Ultimate Impact: Reborn #3 – Open Your Eyes, and Everything is Back to Normal

The fragile boundaries between Earth-616 and Ultimate Universe-6160 continue to fray. In Ultimate Impact: Reborn, we see the result of a powerful chain reaction involving the Origin Boxes being inadvertently set off. Miles, who lost control of the boxes to The Spot, finds himself responding with strange phenomena cropping up all across the city. Realizing this is too big to handle himself, he reaches out to Tony Stark for help on where to go from here.

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Creative Team

Writer: Chris Condon
Artists: Stefano Caselli
Color Artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Cover Artist: Leinil Francis Yu
Cover Color Artist: Dean White

Writing

Chris Condon continues to expand the scale of the event in Ultimate Impact: Reborn #3. Condon does a really amazing job of juggling multiple moving parts throughout the issue, bouncing from people trapped in the negative zone to Spider-Man street-level chaos. Like previous issues, Condon separates the story across several fronts, each with their own needs and arcs.

Condon does a successful job of balancing and juggling the narrative across these fronts. The success elevates the story from a simple street-level story to one that now has a high-stakes multiversal-level threat. Balancing the plot lines gets to a point where it kind of starts to make the pacing feel a little fragmented, but Condon can hold it together well and set up a beautiful layup for the next issue.

Art

Artist Stafano Caselli brings a high level of energy and visual weight to this issue’s layout. When the issue hits its most high-octane moments is when Caselli’s work actually shines the brightest. With Hostilicus getting a chance to show how powerful he is, the panels have clean layouts, while the characters are staged well. Event the quiet moments have line work that feels polished and cinematic.

David Curiel and Joe Sabino build seemlessly on Casellis line art to help set the moon. As the environments shift, Curiel’s palette transitions effortlessly between them. From the bright almost surreal hues of Midtown to the cold metallic tones of a warehouse, Curiel captures them all well. Sabino’s lettering keeps the dialogue crisp and helps keep the pacing on track in a story that it would have been easy for it to go off the rails. Amidst the heavy action, Sabino does a great job of using dynamic SFX to accentuate the impacts of battle.

Final Thoughts

Ultimate Impact: Reborn #3 serves as exactly the kind of story you would want to serve as a mid-series entry. It’s punchy and action-filled. Condon does a wonderful job of using the issue to raise the stakes of the story from street-level to multiverse-level. The strong character dynamics and a villain that actually seems like they could win make it an entertaining read.

Overall Grade: 9 / 10

What did you think about this issue of Ultimate Impact: Reborn? Let me know in the comments