Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
The Ultimates (Spoilers for the Avengers)
I really hate this piece of shit. I know I know, Juan hating Mark Millar, what a surprise. But hear me out.
It’s the way they deal with Bruce/Hulk. See, in the Avengers, Hulk and Banner despised each other, and Bruce was trying really hard to adapt to a normal life. His companions saw this, but they knew that Bruce was a good person and tried their best (Well, except Tony. Sorta) to make him feel welcome, even if they were lying to him about the precautions they take here.
However, in this story, almost everyone is out after Bruce in an emotional way. His work is berated because he’s tackling an impossible task with almost no results. His teammates turn him into the butt of every joke. And the worse part is that normally, these are pretty innocuous things for most people. but when you have a suicidal shell of a man, you kinda should be more sensitive.
I tell ya, man, the ultimates are dicks, and this annoys me greatly.
Comments
It's Mark Millar, what do you expect from the man who wrote Kick-ass? Likable characters are not something he can do.
I did find Thor the environmental extremist amusing though.
Oh, I know. I just decided to revisit the story because I remember it being good. But it really isn't. Or I mean, to be honest with ya, I enjoy the fact that it's a really pretty book. Hitch really knows how to do big scale stuff.
I think he's much like Lee in that he just chooses the suckiest projects (Remember Authority post Ellis? Me neither)
And yeah hippie thor is best thor.
Yeah, while I'm ashamed to own a copy of Hush, I will sometimes pull it out just to look at the pictures.
I tell ya, everything Hickman touches turns to gold.
Ultimate Comics: Ultimates? Title completely redundant, but freaking amazing comic book.
FROST GIANT NAZIS.
And yes, Ultimate Thor was likewise glorious.
Ultimate Thor is what got me into Thor in the first place.
With the exception of a couple of books, the Ultimates universe is basically "The regular Marvel Universe but everyone is a dick."
So, yeah, now that I finished the first two books, here are more of my thoughts on this piece of shit:
*Millar writes the Hulk the same way that Alan Moore writes Mr Hyde. I get that Hulk is heavily influenced by Mr Hyde, but the needless threats to eat and fuck endlessly other people look more like really lame attempts to make him seem threatening. When you fail at making the jolly green giant look threatening, you're failing at something. Also, "Thor's hammer makes Hulk really horny" shall go down in history as one of the worst lines in the whole world.
*Betty Ross is a total asshole in this. I get that she doesn't like Bruce and I respect that. But the way she still sticks around him and treats him like shit is the worse. The really bad part, though, is that when Bruce is imprisoned after his rampage through new york, she says that it's "kinda cute and flattering" that Bruce actually decided to turn into Hulk deliberately to help her. When she finds out that Hank has been beating Janet (again), she just admits that she deliberately ignored it because she basically hoped the Ultimates project was more important. Speaking of that:
*Hank and Janet Pym's relationship is weird in that while I can accept (From an storytelling standpoint) that it's an abusive relationship, there just isn't enough foreshadowing or hints for it to happen. I get that Hank was a wife beater in the original stories or whatever, but it's still bothersome simply because I have to rely on this knowledge for this aspect of the story to not entirely surprise me or feel wrong. With that said, it bothers me a lot that Janet's such a pushover and just accepts the fact that her husband beats her. I mean, I know this is surprisingly (and saddeningly) common, but it just doesn't seem right that a character who was established to be somewhat independent, intelligent and so on accepts being the punching bag in her relationship.
*Captain America. Maaaaan, this book has the Cap entirely wrong. The best example is the scene at the end of the Hulk fight when a meek bruce banner asks for forgiveness for what he did (Turning into the Hulk deliberately to help the Ultimates get a public rep) and he tells Bruce that he has a cut in his cheek and then kicks the ever-living fuck out of him. I get he'd be angry at him, but one of the things that makes the Cap a good man is that he's understanding and he forgives. He tries to not resort to cheap shots with people who he considers colleagues or friends and so on. Not to mention that his one liner at the end of his fight against the chitauri ("What do you think the A stands for? France?" after being asked to surrender) not only is just dumb, but works under the stupid stereotype that French surrender all the time. You'd think the man who spent more time than anyone on European territory fighting the good fight from behind the lines would get this, but nooo.
*Black Widow and Hawkeye are just as dull as they ever were. With that said, I liked that bit where Black Widow said that Hawkeye calls his girlfriend before every mission saying good bye and that it might be the last one. Morbid, yet kinda heartwarming.
*Nick Fury, Tony Stark and Thor are actually somewhat more tolerable (Stark less so, but only because his alcoholism is treated somewhat mockingly, which is, again, unnerving) Fury is probably the most likeable of the bunch, as he tries his best to lead this merry band of fuck ups into victory, displays a sense of humor and actually sounds like Samuel L Jackson.
so yeah, here ya go. now i'll stop bitching about this piece of shit and read the hickman issues i downloaded.
Also, read the Megaman comic.
no
Well then I'm sitting you down and forcing you to watch Superman Returns.
i'll just put it in mute and watch all the pretty special effects
your move, homeboy.
>Pretending Superman Returns isn't mostly Superman sitting around whining.
dvd controls do this thing where you can skip to the scenes you like.
Just read the Megaman comic already.
depends, is it X or ol' school megaman?
Old school, though it looks its going to be progressing through the classic games then doing X.
It's really cool. Think Philip K. Dick for kids.
See that's not even true. He hit is wife once, while going through a mental breakdown and immediately felt like crap after he calmed down. The whole wife beating thing is an exaggeration(like Jean Grey dying a lot and coming back to life, which has happened a whopping once). Hell at this point, Reed Richards has slapped Sue way more times than Hank, but people never give his character the wife beater routine.
I knew that, but I wasn't sure if the comics had exploited that aspect at some point before Ultimates.
You occasionally get people calling Hank a wifebeater as a joke. Because domestic abuse is hilarious.
Yeah, Hank is ragged on far too much. At this point it's arguable as to whether this is because the writers hate Hank and think of him as WIFE BEATER WHO CREATED ULTRON or if they're deliberately writing the other characters of the Marvel Universe as thinking of him that way.
In fact, now that I think about it, all of the characters in that book are written as the most distant logical extension of what people most think of when they think of the character. Captain America is written as an OORAH USA #1 when he's rather clearly a person who stands for the morals associated with America. He guilt tripped a treasoner into committing suicide because he wanted to establish an oligarchy and then gave up his costume for chrissakes; the attitude he has in The Ultimates is far more like that of USAgent. Tony Stark is written as an alcoholic playboy when he's had an addiction a grand total of ONE time. It's a large part of his character, sure, but it's not like he was ever a total drunkard. And Hank is a useless wife-beater. It wouldn't annoy me as much had Millar not said in an interview that they wrote the Ultimate Universe in order to get at the "essence" of what people loved about the characters in the first place.
("What do you think the A stands for? France?")
Huh, I thought it was Loeb that wrote that line. Side note: if you hate this part of the Ultimates don't read Jeph Loeb's part, because it's rather... not good.
Admittedly, I find the 'do you think this A stands for France?' line funny, but I think it's supposed to be Cap being badass.
I always liked Nextwave's response.
"Victim? VICTIM? DO YOU THINK THIS E ON MY CHEST STANDS FOR AMERICA?"
In any case, I actually like how they handle Tony Stark's alcoholism in the current Matt Fraction run where his 'deal with the devil' to get the power to save thousands means giving up his sobriety and it feels like (and is) a serious sacrifice for him.
It is supposed to be Cap being badass, but in an stereotypical, 80s action hero way that I always felt the character simply doesn't work along with.
I dunno. I just like Captain America a trillion times mre when he's not a jingoistic commando.
Again, I like to imagine the Ultimates Cap as USAgent. It's basically the same character.
Also, here is the official response to that line.
>I dunno. I just like Captain America a trillion times mre when he's not a jingoistic commando.
Oh, I agree it's not something Captain America would ever say, but I just like it as a sort of self-parody of ridiculous self-absorbed patriotism. I know that's not how the line's supposed to be, but it's better for my mental health to read it that way.
With that said, I love how Fury reacts to the line simply because that's pretty much how I felt about it. It's damn stupid, but funny. It's just that the wrong person said it.
Then again, Nick Fury's the best part of the whole book, really. As in, "The only character that is actually likeable, besides Thor".
I guess that just confirms that the Ultimates are a mirror universe of the Avengers.
The thing is Thor and Fury are the only ones concerned about making the world a better place, even if Thor is kinda nuts about it. Everyone else is petty and selfish.
Remember that scene where Cap and Iron Man were about to go at it, and then immediately set aside their differences once lives were in danger?
In Ultimates they wouldn't give a fuck and would have let people die to stroke their egos.