Ultimates 3: undoes antidote-reboot Ultimates 1 and 2

I've enjoyed the occasional superhero graphic novel, and I was particularly enamored of The Ultimates, a reboot of the Avengers, starring Tony Stark, Captain America, Wasp, Giant Man, Hawk Eye, Black Widow, Nick Fury, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, Thor and the Hulk-or rather Bruce Banner, since his input is much more interesting than the Hulk's.

In the first two story arcs of The Ultimates, Captain America (who must be one of the most boring superhumans ever after Superman) is funny, quirky, old-fashioned, sweet and gentlemanly. I love Mark Millar's Hulk with its deeply depressed Banner attached, the relationship between Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch is delightfully wrong, and everyone just FITS. Bryan Hitch's art is amazingly lifelike, and the story flows like...well, insert suitable simile here.

The characters feel REAL. They are ordinary people, who dress more or less ordinarily when they're not fighting nazi aliens. There's plenty of testosterone and boobs, but the whole thing reads more like a psychological story than ye olde X-men comic. They squabble and bicker and snark and love, but they're JUST PEOPLE despite their powers--kind of like Watchmen, only, you know, WITH real powers.

So, we have a great story, likable characters, some pretty impressive and nasty storylines, wonderful, realist art.

And then we get Ultimates 3.
Written by Loeb and drawn by Joe Madureira...should be good, no?

No indeed. After Hitch's real people, Madureira's characters just suck. All the females have the same face and physique (that is to say tiny waists and huge boobs), and all the males look like bulls. Everyone is wearing a uniform at every moment of the day. Still, the story begins in a cool way:

Spoiler:

Ok. Sounds great, doesn't it? Then the stupidity arrives, and it just keeps on coming.

It starts with a completely unfounded attack of The Brotherhood...and Venom. Venom is looking for some woman, but since he doesn't say who, and nobody really pays much attention to what he's saying anyway, they just beat him and he turns into a puddle of goo. Hawk Eye thinks Spiderman must know more about Venom, and goes off to find him and talk to him. Talk, as in shoot him with a tranq dart, then fire on him with real bullets, and finally leave him in the snow WITHOUT ACTUALLY ASKING ANYTHING.

The Brotherhood was lead by Magneto, and he has come to take away the Scarlet Witch

Spoiler:

The next part of the stupidity introduces itself as Valkyrie. In Ultimates 2, she was a minor character who played at being a superhero, but who actually didn't have any powers but the power of breasts and butt. In 3, she has gained the powers she boasted of before, without any explanation (must be some x-over issue I missed) hooked up with Thor, who now inexplicably talks in an atrocious old English accent, and joined the team.

Valkyrie sucks. She's stupid and acts like a total moron. Thor has turned into a turnip instead of a sexy, psychologically challenged hippie.

And then, the piece the resistance. Wolverine barges into the door.

God, and I was so happy none of those X-freaks had poked their noses into this series! Nooo, Wolverine, at his most obnoxious and bestial, kicks down the door and demands help to find Scarlet Witch because SHE MAY BE HIS DAUGHTER!

No, I don't spoiler this because it's a facepalm moment of epic proportions. Is there ANY feminine character in that universe that HASN't had either a relationship with Wolverine, or may be related to him? After divulging that charming little possibility, Logan, whose first name apparently is James--I thought Logan WAS his first name--tells the reader the wonderful story of why he might be the Witch's daddy.

After the war...

Eh, which war?

Anyway, after the war, Logan apparently wanted to die, and instead of going to Japan, where he could easily have asked one of his many friends there to chop off his head after he'd committed seppuku, Logan decided to find The Witch of...I can't even remember. Some Yukon place. Somewhere remote, snowy and cold. So cold, he just falls into the snow, and would have died if some broad in a red cape (handy with that wind and that snow) with a facial mask just like Wanda's, shows up and drags him to safety.

She then proceeds to have wild sex with him--yeah, I'd do that too, if I found this hairy wild man in the snow: put him in bed, take off all my clothes and sleep with him.

However, Eric Lensherr is not too pleased when he finds Wolverine in his woman's bed, boots him out and makes sure he never finds Magda again.

And this brings me to which war Logan was fleeing from. Can't be WWI. Can't be the second, either, because Magneto was a young boy in that one. Viet Nam? That one ended in 1975. That makes Magneto rather old, if the twins hadn't been by born then, doesn't it? On the other hand, that would mean Pietro and Wanda are about 35 at the time of Ultimates, which is possible...argh. You CAN't use historical events if people never age and stories keep happening 'Today'.

Anyway, Wolverine had time to shoot his sperm into the Witch of the Yukon before Magneto kicked him out, and now he wants to find Wanda. Never before has he given a shit about either of Magneto's children (or it must be in issues I missed), and NOW he wants to take her away from her only family, Magneto and Pietro, because...why?

Why can't they leave the Lensherrs alone? And why does Wolverine, who may be rude and insensitive at times, make denigrating remarks about Hawk Eye's killed wife and children?

Guhhh...

So, the whole gang, including Black Panther, who turned up out of NOWHERE, move off to the Savage Land, because of course Magneto's gone there. In the Savage Land, they find Ka-Sar and Shanna, and at that point I decided that I could either read the rest of this shitty series and end up hating the Ultimates, or forget about it and use it for toilet paper.

My 4 issues of Ultimates 3 now lie in the bathroom.

Anyone got a scanner and all three arcs to illustrate my rant?

I'm going to have to disagree with your original thesis. To me, ever since the beginning, all the Ultimate stuff has been very two-dimensional and streched-out. Its characters feel not like real people but like the broadest of stereotypes. I've been glad to see it all go down in flames recently.

Also, if you think original Captain America was boring, you've never read any of the good runs. Hunt down the stuff by Steve Englehart or especially Mark Gruenwald, my personal idol.

Thanos6 wrote:

I'm going to have to disagree with your original thesis.

Well, you may, of course Naturally, I'll disagree with you, but you definitely are free to disagree.

Quote :

Also, if you think original Captain America was boring, you've never read any of the good runs. Hunt down the stuff by Steve Englehart or especially Mark Gruenwald, my personal idol.

I might look them up. Got any titles I should be looking for in particular, though?

Well, they're mostly older comics, from the 70s and 80s, so they aren't collected as much as the newer stuff. Do you have access to the individual American issues?

Only if I can find them on internet somewhere...Although maybe if I look really hard I can find them somewhere in an old comic store. Probably not, though, I don't think Holland published much on Captain America...It's pretty nationalistic, of course.

Which is the great and sad irony of Captain America, when written by Englehart or Gruenwald...with them, he wasn't nationalistic, and spent as much time fighting the government as working with it.

Quote :

After divulging that charming little possibility, Logan, whose first name apparently is James--I thought Logan WAS his first name--

In the "regular" Marvel Universe, they revealed his real name was James Howlett in a mini-series a few years ago. Apparently he was a little wimp boy before his mutations kicked in, too.

I can't blame you a bit for being disgusted--I get fucking sick of Wolverine being in at least every other issue of just about everything Marvel publishes. But three titles of his own, and constant appearances in all three or four X-Men books just isn't enough for the fanboys, I guess.

I originally actually rather liked Wolverine--but only when he's intereacting with specific people. I like him with Cyclops, because he makes Cyclops prissy and if he's with people who more or less respect them, Cyclops is awful. I like Wolverine's banter with Jubilee, his weird fling with Storm (in some comics, sometimes it's terrible). I hate him as Cyclop's rival, because in most of the stories he's like some sort of caveman, and I cannot imagine falling in love with someone like that if you're originally drawn to men like Scott Summers. But in the X-men, I liked him as a character.

But on his own...he's boring! You can shoot him, crucify him (done at least twice and probably more often), gut him, drown him, poison him...he keeps coming back...without brain damage. That's entertaining for only so long.

Then again, every single character from the Marvel Universe keeps coming back after being killed. Whether it's Sinister or someone else, there's always a clone stored away somewhere. That's the other thing I liked about the Ultimates. Loads of people die :D And they don't come back.

kleine_kat wrote:

Only if I can find them on internet somewhere...Although maybe if I look really hard I can find them somewhere in an old comic store. Probably not, though, I don't think Holland published much on Captain America...It's pretty nationalistic, of course.

If you use Google, there are usually scans available as torrents. :whisper:

Also, there's no may Logan could be the Scarlet Witches father because she and Pietro are twins, and it specifically said in their origin story that their mother, Magda (Magneto's wife) ran away from him after he went mad following the death of their first child (a little girl named Anna) and destroyed the village they lived in because the townspeople were too frightened of him to help rescue her (their house burned down). She happened across one of the High Evolutionary's sentinent animals (a midwife Cow named Bova, believe it or not), and died during childbirth, but not before extracting a promise from Bova to hide the children from their father. Bova gave them to a passing gypsy couple who'd just recently lost their baby, and they didn't even know Magneto was their father until well into the first run of the original Avenger's comic. They weren't overly happy about it when they found out, either.

I accepted long ago that Logan had likely fathered a good many children in his time (he's got to be close to 150 years old), but there's no way he could be the Scarlet Witches father. Unless Marvel is once again retconning yet another piece of established history.

And yeah, Logan used to be one of my favorite characters back when there were a couple of X-Men books and he had his own comic. Now he's been over-exposed to the point I can hardly stand to see him.

Rabid Badger wrote:

there's no way he could be the Scarlet Witches father. Unless Marvel is once again retconning yet another piece of established history.

The Ultimate stuff is set in a different universe, just FYI.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

Rabid Badger wrote:

there's no way he could be the Scarlet Witches father. Unless Marvel is once again retconning yet another piece of established history.

The Ultimate stuff is set in a different universe, just FYI.

Still, Wanda and Pietro ARE twins, and with Pietro looking like Magneto like two drops of water (something Wolverine remarks on in Ultimates 3) it is impossible Wanda's Wolverine's daughter.

God, those writers are so stupid.

Wait...a litter of dogs can have different fathers. Hahahaha, ok, that explains everything and Wanda definitely must be Logan's daughter, then [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

The Ultimates series is one of the very few comic series I have actually read. Volume 2 involving Thor is my absolute favourite arc amongst other series. He had great character development and an awesome personality. When I heard they were going to continue the series I was really excited, especially for the chance to see Thor be badass again. Seriously, there's no way they could mess up his character that badly...

kleine_kat wrote:

Thor has turned into a turnip instead of a sexy, psychologically challenged hippie.

:crap:

kleine_kat wrote:

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

Rabid Badger wrote:

there's no way he could be the Scarlet Witches father. Unless Marvel is once again retconning yet another piece of established history.

The Ultimate stuff is set in a different universe, just FYI.

Still, Wanda and Pietro ARE twins, and with Pietro looking like Magneto like two drops of water (something Wolverine remarks on in Ultimates 3) it is impossible Wanda's Wolverine's daughter.

God, those writers are so stupid.

Wait...a litter of dogs can have different fathers. Hahahaha, ok, that explains everything and Wanda definitely must be Logan's daughter, then [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Well, Wanda and Pietro are twins, but they're fraternal twins--they were two eggs fertilized by two sperm, it just happened to be at about the same time. Other than the fact that they were born together, they're no more genetically alike than any brother and sister.

So it is possible that, theoretically, if Magda knocked boots with Magnus and Logan within a few days of each other at most, Magnus's sperm could have fertilized one egg (Pietro) while Logan's fertilized the other (Wanda). They'd technically be half-siblings now, with the same mother but different fathers.

That doesn't make it any less stupid a story, mind you.

Trioculus wrote:

Well, Wanda and Pietro are twins, but they're fraternal twins--they were two eggs fertilized by two sperm, it just happened to be at about the same time. Other than the fact that they were born together, they're no more genetically alike than any brother and sister.

So it is possible that, theoretically, if Magda knocked boots with Magnus and Logan within a few days of each other at most, Magnus's sperm could have fertilized one egg (Pietro) while Logan's fertilized the other (Wanda). They'd technically be half-siblings now, with the same mother but different fathers.

That doesn't make it any less stupid a story, mind you.

Plus, I don't think Pietro and Wanda were born till the early 1950s. Magneto was a grown man, and he and Magda had a six-year-old daughter when she discovered she was pregnant with the twins. Also, Magneto had either been hiding his powers all that time, or they didn't manifest until the fire that killed Anna occurred, because no mention's made of him having showed any evidence of powers before (the movie lied) and what he did horrified Magda so badly she ran away from him. IIRC, the reason the rest of the villagers disliked them wasn't because he was a mutant, but because they were Jewish.

I'm not sure where Logan would have been in the early 1950s, but I doubt he was still hanging around post-war Europe.

All of it being rendered moot by it being an AU, but dammit, I get tired of Marvel fucking with continuity!

You can hardly speak about AU and...what would make that? Real Universe? in Marvel anymore. There are so many different story lines and AUs and dreams and reboots that it's impossible to accurately say what's real and AU.

Take Jean Grey. How many times has she died and returned? Time travel, occurring as easily as greyhound travel, doesn't make things better. But yeah, most of all:

You can't have a story go on for 50 years with chracters that hardly age without fucking up continuity, and it's really starting to put me off!

Oh, that reminds me. I should add The Authority to the Antidote section. Anyone else concur? Or disagree?

kleine_kat wrote:

Oh, that reminds me. I should add The Authority to the Antidote section. Anyone else concur? Or disagree?

Depends on the writer. I liked the original run (I read up to the end of the replacement Authority arc) but some of the other stuff they've been in wasn't very good.

Speaking of Wildstorm, there was a Mr Majestic collection I thought was quite good - it was the first one, I'm pretty sure, and didn't include the Superman crossover.

kleine_kat wrote:

You can hardly speak about AU and...what would make that? Real Universe? in Marvel anymore. There are so many different story lines and AUs and dreams and reboots that it's impossible to accurately say what's real and AU.

Take Jean Grey. How many times has she died and returned? Time travel, occurring as easily as greyhound travel, doesn't make things better. But yeah, most of all:

You can't have a story go on for 50 years with chracters that hardly age without fucking up continuity, and it's really starting to put me off!

Oh, that reminds me. I should add The Authority to the Antidote section. Anyone else concur? Or disagree?

Fascist god mode sues go in Antidotes now?

[quote="gaijinguy]
Fascist god mode sues go in Antidotes now?[/quote]

Ah, take it you disagree, then [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] In what way is Jenny Sparks a fascist god mode sue?

kleine_kat wrote:

[quote="gaijinguy]
Fascist god mode sues go in Antidotes now?

Ah, take it you disagree, then [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] In what way is Jenny Sparks a fascist god mode sue?[/quote]

I'm just being unpleasant. What little I've read of the Authority I found utterly revolting (the title alone was kind of a tip) but I don't know them well enough to make a good argument.

gaijinguy wrote:

I'm just being unpleasant. What little I've read of the Authority I found utterly revolting (the title alone was kind of a tip) but I don't know them well enough to make a good argument.

Yeah, see, that's the problem with the Authority. It takes a good writer to make them non-appalling, and they haven't always had good writers. Even in the original run, a lot of their enemies are puppy-eating baby-rapists as a means of trying to make them look good. Personally, I like moral ambiguity when it's done right, and a cop-out like that makes the whole soul-searching "am I doing the right thing setting myself up as God-Emperor of Earth?" kind of pointless.

Rabid Badger wrote:

All of it being rendered moot by it being an AU, but dammit, I get tired of Marvel fucking with continuity!

I agree that one of the problems with Ultimate-verse is some of the batshit departures from the 616 canon. I mean, Ultimate Spiderman does a good job of hand-picking some of the best Spiderman stories and retelling them in an updated way and discarding a lot of padding and mistakes and things that were ok but not really memorable. Ultimate X-Men, however, just throws out names of 'real' X-Men characters and then changes everything else about them completely. What is even the point? Like, Moria is Banshee? Wtf?

Nick Fury being Samuel L. Jackson is awesome though and no one can convince me otherwise.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

Ultimate X-Men, however, just throws out names of 'real' X-Men characters and then changes everything else about them completely. What is even the point? Like, Moria is Banshee? Wtf?

I'm pretty sure I've ranted here before, that Ultimate Marvel lost me entirely when they introduced Ultimate Cable...and he was just a future version of fucking Wolverine. Yeah, nobody expected him to be the exact same--616 Cable's backstory is complicated, and dependant on decades of X-Men backstory. But this sucked.

Ultimates 3 lost me at about page 1-2

The very end of Ultimates 2 we see Tony have a small mope then moving on with his life after spotting a cute blond in a crowd. Bouncing back to his old amazing self.
Ultimates 3, It's mope O'clock, do you know where your Ultimate Iron man is? This guy on the bed? Yeah, not him.

Yeah, at the end of Ultimates 2, not everything is peachy, but they WON, and they're proud of that. Sure, hawk eye lost his family but he's taken bloody vengence. Although, I can believe him getting depressed and being somewhat suicidal. I do not believe him being employed by the Ultimates. Um, give the guy a forced break or something. And take that annoying mask off his face, it makes him look like an insect.

But Tony, yes, Tony's bouncing back the moment a 'blonde little minx' wanders into town!

Also, where's Bruce Banner? And why the fuck is Pym allowed to take sleeping pills? And why is Janet wearing wings all the time now? What happened to her Asian appearance anyway? Wasn't she half-Japanese? Who made HER boss, anyway?