With the events of Age of Ultron #10 coming to a close it really appeared that not much had happened yet to the Marvel Universe. Almost everything in the story line was pretty much undone and the only hint that problems were still around is that something happened with the Universe from all of the time travel that’s been done. Beyond that? We haven’t seen a whole lot on the subject.
That’s all starting to change. With ‘Hunger’ #1 we see the first set of problems that are starting to arise from our heroes’ actions. From what Marvel has hinted. this is just the first of many and when “everything changes” this time around it’s actually going to be big.
We’ll see. At the very least they did start out with something big. Galactus from the Standard (616) Universe ends up in the Ultimate Universe. We’ll get to that in a minute (and some of the ramifications that may arise from it).
We don’t tend to cover too much from the Ultimate Universe as it’s separate from mainstream Marvel continuity. There was a previous crossover in Spider-Men that teased we’d have some kind of a future interaction between the Ultimate Spider-Man and regular Spider-Man though it ended there. This event may bring that full circle as the rumor mill is that the next big event in Ultimate will be caused by this and destroy/transform their Universe. (Possibly by bringing into ours.)
We open this book with Rick Jones (who is also Ultimate’s version of Nova) is hanging around and hungry. All he wants to do is stop by on Earth and grab a quick bite to eat. As he’s about to order a burger, the Ultimate version of The Watcher takes over the mouth of the person at the counter and tells him there is an emergency that he has to deal with immediately. (The Ultimate version of The Watcher doesn’t just stand around doing nothing nor is it a giant bald alien).
He transports Rick Jones to where the event is going to happen and immediately realizes he’s in the middle of a Kree and Chitauri war. I’m going to pause on the breakdown for a moment to say that this is a beautifully rendered space action sequence and one that is worth checking out for that alone! However this war isn’t what all of the commotion from The Watcher is about as right as Rick wants to get involved, out of nowhere the Gah Lak Tus swarm shows up.
The war is put on hold as both forces realize they have to take out the greater enemy. This is where Rick breaks in and tries to get things under control. The entire time, he’s ignoring The Watcher who tells him that this still isn’t the event he has been summoned here for. As Rick is putting up a good fight against the swarm, the Galactus we all know is torn through from the 616 Universe into the Ultimate Universe. While the title might be all about the giant purple devourer of worlds, only the last 5 pages are devoted to him. But what an amazing set of 5 pages they are! Immediately after he shows up, the swarm focuses on him as a new food source.
I won’t spoil the ending of the first issue but let’s just say something huge happens and I would feel very uncomfortable if I was one of the inhabitants of the Ultimate Universe right now. More interesting, though, is what this will change in the regular universe.
Galactus isn’t just a giant guy who likes to eat worlds because he’s got a huge appetite. Over the years it’s been established that he is a necessary part of the cosmic order of the Universe and without him things would fall apart. Well, things were already falling apart which is what caused him to be expelled from our Universe to begin with. This doesn’t bode well for what’s coming up in the standard Marvel Universe and I hope that’s at least partially brought up in this mini-series.
Who am I kidding? I want to see an all out war between alien races in the Ultimate Universe vs. the big purple man. I’d love to say that I have complaints with Galactus only being on 5 pages or this only being such a short mini-series, but it was such a great read that this one is getting a perfect score in my book!
HUNGER #1
Writer: Joshua Fialkov
Penciller: Leonard Kirk
