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There’s clearly two shows at work in UltraForce: one is a second-rate X-Men knockoff that spends far too much time with Prime, a genetically created character who bares a strong resemblance to Captain Marvel, and the second is a more intelligent and darker show that bubbles underneath the surface. The show never reconciles which one it wants to be, and since it only lasted for thirteen episodes, it never got the chance to grow and figure itself out.
The team breakdown on UltraForce dangles dangerously close to carbon-copy ripoffs of team members from X-Men, in both singular characters and overall concepts, Justice League and The Avengers. This is a problem only because so many of the voice actors from earlier incarnations of the latter series of comics show up in this show. They do little to differentiate their voices so a character like Pixx easily reminds one of Jubilee in look, manner, attitude, age, and relevance to the team, even if her powers are different. I’m surprised they didn’t get sued, until you realize that Marvel bought up the Malibu franchise around the time the show went into production.
You see, instead of calling many of these characters mutants, they’re being dubbed “Ultras.” The difference doesn’t amount to much and much of the show just reminds us of how much better and with more maturity X-Men handled so many of these topics, storylines and character types. But every once in a while the show will head into a darker path, like whenever we delve into Prime’s backstory (which is far too often and frequently convoluted) and discover that he’s the product of genetic manipulation by an incredibly fucked-up group of mad scientists and an alien-vampire-demon thing. Or Lord Pumpkin, who is as stupid as he sounds, getting various teenagers addicted to a steroid/drug/mutant-power-giver concoction that he cooked up.
These dark storylines and the villains behind them never gel correctly. Lord Pumpkin is a foppish Victorian-era-meets-Al Capone looking gangster with a giant pumpkin head and hands that look like roots. They defeat him by extinguishing the candle in his mouth. Rune, the vampire-alien-thing, is a piss-poor variation of Morbeus from Spider-Man, who was tragic as often as he was deadly. The less said about the Ultron-lite NM-E the better. One of the many problems with UltraForce is that is there is no standout in their rogues gallery for these overly muscular he-man to engage in battle with. Female characters are drastically under-utilized, especially team leader Contrary and Topaz, who is Wonder Woman re-envisioned as a stranded warrior queen from a different planet.
It’s not awful, but it’s never anything outstanding. It’s a very 90s superhero cartoon and nothing more, complete with frequently off-model animation and a reliance upon a techno-rock/vaguely-industrial score.
