I think I can safely say that Gerard Jones, as problematic as he has become, had the largest 'footprint' creatively in the Ultraverse. In addition to the three titles I've covered previously, I'm going to be looking at Ultraforce fairly soon, and we're not even counting the number of stories he wrote for the various anthology titles.And even I didn't remember this title.
Considering how many people called Night Man the Ultraverse's Batman, I'm shocked no one called Solitaire the Ultraverse's Batman....although I could see people also comparing him to the Punisher. But after reading the twelve issues that make up the series--there were two miniseries promised, but only one surfaced as a three-parter in the second volume of Prime--I think Jones' influences reach further back. While Nicholas Lone has experienced the same kind of loss Bruce Wayne and Frank Castle went through, the whole rest of the premise is pure pulp hero. A little bit of The Shadow, a little bit of The Spider, a dollop of Doc Savage and Fu Manchu...that's our guy.
Nicholas Lone is the son of Anton Lone, a black marketeer/crime lord disguised as a generic industrialist. He witnesses his mother's murder as a child, and learns of his father's scummy evil nature as he comes of age. Rather than live with the knowledge he's the son of a monster, Nicholas drives his car off a cliff in a suicide attempt...but Anton brings him back using nanotechnology, giving him enhanced abilities and highly accelerated healing. Nicholas takes off on a worldwide tour of debauchery--but it's all a ruse, Instead, he builds a network of operatives and trains to take on his father's criminal empire as Solitaire...you know, because he has to always be alone.
This is the most 'meh' of Jones' titles under the Ultraverse banner. I can see what he's doing, attempting a modern take on the classic pulp hero that pre-date comics while also attaching tropes from more modern 'men's adventure' heroes (think Don Pendelton's Executioner or Warren Murphy's Destroyer). And in most cases, he sticks to his guns--no pun intended. For the most part, the stories are the kind I would expect to come across in such media with an emphasis on action and detective work. Even the villains, while somewhat exaggerated, would fit into these lurid boundaries--a sex trafficker in issue #1, a moon worshipping cult in #2 and an arm-dealer with some...borderline racist overtones and an affection for monkeys in #3 and 4. And when Solitaire turns his attention to his father, he deals with the most intriguing antagonist in Jinn, his father's right hand man who partially trained Nicholas. Later in the series there's The Degenerate, a nihilist anarchist who's building a child army and an agent of Aladdin named Serena who is teased to be a love interest.
Where the series falls apart is when Jones brings Solitaire into the mainstream Ultraverse soap operatics. This begins when our hero encounters the sword wielding vigilante Double Edge, who feels he has to balance his every good deed with a bad one in issue #7. But then we get Anton Lone trying to cut a deal with Atalon of the Fire People from
Ultraforce and it just goes off the rails. By that time the series starts to lose its grit and film noir trappings, bringing in villains from
Prototype, some weird cult(?) of nanotech designers responsible for the tech that gives Nicholas his abilities and secretly reprograms his personality, and a plan by Anton to bring his boy back to him. And I think it's telling that once this stuff's going down the series starts being numbered as "__ of 12." Now I don't know if
Solitaire was always meant to be a maxi-series or not, but it certainly makes it clear that an endpoint was on the horizon beginning with issue #8.
The art is mainly by Jeffs Johnson and Parker. I had first encountered--and fell in love with--Johnson's pencils when he and Jones had teamed up on the 90's
Wonder Man series, and if anything his minimalist, sparse linework fits what this series is trying to achieve. Parker's work is a little simplistic and not really to my taste, but I do appreciate how he gave a continuity; yes, the change still could be noticeable, but I suspect you'd have to be looking for it. Both artists are very good at action sequence choreography, something brought home by the stunt of having the covers of the first six issues being put together to make the opening action sequence of issue #7.
In the last issue of Solitaire, two minis are announced that will continue Nicholas' story. Solitaire: The Perfect Man, which saw him encounter a cult led by a woman named Agave, never saw light of day. However, Prime and Solitaire: Exordium did show up as a three issue arc in the second volume of Prime. But, barring a short from Ultraverse Double Feature that I've already discussed that seems to more successfully capture what I think Jones intended for the character and short cameos in some other titles, that was it for Nicholas Lone's career...
...and that might be for the best. Throughout my reading of
Solitaire, I felt this was another title that didn't feel like it quite fit in the Ultraverse. The concept of a pulp/men's adventure hero dressed up in super-hero mufti had potential (Hell, it worked out pretty well for the Punisher, didn't it?), but the more Jones leaned into the 'super-hero' part of the equation, the less engaging it became...and considering how it wasn't all that engaging to begin with, I'm not surprised it didn't go any further.
Next time we finally come to the last of the initial three titles that ushered in the Ultraverse, the one that acted as the centerpiece of the line's lore. Join Steve Englehart and Rich Hoberg in San Francisco as the Jumpstart affects 52 people on a cable car, granting them amazing abilities (and in the case of some, awful taste in codenames) and making seven of them...Strangers!
Until then....why be meta when you can be ultra?
