There were some interesting things done with Ultimate X-Men after that, but Ultimatum was basically the end of that comics line being a sleeker, more cinematic version of the Marvel Universe. The first Avengers movie pulled heavily from the Ultimates, but can you imagine them using any of the later Ultimate stuff for movie material?
― ultimate american sock (mh), Monday, 18 May 2015 14:00 (nine years ago) link
As far as I've gotten into it (still inching toward Ultimatum), most of the Ultimate stuff is pretty perfunctory. Bendis has done well with Spider-Man in terms of personalizing the characters and raising the stakes, and Ultimates was good in terms of bringing the wide-screen cinematic bombast, but very little of the rest of it has much reason for existing. Far too often, the Ultimate stories I've read have hinged on familiarity with their 616 analogues and the reader's ability to spot the differences between the two. Too much fan service and not enough effort to make the stories stand on their own.
― Ape Pagoda (Old Lunch), Monday, 18 May 2015 14:44 (nine years ago) link
post-Ultimatum there's some major status quo changes and stories that got away from this with some interesting results. the end of the Ult. Peter Parker run, the second generation of Ultimate X-Men, and the Ultimate Comics: Doomsday miniseries of series. (I'm kind of ignoring the wacky New Ultimates/Ultimate Avengers and Captain America stuff, though I guess I give 'em some points for that weird Red Skull/Captain America II hybrid story)
ultimate comics X was interesting to me, between the concentration camp stuff and the SEAR govt, felt like this was territory that was hinted at but shunted off to "alternate future" storylines in 616 and pursued further. some good stuff here
Ultimate Doomsday was boss, hard to explain why without spoilers though. let's just say it picks up on a bunch of pre-Ultimatum threads and does well
― Nhex, Monday, 18 May 2015 14:55 (nine years ago) link
Yeah, it's definitely starting to feel like the Ultimate universe was in need of an enema around the time Ultimatum was released. Loeb is like a creative Galactus, so he was kind of a perversely perfect choice.
― Ape Pagoda (Old Lunch), Monday, 18 May 2015 15:13 (nine years ago) link
who is loeb's herald i wonder
― bizarro gazzara, Monday, 18 May 2015 15:14 (nine years ago) link
speaking of Galactus, I like the Ultimate Galactus trilogy.
― EZ Snappin, Monday, 18 May 2015 15:36 (nine years ago) link
the gah lak tus swarm? i think i prefer regular universe sentient chill-bro galactus
― Mordy, Monday, 18 May 2015 15:38 (nine years ago) link
yeah, galactus as a guy in a purple tabard and impractical helmet with the space-munchies or gtfo afaik
― bizarro gazzara, Monday, 18 May 2015 15:40 (nine years ago) link
as far as i'm koncerned
― bizarro gazzara, Monday, 18 May 2015 15:41 (nine years ago) link
what are the best galactus stories? obv the original ff one is great, and i really dug his whole in the original secret wars. oh! he had a great appearance very recently in unbeatable squirrel girl.
― Mordy, Monday, 18 May 2015 15:43 (nine years ago) link
john byrne's trial of galactus story was pretty great iirc
― bizarro gazzara, Monday, 18 May 2015 15:44 (nine years ago) link
(in fantastic four back in the 80s)
― bizarro gazzara, Monday, 18 May 2015 15:45 (nine years ago) link
Recently, old Thor vs Galactus in Jason Aaron's book was fun.
I've never really understood Marvel's big space God characters (e.g. Thanos, Celestials etc). It's like they're omnipotent, but completely useless at doing anything with it. Darkseid is the same as Thanos, right? But at least Darkseid has his own planet to attend to, which explains why he's not busy destroying the world all the time.
Anyway I guess this is a conundrum Hickman's Secret Wars is trying to wrestle with: What if a world-killing God was actually good at their job?
― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, 18 May 2015 16:02 (nine years ago) link
(I should probably get around to reading the 70s Starlin stuff I guess.)
― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, 18 May 2015 16:03 (nine years ago) link
It was interesting to realize, reading the '60s Marvel stuff, that Galactus was presented pretty much from the start as a non-evil (and even cosmically necessary) presence. He's just a hungry dude, and if the lifeforms inhabiting his potential meals protest loudly enough, he's generally okay with moving on to another entree.
― Ape Pagoda (Old Lunch), Monday, 18 May 2015 16:06 (nine years ago) link
The Hickman FF bits that involve Galactus, and more importantly his relationship with the Franklin Richards who drops in from the future, show a more personal side.
It's a throwaway in that there's one panel and later one quote about it, but apparently Reed tried to see if Franklin could stop the incursions and Franklin feels bad that he couldn't.
― ultimate american sock (mh), Monday, 18 May 2015 16:16 (nine years ago) link
Did Hickman ever explain how future Franklin exists (or indeed anyone) if everything is Secret Wars now? I know there was a lot of "Well, we're not worried about the incursions because our future selves are alive" - but I'm not sure if that got resolved (or, I suppose, if it's worth caring about).
― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, 18 May 2015 16:19 (nine years ago) link
I think that was one of the nice parts of Hickman's run, the idea that the multiverse is in flux and things will fall apart, sometimes at a galactic or multiversal scale, but there are some things in the future that are still going to happen. No matter how much things get fucked up now, Franklin is still going to be there in the far-flung future.
― ultimate american sock (mh), Monday, 18 May 2015 16:21 (nine years ago) link
I mean, the counterargument is that all time travelers came from futures that no longer exist.
― ultimate american sock (mh), Monday, 18 May 2015 16:22 (nine years ago) link
i assume franklin will have something to do w/ the general secret wars arc. hickman obv likes him, he's the most [potentially?] powerful mutant in history, etc.
― Mordy, Monday, 18 May 2015 16:25 (nine years ago) link
I've always had a bone to pick with the concept of Planet-Eatin' Galactus, the big gaping story hole (imo) in his existence. Unless there's been some backstory that explains why he has to eat planets that have flora and (sentient) fauna, I don't see why he can't just eat life-free gas giants, and even stars that don't have habitable planets. It seems like bullshit to me that sentient life is less than an ant colony to him – if he has any kind of moral grounding at all, he would avoid ant colonies. If he doesn't have enough morality in him not to torture and kill bugs, I think he would have been taken out eons ago by a Kree/Skrull/Shi'ar/whatever gangpile. This paragraph may be gibberish; I blame poor sleep.
― WilliamC, Monday, 18 May 2015 16:26 (nine years ago) link
funny bc i just read this issue last night:
http://i59.tinypic.com/qn3azq.png
― Mordy, Monday, 18 May 2015 16:41 (nine years ago) link
(Silver Surfer v.1 #01, 1968)
my understanding is that galactus feeds off life force in the cosmic sense so a dead planet won't work... best case scenario is that he gets there before the dominant species has evolved to the point of sentience. or, you know, that the planet can fight back.http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/uploads/WilliamRoberge/2012-12-21_093441_T161_EgoVsGalactus2.jpg
― “audience participation” otherwise known as “touching” (forksclovetofu), Monday, 18 May 2015 16:43 (nine years ago) link
An element of Galactus that's fluctuated over the years is his scale with relation to lowly, mortal, planet-dwelling creatures. He's just kind of a big dude in his initial appearances, having conversations with the FF, but he's slowly become a more gargantuan presence who doesn't even seem to register the presence of the buzzing gnats inhabiting his meals of choice.
(And there's the whole complicated notion that his appearance varies wildly depending on who's actually beholding him at the moment.)
― Ape Pagoda (Old Lunch), Monday, 18 May 2015 16:51 (nine years ago) link
Galactus has been written (at least over the last decade or so) as a cleansing force of nature or Death. I don't remember which book that said it, but I believe that the planets that can sustain him are naturally the same planets that are habitable for sentient life... he's culling the universe of excess population, and writers like to neutralize him for these big space invasion storylines like Annhilation
― Nhex, Monday, 18 May 2015 16:53 (nine years ago) link
Have to pick up the Ultimate Galactus stuff, I was curious about that; I just blew through all of U. Fantastic Four (great), U.C.Ultimates (first half great), U. Doomsday (wasn't wild about it, but good payoff) - basically all the Ultimate Reed stuff to get what was going on with that guy, since I had no clue what his deal was from the Avengers lead-ins. I get the impression that the Reed throughline is really the big Ultimate arc, which makes sense if he's a big player in SW.
The ability of Marvel to lay out these massive plans and arcs and actually carry through with them, in the comics and in the movies, is amazing really, especially in contrast to DC completely thrashing in the water. Remember that 'map of the future' in Avengers from 2010? It doesn't cover what's going on now, but it did cover Age of Ultron which happened three years later.
― Brakhage, Tuesday, 19 May 2015 02:48 (nine years ago) link
just cracking #2 open. lol "doom messiah"
and yeah the millar ultimates is legit great. borrows a ton from millar authority but also batshit in its own unique way.
― resulting post (rogermexico.), Tuesday, 19 May 2015 06:46 (nine years ago) link
I guess Doom's spent his whole life looking for this kind of worldwide adoration and now he sure as hell has it!
Dunno if I'm the only one but man, I really dig the way Hickman uses blank pages, titles, that sort of thing to provide beats in the story. When I first saw it in New Avengers I was really impressed, but SW is the apex of that, with the page actually finishing a character's sentence ('Battleworld'). Maybe it reminds me of the endpapers of the individual issues of V for Vendetta, leading you in and out of the story and providing punctuation.
Will track down Millar Ultimates stuff as well.
― Brakhage, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 02:40 (nine years ago) link
he's had that distinctive style for a while that i don't have the visual vocabulary to really describe but is def recognizable as a type:
http://media.insidepulse.com/zones/insidepulse/uploads/2011/12/120511_2251_TPBReviewTh3.png
http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/comicsalliance.com/files/2009/10/iron-man-covers-456.jpg
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/NightlyNews3-197x300.jpg
sometimes i like it sometimes it seems a little shticky (nb not sure if this is a part of what you're referring to ^)
― Mordy, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 02:45 (nine years ago) link
http://www.spandexless.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/4083915-17030124-thumbnail.jpg
based on this i hope he one day redoes the entire marvel encyclopedia
― Mordy, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 02:46 (nine years ago) link
Yeah, I'm thinking of title pages coming after a couple pages of story introduction a la the SW title pages, more than covers or infographics, really. So a few pages of comic then wham *big title spread* then back to the story. (I would link to images but they're hard to GIS.) I think Morrison tried something similar a few times but restrained himself to doing titles as drawn comic pages, not blank pages of title interrupting the illustrations. When I saw this in New Avengers I initially thought it was incredibly pretentious but over time I grew to really love them since the story was so cosmic and epic it seemed to deserve them.
Thanks for reminding me about the Disassembled covers, I loved those when they came out.
― Brakhage, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 02:54 (nine years ago) link
yeah i found the art in nightly news way, way more interesting and compelling than the hacky sub-fight club story
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 16:38 (nine years ago) link
i signed up for a free month's marvel unlimited in order to look at some of the background stuff, and i am .. confused by the interface. it seems like i have a navigation bar at the top and bottom its impossible to hide (and which .. barely works?) but which the resizing ignores so it's often cutting off the top and bottom five per cent of a panel, i.e., where .. most of the dialogue is
is it really this broken or am i being a noob
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Wednesday, 20 May 2015 23:31 (nine years ago) link
it's not the most intuitive thing, to be charitable. you have to click on the page itself or the black empty space on the sides to hide the interface buttons
some glitches will fix if you click the "smart panel <-> full page" button twice
― Nhex, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 23:39 (nine years ago) link
love cap + devil dino in planet hulk
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 02:20 (nine years ago) link
yeah dd is always welcome. hope he gets a vastly expanded role in the new mu. strong career move ditching moon-boy.
― resulting post (rogermexico.), Thursday, 21 May 2015 02:30 (nine years ago) link
got confused for a moment and thought he was gertie's dino but no that was Old Lace - wonder where that dude is. nico is in A-Force. and i think SW is gonna have a new runaways series.
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 02:31 (nine years ago) link
it's very weird to me that the runaways went from having a sorta ambushbugesque outskirts of the marvel u storyline to being embedded so completely in continuity
― “audience participation” otherwise known as “touching” (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:01 (nine years ago) link
they did? when?
― Nhex, Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:17 (nine years ago) link
they're young avengers and shit now aren't they?
― “audience participation” otherwise known as “touching” (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:28 (nine years ago) link
How often does that sort of thing really last, though? Howard the Duck is one of the few characters of that type who's managed to stay on the fringes for any real length of time, but even with him there seems to be a more continuity-centric push of late.
― The Freewheelin' Denny Dillon (Old Lunch), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:03 (nine years ago) link
DC is certainly better about it i guess. haven't heard from this guy latelyhttp://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071010010819/marvel_dc/images/a/a6/
― “audience participation” otherwise known as “touching” (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:05 (nine years ago) link
er:http://blogintomystery.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/mazing5.jpg
― “audience participation” otherwise known as “touching” (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:06 (nine years ago) link
though didn't it turn out that denton killed ralph dibney's wife?
i'm afraid to know of what you speaki'm several years behind on YA but i thought the Runaways had pretty much disappeared from continuity, glad to find out they're still around
― Nhex, Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:05 (nine years ago) link
I need to reread the Avengers/New Avengers leadups to this. I read a bunch of yesterday's releases and still have some wtf?!?! questions.
― Carly Furiosa (WilliamC), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:34 (nine years ago) link
Nico and Chase were involved in Avengers Arena/Avengers Undercover
― DJP, Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:34 (nine years ago) link
DJP is our Area/Underground expert. I read the former once, but have forgotten most :/
― ultimate american sock (mh), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:36 (nine years ago) link
"comic characters who live on the fringe of continuity" would be a good thread.Ambush Bug (kinda pissed that no one ever points out that deadpool is basically Ambush Bug + Lobo)Mazing ManConan the Barbarianwho else?
― “audience participation” otherwise known as “touching” (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:42 (nine years ago) link