I don't like "The Ultimates"...is that wrong?

Cafe Society
1

I just picked up the latest issue of Marvel Comic’s The Ultimates today. My response: yech.

For the ignorant: The Ultimates is the “Ultimate” line’s take on the Avengers, only they’re a lot nastier. It’s still got Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Giant Man, the Wasp and the Hulk, but the origin is done anew for the 21st century.

My dislike stems from the fact that it reads like Watchmen all over again to me. Watchmen was fine for the 80s, at a time when stagnant creativity demanded a maturation of the super-hero genre. Its cast were more anti-hero than hero (and naturally, they were more “popular” due to their unorthodox heroics), but they were also more “believeable” to the extent that they spoke and acted like normal people.

OK, 21st century, successful “Ultimates” line at Marvel demands a third book following Ultimate Spidey and X-Men. So we get an updated Avengers (Mark Millar refused to call the team that, since according to him, the original team never “avenged” anything), including:

[ul]
[li]A Thor who’s an international environmental/civil rights activist, and who may or may not be the actual God of Thunder; and [/li][li]A Hulk who gets drunk and horny when enraged.[/li][/ul]

Some of the characters are relatively familiar: Captain America is still a time-lost World War II hero with a boy-scout, take-charge attitude. (He’s a little gruffer than the “real” Cap, but not so much that he’s not recognizable). Tony Stark is still a womanizing millionaire playboy.

The one that pissed me off the most was in the latest issue, where

A jealously enraged Hank Pym apparently has the Wasp eaten by ants. Now, I know the “real” Pym had mental health issues, but I don’t recall him going THIS far.

The ending was a little ambiguous, but the circumstances were pretty straightforward.

The point is, these are largely nasty people (with the exception of Cap…I’ll give them credit, his solo story in the first issue was great). They don’t inspire the same heroic awe in me that the classic Avengers did. They don’t seem like admirable protectors, but instead, some corporate/government shills who’ve only been able to fight their own members so far. And yet this book is getting constant critical acclaim, which I find surprising at a time when I thought “heroic” characters were still being revived.

Am I nuts here, or is there something fundamentally wrong with this comic? Fenris? Anybody?

2

But of course you don’t like the Comic, see it’s not Japanese and therefore insincere ersatz American junk thrown out there on a limited budget so that even the visionary who wrote the thing has become apathetic…

Try picking up some Japanese stuff :wink:

3

Caveat:

TalkingHead hasn’t read most American comics. His comment is entirely intended to piss us American-readers off, particularly me… :rolleyes:

4

Well, the early issues of Ultimates were promising, but I haven’t had access to my comic supplier lately (note how very little different this is from, say, heroin).

Anyway, the Marvel Ultimate line overall is excellent, so forgive it a few slips.

5

**

I don’t mind Hulk so much. I see him as Banner’s repressed rage at the world around him and his desires. It also appears that they’ve toned down his vulnerability a bit and made him more of a beserker. What I dislike more is the behavior of Banner himself. He injected himself with the hulk formula to give the Ultimates something to fight? I haven’t picked up the issue after they defeat Hulk but I imagine Banner has been put under arrest pending his trial for manslaughter.

**

It looks like they toughed the 'ole Cap quite a bit. He was able to go toe to toe with Hulk and get a few good licks in.

**

If you can’t have a team that works together what’s the point? I share your frustration.

Marc

6

I haven’t been into comics for years, but Marvel’s current policy of publishing some series online has been drawing me back in. It’s a bit behind the regular publications, so I’m only up to issue 4, but I like what I’ve seen of the Ultimates so far.

I found the Hulk to be completely terrifying, and yet believable, in issue 4. Banner is equally believable as a weak nebbish with a massive green alter ego. Their approach to Thor was fascinating, and original, I thought.

The characters aren’t, at the moment, likeable. If that continues for much longer, that’s going to be tiresome. And if they don’t find someone to fight soon, it’s gonna get old. But for now, it’s kind of fun.

7

I’m don’t like it at all, but I’m fascinated with it in a bloody-car wreck sort of way.

I feel the same way about it that you do, pretty much.

I mean, they told us about Pym’s mental health issues in one of the early issues, but I thought this issue went too far.

And the fight between them earlier was…yuk…

I did like their take on The Hulk.

But overall, I gotta agree. It’s too dark, too ugly 'though damned well done. (But, 'cause of that “rubbernecking at the blood” thing, I’m gonna keep buying it for the moment)

Fenris

8

What ever happened to the 2099 series ? I have the first spider man and i heard they did a x-men series … I take it died out a while ago?

The description of this current series sounds like " heres what they would of been if we didnt have the comic code way back when "

9

I started reading the various comics that marvel have put online a while ago (www.dotcomics.com for anyone who’s interested), and by far my favourites are the ‘ultimate’ series. I think they give the traditional characters a gritty, realistic edge. Having said that, ‘The Ultimates’ has a very slow start… 4/5 issues before they get someone to fight, and that would probably annoy me if i was paying for it :smiley: - doubt i would have bought more than 3 episodes or so

However, the hulk episode made up for it completely… I love their take on the green guy, he’s so much more believable than other hulks I’ve seen. I’ve not read the Hank Pym episode mentioned above yet, but it doesn’t surprise me that it’s pretty horrific, and that pym’s mental problem’s have been cranked up… because everything in ultimate… has been cranked… teh hulk is nastier, cap is stronger, wolverine heals faster, magneto is psychotic, dr x uses his powers at the drop of a hat, cyclops isn’t a boy scout… to me, this is prety much the point of the ulitmate… series…

10

I have been digging the Ultimates line- although I have been following them from the Marvel website (God Bless the dot.comics!!). I really am enjoying the richer context and revised characters. Still, Ultimate Spiderman remains my favorite.

11

Hrm. Are you sure about that domain? It appears to simply be a for-sale sign.

Friend of mine loaned me the issues of the Ultimates up through the Avengers vs. Hulk fight. I have to admit that I got a kick out of Hulk raging about Freddie Prinze, Jr.

12

Marvel suffered an editorial implosion back in 1996, where half of their board was unexpectedly fired. Unfortunately, the 2099 line’s writers (including Peter David, Karl Kesel and Warren Ellis) were incredibly loyal to their editor and all decided to walk with them. Which meant the fans ALSO walked with them, since this led to most of the series being interrupted mid-storyline, and having replacement writers forced upon them. (FF 2099 #5 was one of the worst casualties, as it changed writers between pages 19 and 20.)

Which was too bad, because they had some good stuff in that line. Hey, at least we got to see Doom as the new U.S. President.

Oh, meanwhile…one of “The Ultimates” biggest problems kicked me in the head today: Thor acts like Jesus. This might not be so bad, except that one of the real Thor’s problems was a tremendous lack of humility (hence Odin punishing him by turning him into a human). This guy doesn’t suffer from quite the same problem: he’s got a God-complex, but not a crippling one like my Thor does. (Also, they ditched the Elizabethan speech. I say thee, nay!)

13

whoops… try this one… http://dotcomics.marvel.com/menu_flash.htm

14

Of course it’s wrong not to like it. What, you think you have any choice in what you read? Don’t be silly. (Sarcasm alert!)

For what it’s worth, Fenris and I have disagreed on Superman, and he has every right to his opinion [wrong though it may be :wink: ] and so do I and so do you.

15

Personally, I like the book. Of course, the Authority was one of the three comics I used to collect, and it seems the entire original team from that book moved onto the Ultimates, so it’s familiar to me in that respect. I never really liked the Avengers, so I don’t know all that much about them, but I really like the set up to this book. It’s not just that the Ultimates line is rewriting characters and teams, but it’s rewritten the entire Marvel World. By the time the Avengers came out, everyone on the team pretty much already had their own books and adversaries, so it worked out well. But in this world, the team is set up to deal with an evil that may or may not ever show. The premise that the team is set up and MONTHS go by without them doing anything really seemed cool.
And I like the deal with the Hulk. The way they made Bruce’s character, it seemed completely legitimate that this would be a course of action of a desperate man. He dedicated his life to this project, it ruined his life, and then was taken away from him. He still wants it to succeed, so he offers himself as a sacrifice of sorts to help the situation and, in his mind, die having done something decent with his life. Too bad things don’t quite go his way.
The characters seem more believable, and so far, the book’s able to hold my interest. We’ll see what happens when the artwork changes.

16

Eh, I’m with Resipsa and Fenris on this one. I don’t really like the comic, but keep reading it in a ‘Waiting for it to Self-Destruct’ kinda way.

Of course, it’s all in the DotComics form, so I’m not losing any money on it. :smiley:

Ultimate Spider-Man? We get a wicked Spidey, plenty of cool villains like an Ultimate Doc Ock, and great dialouge.

Ultimate X-Men? We get a tall Wolverine, a psycho Magneto who’s had his brain wiped, and a Storm and Beast romance.

The Ultimates? We get a horny Hulk. :smack:

17

Point of order–I thought Warren Ellis created The Authority, and Mark Millar jumped on it later. If I’m mistaken, my bad. Wasn’t The Authority the follow-up to Stormwatch, which I’m positive Ellis wrote?

Side note: I don’t mind about a team like The Authority so much as I do The Ultimates, because the former is a parody of a super-team (largely the JLA) and is free to joke about the state of superheroics; the latter is a corruption of one. Y’gotta realize: the original Avengers were a collection of some of Marvel’s brightest, and they largely set a standard for noble super-hero behavior, even holding themselves accountable for their own actions. They always take the noble route.

I’m imagining this scenario from Avengers Forever #10 to make a point:

Now here’s how the Authority would have responded:

Jenny Sparks: “Forty-two…? Bloody hell, these Time-Keepers have a point. F*** the universe.”

:smiley: