Top Five Month continues (check here to see an archive of all the top five lists featured so far) with a look at the top five Ultimate tradepaperbacks (only counting the single ones, not the combined ones).
Enjoy!
5. Ultimates Vol. 1
The first Ultimates trade opens up extremely well, with a depiction of Captain America during World War II, and the formation of the group in future issues is handled well, too. Bryan Hitch is given a lot of neat stuff to draw, and he does an amazing job with it.
The only drawback between this and later issues is that it is a bit high on the setup end of things.
4. Ultimate X-Men Vol. 1
Adam Kubert (and to a lesser extent, Andy Kubert) really help Mark Millar out on this story, especially how well Adam depicts the X-Men early on.
In any event, this is an action-packed introduction to the X-Men and Magneto that also manages to give readers a decent introduction to the characters depicted in the series.
And the Cyclops reveal at the end of issue #5 (or is it #4?)? That was sooo cool.
3. Ultimates Vol. 2
This volume has a lot of the greatness of the first volume (including awesome Hitch artwork), but a tighter plot overall, which really helps the readability of the series.
2. Ultimate X-Men Vol. 6
Mark Millar's final storyline on the title was mesmerizing with the amount of story he was able to pack in here, while all the while showing that he had a real thematic purpose with his run on the book, and it had a direction that later runs really were unable to come close to matching.
Ultimate X-Men could be the best monthly work Millar has ever done.
1. Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 2
The first volume just barely misses the list, mostly due to the relative silliness of the Green Goblin. This second volume, however, is a lot more down to Earth and is a well-plotted and well-dialogued series, particularly as it allows Bendis to do crime work, which really seems to be a passion of his.
This trade also includes Ultimate Spider-Man #13, which we have already established (when it made the Top 50 Countdown) was a remarkable issue.
It is weird to see so little Bendis on my list - I think Millar's work, while less frequent that Bendis', tend to stick out a bit more.
Well, that's the list!
Agree? Disagree? Let me know!