Rocket Racoon and Ultra the Multi-Alien

 

Fans are going crazy for Krypto in the new Superman trailer, and considering James Gunn's deft handling of Rocket Raccoon and other animal characters, I can understand why.  I loved the brief glimpse at Metamorpho as well - If Gunn can successfully bring that tough to adapt Silver Age hero to the big screen, who's to say the Ultra the Multi-Alien is off the table for an appearance in a future DCU project?

Ultra the Multi-Alien and The Silver Surfer

 

Ultra The Multi-Alien is definitely a Silver Age C-lister, but as a kid, I thought he was pretty cool.  Maybe it's because he looks like something that a kid might have come up with.  We used to play a game where we would fold paper in three and pass it around with each of us kids drawing a head, torso, or legs on it.  Then you would unfold the paper and see what kind of crazy character was created.  Ultra reminds me of one of those.

Ultra: The Multi-Alien Vs. The Super Skrull

Ultra the Multi Alien was a hero that I used to think of as a one-off creature character, like the monsters that appeared so often in early Marvel comics.  Looking back though, he was given a real push, appearing in multiple issues of Mystery in Space.  I wonder why he never made it to the Big (or even Middle) Leagues?  Maybe the popularity of other characters like Adam Strange pushed him out of his series, or maybe his look was too similar to Metamorpho's, who knows?  At any rate, I always thought is would be cool to see him in battle with The Super-Skrull, so here goes!

Batman and Ultra, the Multi-Alien

Here's one of the first batch of covers, right when I started taking requests. Two of the most obscure characters asked for were Ultra, the Multi-Alien and Mopee, and this was the result. I confess to knowing very little about Ultra, other than that he is kind of cool looking - I don't remember ever reading one of the few stories he appeared in. I smiled when I saw him make a cameo appearance on Cartoon Network's Batman: The Brave and the Bold Starro two-parter.

Mopee I think made only one appearance in an issue of The Flash. It was explained that he, a magical imp, in fact was responsible for the Flash's powers and the idea was universally found to be ridiculous by readers and creators alike... and so Mopee was never referred to again. I'm thinking that was for the best.