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So, I recently sat down and reread everything Ultimate (up through just after Ultimatum), which turned out to be a rather interesting experience. There were a lot of things that I either forgot about, or just weren't as noticeable when reading it on a monthly basis.

Initial impressions:

-The Ultimate books took a dramatic upswing in quality once they started taking more risks. A lot of the early stuff is just a note by note retelling of the 616 universe, which winds up getting wonky later. It's quite jarring that Iron Man and the FF randomly get reset a year or two in.

-Greg Land really is a sh*tty artist, isn't he? I always knew he was fairly crap, but rereading Ultimate FF and Ultimate Power has led me to the conclusion that he may well be the worst artist working today.

-At what point did Jeph Loeb completely lose his mind? I mean, I won't pretend to have ever liked him as much as I was always led to believe I should, but how do you reconcile the man that wrote Hulk: Grey with the slobbering man-child that wrote Ultimatum? Also, how big a f*ck you was the thanks to Bendis, Ellis, Millar, etc., at the end? "Dedicated to the creators that wrote the characters I've spent five issues sh*tting on."

-They really dropped the ball when it comes to Captain America. Rereading the Ultimates, Millar's Cap is nothing but Andy Rooney in tights. Okay, we get it. Things cost more than they used to, and black people have rights. You're Captain ****ing America. Adapt.

-On the whole, the books were solid, with a few missteps (the last couple arcs of Ultimate X-men, Blob eating Wasp, Ultimate Power). Need to catch up on post-Ultimatum stuff (Red Skull was interesting).

I keep meaning to reread Ultimates 2, the 81 year gap between issues made it a very disjointed read at the time.

[Unrelated: But dang, i wish I had one of those fancy pants la-de-dah phones so I can see what the secret message in your avatar is].

inflatable dalek wrote:I keep meaning to reread Ultimates 2, the 81 year gap between issues made it a very disjointed read at the time.

Kind of like Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk. How many times did they re-solicit the third(?) issue? Six?

[Unrelated: But dang, i wish I had one of those fancy pants la-de-dah phones so I can see what the secret message in your avatar is].

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RaF9eoOUn8

Just got a Nexus S, and it's the first phone I've had capable of reading and creating QR codes. Just having a bit of fun.

I was really big into Ultimate X-Men and man oh man by the end it just wasn't worth reading.

My opinion is that it all started going down hill right around the time Colossus came out. That wasn't the reason, but that was certainly the event I attach with things going down hill.

Cable? Mr. Sinister? Apocalypse? I don't think there was a single storyline that had anything good after that point.

Ultimatum was lulzy. I still subscribe to the theory that Leob was drunk.

The Cable/Sinister/Apocalypse thing had several things that I kind of dug, though it wound up being crap overall. I was especially annoyed that, at the end, Phoenix has set everything back to normal. Nothing even really happened. In the end, that was my real issue with Kirkman's run. Everything was either vague enough that it could just be claimed that people misread it, or it was reset by the time it was all said and done.

And then there's Phoenix, who takes off for parts unknown to reset the mileage on other worlds, only to magically reappear at the beginning of the next issue. Because, hey, new writer. Or Nightcrawler, who's suddenly buddy-buddy with Colossus, with no explanation.

On the plus side, at least Sinister accomplished something in this universe. Had it been 616 Sinister, he'd have stood around doing absolutely nothing for six issues, before appearing to gloat and take credit for everything that happened.

Dead Man Wade wrote:The Cable/Sinister/Apocalypse thing had several things that I kind of dug.

There was small things in each story that should have been solid building blocks for something. The idea of Cable's origins, for instance, seems like an interesting turn but they never did anything good with it.

I completely agree. Certainly a lot of Kirkman's run contains threads that could have been worked into something brilliant, but that were either dropped or mishandled. Apocalypse was truly a threat for the first time in 15 years, but gets handily defeated through the timely intervention of the Phoenix within three issues of his first appearance. Given the amount of time and effort that went into setting the stage for his arrival, it fell flat on its face (though I suppose it could have been a case of his trying to wrap the whole thing up before a new writer came on).

Beast's "dramatic" resurrection never really seemed necessary, since I doubt seriously that anyone was begging for his return. His paranoia over Xavier's manipulation of Storm's feelings was great, but the only other plot points usually involved him winding up under some rubble.

Not that Coleite was any better. The Colossus/Banshee revelation was interesting (and was by far one of the better things that was done with him), but didn't make any sense. In the Ultimate Spider-Man "Deadpool" story arc, he and the other X-men were abducted from the school (which was surely not the first instance of such a thing happening). When something like that happens, how does he get hold of his drugs? Does he keep some taped to his chest, just in case?

Speaking of Ultimate Spider-man, Norman Osborn is kind of a one-trick pony. He breaks out, comes back for his money/revenge against Fury/what have you, tries to kill Peter, freaks out, Harry is used against him. Norman goes back to SHIELD lockup, and continues talking down to everyone around him.

I dont know why everyone hates Ultimatum.

IMO its the only Marvel book that had the balls to kill of its characters and let them stay dead.

Kill them off in particularly gruesome ways i might add.

As for Ultimate Captain America, i kinda get what Mark Millar was trying to do.
If 616 CapA was to represent everything America stood for, Ultimate Captain America was a cynical jab at everything the world thinks America is.

No offense to americans, but Mark Millar loves his satire and Ultimate Captain America is just that.
A satire on modern day america. The one holding on to aged ideals and refusing to change, the one who chastises his enemies and argues other people's personal philosophies. The one who imposes his own views on others, who leverages his strengths and is not afraid of flaunting it.

relak wrote:I dont know why everyone hates Ultimatum.

IMO its the only Marvel book that had the balls to kill of its characters and let them stay dead.

Yeah! Like Beast... oh... Magneto... oh... Sabertooth! Twice! Oh...

It was no different than the regular imprint, except for when Loeb got drunk, and that was some of the worst writing he's ever done... ever.

Blaster wrote:Yeah! Like Beast... oh... Magneto... oh... Sabertooth! Twice! Oh...

It was no different than the regular imprint, except for when Loeb got drunk, and that was some of the worst writing he's ever done... ever.

Sabertooth didnt die in Ultimatum.

Beast did. Yes they brought him back, during Ultimate X-men but the explanation was a lot more believable than 616 back from the dead attempts.

The regular imprint never put a bullet through Characters heads, never had guts eaten out, never smashed people to bits on jagged wreckage.

relak wrote:Sabertooth didnt die in Ultimatum.

He get thrown off a waterfall... implies death... lives.

Get his HEAD cut OFF... comes back with a scar.

Blaster wrote:He get thrown off a waterfall... implies death... lives.

Get his HEAD cut OFF... comes back with a scar.

Since when did getting thrown off a waterfall imply death for someone with a healing factor that is supposedly better than Wolverine's.

His head was supposedly still connected via bits of tissue so yes he regenerated from there.