Product Description: Cerebro has been stolen - and the trail points directly at the government's premier think tank, the Baxter Building! The X-Men aren't happy about it - and the Baxter Building's most famous residents, the Fantastic Four, aren't happy about an angry team of mutants showing up on their doorstep! It's FF versus X-Men in an all-star blowout as Ultimate Fantastic Four's Mike Carey is joined by superstar artist Pasqual Ferry for this tour de force of Ultimate action! Plus: in-depth bios on the Ultimate X-Men, the Ultimate Fantastic Four, the Ultimates and Ultimate Spider-Man! Collects Ultimate X-Men/Fantastic Four Special, Ultimate Fantastic Four/X-Men Special and Official Handbook of the Ultimate Marvel Universe 2005 #1 and 2.
Probably the worst I have read everything in the Ultimate line so far, including the dreadful Hawk Owl and Woody. This collection is a low point for the Ultimate line. The story isn't great, the art is sub par, and it is basically just 2 issues collected with the Ultimate Handbook thrown in to fatten it up enough to make a trade paperback. I did like the informative handbook of all the characters that have appeared so far in the Ultimate universe. The 2 comic issues were just way below what you would expect. I collect the Ultimate line because they use top writers and artists. More dreck like this and I will start looking elsewhere for a good story.
Bleh This was a low point for the Ultimate line. The characters don't mesh well, and the selection of X-Men to pair against the FF seems alomost arbitrary (let's see, we definately need Wolveriene, let's just tack on Ice-man so we'll have that fire/ice angle with the human torch, and toss in Kitty, because phasing and invisibility complement each other so well, she'll attomaticly get along with Susan Storm). They didn't think to use nightcrawler, who would have gotten along well with the thing because of the hideous appearence problem, and a little guy teleporting the Thing around would have been cool. The villain is defeated in a way that made me feel cheated, as there was no real fight, just an I gotcha moment on the part of Reed Richards, who has no X-man counter part in this story (I can only assume that if Beast was still alive he would have been it, but oh well). Even the super fight between the two teams is just pitiful, as the X-men are just pounded as they walk headlong right into a more powerful and more numerous group (with their biggest gun Wolveriene still shaken from his last fight). At parts this is just idiotic, and it always seems rushed. Bad book.
Ultimate Handbook plus Ultimate Waste of a Half Hour of Your Life This book really only has one part to warrant it's purchase, the handbooks in the back offer story's and statistics to every major character to grace the ultimate universe. Its basically like the marvel encyclopedia but for the ultimate universe and offers great art and backgrounds that any Ultimate fan would be interested in reading about.
The story of the book however is very lacking. I'm not entirely sure it should be called Ultimate X-Men and Fantastic Four since it only involves a fraction of the X-Men's team. The writing is nowhere near on par with that of either series and the art is at time terrible and others...acceptable. The only real reason to check out the story is so you can check out the new characters introduced to the marvel universe, but I must admit its a shame that Caliban was changed into some sort of machine with no emotions as emotion had such a large part in his original character.
Simply put if you like the Marvel handbooks your going to want to pick this up but if your looking for a good story with the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, keep looking.
Surprisingly good I wasnt expecting anything worthy when i picked up this trade paperback. the concept sounded pretty lame for a teaming up, and it was only about 2 individual comic books long. however the plot was actually much better than i had thought it would be, and the characters were more true to their original marvel universe personalities. wolverine has no problem gutting the thinker's creature as well as rigging her escape vehicle to explode in midair. as for the thinker, she was drawn much more humane than her first appearance in UltimateFFvol.4, which was a terrible volume. the best thing about this tpb however is the official ultimate marvel handbook in the back. while it lacks a few characters who have not made many appearances yet, it's essentail in refreshing the memory with some material which may have long been forgotten. due to it's small amount of actual comic book reading, it gets a 3. however it's a necessary and interesting read from the ultimate universe, and the price isnt bad either.
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