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.