Ultimate Origins #1 Review

ULTIMATE ORIGINS #1
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Jackson Guice

It's all connected. At least, when you retcon everything, it's all connected. This series is set to redefine the Ultimate Universe and answer questions nobody asked.

The main players are Wolverine, Kingpin and Nick Fury and we start with them back in WWII, where a black man (remember, it was a different time back then and skin colour was a bigger issue than it is even today), an American and a Canadian teamed up to loot homes in Sicily before Fury and Logan were caught in the act by a commanding officer. Fisk managed to escape, I think, as he was hot in the leg, but it never showed anyone carting him off to jail like they did with Fury and Wolverine and he's never seen again after that.

Fury ended up in an American prison where he acts as the Ultimate Sam Bradley, "volunteering" for some Super Soldier serum testing. The serum is a success on Fury and his eyes end up glowing red and he practically explodes from his restraints in rage. He tears through the guards and personnel at the facility and escapes to find himself in downtown New York.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Wolverine has been captured and is undergoing some tests of his own. He escapes and flees into the snow filled landscape. He's quickly shot down and recovered by the guards, who are all amazed at his wounds healing up before their eyes.

It is revealed, three years later at the Weapon X facility, that they have developed the first mutant genome and that Wolverine is the first mutant, codenamed mutant zero. It's an interesting take on the ultimate mutants as it means humans created mutants in the Ultimate Universe and they imply they are going to spread the mutant genome to people around the world. Whether they turn it into a virus or breed Logan with people to produce new mutants or what have you is left open at the end and I'm sure we'll see more of this in the future.

Verdict - Avoid It. Aside from the mutant revelation, there's nothing worth really seeing here and it's not exactly a story worth telling or reading at this point. This could have all been implied or told in Ultimate Spider-Man / X-Men / etc and it would have worked just as well and probably more effectively than making a big deal of it with a rather lackluster first issue.

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