This week's comic to look for is Ultimates 2 Vol. 1 by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch.

When the first "season" of Marvel Comics' The Ultimates came out it hit the comics world with shock and awe. With Bryan Hitch's impressively detailed and cinematic artwork, it gave us a retelling of the classic superhero group, The Avengers, that read like the best superhero movie never made. It's decompressed pacing took the time to set its stage and introduce it's interestingly flawed cast of characters so that when the action came it felt abrupt, violent and real.

Season 2 (the final outing by the original creative team) is halfway through and the first six issues are collected in this volume. Set in a world much like our own, the story begins with Captain America being air dropped into Iraq to free a group of hostages. As a team of super soldiers working for S.H.E.I.L.D., a CIA type organization, the Ultimates work for George Bush's government and writer Mark Millar uses this to comment on the current global balance of power. When the Ultimates invade a foreign country to disarm them of their nuclear weapons, the parallels to the real world and the U.S.'s current standing in it are pretty clear.

The most interesting character in the Ultimates finally gets the spotlight in this volume. Thor in regular Marvel Comics is the Norse god of thunder, but here in the Ultimates (part of Marvel's new Ultimate line that updates their characters for a new audience) you don't really know if Thor is actually a god or a delusional mutant suffering from a nervous breakdown who only thinks he's a god. Thor is an environmentalist peacenik who acts as the liberal 'conscience' of the team. When his teammates eventually turn against him it is nearly heartbreaking.

The Ultimates is smart, contemporary and beautifully illustrated. It also contains a bit of a mean streak in regards to some of its characters so don't expect to find your usual comic book do-gooders here.

For a pretty in-depth description of the book and its characters check out the Wikipedia entry for the Ultimates.

Check out your local comic shop today. If you don't know where your local comic shop is, find it here: http://www.the-master-list.com