“Yesterday’s” Comic> Ultraverse Premiere #0

Didn’t I see this guy on Ultimate Muscle?

Ultraverse Premiere #0

Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (November, 1993)

COVER ART: Jim Lee

VOLUME EDITOR: Hank Kanalz

According to the recommended reading order I’m using, only the first story should be read now in continuity, with four others grouped later and the last one not even on the list that I can see. Since that’s a dumb way to review a comic, I’m going to do the whole thing now in a quickie review similar to what I’m doing with The Blue Beetle Golden Age comic. If we can handle the mess up in my reading order for Sonic and Knuckles comics, I think we can deal with this.

So we have six stories total: Prime, The Strangers, The “Making Of Rune”, Hardcase, Mantra, and Freex. Prime is one I’m interested and have enjoyed the previously reviewed Strangers and Hardcase stories. Manta and Run are ones I don’t care about but they’re here so I might as well let them audition for a spot in my comic reading, and Freex apparently isn’t what I thought it was (I was thinking it was one of the mystical comics like Rune and Mantra) so this is their first chance to get me to read the series. With that, let’s speed run…through the review, because I want to try to enjoy the story.

Prime: “Primal Appearance”

WRITERS: Gerald Jones & Len Strazewski | ARTIST: Norm Breyfogle | COLORIST: Keith Conroy | LETTERER: Patrick Owsley

As an intro to the character…I can’t say I’m impressed. We meet Kevin, who is having nightmares about being eaten by some creature called Prime, which is really a manifestation of his power to excrete some substance that hardens into an adult body for the teenager. This power comes forth after he sees the high school gym teacher molest of his female classmates…because that’s what a superhero needs in his introduction: sexual assault of a teenager by a teacher. In his anger Kevin first unleashes the Prime body, flies off, and has to save the plane he accidentally smashed, taking credit for the rescue but not the wing he damaged in the first place. This is our hero, everybody. I’m still going to check out the comic but one story in and I liked him better in the cartoon.

The Strangers/Yral: “From On High!”

WRITER: Steve Englehart | PENCILER: Rick Hoberg | INKER: Joe Rubinstein | COLORIST: Keith Conroy| LETTERER: Dave Lanphear

I think this takes place prior to The Strangers. Yral is watching down below, to the objections of the Chieftain since he doesn’t want them to be spotted, and sees a vampire return to kill a priest. Apparently we’re going with the “we don’t consider God real so crucifixes do nothing and that was all Bram Stoker fiction” route, though I don’t know if we’re still going with sunlight hurting them. Yral drops him onto the spire of the church or he runs off a cliff and falls onto the same church somehow or another church or something, so apparently the “stake through the heart” still works. I just wasn’t into this one. I’m not into vampires to begin with, but changing the rules in this way shows they’re making a negative statement on God’s existence instead of letting the reader decide and that doesn’t help. I’m hoping this isn’t where The Strangers are going because I won’t be reading it if that’s the case. We’ll see.

“The Making Of Rune”

TEXT: Chris Ulm | ARTWORK: Barry Windsor-Smith

This isn’t a story, it’s a behind the scenes segment and I’m only looking at it to see if it makes me curious about the series. So maybe that’s why the reading order is the way it is, ignoring this section and focusing on the actual comic stories? It tells how Rune began as a vampire creature in a dream Ulm had once and how it became a concept he and Windsor-Smith built into his own character. I guess it appeared in some back-up stories in Ultraverse stories that were released before this, but I don’t know if it will show up in the reading order. That’s fine, as I still am not interested in this series.

Hardcase: “The Last Mission”

WRITER: J. Hudnall | ARTIST: K. Maguire | COLORIST: M Baumann | LETTERER: D Lanphear

Someone takes kids hostage, they learn the Squad is moving in, but that doesn’t help as the heroes take the bad guys down, and our mystery villain isn’t happy about it, telling NM-E to kill them all. End of story. Not much happens, but what did happen was kind of cool. Most of these characters are dead and we see Hardcase flirting with the comatose girl so we know they were an item, and that makes it difficult to connect with them in a story like this.

Mantra: “Once Upon A Bedtime”

WRITER/CREATOR: Mike W. Barr | PENCILER: Scott Kolins | INKER: Barbara Kaalberg | COLORIST: Patrick Oswald | LETTERER: Patrick Oswley

For the uniformed, Mantra is a man from Medieval times, a magic using warrior who now inhabits the body of a modern day woman, who is also a mother. For his sake I hope he came in AFTER the kids were born. His attempt to free his soul from her body wakes her daughter, so he must tell the girl a story so she’ll go back to sleep. I can so see the usual suspects misinterpreting this concept, but using “tell a child a fairy tale” as a way to go over the character’s origin isn’t a bad framing device. I’m still not going to read this one, but if she (he?) shows up in a story I am reading at least I know the full story.

Freex: no title given

WRITER: Gerald Jones | PENCILER: Gene Ha | INKER: John Lowe | COLORIST: Moose Baumann| LETTERER: Dave Lanphear

I’m not sure what happened. We have another pervert, a laundromat owner who wants to get into the pants of our protagonist, Valerie. She summons some snake thing to attack him and then when the cops show up some clay golem thing whisks her away. She meets his friend, Lewis Phelps, who was sent by someone he doesn’t know to find her after the last guy who wanted to force himself on her. What’s with this comic and perverts? She agrees to go along for a place to sleep and others like her. So it may not be the comic I thought it was. Okay, I’ll look into this one when it pops up on the reading order.

So, no real change in my opinion. Prime, Hardcase, and The Strangers were already comics I was interested in while Rune and Mantra aren’t. I’m hesitatingly going to give Freex a chance, so maybe that’s its victory. I’m just hoping these comics aren’t full of child molesters and rapists or I may be noping out a lot. We’ll see what happens.