Sunday, August 06, 2006

Ultra, the Multi-Alien

DC introduced a lot of weird characters in the late 1960s, but few of them were weirder than Ultra, The Multi-Alien. Ultra was Ace Arn, a space explorer from the near future, who was accidentally transformed into a freak with the composite powers and body of four different aliens. As was becoming common, some of the conflict in the story was actually internal; the hero was unhappy with being "different". See Ben Grimm (Thing), Metamorpho, the Doom Patrol and others. At first one of the agonies for him was the loss of his girlfriend, Bonnie Blake, but eventually she accepted him despite his strange appearance.

Ultra's powers were pretty basic--he could fly, had incredible strength in one arm, could shoot lightning and had magnetic powers as well. He first appeared in Mystery in Space #103, taking over the cover and feature slot from Adam Strange. There were eight appearances in all, with #110 spelling the end for both the Multi-Alien and Mystery in Space.

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