I’m a “wait for the trade paper” kind of guy, so I only recently managed to complete the Ultimates 2 series when the second collection came out. I feel like this book continues to put the other mainstream superhero titles to shame with awesome art and compelling storylines. One keeps hearing complaints about the irregular publishing schedule, but I feel like that should probably be read the other way ‘round — it turns out (no surprise) that one can do much better work if one doesn’t slavishly adhere to schedule and, instead, turns out a new story if and only if the new story is actually done in a satisfactory manner.
The financial rationale for regular publication of issues seems clear enough, but I wonder if we aren’t moving to a point in time when that may change and it makes more sense to drop the whole “issues” concept and just publish complete storylines as trade paperbacks if and when an entire story is done. More to the point, the book also illustrates key liberal views about international relations, namely about the importance of doing nuclear non-proliferation policy through legitimate international institutions rather than coalitions of the willing and/or random superhero teams.