Well yes and no. However this is where the ‘good’ stops and the ‘bad’ starts to slip in. The overall tone of the book is set in the aftermath of a mega-battle between the ‘Liberators’ and the ‘Ultimates’. So within the wreckage of Washington, and amid the carnage of torn off limbs, exploded heads and millions of dollars worth of trashed Mechs, the team only has a moment to catch their breath before they are once again thrown back into the fray between Thor and his evil half brother Loki in the mother of all fantasy battles. While this huge event finally clears the air and shows that Ultimate Thor is indeed the thunder god rather than a raving nutter, this whole ‘asgard invasion’ plot seems a little rushed, taking only half an issue to resolve (to think when the book started it took at least three issues to take the Hulk down).
This whole first half of the book is sort of like the computer game Myst, which looked gorgeous but had no real substance. The Ultimates are really only secondary to the whole event and hardly anyone gets a line of dialogue, with most of the cast mulling around and spending their time generally punching stuff off-panel . It’s only really Thor himself that gets to do anything worth mentioning, when he goes all ‘Mallet’s Mallet’ on Loki’s head. And then, just like that, it ends. It all seems very ‘volia, thank you very much for the wait … there was your pay-off, now live with it… we have to set up the next season’. This editorial tinkering really shows as both Hitch and Millar sort of ‘give up’ by the final half of the book, with the battle aftermath filled with empty panels and shallow dialogue. This sense of throwing in the towel really comes to a head at the very end where we get a flashback to Captain America before he becomes the super-soldier. Why is this in there? It just seems to be a page filler, rather than a fitting conclusion to the book. Granted, it served its purpose to deliver a grand finale to the story arc, but really, that was it. Maybe it was that fans were expecting more or the build-up and anticipation was too big, but Ultimates 13 is a big let down. While not on the scale of the bad ending of Miller’s ‘Wanted’ comic book, the Captain America finale just seemed to be tacked on and a bad payoff after such a long wait.