It's billed as being a huge turning point in the "Ultimate universe" that Marvel introduced with their Ultimate Spider-Man title all those many years ago. I've largely ignored that imprint, although the first two volumes of The Ultimates were great, both in terms of story and art. When volume 3 of that title was announced last year and I saw that Jeph Loeb was writing it, I gave it a pass and everything that I've heard about it since has reinforced that decision. Not coincidentally, Loeb is also the mastermind behind Ultimatum, which brings us to this very disturbing scene from the second issue:
The dead woman on the ground is the Wasp (a founding member of the Avengers in the regular Marvel Universe, who was recently killed off at the end of Secret Invasion, which now looks like a mercy killing compared to what happened to her Ultimate U counterpart) and the creature eating her intestines is the Blob, one of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. I'd confidently say that this is one of the most disgusting scenes I've ever come across in almost 40 years of reading comics. Oh, sure, we've had cannibalism in the Ultimate U before (the Hulk has been known to chow down on human flesh, believe it or not) but having the victim be a well-known superheroine just takes it to a new level of depravity.
Needless to say, I've purchased my final issue of Ultimatum, and probably my last Ultimate U title (at least for the foreseeable future). If what I'm seeing there is the new direction of that line of comics, then they're just going to have to get by without any more of my money (which I'm sure they won't miss, since I wasn't spending that much on it before anyway). Just when you think Marvel can't sink any lower in terms of good taste, they have to go and prove you wrong!
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