Ultimate Avengers vs. New Ultimates 5

Hmm. More Ultimate Marvel stuff this first week than I was hoping. Oh well, it's heading towards a big relaunch anyway, so I suppose this is to be somewhat expected.

    So, Ultimate Avengers vs. New Ultimates(UAvNU). With Ultimate in the title twice it must be good! Actually it's just kind of okay. For those of you somewhat unfamiliar, this 6 part mini-series details a conflict between The Ultimates(basically the Avengers of the ultimate universe. Yeah, I know you'd think the Ultimate Avengers would be the Avengers, but they aren't.) and the Avengers(a shadow team created by the supposedly dead Nick Fury).  Both teams found intel that the leader of the other team, Carol Danvers and Nick Fury respectfully, are supplying superhumans to North Korea. This leads to an all out conflict between the two teams, with poor Spider-man caught in the middle(See: Ultimate Death of Spider-man).

Despite my previous assertion that I wouldn't say it anymore, I decided to be nice. Spoilers begin here. (Aeris dies, rosebud was his sled, etc.)

   To begin, I don't much care for Gregory Stark. He's a superfluous character, who, like much of the Ultimate Avengers, was created because Mark Millar didn't get to write the New Ultimates, so he invented a bunch of characters so he didn't have to alter his ideas much. Gregory Stark is basically Nemesis(Millar's terrible creation). He has plans within plans and they kick the crap out of your plans. So that tainted the issue for me. As did the revelation that The Spider was just an experiment of his. I was hoping for extradimensional shenanigans, so this wasn't much of a payoff for me. The thing with Cash was okay, except for everybody hulking out, that seemed a little silly. On the plus side, I feel Leinel Yu's art works better for something a bit grittier like this than it did for Secret Invasion.(I also didn't like his tendency to draw strong chins on everyone in a story involving aliens who had chins as a major defining feature).

Overall, the mini isn't bad, the issue is probably one of, if not the, weakest in the series. I'm just kind annoyed all this is needed to bring the universe back to something resembling it's pre-Ultimatum days. I hate Jeph Loeb so much. So goddamn much.