Review of The Ultimates #5 Comic

The Ultimates #5, by Marvel Comics on 10/9/24, delivers another one-and-done story when Iron Lad asks Captain America to recover the Hawkeye gear Clint Barton rejected, only to find it’s already been taken.

The Ultimates #5 would be a great issue, but it has to settle for very good due to one specific problem. Writer Deniz Camp can’t help going overboard with the soapbox messaging. A little messaging is fine. A little more than a little is okay. When it gets so heavy that some of the talking points don’t make sense, the writer goes overboard.

When last we Iron Lad and Doom in The Ultimates #4, we saw an issue long flashback, intermingled with the present, showing how the Maker prevented the Fantastic Four from becoming superheroes, the deadly toll it took on the family, and how Reed Richards was tortured by the Maker into becoming Doom. The issue ended with Doom resenting Iron Lad for prohibiting him from using time travel to undo the Maker’s intervention.

In The Ultimates #5, Iron Lad and Captain America discuss one of Tony’s misses. He created a cache of archer weapons for Clint Barton to become Hawkeye, but Clint chose to reject the mantle and walk away. Lately, somebody has been destroying Roxxon facilities around the country (non-lethally) with the archer weaponry designed for Clint. Tony needs Steve to get it back.

Okay, fair enough. Deniz Camp starts the issue with a straightforward objective with clear stakes. Of course, the obvious question, which Camp never answers, concerns why Tony never kept an eye on Clint after gifting him the weapons and immediately recovering them when Clint tossed them away. It’s an obvious and lazy plot hole.

Captain America somehow finds the perpetrator using the advanced archer gear to destroy a Roxxon refinery in Missouri. He finds Charlii Ramsay, a member of the Lakota Nation, destroying Roxxon facilities out of some vague sense of retribution for an undefined injustice. The rest of the issue follows Captain America evading Charlii’s attacks while she layers on an extensive diatribe about the inherent racism of “Cowboys and Indians.”

The issue ends with Cap offering to bring Charlii on to the team after they work together to wipe out a small army of Roxxon mercenaries.

As with the She-Hulk issue, Camp created a unique derivative of a familiar character with her own voice, background, and aspirations. Charlii is no Clint Barton, but she’ll make a fine addition to the team.

Oy! The soapboxing and racial justice are off the charts. There’s nothing wrong with having a character who is socially minded in her motivations, but Camp doesn’t do the work to define what those motivations are for Charlii other than “bigotry against Indigenous peoples is bad.”

Of course, bigotry is bad, but that doesn’t mean everyone goes around blowing up Roxxon facilities. What did Roxxon do to draw Carlii’s wrath? How did Roxxon harm her, her family, or the Lakota Nation? How did a 16-year-old learn to master an advanced, replicating arrow archery set with all kinds of trick arrows? Charlli says she got a sense of the systemic racism about “Cowboys and Indians” from watching shows and films from her grandfather. Was her grandfather 95? There hasn’t been a “Cowboys and Indian” show on television since the 1960s. Does Charlii not know how times have changed? Why is Charlii trying to kill Captain America when he makes no move to attack her?

The more you think about it, the more you realize, again, that Camp shortchanged proper character-building in favor of soapboxing, which ultimately (*heh*) makes Charlii’s debut less than it could have been for a cool-looking character.

About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.

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The Ultimates #5 introduces a cool new version of Hawkeye to join the fledgling group of heroes. Unfortunately, writer Deniz Camp can’t get out of his own way, going overboard on the soapboxing instead of giving you a complete picture of Hawkeye’s personality. What could have been one of the stronger variants in the Ultimate universe is squandered.

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