Join me as I read through Ultimate Marvel. Today I read Ultimate Adventures #1-6 by Ron Zimmerman and Duncan Fegredo. Ultimate Adventures is a six-issue mini series that follows billionaire Jack Danner, who moonlights as the vigilante Hawk-Owl. Danner decides to adopt a young orphan and train him to be his sidekick. I collected these issues in the trade paperback “Ultimate Adventures: One Tin Soldier”.
Ultimate Adventures introduces Hawk-Owl
Ultimate Adventures takes place in Chicago, a different setting from the usual New York City that all other Ultimate titles take place in. The city’s superhero is vigilante Hawk-Owl (a pastiche of Batman), who roams the city at night, stopping criminals. By day, Hawk-Owl is the billionaire Jack Danner, an orphan who inherited a large estate and lives with his aunt, butler, and driver (all of whom know about his alter-ego).
Danner decides to adopt an orphan, and he chooses Hank Kipple, an unruly kid with an attitude problem. Danner’s intention is for Hank to mature and eventually become his sidekick, but things don’t go as planned. Hank is disrespectful, and does not want to play along, even after discovering Hank’s secret identity.
Elsewhere, an old friend of Danner’s, who is the principal of Hank’s school, becomes insane after a series of unfortunate events (including his wife cheating on him and kicking him out of the house). He and his secretary decide to go on a killing spree to “punish” young, disrespectful kids, and kidnap Hawk-Owl in the process. Hank, along with Danner’s aunt, butler, and driver, team up to rescue Hawk-Owl, and afterwards, Hawk-Owl and Hank (under the name Woody) begin to patrol the city as a dynamic duo.
Satire or Parody?
These issues are… different from the rest of the Ultimate Marvel universe. The main characters are meant to be pastiches of Batman and Robin, and the story throws jabs at some absurdities, like adopting a teenage orphan to turn him into a sidekick. Zimmerman (the author) was a satirist, so this type of work would be expected from him. However, this reads more like a parody and less like a satire. While some scenes and dialogue are funny, and the series does have memorable moments, for the most part, it reads like the story goes nowhere. I think that the idea behind Ultimate Adventures had a lot of potential, but the execution left much to be desired.
The highlight of this series is when the Ultimates head to Chicago to try to recruit Hawk-Owl, only to get rejected. This scene alone makes that issue worth reading, although I probably wouldn’t sit through the entire series again.
Score: 5/10
Ultimate Adventures is not a bad comic, but it also doesn’t contribute much (if anything at all) to the Ultimate Marvel universe.
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