Writer: Warren Ellis
Artists: Brandon Peterson, Justin Ponsor & Jason Keith (c)
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Well sir, it's taken the better part of two years to reach a climax, but the Ultimate Gah-Lak-Tus Trilogy is done - I think. For some time, the third chapter was alleged to be six issues in length, if the Front Covers were to be taken at face value... Unless it was just a giggle on Marvel's part, a little jab at Ellis' Planetary which has required a few extra issues to squeeze out an ending.
Ambitious? Most certainly. Successful? Like most things, it depends upon how you define your terms. For me, not so much.
The only issue of the whole kit'n'kaboodle that really grabbed me was the final part of Ultimate Nightmare, published in the late Paleozoic era. Since then, the story has been spinning its wheels and spraying (unresolved) plot fragments in all directions. This last installment continues the trend unless Marvel's planning a Nick Fury vs. Team Moondragon mini-series.
The cadre of Heather Douglas clones seen breaching the walls of the Triskelion at the end of #4 break through. As it turns out, there's a whole regiment of them, half wearing green skintight suits and half wearing red. Like Christmas! Instead of Burl Ives crooning "The Holly & The Ivy," Team Moondragon attempt to battle through SHIELD, Cap'n Marvel, a few Ultimates, and two panels worth of X-Men (Wolvie goes to town, 'natch), in an attempt to destroy the super-Cerebro transmitter before Charles and Jean can do whatever it is they're supposed to do. Oh, we find out what they're supposed to do, and they do it, just as Reed does his thing out in the desert. I'm not an afficianado of mystery stories, but in some respects that's precisely what the Gah-Lak-Tus Trilogy is, and the Cardinal rule of mystery writing, according to "S.S. Van Dine", is The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described. So, you might have guessed what Charles and Reed were concocting, and that they were working in unison rather than at cross-purposes as was intimated, but you'd probably be in the minority even among the prescient. Instead we got a little build-up and a lot of hand-wringing, followed by Rabbit + Hat = Miracle. Not Warren Ellis' finest moment.
Skip forward a month (based on a comment by Mahr Vehl). To help the next unfortunate planet in Gah-Lak-Tus' path (my money's on the Asparagus people), "Sam's going to be loading up the Vision with the records of the whole thing. And Richards' gun design, all the science." In other words, another race (and another, and another) will have the plans for Reed's "Ultimate Weapon," making Fury's "Human beings can kick the hell out of anything" message kind of pointless, unless all those Moondragons can protect them. If the Skrulls get their hands on Richards' jumpgate tech, it's presumably only a matter of time before they establish first contact and turn Earth first into a Utopia then into a depopulated world ripe for colonization (if you're not getting the reference, it's appropriated from the last Ultimate Fantastic Four arc).
Brandon Peterson's illustration continues to be enigmatic. He does so many things well, from carnage to Kirby-esque awe, from crowd scenes to quiet and personal. Yet he fails to satisfy. This is due in part to his inks; though they've improved measurably in a relatively short time, his dependence on bold, parallel lines for shading is beyond tiresome, and he has no feel for certain characters. Two panels of high-buff, chromium Colossus is forgiveable, pages and pages (over the course of the series) of high-buff, plastic Captain America is just ugly. Find Brandon an inker, and you've got a major talent, leave him to find his own way, and he's liable to be yesterday's flash-in-the-pan.
The Ultimate question is whether you should spring for the Trilogy Collection when it arrives in a couple of months. If painfully decompressed storytelling (the entire series could have been accomplished with the final books of each chapter), jarring differences in appearance from one chapter to the next, and a great, big pile of dangling plot threads are your cup of tea, by all means, order one today. As the story is not without merit and much of the illustration, including Peterson's, is not without beauty or charm, you might want to hold out for a used or remaindered copy some time down the road.
Hang on... since no limit was imposed on the number of Silver Surfers that Gah-Lak-Tus could produce - we can be certain of three - um, why wouldn't they have attacked the Triskelion en masse to foil Xavier? It's not like Big G needed to know the details, he already recognized the place as a threat, as evidence: launching a Surfer right at it. Sorry, had to get that off my chest, carry on.
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