Whatever a Spider Can’s All-New Ultimates #3 review

Hey folks, Michel Fiffe and Amilcar Pinna’s teenage super-hero team comic All-New Ultimates is really starting to move forward and here’s our review of issue #3, for the recap go here.  But the short story is that we saw the team falling apart in the last issue with Bombshell leaving and Spider-Woman/Black Widow collapses after being poisoned, creating some rather dramatic plot-points and cliff-hangers for this issue.

Seeing this super hero team come together and trying to work as a team will always be one of the more interesting things in an ensemble comic, after all we have several different characters and personalities, who are all teenagers, trying to work as a cohesive super-powered crime fighting unit. The issue is that real storylines and real plot development can’t happen when the narrative is still stuck in the ‘can they succeed if they don’t get along’ rut.

With that being said I was a little bit disappointed with how quickly the two central issues that were formed in the last issue were resolved. Jessica’s life-threatening poisoning was tackled in the first panel of the new issue, creating a rather flat cliff-hanger. Still, it was fairly obvious a member of the team wouldn’t perish so soon and it’s nice to be reminded that one of them might die in the future, it’s the highest possible dramatic element, the possibility of one of your favourite characters dying.

However the danger that Black Widow was in also served as the narrative cause of bringing the team closer together, because it forced Kitty Pryde to leave her self-induced public seclusion and join Jessica on patrol. Kitty’s delayed addition to the group has been handled well, but I still feel that everything happening in the same issue is a bit too neat.

The second dominant problem presented in issue #2 was Lana aka Bombshell. She appeared to be one of the more volatile members of the group and her quitting last issue was the first major set-back the team had. This issue cleverly skirted around answering the question of what Lana is doing, and where her allegiances were until the very last panel as we saw her skillfully playing her boyfriend to lead her and Spider-Man to a drug-bust in an undercover operation that proves that Bombshell is incredibly dedicated to the All-New Ultimates.

I like the addition of Scourge as a wild-card and think that he can be a good villain for the guys to take on, he’s ruthless and proved in this issue that he can hold his own against the person that turn down Galactus. The first few panels create suspense by keeping Scourge off-panel, showing only the consequences of his actions, so that when you see the foreboding ‘Summer of Scourge’ headline you really feel that he will be an important addition.

However some of the other supporting characters and even some of the All-New Ultimates team seem a bit sidelined. Cloak and Dagger merely show-up in this issue as the focus is completely on the Spider-Man & Bombshell as well as Shadowcat and Black Widow. Also the police side-story with Brigid O’Reilly talking to a character introduced in the first issue was neat, but I’m not getting a sense of dramatic urgency for this side storyline, even with a mutated Terry Schreck walking around.

But this is a positive issue, perhaps the strongest so far. The team are back together which means they can now once again focus on working on their team-work, something they desperately need following their less than stellar record so far. And once they’ve proved that they’re a formiddable super hero team Fiffe can start putting them into some seriously dangerous, yet fantastic situations!

Check out Whatever a Spider Can’s other Spidey comic book recaps and reviews
Amazing Spider-Man #1 recap, and review
Amazing Spider-Man #2 recap, and review
Amazing Spider-Man: Learning to Crawl #1.1 recap, and review
All-New Ultimates #1 recap, and review
All-New Ultimates #2 recap, and review
All-New Ultimates #3 recap,
Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #1 recap, and review
Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #2 recap, and review
Amazing X-Men #7 recap, and review

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