WHEN WE WERE ULTRA: Punked By A Green-And-Purple Sci-Fi Cockroach and Other Indignities (RUNE V. 2, RUNE V. VENOM, RUNE: HEARTS OF DARKNESS, RUNE/CONAN crossover event)

 As with the other three Ultraverse titles that netted itself a second volume, changes were very apparent in the new, post-Black September Rune.  While Kyle Hotz was retained as the artist of note, the scripting was taken over by Len Kaminski, perhaps best known for the run on Iron Man that introduced War Machine*.  The reboot changes of the second volume did manage to make the plotline more comprehensible than it was in volume one.  However, it doesn't necessarily make it better.

At the end of Rune Infinity, Rune is literally dumped into the Negative Zone, where he will get owned rather decisively by Annihilus (incidentally, one of my favorite Marvel baddies).  This leaves us with the two twins who made up Gemini, Erik and Noel.  As Erik is bitten and turned by Rune in the Curse of Rune mini, he takes over the Gemini form at night and stalks Los Angeles whereas Noel has control of the body during the day and tries to be humanity's savior while totally misunderstanding how to do so.  Meanwhile, Adam Warlock (who we found at the end of Curse) is revived by Aladdin, gains healing powers and sort of walks around, reviving the people seriously injured by Noel's 'world saving.'  And in the background, instead of Janus, we've got a pair of police detectives and a policewoman who's secretly a bewinged and befeathered ultra that Warlock takes an interest in.

Don't worry, though--Rune gets a two part tale set during the Black Plague in issues #4-5 before finally finding his way out of the Negative Zone into Marvel Earth and fusing with a symbiote (where did he get a symbiote?  Hell if I know...) so he can tangle with Venom in the appropriately named Rune Vs. Venom one-shot.  He doesn't appear in the last two issues of Volume Two, but does show up in both the Rune: Heart of Darkness mini and the rather unique crossover with Conan.

The good news is Len Kaminski's stories are more coherent and focused than what we saw in Volume One.  The bad news is it's still a mess and a half.  It's hurt by the fact that both Erik and Noel become absolutely unsympathetic and unlikeable over the course of the first three issues of volume two.  By the time we do hit that Rune flashback two-parter--also a lot more coherent and focused than the first volume--it's almost a relief.  

Then there's the presence of Adam Warlock.  I think he's brought in to act as an opponent for our Gemini/Rune Jr. mash-up, something that's given more credence by his being given the new ability to 'travel through men's souls' and heal, maybe even from death, others.  But he hangs out with Aladdin for two issues, all the while moaning about being brought back to life again, wanders into Los Angeles and hangs out with an ultrafied cop with wings....it's made obvious there's a Big Conflict between the two coming.  But when they're finally face to face, on the last page of the last issue of Volume Two, we're directed to the first issue of Ultraverse Unlimited for the resolution (and I'm so unimpressed that I'll wait to talk about that when we get to that title as a whole).

So volume two leads into Rune: Heart of Darkness, written by Doug Moench with pencils by Kyle Hotz.  This finds Rune in New York being hunted by a malign intelligence that, we learn in flashback, is where Rune got his soul-sucking gems from.  This really seems like an attempt to realign the character into a more 'heroic' role.  After two and a half issues of running around, Rune ends up winning the battle by getting the rune gems on his side by promising only to sup on the wicked.  It's great seeing Hotz work on a character that's right up his alley--Hotz leaves midway through volume two, presumably to do this--but there's something weird about how Rune went from The Big Bad of The Ultraverse to Cosplay Morbius in his last appearance.

The funniest thing is that the outlier to this phase of the Ultraverse--the only Marvel/Ultraverse crossover that's put out by Marvel--is arguably the best thing published featuring the character.  To celebrate Barry Windsor Smith's debut on Conan twenty five years previously, Marvel editor Carl Potts arranged for an event called Rune v. Conan.  This took up the fourth issues of both Conan The Barbarian and the black-and-white The Savage Conan as well as a stand alone special.  Cleverly, the event is portrayed as happening over the life of Conan with each issue focusing on a different phase of his career.  All three of these could be read on their own to get a complete story, but reading them together gives you a different reading experience.  Each issue is great for its own reason.  Larry Hama provides the script for Conan, and it's a massively breathless adventure story full of swashing and buckling with Rune in the background getting visions of Conan as his greatest opponent.  The special, written and drawn by Windsor Smith, shows the character at his best as young Conan stumbles upon Rune supping on an entire troupe and fight very, very hard to gain even a sliver of vengeance.  And The Savage Conan issue shows us the two encounter each other while Conan is King as a priest tries to call forth a Lovecraftian monster.

Which brings me to something that puzzled me.  Considering that the best stories featuring Rune (the prequel serial, the two-part story set during the Middle Ages, the Conan crossover) were those dealing in the past, why wasn't that the premise of the series?  The Ultraverse had a number of characters and concepts that stretched back into the past, and I'd be intrigued to see Rune interact with, let's say, Rex Mundi or Rhiannon or Lukacz earlier in their existence, or following up on some of the hints in the prequel (why did Rune pick Tesla's mind anyway?).  We could even do stories on some of the individuals who became trapped in Rune's stones.  Ultimately, I don't think the tight interconnectivity hurt the concept--it just needed a little thought to make it work optimally.  Rune doesn't work as The Cosmic Big Bad, but he definitely could have worked to further build the 'world' of the Ultraverse.

I once again state--I wanted to like Rune.  And for a change, the second volume suggests to me how I could have liked it.  But taken as a whole, this series was very disappointing.  It's certainly in a lower tier, a book that never lived up to its true potential because...well, maybe because the creative team behind it wanted it to be something else.

And speaking of characters and potential, next time we'll look at the last character introduced before the Black September reboot whose major problem may have been being introduced just as Black September hit...and also maybe the fact that we don't learn her origin until her series is over.   Join me--and Taskmaster, and Diamondback, and yet another kid sidekick--as we kick back and examine the short solo life of Siren!

Until then....why be meta when you can be ultra?

*--although for me, I will always fondly remember him for his year-long arc on Hellstorm, Prince of Lies...complete with frequent swipes at DC's John Constantine: Hellblazer, the title it was consciously aping.

WHEN WE WERE ULTRA: BUT I WANNA DO COSMICALLY POWERED ALIEN BARBARIAN VAMPIRES WITH CANCER! (RUNE V. 1, THE CURSE OF RUNE, RUNE/SILVER SURFER)

I really, really wanted to like Rune.

I did.  I know that Barry Windsor-Smith can be off-putting to some, but I love his unique pencil style.  The fact that Rune was supposed to be focusing on the Ultraverse's major villain was novel.

But it pains me to say this--what resulted from Windsor-Smith taking a liking to a proposal by Chris Ulm is just, well, impenetrable.  What's worst, it has so little to do with the Ultraverse that it rightfully should have been put under the banner of Bravura, the Malibu Comics imprint for creator-owned properties.

Rune is an ancient...alien?...barbarian who was exiled to Earth by Argus, one of the deities we learn a lot about in the Godwheel event.  While hanging out here, he ends up being vampirized and becomes worshipped as a god by a tribe in Africa.  A war with another tribe causes Rune's girlfriend to be murdered, resulting in him stalking the Earth and getting cancer from a nuclear bomb blast.  Meanwhile, a military man during the Vietnam war discovers an alien artifact and creates an AI called Genie that leads to the foundation of Aladdin and the creation of two boys infused with alien tech that, when joined, become a ultra-powered cosmic being named Gemini.  Meanwhile a fat guy cosplaying as John Constantine with a pet rat called Janus looks for Gemini so he can find Rune and...

sigh

Did everybody get that?

Believe it or not, there's loads more exposition, and even after absorbing it all I still don't understand what Windsor Smith and Ulm is actually talking about.  I will begrudingly admit that the storyline gains a little bit more clarity in the last issue of Volume 1--the first issue where Ulm flies solo and Windsor Smith isn't doing pencils--but at that point Marvel has taken over the reins and things go back to confusing.  The last issue leads us into Godwheel, which then leads us into Rune/Silver Surfer, yet another flipbook with the same story being recounted by the POV of the two different characters.  In that issue, Rune shows up on Marvel Earth just long enough to grab all the Infinity Gems and stop time only for the Silver Surfer to show up and punch him back to the Ultraverse...

...which leads right into the four part Curse of Rune, where Gemini and Janus look for Rune, and Shuriken (remember her from All-New Exiles?  This is her debut) shows up looking to capture Gemini and kill Rune, and Rune shows up and bites Gemini, who is now part vampire, and....

As all knotted up as the storyline is, I would have forgiven it if the characters were, well, interesting, and these characters aren't.  After showing some charisma in the prologue that ran through all the Ultraverse titles (and reprinted as a promotional giveaway in an issue of Spin), Rune spends almost all of his time thumping his chest and giving himself really Edgelord-y nicknames like 'The Dark God' and 'Prince of The Void.'  The only way I can tell the difference between the two kids who make up Gemini is because one of them is always whining about his girlfriend.  And Janus...oh, god, Janus.  There's a constant sense that Janus will be Really Important, and that there's a reason he's hunting Rune and that he's older and more powerful than his 'scraggly homeless man' vibe indicates...but nothing connected to him ever develops.  At one point, this is a character who is decapitated and his head put on a pike that still talks and I felt nothing.  I wasn't impressed, I wasn't sickened, I wasn't disgusted or disgruntled...not. A. Thing.

This series just made my head hurt.  And throughout it all, I never got a sense it actually belonged in the Ultraverse.  Outside of the issue where Mantra and Prime show up for a couple of pages and the Aladdin name, it felt like it was happening in its own continuity.  I wonder if I would find this more palatable if this was a stand-alone series (and let's be obvious, Bravura was right there).  But since Rune was a much-touted Ultraverse title set in the Ultraverse, I have to evaluate it in the context of the imprint.  And as part of the imprint, the story fails. I think Malibu knew it also judging by the way there was a sudden, sharp pivot to defining Lord Pumpkin and Necromantra as the major bads of the continuity.

At least the art, more often than not, is spectacular.  In addition to Windsor Smith the majority of the first volume, we get lovely John  Buscema pencils on the Silver Surfer half of Rune/Silver Surfer and Kyle Hotz doing exceptionally weird art for Curse of Rune #1-3.  If you're going to need someone to follow Barry Windsor Smith's very mannered and atmospheric art, Kyle Hotz is probably the best choice you can make.

The pre-reboot run on Rune was the most difficult run I've had to get through save for The Phoenix Resurrection and maybe All-New Exiles.  After all of this, I still feel like there's still world building that needs to be divulged so I can better understand what the Hell is going on.  I do want to love this given the creatives involved, but I cannot in no way recommend it.

But we're not done with our...favorite?...cosmic barbarian vampire.  Black September is just around the corner, and you know what that means!  It's time to look at Rune V.2, as well as Rune vs. Venom, Rune: Heart of Darkness, and the crossover that spans Marvel's Conan #4 and Conan The Savage #4, as well as Rune Vs. Conan!  Can this series right itself in the brief reboot phase?

Until then....why be meta when you can be ultra?