This Is The Thread Where Ex-Fanboys Post The Name Of An Old Character They Liked And Still-Fanboys Tell Them What Happened To Him/Her/It

Ultimate Fantastic Four: Reed Richards, boy megagenius who's buddies with jock Ben Grimm, discovers Negative Zone as teenager without realizing it (he's been teleporting fruit and things to it); recruited by gov't for super-elite private school dealie run by Dr Franklin Storm, father of Sue & Johnny, boss of suspiciously Mole-looking Man; Victor Von Doom is another student at said school. Fast-forward some years to Reed's Negative Zone experiment going wacky wrong, everybody gets weird powers including Ben who's all freaked out and pissed by it. The Mole Man attacks cause he got fired and he has these subterranean buddies, the Four Friends smack him down.

It's typically Bendis Ultimate stuff, very similar to his first Ultimate Spidey arc, which works in some ways -- I like that the FF (who aren't called that yet) need time to figure out what their powers are, much less how to use them, and that their chemistry is going to be different since Sue & Johnny don't really know Ben -- even while I'm not sure how I feel about the team and Doom being in their late teens.

Brief subtlety-ignorant synopsis: Dr. Doom becomes makes pact with demons (involving the death of his true love) to gain magical powers and exact revenge on you-know-who. He kidnaps the Richard's kids, puts them IN HELL, eggs on the FF. FF travels to Latveria, meets up w/ Magick Doom, gets bushwacked. Dr. Strange gets involved, tries to help science-crazy Reed get his magick on. Ends up w/ big battle w/ Doom getting trapped in Hell (& Reed wanting to stay in Hell w/ Doom to make sure he doesn't come back), kids get rescued, as does Reed (against his wishes), BUT:

A) Doom scars Reed's face in a similar way to Doom's scarring, which leads to Reed going off the deep end, and becoming "beneficial" dictator of Latveria, trying to "help" the nation out but only becoming equally dictatorial & nutso
B) Doom pulls the out-of-body trick on the Invisible Girl, mucks around w/ the FF just as S.H.I.E.L.D. shows up & tries to put a kibbosh on these shenanigans.
C) The Thing gets killed in the resulting brou-ha-ha.

BUT, Reed invents a machine to travel into Heaven to rescue Ben's soul, so the FF hop on board, and they end up running into God (who, of course, is Jack Kirby), who allows the Thing to return, erases Reed's facial scars, and everything's copaceticy (except for the fallout of Reed going dictatorial, which means the cancelling of any sponsorships or research grants or any sort of $$$ the FF got for being the FF).

And that's where I took a break (strictly for financial purposes) - I'm really enjoying Waid's run, even if it got a bit hamfisted (during the tender, "Oh, Franklin's been in Hell, what can we do to break him out of his traumatic stupor" moments). This might feed into your anti-Waid arguments re: him fetishizing the "glory days", TT (or whatever your arguments actually are - I shouldn't reference them if I can't recall them), but I think it's good stuff. Warning: Mike Wieringo is the artist, so if you're not a fan of "cartoony" looking dramedy, step away.

OK, #2 - The Flash

(Other David - I know, I know. I meant ex-fanboys of the specific character)

As for the Flash, where to begin, no really, where to begin? He's been through a lot, like dying for example. I think he and Jason Todd (1-900-KILL-ROBIN) are just about the only still-dead, and still-staying-dead heroes, except maybe the original Mr. Terrific (but he'll probably be back soon enough). So the Flash now is what used to be Kid Flash, Wally West. When he started his own series, which is at about #210 right now, he could barely break the speed of sound and was pimping himself out as courier. Then he won the lottery. Then a bunch of other stuff happened and he's faster than Barry Allen ever was now, and he doesn't even need a Cosmic Treadmill to get trans-dimensional (though I'm not sure if there are any other dimensions left, there might be, there's this thing called Hypertime that seems like the old Multiverse we knew and loved, but who can keep track?)(also, he should use the cosmic treadmill anyway, because it's really cool).

Went through a phase where all the Rogues decided that working together might actually defeat Flash once and for all. Failed, of course. Went into a final climactic battle with Zoom, where Zoom found Wally's wife Linda and caused her to spontaneously abort their twins. Zoom ends up going so fast he is held between time somehow - appears static to the rest of the world. Distraught Linda blames Flash.

Wally does a deal with the Hal Jordan Spectre to make him and Linda forget he's the Flash, and forget the battle with Zoom. He becomes a mechanic at the police dept, but eventually Flash powers start kicking in and he has to acknowledge he's the Flash after all. He decides to tell Linda, who leaves him.

(From memory, this, hence the 'something'-type caveats)

(I wasn't criticizing, Huck, just pointing out that that kind of scope would make an X-synopsis enormous and complicated; which is maybe the appeal of the X-titles sometimes, in a soap opera X-Files Buffy Alias kind of way.)

(... I don't know a better way to phrase that. Like, if Donald Duck got the power of the Phoenix, the Phoenix was still something we knew about before that, not something introduced for the sake of Donald blowing the shit out of Duckberg.)

As far as I can tell, no. It was some sort of manifeset destiny thing or something. It was pretty lame except for the side-effect of getting him out of that terrible, terrible costume. I think one of the biggest reasons I couldn't get into comics in the 90s like I did in the 80s and I am in the Oh-Ohs, is that the costumes and hair were just too fucking lame.
Like Superman with his ridiculous mullet, which wasn't even as bad as Nightwing's coif-from-the-crypt, and I remember Changeling had pretty terrible hockey-hair too.
I'm still not clear on what they've done to Batman. Is it back to the Dave Mazzuchelli (sp??) Year One style or is it different still? Most of the time it looks okay, but the yellow oval was all right too. It even served a purpose. But whatev. Time marches on.

http://images.tfaw.com/coverst/med/g/guygardnerwa2.jpg

Blue Beetle got fat at the end of Breakdowns, about the time Maxwell Lord was shot, brought back to life, then possessed by Dreamslayer before he killed the Silver Sorceress. In the new FKATJL series, he says he has a heart condition, but nothing comes of it.

Likewise Rom - Spaceknight.

(I don't remember if Rom returns in the mini or not, or if they had to keep him missing.)

Anyway, I did just read that Peter David is writing a new Multiple Man title soon.

OMG Tom Gr@nt M0rris0N pwnz!!111!!!1!

Or it could just be a cash-in like Millenium or Joker's Wild.

OH THE IRONY.

Also, what's up with that bald loser being Mr.Miracle*? Where's Scott Free, Oberon, Big Barda?

* srsly I might warm to the character, he doesn't seem too bad a guy, but he just seems to be drawn to *look like* a total wanker.

This week's 52 has an appearance by Little Barda. Yes.

Actually 52 has a hell of a lot of threads pointing to some major Fourth World-related developments: so far we've seen Intergang, Adon, Devilance, a couple of Apokoliptians in the interim Titans, etc., and there's a reasonably convincing argument about that Supernova is actually Lightray.

JUSTICE, LIKE LIGHTNING, SHALL EVER APPEAR TO SOME MEN HOPE AND TO OTHER MEN FEAR.

Last time i looked at the Outsiders they were doing undercover black op shanans in africa

stopped reading at issue 60 cuz i got a girlfriend

loved this comic when i was 15

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2015/02/idws-chris-ryall-commissions-custom-rom-hardcover-set/

i am prepared to answer marvel universe questions here.

I'm hugely confused as to what's up w Quicksilver, based on an appearance I kinda read in a Peter David X-Factor. He's full-on evil now and his main power's using his speed to time-travel?

I don't know what's been up with him within the last couple of years, but he was among the mutants depowered by his sister after House of M (an event which he was complicit in bringing about, so he was already a bit less than heroic at that point). He then used Crystal to finagle his way into the Inhumans' terrigen mist chamber and stole some terrigen crystals, which he used to artificially repower himself and a number of other ex-mutants (with decidedly unsexy and occasionally fatal results). His own new power was, yes, something confusing which involved sending himself a short way into the future in a way that seemed like super-speed to outside observers. Having already made himself a pariah among earth's heroes (largely among those like Spider-Man who remembered the events of House of M and realized how shitty their current lives were in comparison), he ultimately wound up inadvertently delivering the crystals into the hands of the US government and sparking off a small war with the Inhumans. Oh, and he also damaged his daughter via artificial terrigenesis, so basically the Inhumans kinda hated him, too. And then he went to Mutant Town and started his spree of artificially mutant-ing people and X-Factor tried to set themselves up as a bulwark against his nonsense.

I don't know. It's been a while. Most of this stuff is contained in Son Of M, Silent War, and the first couple years of David's X-Factor reboot, so it's pretty easy to catch up on.

Oh, also, he had actually embedded a bunch of terrigen crystal fragments in his flesh, which gave him the ability to induce his half-assed version of terrigenesis on ex-mutants and sparked his whole M-Day Messiah trip.

Thanks, that explains a lot.

Plz update me on Kitty Pryde. I know she is (was?) dating Starlord. Is she tangible again? Is she making appearances in any of X-books?

Most recently, Wanda nearly killed Quicksilver in her attempt to kill Magneto (when the pair of them found out he wasn't their dad).

Kitty Pride is tangible, but then most of her time with Starlord has been by hologram. She's with him in space at the moment though, and she must be in at least one X-book because GotG are in nearly every Marvel book at the moment, including some of the X-books and 'Guardians of the Galaxy & X-Men' which is the core book of The Black Vortex.

Kitty was working at the school but, after the original X-Men were brought forward in time and ran off with Scott's rebels, she went after them to keep an eye on them

Most recently, Wanda nearly killed Quicksilver in her attempt to kill Magneto (when the pair of them found out he wasn't their dad).

There's been some speculation that a lot recent plot developments in Marvel comics are because Marvel Studios wants to get all the characters they can get to be part of their own movie franchise, so that the studios who have the film rights to X-Men and Fantastic Four can't claim them. So Magneto not being the dad of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch would be a way of distancing those two from the X-Men/mutant franchise, so that they are firmly in the Avengers franchise. The same applies to mutants becoming Inhumans (because Inhumans are part of the Avengers franchise) and stuff like that. I'm not sure if all this is true, but if it is, it's kinda sad.

That all seems very likely. (See also the cancellation of FF and the internal memo that no new characters were to be created in X-Men.)

There's some sort of mission w/Uncanny Avengers or whatever they are called now with Wanda & company tracking down the High Evolutionary, who is now on one of whatever other-earths is still around (maybe the one last seen in FF?) with the implication he knows the real background of the twins.