Superhero comics: What insane story/character developments do avid followers take for granted but would blow the minds of anyone only peripherally aware of them?

So wait, Dr. Doom is now Bruce Wayne now? WTF.

Ha!

Dr. Doom is now Vandal Savage & Jason Blood rolled into one.

Just popping in to say that I'm really enjoying this thread, although I'm sadly unable to contribute.

wow, that Ultimate stuff is more horrible than I imagined

Ditto! That Ultimatum stuff is nuts.

Xpost

It is kind of sad that Marvel pretty much trashed the Ultimate stuff. The Spider-man and Ultimates stuff was pretty good. Thing about the X-men is that they immediately went right back to just doing re-hashes of the dumb stuff that kind of corrupted the line in the first place.

It is either the editors have no clue how to say no or these are their stupid ideas. I'm actually leaning a bit to the latter for a lot of this stupid stuff.

I like the idea of Elseworld or Ultimate kind of things, I'd just like to see a writer have a good long while to tell their take. That is one of the things that I thought was kind of cool about the Ultimate Spider-man stuff I read. Take something like Sandman Mystery Theatre, that book was excellent and I would love to see someone do the JSA like that book or fit that continuity. Thing is do do something like that and make it work, it would take a few issues.

One of Pym's Ultron robots drugs him and leaks a sex tape of Stark and the Black Widow to the Internet.

― so says i tranny ben franklin (HI DERE), Monday, September 21, 2009

only Loeb could make this not awesome

sex tapes! internet! a-whomp-bam-boom!

Since I haven't read comics in years, I thought I'd keep a running list of the stuff that has blown my mind, but I'll admit it--by the time I got to the end of this thread my mind had been blown multiple times over. Also it has made me glad I missed alot of this.

Was the Ultimate line starting to not sell very well or something? I still haven't figured out why they pretty much wrecked it and collapsed it into fewer, shittier books.

I could be wrong, but i think because after ten years of the Ultimate universe basically fast-forwarding through 40 years of original Marvel Universe storylines, they canceled out the intended effect of the Ultimate line, a simplified reboot that new readers could get into without baggage of so much history. It might not have been the best idea to have a new line-wide crossover every summer, eh?

Ultimate X-Men was basically a crazy mess within a few years, UF4 was frankly never that great to begin with. The first two Ultimates series were entertaining, and Ultimate Spider-Man was pretty consistently readable since Bendis and Bagley stuck with it for the most part, but really the whole unified universe concept (that they were trying to create from the '60s Marvel days) had gotten overwhelming - sad because it started out pretty promising with most books connecting somehow to the global super soldier projects. It probably didn't help that Ultimates 2 and 3, both major books for the universe, had major delays - I was sort of out of this by the time they were working on Ultimates 3. Can someone provide more clarity on the last two or three years?

Ummm. It just got messier - or at least USM did. It turned out Peter's dad was alive after all and had been working on a super soldier project in secret. He had created a cloned MJ (? Might have female leads confused, but cloned from Peter and her cells) who became Spidergirl for a while. Kitty Pride started going to Peter's school and he was seeing her behind MJ's back. Final issue was atribute to 'Nuff Said.

It's back post-Ultimatum and Peter is seeing Gwen. MJ and Kitty are friends. My head hurts.

The Gwen Stacy that's some kind of weird Carnage/Venom symbiote and/or clone? And MJ and Kitty are friends? ...How is this a fresh start?

This goes with the Kitty Pryde one: Count Dracula is afraid of Stars of David.

Just logged in to mention Jason Todd:

He was originally Robin but was killed off after readers voted successfully by telephone to have him murdered. He came back 14 years (RL time) except it wasn't him it was a shapeshifter. But then he did come back when Superboy-Prime, the evil Superboy from our world that we, the readers, live in, punched reality too hard. He most recently went by the name Red Hood, who used to be the Joker.

And now Morrison has another Red Hood, who may or may not be him, that has a kid sidekick

...And that sidekick's name is what? Minge?

No her name is Scarlet, she is angry about how ugly she is since Professor Pyg gave her a lumpy pigface.

They should have given Red Hood an entire posse and called them The Crimson Tide.

The Mandarin has a ring that can turn people Chinese.

Looking forward to Jet Li replacing Robt Downey Jr. in sequels.

All of the Justice League have died at least once except Wonder Woman

Didn't Wonder Woman die some time in the 90s too? I wasn't reading WW's own title back then, but I remember in Morrison's JLA people mentioned she was dead, and her mother became Wonder Woman for a while.

Anyway, I thought it was kinda preposterous that DC actually brought back Egg Fu in 52. Okay, the new Egg fu was much less of a racist stereotype, but he still was a Chinese giant monster egg with a face, and there still was no explanation how such a thing came into being.

Okay you win Chinese Eggface Killah has exploded my brains.

I know Egg Fu from ambush bug.

Has anyone in this thread just made something up yet? How would we tell?

I can attest that the vast majority of this thread is true, believe it or not.

there still was no explanation how such a thing came into being.

KANIGHER SAYS... DON'T ASK - JUST BUY IT!

* The Power Pack have been revealed to all be aspects of The Hate Monger's personality, which was split into four and put into clone bodies by Nazi scientists hiding out in Genosha.

* Machine Man contracted machine cancer, and created tiny avatars of himself in order to enter his own body and befriend the rapidly mutating rogue metal cells. This backfired when the avatars achieved autonomy and declared his body to be the First Free Machine State. The original consciousness was overwhelmed, and Machine Man's corpse currently orbits Neptune and continues to grow exponetially and play host to a Utopian society of identical purple robots.

* Hawkeye is now the Herald of Galactus.

* MODOK was briefly president of the US in the Ultimates universe, and ironically did a pretty decent job.

* The current FF line-up is Mr. Fantastic, Sue Storm (Now known as the Invisible Lady), a cured Ben Grimm armed with an uzi, and Kuurgo, Master of Planet X.

One or more of the above may be made up.

i was about to say!

i really like your power pack idea tho'.

If Power Pack is Hate-Monger, can we bring back Razorback and his 18-Wheeler, Big Pig?

http://www.samruby.com/SpectacularA/Large/SpectacularSpider-Man014.jpg

Of course, in that storyline Hate-Monger was actually Man-Beast in disguise. Maybe Power Pack are actually Man-Beast in four parts because the Genoshan Nazi docs made a mistake?

By the way, I had those Spectacular Spider-Man issues with the great electrified mane of Razorback. Some of my earliest comics (1977 or 78?).

Big US1 fan here
http://ape-law.com/GAF/images/us1logo.gif

I remember US1! Ulysses somebody, with Poppa Wheelie and Wide Load Lady or something like that. Not bad, but Razorback was a mutant with the innate ability to drive any vehicle instinctively.

Killing Me Softly With His HATE

sorry guys, Egg Fu? A giant egg with a face? This is amazing.

Pre PC version, as Wonder Woman foe: http://www.supermanartists.comics.org/silverage/EggFu-WW157.JPG
http://www.supermanartists.comics.org/silverage/EggFu-WW157.JPG

PC version, as introduced in 52: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Egg%20Fu%203.jpg
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Egg%20Fu%203.jpg

On one hand, the idea of a giant talking mad scientist egg is kind of funny. But on the other: AMELICAN? oh god so racist, at least that didn't carry over to the reboot

I thought the 52 Egg Fu was merely a freaky monster who just happened to be egg-shaped, but when he was shot his shell actually broke and yolk spilled over...

HEEEE-HO!

EGG-FU VS. M.O.D.O.K. TS AND FITE!

I choose M.O.D.O.K. because I'm a Marvel zombie. And he's more boss.

I don't think Egg Fu makes any sense if he isn't racist.

I choose the Elvis Modoks from Nextwave.

hahaha Nextwave was so great

I think Nextwave fits this thread perfectly. One of the best things this decade for sure.

"Remember the bubble-gum chewing Jubilee clone from X-Force? Well..."

To be fair, Boom Boom was around well before Jubilee. Just sayin'.

I was gonna say, if anything Jubilee was Boom Boom + Kitty Pryde!