Ultimates #16

So last issue Captain America won the emergency presidential election.  That actually gained the Ultimate Marvel Universe some serious mainstream attention(for the first time in a while).  Now we see if Sam Humphries and the rest of the Ultimate crew can make this thing work.

Ultimates #16:

Summary: This issue opens with Cap giving a speech stating he's willing to answer the call of the people and take on the job of president.  After being sworn in, Cap takes off in a jet to try to fix the mess the country has become.  That angers Carol Danvers, who wants Cap to return to the temporary White House, but Cap just tells her to deal with the political crap as his Chief of Staff, while he goes about reuniting the country. With that, Cap takes Thor and Iron Man and they rapidly put an end to the hostilities between North and South Carolina.  Cap then sends Iron Man to the West Coast Nation to convince them to reenter the Union, which Iron Man succeeds in doing.  He asks Thor to head to Wyoming, where a top secret SHIELD facility had fallen off the grid, however, Thor wants to investigate an Asgardian rune that was found in Texas.  Cap tells him the most important thing was to secure the weapons in Wyoming, so Thor dutifully heads off...  Cap hops back in his jet to deal with the Dictator of Detroit and gets a call from Senator Underwood, who tells Cap to stop running around unilaterally and get back to Washington to do things with talk and compromise, not force.  Cap blows him off and continues his mission to bring the country back together.  Underwood gets in touch with acting head of SHIELD, Marvin Flumm(in the 616, Mentallo), and since they were working with the mysterious Morez, who wanted Wyoming left alone so his Hydra forces could ransack it, Underwood tells Flumm to shoot Cap's jet down with a missile.  Flumm fires the missile and Black Widow appears, having been spying on Flumm's conversation with Underwood at a miniature size thanks to Pym particles.  While Widow and Flumm fight, the missile system announces a successful hit, but Cap storms in the room and tells Flumm that the missile had been tricked into hitting nothing by Stark Tech.  With that, Cap destroys Flumm for betraying the country, and you know, trying to assassinate the President of the United States, before calling Underwood and telling him that his time was over, which leads to a defeated Underwood resigning(with the help of a little arm twisting by Hawkeye).  In Wyoming, Morez is annoyed by Underwood's resignation, but has already entered the Wyoming base and was looking over the weapons with the leader of Hydra.  Morez senses Thor nearby and tells the Hydra leader to leave him alone, at which time Thor walks in, figuring Morez was Loki, which would explain why he was sowing such chaos throughout the nation.  But wait!  This issue ends with Morez revealing that he wasn't Loki, but was actually Modi, Thor's son!

Thoughts: Hey, you know what, I really enjoyed this comic!  Issue #1 of the Captain America as POTUS era was a success in my opinion.  I liked Cap basically blowing off all of the politicians and continuing to act as Captain America, a man of action, not President Rogers, a guy sitting in an office signing paperwork.  So yeah, all the Cap stuff was great, as was the way the other Ultimates were used.  Widow being named head of SHIELD, Hawkeye intimidating Underwood into resigning, Iron Man talking to the Silicon Valley jerks and getting them to come back to the Union, and of course Thor...  See, I dropped the Ultimates series a few issues back because I can't stand Jonathan Hickman's writing(for the most part).  The only thing I did like that he did was put Thor's son away in the World Tree, and I'm happy to see Thor's kid popping up here, especially as a villain, because that can lead to a lot of good...  Especially since he seems to be the only person left with Asgardian power thanks to Thor's actions(I think Thor is still using armor that was designed by Iron Man to imitate Asgardian powers) back when EVIL Reed Richards was killing all of the Asgardians.  But yeah, this issue was really, really good, and the future looks damn bright here.

Score: 9 out of 10.

I'd vote for him.