Marvel's Ultimates Line - Classic Or Dud?

The only one I've actually read is The Ultimates, which is ace.

Ultimate Spidey's been classic, and carefully handled -- new bottles of old wine aren't being tossed in left and right, but they're not being portioned out so portentously that each one has to be an Event, either. I don't know if it can stay gold forever, and I don't know if it'll be good in anyone's hands but Bendis's (it's been all him so far except for a co-writer credit for Jemas in the Julius Schwartz role for the first arc).

I got three free issues of Ultimate X-Men with some subscription deal at some point and didn't like it. No idea if there have been creative changes since or what -- Bendis was writing it at some point, wasn't he? Maybe he still is.

Haven't read Ultimates because I don't like Millar.

Ultimate FF has had some great moments, but doesn't seem as solid -- I got a free subscription to it when I renewed Ultimate Spidey, but I don't know if I'll keep up with it. Not sure who's coming on after Ellis.

It could have been a great opportunity to reach out past the regular base of comics readers with a brand new world and familiar characters to pique interest. Seems like Marvel never made an attempt to do that, and they're not really reaching out that much with the Marvel Age books (which end up doing the same thing that the Ultimate books do, only "kid-friendly.")

Personally, if I want to read stories of Spiderman just starting out, I'll go back to the Lee/Ditko/Romita run. I'm not down with the Ultimate Hulk at all, though if they'd kept him as an antagonist, it could have been awesome (even better if they'd put him in a clown suit and had him say big words like "masquerade", as in the first issue of the original Avengers book). Most of the reinterpretations don't really do anything that wild or original it seems. And the relentless hyping of the reintroduction of beloved villians and side characters has gotten kinda old.

I actually though the first six issues of Ultimates was pretty good, except for the underdeveloped characters. The plot twist that dominated the last three issues and the pacing were pretty terrible (but grebt if you're a fan of Hitch's, as it gave him an excuse to draw many HUGE DOUBLE-PAGE SPREADS.) The other Ultimate stuff has just seemed sorta blah, and paced such as the only way to really read it is in trades.

- Ulitmate Spider-Man is the crowning jewel.

- The Ultimates started off FANTASTIC, but then veered into the same ol' Millar cynical schtick (or maybe the early issues were guilty of the same thing)

- Ultimate X-Men was VERY spotty under Millar; Bendis took over for ten issues, I think, & did OK; Brian K. Vaughn is now the writer & is doing a fine job.

- Ulitimate FF dragged under the two-headed Bendis / Millar combo (6 issues of Mole Man?), but Ellis did light a fire under the title's ass, and I LIKE Devil Doom & His Halitosis! (Stuart Immommen = the goods.)

- Ultimate War, Ultimate Six, Ultimate Nightmare = fun, flighty crossover stuff; War is the weakest; Six petered out, but had some kewl "evil" moments; Nightmare is a slow burner, & has already switched artists two issues in, but I'm enjoying it.

- Ultimate Team-Up = Bendis having a goof w/ various indie / underappreciated artists; characters introduced are not THE OFFICIAL Ultimate characterizations.

- Ultimate Daredevil / Elektra = OK. Average stuff.

- Ultimate Adventures = DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG.

MORE TO COME!

Granted, The Ultimates is going out of its way to portray "realistic" characters of both genders, mostly by taking the existing defining character traits from the "real" MU & super-sizing them. So you have a SUPER-annuated version of Captain America, a SUPER-milquetoasty version of Bruce Banner, a SUPER-anti-authority version of Hawkeye. The places where Millar's seemingly eschewed the MU template for his own vision (cf. Thor, Nick Fury) are where the The Ultimates character revamps ultimately (tee hee) succeed.

I also felt that the ultimates worked much betterthan the others i saw (ultimate x-men, spiderman etc.)

The Ultimates does not feel like the Avengers to me, but then its not called the Ultimate Avengers for much that reason. It works and delivers big funny superhero moments like no other current title. It also has some interesting re-imaginings of Marvel heroes and Hitch's art is just beautiful.

The rest of the line I can take or leave.....

Anybody know anything about DC's plans for a similarnon-continuity line. I read somewhere that Jim Lee was heavily involved and that Art Adams was doing art on either Bats or Supes....

In theory, this is all going to hit in early 2005, but that's not so far off, and there haven't been many rumblings about it lately.

Again, if the companies don't take the opportunity to attract readers outside the normal comics readership, it's a missed chance. Though there is a school of thought that excess continuity doesn't hamper new readership if handled correctly (given the popularity of soap operas and the like with decades of backstory), so once again I could just be acting like a big windbag. It happens.

Yes, I have used the word "eschew" twice in this thread.

In the Ultimate Universe, the third part of the Warren Ellis trilogy will se print in August.

Ultimate Iron Man will launch in 2005 with Andy Kubert as artist. Buckley hinted at Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card in regards to the title, which lead to parallel lines of speculation, as to whether Card himself will write the series, or if the series will somehow be related to Card’s premise in his novel series.

Adam Kubert will return to Ultimate Fantastic Four, while Warren Ellis will remain on the title through a portion of '05.

The most recent issue of UFF was the last in my free subscription, and I haven't renewed it or put it on my pull list. It's not terrible, it's just not grabbing me, and I don't think I actively like any of the characters (who remain strangely underdeveloped).

(I can't sleep and am reading comic books and comic book message boards.)

(I can't sleep.)

The Ultimates, on the other hand, I grab as soon as each issue comes out. I really love what Millar's doing with Thor, in particular. (And I want it to stay up in the air too.)

I'm as prone to MM bitchery as anyone, but he is fantastic on The Ultimates, & that sequence in the last issue where Thor is "revealed" to be a kooky fraud, but is then visited by LOKI in the cell, & once again casting doubt on whether Thor's who he thinks or who they think, was a fantastic set of scenes that worked a lot better than I ever thought they could.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

("Just" = "last night")

One thing I like about it is the way Bendis doesn't duck the consequences of stories - it isn't very difficult for people to work out Peter Parker is Spider-Man, which is as it should be, so you hardly ever get that sinking feeling where characters have to do enormously contrived things to preserve a book's status quo. (This is what's good about the Ultimate line in general, actually.)

And Ultimates 2 is great! I was a bit down on the end of the fisrt volume (because of my semi-anti MM stance), but this volume's been fantastic from the get-go. Don't mind me if I take a raincheck on the third volume, tho.

Does it matter that I was never a huge fan of The Avengers?!

I wish people would stop referring to Ultimate X-Men as UXM. That's Uncanny X-Men!

Now, to read it!

except i hate the art!

and i hate jean grey's haircut!

Ultimate Spidey, though -- if you've just started, it will flag some, partly because it'll lose the steam of "OMG I'm totally Spider-Man!" as a status quo settles in, and partly because Bendis became distracted by a thousand other things. But it gets better after that, too, and I really like what's been going on lately.

The thing with the Ultimate universe that really bugs me is that Marvel went out of its way to create this blank slate universe where creators can play with the characters without dealing with all of the "real universe" continuity problems, but then the writers go and fuck it up so that key characters are no longer in play. They kill off Beast, kill off Gambit, fuck up Rogue. It's sort of ridiculous that in both universes, Rogue and Gambit are irrevocably ruined.

Rogue's not irrevocably ruined until she's had 12 different power ups/downs!

Please note that BKV did this (in one story)!

Also, Matthew (AKA He Who, IIRC, Doesn't Understand Why The Ultimate Universe Is Just Copying Characters), why complain when the U-verse diverges from its daddy & tries something different w/ an existing character? You can't complain when they stick to the script, and then complain when they go off book too! (Well, you can, but it's kinda gauche.)

I'm not sure if I remember making any complaints about the Ultimate universe that didn't involve being annoyed with gimmicky short-sighted versions of pre-existing characters. If I said anything, it was that they are better off coming up with new characters rather than doing lame radically different versions of existing characters and thus fucking it up for future writers.

Not to be any more of an asshole pedant about this than I've been already, but that "fucking it up for future writers" meme you're trying to propogate, Matthew, really chafes me. As if, for instance, Rogue acquiring Gambit's powers before he dies (in the U-verse) or Sunfire's powers (in the proper MU) is keeping the Greatest Writer Ever from writing The Greatest Rogue Story Ever. As if writers don't want obstacles in their way! And can't stand problem-solving! Especially in genre fiction!

The fact that there's a clean slate in the U-verse MEANS they can go and kill off "key" characters and fuck w/ people's expectations, which is part of the enjoyment of the entire endeavor (for those willing to go along for the ride). If it's just going to be a note-for-note remake of what was published 30 years ago, then it IS as pointless an exercise as critics of the line make it out to be. But folks saying that aren't reading the books. And folks complaining because they're doing it all wrong by not following the precedent or maintaining the MU's status quo ... maybe they should just go back & read those original stories again & leave this U-stuff alone.

(I'm riffing on this, BTW: The thing with the Ultimate universe that really bugs me is that Marvel went out of its way to create this blank slate universe where creators can play with the characters without dealing with all of the "real universe" continuity problems, but then the writers go and fuck it up so that key characters are no longer in play.)

and rogue? where the fuck has rogue been in the x-men universe anyway? did she and gambit bang or somethin? that is lame.

Although personally, I don't like the Ultimate line - in fact, I'd give it a "dud". In fairness, I've read very little of it, just the first trade or two of X-Men and the first few issues of Spider-Man, but I didn't find either one very enjoyable.

That's the point!

I mean, isn't that so much more sensible than writing lame-ass stories for the purpose of undoing really stupid moves?

Also: "Xorn was Magneto and he died in Planet X. We'll bring back Magneto someday, but it won't be in some stupid way. We'll do something with the nanobots he was using or maybe the Phoenix will resurrect him. But that whole bit about him being an imposter and hanging out with Charles Xavier? Sorry, Chris Claremont is kinda dumb these days."

Man, that was a great episode!

Heh, Jimmy's been through weirder and worse.

You seem to like things like ASS because someone pushed the reset button before they started. The longer it goes on, the less likely it is you'll like it, because eventually something will change.

'Change' is a kind of weird concept in long-running comics with valuable intellectual property attached. Everyone knows that characters are going to snap back to their earlier incarnations at some point anyway. Professor X could be running marathons this month, but he'll be back in the wheelchair eventually. Will one more miraculous recovery/ironic injury cycle break anyone's suspension of disbelief? Does anyone believe that a new creator is going to think "Hey, I've a great story about Professor X being stuck at the bottom of a flight of stairs... oh, hang on, the previous writer took him out of the wheelchair. Dang." - and if not, how are they really limited?

I think that if someone had actually wrote a good story about Rogue "getting over it," then I would be a little more okay with the character being essentially ruined - at least there would be some kind of narrative that came to a logical conclusion. But in the case of both universes, it's more like writers got bored with her and just decided to ditch the core concept and make her into something else, in both cases far less compelling than the basic version of the character.

You mean, selfish like Grant Morrison killing Magneto was selfish? *winky*

As for the Rogue example you're using: I was never that impressed w/ her as a character except when she was grappling w/ the consequences of her first OMG I TOUCHED SOMEONE supermoment (when she stole Ms. Marvel's powers semi-permanently) - I remember a great issue of X-Men where Rogue was having Carol Danvers flashbacks & pretended she was a SHIELD agent. That was the good stuff. The OMG I CAN'T LOVE ANYONE thing worked fine as an underlying theme w/ her stories - since the moment her powers manifested coincided w/ her first kiss, there's an emotional anchor that undermines her contact w/ everyone. But bringing that up as often as Wolverine mentions his healing factor got real old real quick, especially when it involved falling in luv w/ that card-flipping dipshit. And I guess that she was given Sunfire's powers so she'd have more to do than just be the Absorbing Woman With Issues.

BKV, on the other hand, was given a Rogue that (IIRC) didn't have the Carol Danvers moment (or that first-kiss moment) until absorbing Gambit's powers right before his death. And (in that wide, wonderful world of funny book logic) it makes sense that Rogue can only absorb one "power set" at a time, so if she's gotten Gambit's powers (& memories, I assume) for the long haul, then she can't absorb anyone else's powers. Does that change the character as most folks understand her? Of course. Does it limit the stories that can be told? If they're going to be about Old Rogue and her fear of intimacy, yeah. If they're about Rogue dealing w/ what her first intimate moment meant, and now discovering intimacy, and things along those lines, then no. And breaking from the mold of "Rogue can't touch, Rogue can't ever touch," is, to me (and some other folk, I imagine) just as interesting, if not more so.

Sure, that is unrealistic and in many ways makes for bad stories - but so does having characters that can't change from their depiction 20 years ago.

But honestly, I don't get the impression that BKV had any big ideas other than "let's do something clever and shocking in the short term with these characters who were big in the Lobdell era that I don't really like." See also: His usage of Mr. Sinister and Apocalypse.

But yeah, I do think that Morrison was very dumb to kill off Magneto in Planet X even if it was the logical conclusion of the story. There's just no good reason to kill off any of these big characters. They will always come back! Why bother?

But even if they're always going to come back eventually, if you're a writer, you can not bring them back during your run. So you can tell the stories about dead Magneto and smily happy Rogue if you like.

Because it's a better ending? That's more than fine by me...

As for Mr. Sinister & Apocalypse - I though they were both ill-definied generically-evil asshats that epitomized everything wrong w/ the X-world, so seeing BKV make one into a loony twit and the other into a mop (OR IS HE?) was fine by me.

Okay, so with Sinister and Apocalypse, BKV can basically editorialize and write the characters off, closing the doors for writers who may have actually had very good ideas on how to take those characters and make them into something better than the original Marvel Universe versions!

Somewhere, folks are butting heads over Ultimate Green Goblin in the very same way.

In some ways, it's the best of both worlds. A writer starting off on the X-men can use whatever characters they like, and do whatever they want with them, until the end of their run. When another writer takes over, they can just ignore anything they don't like. The only people who lose are the people who read a comics run twenty years ago, pick up a comic today, and expect to see the same characters doing the exact same things as they did then.

Morrison has said that this was totally deliberate - he killed Magneto at the START of his run, brought him back, and killed him again, because that's what happens in the X-Men, everyone gets killed and comes back.

anyway, surprisingly great and SO much better than the early stuff. there's only so much i can watch superheroes instant message each other before i want to kill myself

"Ultimate Team-Up = Bendis having a goof w/ various indie / underappreciated artists; characters introduced are not THE OFFICIAL Ultimate characterizations."

-millar
-the art

so i am still being a little... careful! maybe FF is not for me! or maybe i should just jump to the ellis stuff (i'm not nuts about him but i do enjoy his stuff sometime... especially the ultimate galactus biz)

i adore the kirby FF... i wish i could get good cheap colour reprints of it (if not i might just have to buy another essential volume... say, if a guy had #3 already, should he go back to #2 or forward to #4?)

S1ocki, I'm so glad you could come clean. I think it's all gold (tho I've yet to get #4), tho #2 still has Stan & Jack trying to find their sealegs (relatively speaking). I'd go w/ #4, because that means more Kirby / Sinnott art, which is the best.

Winter ILC coloring in project! I have crayons.

i almost bought ultimate ff today but i went for grant morrison's earth-2 instead. and the first bendis daredevil. it's payday yo!

* ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN is 8 parts into The Clone Saga, and Benids seems to be pulling it off nicely. As far as I can tell, this is far from whatever cloning happened in the regular MU. In a few months, Mark Bagley will be leaving the title, to be replaced by STUART IMMOMNEN (sic). Awesome!

* ULTIMATE X-MEN was doing well under Robt. Kirkman @ first, but the last couple of months find him pulling the same sort of schtick Millar pulled on this book back in the day - drop some plot bombs, then fast-forward through the ramifications. Not sure where this is going, but it's been a little bumpy of late.

* ULTIMATE FF has been great since Mike Carey hopped on board - he's been mucking around w/ Thanos & aliens of his own creation. Paul O'Brien's claiming that Carey's trying to create the Ultimate New Gods w/ this stuff, which could very well be the case (& I approve). Superfun (tho the lagging sales leads me to think that people hate fun), and if you haven't read the 2nd UFF annual (released just before the start of Carey's current run), you are dead inside.

* ULTIMATE VISION is, um, OK. Vihz gets shanghai'd by folks what captured one of the Ultimate Galactus bugs, is asked to facillitate communications, but OH NO IT'S A TRAP. Not bad, but not at all essential, either.

* ULTIMATE POWER? Meh. I'd avoid this, even tho the first 3 issues have been OK - it involves JMS' Squadron Supreme revamp, it's being drawn my Greg "Horngro" Land, and the final 6 issues are being essayed (in a writerly fashion) by JMS & Jeph Loeb. Looks to be a Trial of Reed Richards dealie.

* The first issue of THE ULTIMATES - VOLUME 2 came out 2 years ago. OH YEAH.

(Weirdly, I know I've read at least the first two issues of Ultimate Power, but have no memory of them at all. In one ear, out the other.)

I liked Ultimate Vision #1: "Humans are a magical race, more intricate and exceptional than any of those that have faced Galactus before. Too bad you're fucked!"

Those Ultimate Power parodies, on the other hand, are off the chart.

I'm stoked for the new artist, but I'm gonna miss Bags - I think he done good (yes!) on this book, and while I'm probably not going to be on the look out for what he's doing next (specifically because of his involvement), I wish him lots of love & luck & booty.

(I never minded Bagley.)

(The mention of Powers has me trying to picture Oeming's Spidey, and particularly Oeming's Ultimate Spidey. Not easy.)