TITLE: Break-Thru
YEAR: December 1993
COMPANY: Ultraverse/Malibu Comics
Script: Gerard Jones
Penciller: George Perez
Inker: John Lowe
Ink Assists and Lettering: Tim Eldred
Color Design: Moose Baumann
Editors: Chris Ulm & Hank Kanalz
In December 1993, Ultraverse had it’s first major crossover titled “Break-Thru”.
A storyline that would continue on to 12 titles and featured the awesome artwork by George Perez and a script by Gerard Jones.
The crossover begins with a suicide as a man looks up to the sky and tries to reach the moon and falls off a tower, another pilot tries to reach the top and flies a domestic plane straight to the sky and incidents are being reported all over of people trying to climb to the highest points in order to reach out to the moon.
What is known is that an Ultra named Amber is up in the sky and she is burning up from a red flame and going through the spectrum from low-intensity light waves to high. The problem is once she reaches purple, she will introduce ultraviolet rays which can kill all life on Earth.
You have two groups of heroes, one set to stop Amber and another trying to protect her, because she could be the answer to the secrets about the Ultras. This leads to a major Ultra battle involving the good guys but two sides opposing each other.
For the most part, you have a story that features all heroes together, even though some may be each other’s rival/enemy. Meanwhile, being the first major crossover event for Ultraverse was special to begin with. The problem, I felt that the pace was off as the storyline for issue #1 of “Break-Thru” tries to showcase many heroes at each other’s throats, but not giving much time dedicated to the battle.
It’s an interesting storyline but when it comes to crossovers, it didn’t really captivate me. I will say that for me, it was more interesting to see all these Ultraverse heroes together and fighting each other.
But it’s only the first issue of the crossover and it helps to have major veterans working on this title alone! It’s just that the “Break-Thru” storyline was more average than spectacular.