Marvel have acquired yet another licence: Ultraman, a famous (in Japan) superhero franchise, that they’re softly rebooting with this first book, The Rise of Ultraman, for a new Western audience. This one really tugged on my nostalgia strings because I grew up with Ultraman - I had the toys, the stickers, the books, and a whole raft of merch crap that’s long gone (sobs) - so I really wanted this one to be great, even though I’ve yet to come across a genuinely good Ultraman comic. And I’m still waiting unfortunately!
The biggest problem with The Rise of Ultraman is how goddamn long it takes writers Kyle Higgins and Mat Groom to set things up. It’s well over the halfway point before Ultraman finally swings into action and it takes the entire book for the premise to be established: kaiju flood into Earth and it’s up to Ultraman to stop them.
That’s far too long. Because Ultraman is not a difficult concept for anyone to grasp: there’s an ordinary human who turns into a superhero (which is 99.99% of the superhero genre) who then fights monsters with superpowers - basically Hellboy. The United Science Patrol are basically SHIELD, right down to the VTOL jets, which are just Quinjets, with its own questionable head of the organisation, the Fury-esque Ichinotani.
Higgins/Groom fill up the space extensively focusing on Shin Hayata, the new host of Ultra, and his buddy Cadet Kiki Fuji, as they rush around in a convoluted, and ultimately pointless, plot, until Shin becomes Ultraman and fights some monsters. It’s really very boring. But then, looking at Ultraman as an adult and not a fanboy kid, there isn’t much to the character besides Ultraman punching monsters, so I can see why they felt the need to do more. Nor do I know how to make a good Ultraman story, having never really come across one before - all I knows is that reading about Shin and Kiki and all the dull USP conspiracy crap wasn’t at all entertaining.
I suppose it’s a decent introduction to the character for new readers, it’s just disappointing that this first book is essentially only table-setting. That said, it doesn’t really explain how kaijus keep escaping from their limbo and continue coming to Earth, which is a major question that really should’ve been addressed (it was ignored probably because then there’d be no series if Ultraman/USP figured that one out)!
I had no problems with Francesco Manna’s art, or any of the artists contributing pages to this book - it’s a great-looking comic with a gorgeous Alex Ross cover. And that final battle did make me smile as Ultraman went giant-size to battle Bemular (the poor man’s Godzilla) outside Tokyo, which was classic Ultraman.
Hopefully with all this setup out of the way, the next book, The Trials of Ultraman, due later this year, will be more fun, but Ultraman, Volume 1: The Rise of Ultraman didn’t do much for me besides make me ultra-yawn far too often.
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