Fight Monsters and Stand with Humanity!
"This is what happens when GODS fight."
An Image Comics title written and drawn by James Harren (RUMBLE and B.P.R.D.) inspired by tokusatsu superhero shows like the Ultra Series.
Across the cosmos, superhuman giants battle the Kaiju, their eternal foes who mutate the innocent populations of countless worlds into humongous bloodthirsty monsters.
Earth is no exception.
And so, three "warriors" from the ranks of mankind are drafted into this vast and violent war.
Their Enemies: Endless.
The Threat: Insidious.
Their Battles: MASSIVE.
They are ULTRAMEGA.
Pray that they will suffice.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: The Kaiju Queen mostly just treats her son, the Prince/King, with withering contempt despite his efforts to please her.
- Ancient Evil: The Kaijus have been around as long as the Ultramegas. In fact, the first one and Atum wasted no time in attacking one another the moment they made eye contact at the dawn of time.
- Antagonistic Offspring: The Kaiju Prince really doesn't like Jason.
- Alas, Poor Villain: In-Universe, Noah's willingness to show mercy and empathy to Red Gara despite everything he's done is part of what makes Atum and the Eye deem him worthy of being an Ultramega.
- As Long as There Is Evil: It’s heavily implied that the Ultramegas and the Kaiju are two sides of the same coin, neither able to exist without the other. After a years-long stretch where there are no living Ultramegas left on Earth, the Kaiju dwindle in size to the point where most are barely larger than human if not smaller, and as soon as a new Ultramega appears, they soon return to their original skyscraper sizes. The first Ultramega, hatching from a cosmic egg, was followed seconds later by the first Kaiju from within the same eggshell.
- Badass Normal: Just about anyone who isn't a Ultramega or Kaiju, but especially the Masked Ultra.
- Bathos: Between the insane fight scenes are some bits of delightfully quirky humor, like Jason having a normal head on a tiny body after transforming back into a human.
- Big Bad: On Earth, the Kaiju Queen.
- Big Good: Atum Ultramega, the very first of his kind and the Greater-Scope Paragon who scouts out "warriors" on various worlds to protect their planets from the Kaijus.
- Body Horror: The Kaiju mutations for one. But while morphing into an Ultramega is rather instantaneous, returning to human form is a gradual and more queasily proportional process.
- Boring, but Practical: The very tall and very thick walls that the humans put around their inner cities prove very effective in discouraging most Kaiju attacks, as the monsters tend to only about the standard size of their tokusatsu counterparts.
- Boxing Battler: Jason's experience as a former pro-boxer aid him well as an Ultramega.
- Cain and Abel: Noah and the Kaiju Prince/King are half-brothers, though neither knows til after a newly-empowered Noah has killed the latter.
- Calling Your Attacks: The Ultramegas frequently do this in true tokusatsu style.
- Citadel City: ALL surviving cities are this after the first Ultramegas fall. They actually do quite well at keeping Kaiju out.
- Cool Old Guy: Odis, one of the founders of Avalon and a hammer-wielding badass who always looks out for the innocent.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Mariah is submerged in the literal flood of blood gushing out from Jason's decapitated body. And then it coagulates, trapping her inside of it to suffocate.
- Decoy Protagonist: Jason, Stephen, and Ern.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The Kaiju King.
- Emergency Transformation: Though he would have gladly done it anyways, Noah's transformation into an Ultramega is partly done to save his life after he's maimed by a vengeful Kaiju.
- Fantastic Racism: People even suspected of being infected by or potential carriers for the Kaiju virus are cast out of the cities and left to live on their own aside from occasional government supply drops.
- First-Episode Twist: The entire first issue is basically just a prologue, with Jason, Ern, and Stephen dying to the Kaiju King and the story proper taking place several years later.
- Fling a Light into the Future: Jason does this with the Eye by blasting it into the Earth to keep it safe from the Kaiju King and in hopes that someone else will find it and continue his fight as a new Ultramega.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Ultramega Green, Stephen Meier, who managed to grow up into a millionaire inventor despite having to fight Kaiju on occasion. Beth is also similarly skilled.
- Genre Deconstruction: Of Toku series, showing how terrifying and dangerous it would be to actually live in a world where Ultras and Kaiju battle for the fate of humanity every other day, with many of the genre's tropes and conventions getting subverted and toyed with. There's also a lot of Reconstruction at work, however, as through it all this is still ultimately the story of mighty heroes battling Kaiju in awesome fight scenes to protect people.
- Genre Throwback: To classic Toku series like the Ultra Series.
- Giant Mecha:
- After the Kaiju King murders the first three Ultramegas, the public turns to using giant robots to battle Kaiju.
- The Kaiju attempt to create one of their own plarger than any of them to destroy or at least scale the walls protecting the human cities. While it certainly looks relatively impressive, the insides are a mismatched mess, and it winds up being too small for the job it was made for anyway.
- Gladiator Games: Without Ultramegas to fight, the Kaiju turn to staging gladiatorial "games where they dress prisoners up in Ultramega costumes and throw them into a toy model city to be brutalized and killed by Kaiju warriors.
- Gorn: The comic pulls no punches on depicting just how brutal fights between Ultras and Kaiju would really be.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Kaiju Prince kills Stephen this way
- Kaiju Prince: "I impaled their soft bits on their architecture. They were worthy."
- Improbable Weapon User: Odis and Seth wield hammers made out of an Ultramega's tooth.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Without Ultramegas to fight, Kaiju quickly become intensely insecure and obsessed with dominating everyone else to prove their strength… a fact not helped by the fact that they shrink down to smaller forms when said foes are not present.
- Kaiju: They also double as The Virus as they mutate not only the bodies of their hosts but their minds as well.
- Kid Hero: Stephen in the past, and Noah in the present. To stress how this trope can potentially be a dangerous one, they both lose their arms early in their Ultramega careers.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Jason refusing to kill his pregnant first wife Lilith despite her having been infected by the Kaiju virus. This allows her and their baby to become the Kaiju Queen and Kaiju Prince/King years down the line.
- Noah's harassment of the Kaiju Klan unwittingly delivers a capacity cube to them. And lands him and his adoptive mother Beth in their sights.
- No Endor Holocaust: Repeatedly averted. The Ultramegas are all too aware of the Collateral Damage their battles with Kaiju can do, and when they're unable to get Kaiju clear of civilians before engaging, lots of people die in the crossfire.
- Not Quite Dead: Thanks to his Eye surviving, Jason's decapitation doesn't prove as fatal as expected.
- Offing the Offspring: Ern's young son was sleeping near him when he became an Ultramega… and saw that said son was infested with the Kaiju virus. Ern is still traumatized from what happened next.
- Off with His Head!: The Kaiju King literally punches Jason's head off. Noah later returns the favor.
- Posthumous Character: Seth, Odis' partner and Noah's mentor who helped found and defend Avalon… until Red Gara murdered him. He appears only in flashbacks.
- Purple Is Powerful: Jason and later Noah have purple Ultramega forms, and purple is generally a predominant color where Ultramegas are concerned.
- The Quisling: Many of the slaves of the Kaiju Cult serve their masters beyond what is needed to survive in hopes of earning special privileges once the monsters dominate the Earth or in the case of Red Gara, becoming Kaiju themselves.
- Remote Body: Issue two starts with Noah remote piloting a robot drone to attack the Kaiju Klan… and then self-destructing it when they manage to beat it.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Red Gara's betrayal of his fellow humans to the Kaiju is "rewarded" by being thrown into their Gladiator Games to die alongside their human prisoners the very instant he gets injured and ceases to be immediately useful.
- Sadistic Choice: Odis is made to choose between letting all of Avalon go hungry when the Kaiju Klan threaten to steal the yearly supply drop or giving up Noah in exchange for the food. He reluctantly chooses the latter, to his own shame.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: All the Ultramegas eventually but especially Ern.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- At one point a fight between a Kaiju and the Ultramegas comes close to a crowd of evacuating civilians and the civilians are knocked out cold by the concussion from the fight; that's what happens when gigantic beings with Super-Strength hit each other as hard as possible.
- Bigger creature means more blood. So the corpses of the building-sized Ultramegas spill enough blood to flood streets.
- Take Up My Sword: Atum to Noah and the Eye as he succumbs to his injuries.
- Taking You with Me: Ern tries to do this to the Kaiju King. It doesn't work.
- Ultraman Copy: The Ultramegas, natch. Regular humans chosen to transform into titanic alien warriors capable of projecting Pure Energy as a weapon, in order to defend the Earth against equally gigantic alien monsters. However, aside from that basic concept, Ultramega shares little else.
- Ungrateful Bastard: The Kaiju have little appreciation for the humans under their thrall despite their loyal service, treating them as expendable cannon fodder at best and punching bags at worst.
- Villain Forgot to Level Grind: The Kaiju King is about as strong as he was when he killed Earth's first three Ultramegas, but a number of factors give the much weaker and less experienced Noah the edge his predecessors didn't. Firstly, they're fighting in the ruins of the old city which is filled with either Kaiju or their mostly willing slaves, so he doesn't have to worry much about collateral damage. And perhaps most importantly, he's unaware that he and the villain are half-brothers, so he isn't rendered off-balance by the familial connection he has with his opponent like how it was with their father. And on top of all of that, Kaiju King is now very out of shape from years of inaction.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: The Kaiju King ultimately just wants his mother, the Queen, to approve of him. No matter how many dead humans it takes.
- X Meets Y: Ultraman meets Invincible.
