ultimates

Just polling the masses.I was just looking for feed back on the ultimate avengers,nothing fancy just some charicture insight on the differences between them and the normal M.U

I like some of the changes, but it seems reality is creeping into my favorite "escapes" these days. I used to allow comic books to take me away from the daily grind and just have fun, now it seems that EVERY other comic book is being used as a "Real World" spin-off. I like the indepth analysis of a character but do we really need to see these characters as so human that the fantasy aspect of them gets lost in the translation. I guess i just want them to stay fantasies without being too real, ya know? I recall one new writer mentioning how he was gonna take certain villains out of their spandex and into real world costumes and he had to find real world motivations instead of the ones they were created with. Geez, how much more reality can we put into them???

Everyone is a lot more obnoxious and prepared to kill. Except Iron Man, who just drinks heavily, and Thor, who is a peace-loving hippy badass and generally absolutely awesome.

Hawkeye is an old-time SHIELD agent with a falsified background and Bullseye's abilities. Or Roy Harper's abilities, which given that he also has Arsenal's look fits rather well.

Hank Pym is a wife-beating S.O.B. Captain America put him in hospital after a nasty incident involving bug spray, and he's been out of the team since. He's been replaced as Giant Man by several Green Berets.

Janet Pym is Asian, a mutant, and dating Captain America (but was considering getting back together with Hank, last I saw). She's pretty much a good guy, and damn smart.

Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch dislike humans, and are hinted as having an incestuous relationship.

Captain America is... well, he's a xenophobic right-wing @#$%&.

Nick Fury is the man, in every slang sense of the word. He runs the entire Ultimate universe, but especially the Ultimates. And he looks like a one-eyed Samuel L Jackson.

Oh, and the Black Widow is a Soviet super-soldier turned traitor.

-Wal

Surrender? What? You think this letter on my head stands for FRANCE?

My thoughts on it -- and the whole Ultimate line -- are well-known to all who freuquent these phorums ;) . However, for the sake of completeness, I'll post 'em here, too.

Actually, my views are much the same as halo's & Wallace's. I read comics as escapism, to read fantastic tales of clear-cut Good versus clear-cut Evil. This is why my favorite comics are those from the Silver Age. And it's fine if a bit of realism is injected into the stories -- some always is, comics have always served as a mirror for/comment on various sociopolitical things -- but do it too much, and the tales cease to be fantasty, and begin looking too much like the evening news.

Plus, I like the 616 Universe just fine. Well, I don't like the recent "blockbuster" things, and some recent poor characterizations, but, overall, I like the mainstream MU just fine. Yes, I see full well it's got continuity error, anything that's been around for five decades (or so) that's had so many different writers is bound to, but adding a new continuity isn't the way to fix it, no more than adding a new room to a termite-infested house will get the termites out. And, in time, the problems seen in the old/established stuff will bleed over into the new one -- if the Ultimate lines go on long enough, they will eventually fall under new writers, new writers who'll decide to ignore previous continuity in favor of their own new ideas.


Wallace, I can't help but notice that it seems like you dislike the Ultimates... yet your quote is directly from an ish of it.

Dr Archeville i loved your analogy,your reply.Your bloody briliant.

I am an unabashed fan of the Ultimates line, and the Ultimates Books 1 & 2 in particular. I love classic marvel stories. All of the cosmic concepts that spun out of Fantastic Four [though I hate that team], Dark Phoenix saga, Infinity Gauntlet, I love marvel at its core. But truth be told I'm a little old for pow! Zip! these days. And what was worse, is look at the Avengers through the 90's What a shoddy book that was, with crappy creative teams and unoriginal concepts, the brief period where the Avengers were all trying to wear X-Men like costumes. Even the Busiek era didn't really usher in anything revolutionary, except maybe the Avengers Forever limited.

Don't get me wrong, i still read the mainstream marvel universe. And I love it. But the Ultimates line appeals to me as a sophisticated reader. If I want to get girls to read comics, I break out my Ultimate X-Men hardcovers. And if I want to read cool Avengers stories with a really cool iconic line up, then the Ultimates is the best bet. Ultimates 2 is paying off harcore also. The Avengers are cool again, and for the reasons that they are the Avengers when you strip the cartoon off of them and apply realistic human psyches to the characters. They're dynamic and approach a world that seems like the one I look at outside. Except it offers one that alongside the Carl's Jr. I see our my window at work, i could see a man with a mighty hammer summoning lightning as he flew by. And to me, that's more fantastic. It actually fuels my imagination by putting it in a framework I relate to on a daily basis. I'm not a kid who can be satisfied with stories where they glossed over how people really interact and, approached the characters with a 'funny book' mentality. In the ultimates universe, people act in ways that I see people react in the world around me. That puts me closer to the fantasy, not pulling me further away.

Yeah, i can see the appeal of being drawn closer to the character and making them seem more real and thus care about the stories and what happens next a little bit more. I am not a kid anymore either but i still feel that way when i read just a simple 4-color ZAP! POW! once in a while, the nostalgia is a rush. By the same token and i dont know how or why, my brother and i dont run a 4-color campaign, somehow the world we operate in IS very gritty and realistic, the opposite of what i am discussing now. How did that happen?? Dunno, i guess "Real World" scenarios ARE more fun to play after all. WOW, an ephinany!!! i think. LOL.

While I admit there are "some" things I like about the Ultimate lines of comics, there is one thing I absolutely LOATHE, DETEST, HATE and am in general unhappy with. That is their portrayal of Captain America. He has always stood for the American Dream, but in the Ultimates line he is an absolute @$$ who I dont think portrays that ideal in any way close to as he does, and always has in 616.


This of course is my humble opinion and I do not ask anyone else to agree or support it.

I think this is intentional actually. Cap is supposed to represent the Ultimate soldier who was an archetype of his time. But in the 40's just as now, people had prejudices and presuppositions about the world. Stever Rogers of the Ultimates Univers isn't a Paragon as much as an example of what one of the best and brightest of the time had to offer.


Collossus is the characterization in ultimates that pisses me off.

capocastillo,

Why?

I don't like that they made Colossus gay. just doesn't set well with me.

capocastillo,



Okay, I can see how that would bother some people. I personally find it an interesting idea that possibly one of the top bricks is gay as opposed to being the lesser used characters that explore "non-mainstream" lifestyles.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2006 06:50PM by YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT.

Colossus being gay didn't bother me.
And most of the Ult F4 didn't bother me, either. I even like Ult Doom.
Ditto for Ult Spidey. Most of it, I like. Not big on Ult Carnage, or how Ult Connors seems to be a full-on mad scientist.

Wolverine bedding Jean his first night in the x-mansion did. I liked the tensions there is (well, was, since Jean's dead now... well, for now) between Jean & Logan, how he could never have her, and it's one of the things that gnawed at his rage.
Cap being a Icon of what the American Military Really Was, rather than what the American Dream/America Should & Could Be, doesn't sit well with me. Like I've said, I like my comics characters being icons & ideals, which Ult Cap (to me) isn't.
Really don't like Xavier being more like Machiavelli than Gandhi/MLK.
Not really a big fan of Cannibal Rapist Hulk. Sure, that may be more 'realistic' for an Id-based monster, but it's a bit much for my liking.
Really not a fan of Wife-Beatin' Pym. Yes, he's struck Janet in 616 -- once, of hiw own volition. (Yeah, he's struck her more times than that, but he was under mind control or somesuch all those other times, which has affected most every member of the Avengers at some point.)
Hated what they did with Sinister, since he's one of my fave characters.

You know Doc, I agree with you completely. Downgrading Sinister like they did is rather "suckage".

*curses inability to edit posts after a 5-minute mark*

Also none too fond of the incestuous relationship they seem to be saying is going on between Ult Quicksilver & Ult Scarlet Witch.

That I dont really have a problem with as I always thought Pietro was a little "too" close with his sis anyway and it fits I think.

Listen to what you guys are saying about "you dont have a problem with." And case by case fine but taken as a whole what the hell is going on with Ultimate comics. The stuff you guys are talking about seems far out there. This is not your fathers comics anymore, i guess.


Do you guys see a concentrated effort to do a post-modern hardcore comics line or is this just coincidental?

I feel like Ultimate So and So was started to add some believability into some facets of the MU. Like better explaining how a superpower works, and making it sound a little more plausible. I like that. It helps me with my suspension of disbelief (I think that's the first time I've ever quoted Cambpell, or whoever coined the phrase...), which is important to me; I need to at least be able to think, yeah, that's plausible in a comic book kind of world, instead of, No! No way would that happen!
It just distracts me.

Anyhow, what started in some writer/editor's brain as adding a little believeability became adding some realism. Then adding a lot of realism. So much, it started seeming fake at points. Kind of full circle where it starts off as fantasy, gets a dose of reality, gets doused in reality, and starts to seem fake again. Only when it started it just seemd like fun fantasy, now, to me, it kind of seems "phony real."

Anyway, I LOVE Marvel Universe 616. I like Marvel Universe 616 1/2.
MARK

"My parents went to The Secret Wars Battleworld and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt..."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2006 10:18PM by Mark.

What does the term(phrase) 616 Marvel universe mean and where did the phrase originate from? I gather it means the original MU before the Ultimate's line of books. What does 616 mean?

Actually, according to a 2005 Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe, the Ultimate Marvel Universe is Earth-1610.