Ultimate Elektra Hardcover Review

Verdict: Unless you're a 12-year-old boy who's just discovered the joy of jerking off, avoid Ultimate Elektra. On the other hand (pun so intended), if you are a 12-year-old boy, have at it. I'm sure the creators worked very hard to produce this material. Someone might as well enjoy it.

Collects Ultimate Elektra #1-5
Writer: Mike Carey
Artist: Salvadore Larocca

Elektra Natchios can only stand by as her father makes a deal with his cousins Paul and Leander to rebuild the family's laundromat business. But what her father doesn't know is that the Natchios brothers, members of an organized crime unit, hope to "launder" the money earned from their criminal life. All goes south when Kenneth Cullen, the Natchios brothers' book keeper, turns in state evidence.

Elektra makes a bargain: she will recover the evidence for her cousins in return for her father's financial freedom. She impersonates a call girl so that she can get close enough to get the job done (no pun intended), just in time to see Kenneth Cullen killed by Benjamin Poindexter (Ultimate Bullseye) who was sent by the Kingpin.

All I can say is, Who gives a shit?

For the entire five-issue arc I could do nothing but wish that things would just come to an abrupt end. It's not that the trade is poorly written or rendered (it's certainly not), it's that I don't care about Elektra's father's laundromat, or his two cousins. Why should I?

Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra Hardcover Review

Verdict: Rucka's delivery is so natural that I forgot about what the book wasn't and concentrated on what the book was. Taken on its own, removed from its 616 counterpart, this book is just a good read.

Collects Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra #1-4
Writer: Greg Rucka
Artist: Salvadore Larroca

Where I had high hopes for Orson Scott Card's Ultimate Iron Man I and was subsequently let down, I went into Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra without a shred of hope and came away impressed.

The story centers largely on Elektra during her first year at Colombia University. Matt Murdock, who plays a supporting role throughout, is a pre-law student that hasn't yet donned the Daredevil cowl.

The story revolves around a pompous millionaire's son named Cal Langstrom III (who's actually called "Trey" by everyone, including his father ... why, I have no idea). Trey rapes a close friend of Elektra, and Elektra retaliates by breaking into Trey's bedroom in the middle of the night, nearly killing him. The feud between the two eventually leads to Elektra's father's home and business being burned to the ground. Because of Trey's wealth and political stature, his crimes are repeatedly swept under the rug. Elektra decides to take the law into her own hands, which leads to a climactic moral confrontation between her and Matt (who's been masquerading as something of a masked vigilante).

Given that writer Greg Rucka only had four issues to work with he was right to largely ignore Murdock's side of the story; instead he chose to write him in only when necessary. There simply isn't space in this story to delve into both characters equally. This mini-series probably should have been titled Ultimate Elektra Vol. 1., as it's an Elektra story through and through. Murdock is present only to juxtapose their differing points of view on the nature of justice (and, presumably, to sell issues).

Ultimate Iron Man I Hardcover Review

Verdict: Ultimate Iron Man I—a book defiantly different than its source material—is a frenetic, anxious mess.

Collects Ultimate Iron Man I #1-5
Writer: Orson Scott Card
Artist: Andy Kubert

"I really hate superhero comics. Then Marvel comes to me with this character. And when they told me what it was I said, 'Wow, that is even dumber than most superhero comics.'

"This guy is the head of a multi-million dollar international corporation—that's a full-time job. He is also a scientist-inventor-engineer—that's a full-time job. And he wears a suit and goes out and saves people?

"But then I found out I could give him a childhood—that's what I do."

— Orson Scott Card, to SciFiScanner, on Ultimate Iron Man



I have a problem with publishers that bring in high-profile novelists to write comics. Admittedly, the concept sounds great on paper, but it ignores the fact that these are two very different mediums and it takes an extremely versatile author to bridge that gap.

Novelists are afforded the luxury of time and space, where they spend years crafting a tale that spans hundreds of thousands of words. Conversely, comic book writers are confined to monthly deadlines during which they must write compact, economic stories that ideally work as individual compositions as well as single pieces of a larger whole.

With Ultimate Iron Man I, Orsot Scott Card fails in much the same way that fantasy juggernaut Tad Williams did with his foray into DC with Aquaman. Card's story reads as if it was originally conceived as a 10- or 12-issue series, but was truncated to suit a more impatient medium.



As a result, Ultimate Iron Man I—a book defiantly different than its source material—is a frenetic, anxious mess.



A chronic problem I have with comic book writers (or, more accurately, comic book publishers) is their restless manner of storytelling. Trying to fit what should be a 250-page story into 125 pages makes for bad writing—plot, dialogue, character development, believability, resolution, etc.

Everything happens too quickly—most especially the forming of relationships and animosities, and the progression from problem to solution—and this impatience causes the story to lose all sense of credibility. It says to the reader that these events are happening because they were supposed to happen, that they were clearly pre-ordained by a writer who has crafted this tale. Because of this impatience, Ultimate Iron Man I tries to establish too many classic staples for any of them to have any gravitas at all.