slit his wrists so he can avoid the Rider's wrath.
• Everyone Has Standards: Tyrone Cash attracts the ire and disgust of pretty much everybody around him, from both the amoral, jingoistic War Machine to the Vice President who literally sold his soul to Satan.
• Fantastic Racism: A lot of the Avengers freely throw around the fictional slur "mutie" when referring to Ghost Rider, who they believe to be a mutant.
• Kick the Dog: The Red Skull uses the Cosmic Cube to screw with the Avengers, including summoning the bones of Hawkeye's dead family and reconstituting them into the toys his children played with.
• The Man Behind the Man: There's some unsubtle hints that Fury convinced the Red Skull out of retirement for the sole purpose of being reinstated as head of S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Captain America scoffs at the idea of Nerd Hulk being the Hulk with Banner's intelligence, yelling that S.H.I.E.L.D. had royally screwed up by taking away the Hulk's Wild Card edge.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Avengers assume that their target is some mutant with pyrokinetic abilities hunting down various wealthy and powerful people. Said "mutant" turns out to be Ghost Rider, still retaining his supernatural origins and everything, thus there is almost nothing the Avengers can even do to intervene in his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Frank Castle's suit is claimed to be given so his identity can be hidden and S.H.I.E.L.D. can avoid association with the Punisher. Leinil Francis Yu might not have gotten the memo since Frank's suit has a giant Punisher skull on it.
• Pet the Dog:
  • The usually hardass Ultimate Captain America takes a moment to sincerely thank and praise Spider-Man for Taking the Bullet.
    Captain America: You took a bullet without even hesitating. When you grow up, you're going to be the best out of all of us.
  • The generally antagonistic Monica Chang also has nothing but praise for Spider-Man, calling him one of the most heroic people she's known and calls out Fury in a message for supposedly putting him in harm's way.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Nerd Hulk teases Cap for using "girlie" weights during training and regards Ghost Rider's Superhero Origin as "retarded".
• Retcon:
  • The series firmly puts Ultimate Iron Man into Canon Discontinuity, instead establishing that the origin story depicted there was in fact a cartoon series that heavily embellished Tony Stark's beginnings as Iron Man and also didn't give Rhodey any royalties for using his likeness.
  • Thor's faux-Shakespearean speak from Jeph Loeb's tenure of writing The Ultimates is undone by way of Tony offering to donate to any charity of Thor's choice just to make him stop. It's not entirely explained why he ended up talking like that to begin with considering he never talked that way in the first two Ultimates books.
• Saw It in a Movie Once: The Spider, who somehow figured out Ghost Rider's origins, forces Monica to reveal why she divorced Nick Fury in exchange. Nerd Hulk explains that the Spider saw it in a movie and thought it'd be amusing.
• Self-Deprecation: Nerd Hulk wants to go into Manhattan to get some comics signed from his favorite writer. Said comic is the infamously panned Trouble written by none other than Millar himself.
• Shout-Out: There's some strong implications that Monica's son Julius is Nick Fury's son, which makes one wonder if his name is a reference to Jules Winnfield.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Red Skull looked exactly like his father when he was younger. So he carved off his face to shed his association with him.
• Take That!: Issue #1 opens with Nick Fury lamenting how much things have fallen with him briefly out of the picture. It really comes across as Mark Millar commenting on how disastrous Ultimate Marvel had become without him.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In spite of being a major character in the first arc, Red Wasp never shows up again outside of a flashback to a conversation she has with Perun.
• Who Shot JFK?: The Red Skull did. In the ultimate act of rebellion against his father and the system that birthed him, he assassinated President Kennedy.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Red Skull literally tosses Red Wasp's baby out the window.
  • Frank Castle also has no qualms about killing teenagers that are among the gangsters and cartel he massacres. That said, he's intensely remorseful when he accidentally shoots Spider-Man and demands punishment.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: Rhodey is very unimpressed with what Tyrone Cash had done with his Hulk powers, having decided upon pursuing a hedonistic life of being a major crime lord who Really Gets Around.

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