Today at work (Barnes and Noble) I noticed a new Ultimates novel is scheduled for release in August, 2007 entitled "The Ultimates - Against All Enemies", written by Alex Irving. Its being published by Pocket Books, who published the first novel "The Ultimates - Tomorrow People" which released earlier this year. No news on the plot, etc, as its release is still over 9 months away. I look forward to it, though, as I enjoyed the first novel. Hopefully Irving does as well a job, if not better, than Michael Jan Friedman did in the first novel.
The first novel was fun to read, I'm glad tehy're continuing the series. I actually wouldn't mind seeing the comics make background references to these things. Like, maybe if there's ever a collage of Ultimates enemies or something, stick the Tomorrow Men in there. It would be cool.
Apparently the first novel did well enough to encourage publishing a second. Be interesting to see if this one is out when promised, or whether it will keep up the Ultimates tradition of being constantly delayed. :wink:
Thanks, DIrishB. I'll have to keep an eye on this entry. I liked the first novel -- even though it focused mostly on Tony Stark, there were enough highlights of the other members that made it worth reading. It also seemed to fit pretty well into the existing continuity; here's hoping the second one does, too.
The first novel was fun to read, I'm glad tehy're continuing the series. I actually wouldn't mind seeing the comics make background references to these things. Like, maybe if there's ever a collage of Ultimates enemies or something, stick the Tomorrow Men in there. It would be cool.
Apparently the first novel did well enough to encourage publishing a second. Be interesting to see if this one is out when promised, or whether it will keep up the Ultimates tradition of being constantly delayed. :wink:
Thanks, DIrishB. I'll have to keep an eye on this entry. I liked the first novel -- even though it focused mostly on Tony Stark, there were enough highlights of the other members that made it worth reading. It also seemed to fit pretty well into the existing continuity; here's hoping the second one does, too.
I got this today using a 20% discount coupon at the bookstore and thought it was an okay read. Decent if you like media tie-in novelizations, but not very deep or interesting in and of itself.
I may be a little biased because I was hoping two of my favourite characters would at least have a guest appearance, which they didn't.
In any case, the plot of Against All Enemies is more comics-related and a little easier to follow than that of The Tomorrow Men.
The following summary does not contain any major plot or character development details, but I'm going to semi-randomly spoiler-text stuff in case someone really and truly wants to be surprised by everything as they go along. And also for my own amusement.
It spins off from the original Ultimates series, in that the enemy are
Chitauri infiltrators
, but is set circa early Ultimates 2 in that
Loki shows up to taunt Thor
and
Hawkeye's family are still alive
.
The star of the story is Captain America, and the book does a pretty good job of portraying him
as an idealistic fish out of water, whose starkly delineated convictions are struggling with a shades of gray political climate
. Also he's
an old fogey in a youthful body and is experiencing cross-generational culture shock
as was alluded to in the comics.
As a result of the focus on Cap, Jan gets a fair amount of screentime as his girlfriend, and so does Hank, who
does unauthorized research into using ants to detect the shapeshifted Chitauri agents
in the hopes of being accepted back into the Ultimates and Jan's life.
Fury and Stark are also important secondary characters, who are somewhat antagonistic towards each other due to
the US government's not wanting to put too many eggs into a Stark Industries basket and that leading to the rejection of the Stark Technologies Chitauri scanner, causing tension between them once the inevitable preventable disaster happens
.
And Thor gets a few pretty good scenes, due to the item spoiler-texted earlier. He's
being written as more ambiguously godly than the first novel
, though everyone else
at this point still thinks he's delusional
, but with Clint's help
he gets in a good shot at Loki
.
Overall, I'd say it's pretty decent for what it is. There's more depth of characterization and interaction than the comics usually get into, and the ideas which drive the plot make sense, which is more than can be said of the parent title, sometimes.
The only real drawback is that every few chapters, the author puts in
some sort of boring Chitauri status report detailing their insidious plans for the planet Earth in the form of a military communiqué and how they were foiled by the stuff that happened in previous chapters
.
After the first few, I just skipped those because they don't add much to the base story, of which all you really need to know is that
the Chitauri are trying to take over. Again.
Fans of Captain America will like this one, I think.
