A review by markk
Ultimate Comics Ultimates: Disassembled by Carmine Di Giandomenico, Joshua Hale Fialkov
4.0
Though I have been a reader of comic books since the 1980s, my enjoyment of them in the past few years has been infrequent. While I miss out on a lot because of this, the silver lining is that when I DO pick up a comic book or a graphic novel it has the ability to be a lot more surprising to me. This helps to explain why I enjoyed the collection as much as I did, as I was experienced Reed Richards the megalomaniacal villain for the first time. It's quite a logical development for a character who has often been high-handed and manipulative even in the regular FF run, and that he sees himself as being so for altruistic reasons only highlights the costs of his actions.
Of course, this is an Ultimates title, and not an FF one; Reed even isn't the main villain (that would be the Ultimates version of Kang, which as with many of the best Ultimates characters is depicted with a twist). Joshua Fialkov starts things out abruptly, as events go from calm to crisis in just the first three pages. Once the pace is set Fialkov doesn't let up, keeping events going at a rapid pace). What drives events isn't really the plot (which is ill-defined even by the end) but an entertaining intellectual pissing contest between Reed Richards and Tony Stark, which is just the sort of thing that two arrogantly brilliant adversaries would obsess over (the more noble depiction of Richards in the regular FF series is what prevents such exchanges taking place there between him and the oddly insecure Doctor Doom). The verbal and intellectual sparring between the two makes for a highly entertaining conflict, one that I hope to see again the next time I pick up future collections in the series.
Of course, this is an Ultimates title, and not an FF one; Reed even isn't the main villain (that would be the Ultimates version of Kang, which as with many of the best Ultimates characters is depicted with a twist). Joshua Fialkov starts things out abruptly, as events go from calm to crisis in just the first three pages. Once the pace is set Fialkov doesn't let up, keeping events going at a rapid pace). What drives events isn't really the plot (which is ill-defined even by the end) but an entertaining intellectual pissing contest between Reed Richards and Tony Stark, which is just the sort of thing that two arrogantly brilliant adversaries would obsess over (the more noble depiction of Richards in the regular FF series is what prevents such exchanges taking place there between him and the oddly insecure Doctor Doom). The verbal and intellectual sparring between the two makes for a highly entertaining conflict, one that I hope to see again the next time I pick up future collections in the series.