Ultimate Endgame #3 Is a Fine Comic That Is Vaguely Disappointing (Review)

Marvel’s Ultimate line was the new hotness in 2024 and a good portion of 2025, but things haven’t been as great as they were. Part of it is the disappointment of knowing that it was going to end, but part of it is just the problem that Marvel has been having over the years. Ultimate Endgame is the big ending of the battle against the Maker. Most fans believed it would be a grand finale, written by the fantastic Deniz Camp with artists Jonas Scharf and Terry and Rachel Dodson. However, while the book is definitely imaginative, it’s doing the thing that Marvel’s events always do — ignoring what made the line work to give readers “spectacle”.

The new Ultimate Universe worked so well at first because it wasn’t doing what the rest of Marvel’s mainline books were. Ultimate Endgame has just been giving readers standard Marvel action, leaving behind the most interesting aspects of the line. Ultimate Endgame #3 is a book that definitely has cool parts to it, but it’s also disappointing in various ways.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Pros	Cons
Camp nails the high concept sci-fi feel of the book	It’s all just big empty action
Scharf’s art is getting better with every issue	The Dodsons’ art has a lot of their usual problems
There’s some cool scenes in the comic	The book’s big death doesn’t really hit at all

This Both Feels Like a Deniz Camp Comic but Also Doesn’t

Deniz Camp is one of the biggest success stories of the last two years. He made a huge splash with Children of the Vault during the X-Men’s “Fall of X” story, and has since gotten big jobs at both Marvel and DC Comics, working in the Ultimate and the Absolute lines. Camp is amazing with sci-fi narratives, bringing in big ideas and concepts, and his books are also unabashedly leftist. His work on The Ultimates did a fantastic job of melding superheroes and politics in new ways. The problem with Ultimate Endgame so far is that it feels like a standard Marvel event book, and does away with what makes Camp’s work so great.

Ultimate Endgame #3 has the right amount of action and suspense, but it feels so standard that it really hurts the book. The battle against the Maker has had some great scenes, but it feels empty in a way that Camp books usually don’t. Camp nails the big sci-fi stuff and suspense well, but if you’re looking for more, it’s not here. In fact, one of the problems with this book is even more obvious with this issue: none of it feels like it has any impact. This book is a big event story that doesn’t really sell why it’s important. There’s a huge death in this issue and yet I felt nothing because I know that it doesn’t matter. The announced end of the Ultimate Universe robs this book of stakes; event books work because of the stakes and how they effect the continuing story, but knowing that this all ends means none of it feels important or has any impact.

Scharf’s Art Is Fantastic Yet the Dodsons’ Pages Have Their Usual Problems

Much like Camp, Scharf came to prominence thanks to his work on “Fall of X”, drawing the mostly great Dark X-Men. Marvel has been hiring artists that have similar styles, and Scharf’s pencils have a look that is different from a lot of those kinds of artists. His pages are the best in the book, full of fluid, dynamic action and cool little scenes using the nature of the City. That said, this doesn’t really feel like the art of an event book.

Terry and Rachel Dodson have been working together for years as a penciler/inker team, and they were a weird choice for this book in general. The Dodsons are good for cheesecake art with beautiful women, but was never all that great at action. One of the problems with the Dodsons is their art loses its detail on longer shots, and that happens several times in this book. Any scene with close-ups on the character looks great, but any mid or long shots get really sketchy. None of the art in this book feels like it should be in an event comic, even when it looks good, and that’s yet another problem for it.

Ultimate Endgame was a book that most people thought would have been a blockbuster, but so far the comic hasn’t really worked. The first issue was all set-up, the second issue was a little better, but this issue falls back down to mid at best. This event book misuses its writer and the art has some rather noticeable ups and downs that hurt the product. This book has been disappointing since the start and this issue is more of the same.

Ultimate Endgame #3 is on sale now.

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