Usually we don’t tend to cover the Ultimate Universe line of comics from Marvel. It has its own continuity and the two tend to not play with one another that much. After the events of ‘Age of Ultron’ though, we found Galactus in the Ultimate Universe and he was full of ‘Hunger‘. With it being our Galactus, potentially the end of the Ultimate Universe, and a few characters possible moving into the 616 Universe before this event comes to a close – it’s worth covering.
My question about ‘Cataclysm’ though is does it really need this prelude issue? I mean, I honestly felt ‘Hunger’ did enough of a lead up to give us what to expect, so while this is a tale of Galactus moving towards Earth he was only in the issue for a few frames. The majority of it actually followed this world’s version of Vision who was created just to destroy the Ultimate Gah Lak Tus. Let’s just say it’s not quite as powerful as the giant purple world devourer that we’ve come to know over the years.
The setup is that with Gah Lak Tus having briefly touched down on Earth, she was alerted and starts looking into things. She reads the remains of the creature that was destroyed on our planet and goes off in search of the new threat. One on one she stands against the world devourer and as we all know she’s pretty much doomed from the start. She tries though and before her death, resorts to begging for Earth to be spared. Galactus’ response is that this Universe is falling apart and while Vision says it can be healed if given time he prefers to use it to satiate his own hunger.
Before she leaves the land of the living Vision gets an actual vision of the Universe Galactus came from. She sees our heroes. She also sees that the one potential person who could stop this behemoth is Reed Richards and he is in no shape to stand up to the creature. She sends the information to Earth, but from both being in prison and being partially insane at this point, Reed isn’t going to be much use here. Without him the Ultimate Heroes may not stand a chance.
With the main focus of the issue being on a character who hasn’t been all that important in the overall stories for Ultimate Marvel, this felt almost a little forced. She was there when the original Gah Lak Tus attacked the Earth and I get including her for that reason but she really hasn’t been around all that much since then. Of course, they do focus on the fact that she and The Falcon have been in some kind of a relationship, but as we haven’t actually seen much of that until now, it almost felt artificial. Sure humanizing the Vision here for how the book closes was a good idea, but with only one issue to do that it felt rushed.
Is this the lead in to the end of the Ultimate Universe? I’m pretty sure it’s coming to a close aside from characters moving into the 616. Was this a needed issue? I would argue against that.
‘CATACLYSM’ #0.1
Writer: Josh Fialkov
Artists: Mico Suayan, Mirco Pierfederici, and Leonard Kirk
