Pages

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Ultro of the Argo Universe

Get a load of this dude.


What we have here is a pinup of Ultro from Argo Comics' Team North America by John Hebert.  He is one of two Canadian heroes on that team.

I struggled to get the books in the Argo Comics line due to an inability to order from Indyplanet. However, publisher Dan Sehn went the extra mile to make them available which, naturally, I appreciated.

As expected, being that Team North America appears in a three-story anthology, their inclusion is limited to only a few pages. However, the story centers around the two Canadian characters; Ultro and a demon named Wilde (the purple dude at far left on the cover to #3). Wilde feels that Ultro was out to show him up in a recent mission to stop a monstrous creature named Motetzotzona (yeah, like I really wrote THAT from memory...).  The page count for that individual story is low, true enough, but Team North America dominates the pin-up section.

Unfortunately, there is too little time (or page space) to go into origins and backgrounds of individual characters, Wilde and Ultro included.  And based on solicitations for anthology issues beyond this one, it doesn't seem as though Team North America gets a lot of attention going forward.

The rest of the Argo book content is interesting if only for the variety of nationalities represented. If Alpha Flight was referred to as the "Canadian X-Men" (an unintended slight, as far as I'm concerned) then I would call this series the "Indie Legion of Super-Heroes".  A great many cultures are represented, though one significant difference is that they are not all on the same team.

I'll continue to get the Argo books just on good customer service alone, and highlight the Can-Con, if and when it comes to pass.

Dan, if you happen to read this, again and sincerely, thank you for the effort to get these out to me.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! Hadn't seen this until now but glad you enjoyed the comic! Team North America popped up again in Argo 5 # 5 http://www.indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=7261 since Ultro (the character at the beginning of this post) is the brother of Gladiatra (the caped woman on the cover of the link). Team North America has more appearances in issues of Argo 5 I currently have in production. Thanks for the write up :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good stuff! I never did follow through with my "promise" to obtain more books from you, but as you probably recall, shipping costs to Canada are brutal. Knowing that TNA shows up in future issues of Argo 5 is petty motivating though. :-)

      Delete