PREVIOUSLY ON ULTIMATES
After setting off to inspect the timestream from the outside, almost dying in the process and being saved by Galactus, the team is back on Earth. Conner Sims, the Anti-Man, whom they found in the Neutral Zone on their journey through it and brought back to help him, is awaiting trial for his past crimes. Meanwhile, using the opening created by Galactus to get the team back on Earth, Thanos the Mad Titan returns to the Marvel Universe from the void beyond.
ULTIMATES #7
The countdown to the most worrying crossover event of 2016, Civil War II, has officially begun, with this comic serving as a setup for its first issue (a portion of which was released last week on Free Comic Book Day). It also seems like Al Ewing (along with Captain Marvel writers, Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas) will be stuck with making sense of whatever Bendis will have Carol do in the main series. Good news is, he seems to be managing it.
The trip outside of the timestream has left Carol pretty shaken. Galactus has shown the team how time looks through his eyes – a changeable construction where even the past is malleable. That part Carol shrugs off, explaining that since she lived through the past, it definitely happened. What moved her were the potential futures she saw, in many of which everything was dead. For all their satellites and other early warning systems, they still don’t know where the next world-ending threat will come from. That is, as she puts it, the ultimate problem. Ewing gives us a much better explanation for Carol’s stance in the upcoming event than (judging from the free preview) Bendis likely will.
But that’s in the future. In the meantime Carol has more immediate problems. An irritating station commander of the Shi’ar empire, M’Korr, has discovered that on Earth is a cosmic cube. Again. He offers to translocate his team to find it (because who doesn’t like a team of soldiers from a galaxy-spanning martial empire searching for a super powerful artifact on your planet), but Carol tells him she’ll deal with it herself. She arrives at the Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. base (a scientific initiative devoted to researching alternative and fringe energy sources), where she’s greeted by Dr Adrienne Brashear, Blue Marvel’s daughter. She leads her to a room devoted to their newest project, an ISO-8 crystal (a „magic matter” which was supposedly formed during the creation of the universe)... infused with cosmic cube shards from SHIELD.
Carol is understandably pissed that someone is keeping and working on an unexploded reality bomb – again. Just after the whole Pleasant Hill debacle. She informs them an alien civilization is using the existence of that project as political leverage and shuts it down. Having instilled the "fear of Carol" in them, she returns to the Alpha Flight Space Station. En route she’s informed that Medusa of the Inhumans wants to liaise with the Alpha Flight and Ultimates – which comes care of another plot point from the upcoming Civil War II.
Meanwhile M’Korr is already salivating at the thought of the prestige he’s going to get from that leverage he has on Earth. Prestige he’s very unlikely to get – as his station gets visited by Thanos, who kills everyone else on sight and would like to know about that cosmic cube M’Korr’s been talking about. And that takes care of the rest of the buildup for Civil War II.
The rest of the issue is devoted to the problem of Conner Sims, the Anti-Man (i.e. Dr Manhattan went really bad), currently kept in a pretty much impregnable energy cage at the Triskellion. He’s interrogated by Adam Brashear, whom he tells about the visions he is having where he sees what seems like the bars of a cage where he’s chained up – and a jailer, who watches him. During their conversation Blue Marvel turns his back on him – and that’s when the inside of Sims’ cell transforms to reflect his words – including a pair very menacing eyes. Add that to the words he said during the team’s encounter with Galactus at the end of their timestream mission – and it would seem Sims has some knowledge about Eternity’s current predicament.
In the meantime, he’s awaiting trial for his many crimes – as soon as the location of said trial is decided. The United States wants to do that in New York, while the E.U. – in Hague. Meanwhile T’Challa has decided that he’d rather execute Sims, as he’s too dangerous – and will do so, if he deems it necessary.
And that’s all of the Ewing Avengers issues for May. Next month – the Civil War II tie-ins begin with New Avengers #12 and Ultimates #8. I’ll see you then.
Dominik Zine is a nerdy lad from northeastern Poland and is generally found in a comfy chair with a book in hand.
