shhhhhh secret wars is the big marvel summer event of 2015

At this point in the pretty horrible Uncanny Avengers story it seems like the answer is no.

from Wikipedia:

Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff) is a fictional superhero appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appears in X-Men #4 (March 1964) and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He is the twin brother of the Scarlet Witch and the son of Magneto as well as the paternal half-brother of Polaris. However, he and his twin sister were later retconned, in Uncanny Avengers #4, to be the children of Django and Marya Maximoff who were kidnapped and experimented by the High Evolutionary. After a failed experimentation that gave Pietro his power, the High Evolutionary returned them to their parents and they then grew up believing that they were common mutants.[2]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

yeah the wanda/pietro retcon is a strong competitor for all-time most horrible retcons

tbh I like to think that the Marvel 616 universe has been fucking itself up as of late due to the post Age of Ultron timefuck, and this incident was part of an alternate continuity that bled over

...wow @ that retcon

add to that the fact that Magneto does have at least one kid, but it's Polaris

hahaha I was wondering when someone was going to bring that up

just wait for the multiversal version where his first kid never died in a fire

hey, at least Polaris kinda made sense, they have the same powers
what's worse was the Ultimate version where it was in question whether the twins' father was Magneto or Wolverine, who had a tryst with their mother around the right time. thanks Jeph Loeb!

Mutants in the Ultimate world were a mess.

ironically since they had an (ostensibly) simpler origin. kind of? i don't know.

natural mutation vs. genetic manipulation via the Weapon X program and then somehow spreading via a "mutant trigger" thingamabob.

Give me stock 616. Even Earth X Celestial fuckery is better than the Ultimate Universe "messing with Wolverine" origin.

Yeah, the Ultimate version is "the US government made mutants"

616 Wolverine has been completely fucked continuity-wise, and oddly enough, *not* just by the Origin series (although the later issues of that definitely helped). Again, the guy who started the plot down that path was... Jeph Loeb. They at least reversed the idea that Wolverine and other lupoid characters were somehow descended from wolves instead of primates.

I really like what Jason Aaron has done with Thor, but there seriously was a plot where a group decides to get revenge on Wolverine and they hire a group of mercenaries, all of which Wolverine kills.... only to find out they were all his children.

oh yeah, and Wolverine wanted to become a horrible killing machine pre-brain wipe, and he was in fact partially responsible for the Weapon X program melding metal to his bones

wait, what was this "mutant" trigger thingamabob? i think that's where I got lost.

omg that story that sounds awful. how many pups can a Wolverine have?

stuff like that Wolverine story started the big push that moved me out of being mutant-exclusive and more towards following what the Avengers were doing (along with Sunspot and Cannonball being tapped as Avengers)

they'll always be magneto's kids to me

wait, what was this "mutant" trigger thingamabob? i think that's where I got lost.

omg that story that sounds awful. how many pups can a Wolverine have?

I think it was in Ultimate Origins? Magneto's parents were part of the program and the changed genome became airborne when Magneto freed Wolverine, thus triggering latent mutants or something? It's been a long time since I read it. It was a mess. Fury was involved too, and I think his blood helped make the Hulk and it's a clusterfuck.

Reading Ultimate Origins right now. Saying that it's the most coherent of the Ultimatum-related comics I've read thus far is damning with wafer thin praise.

I think Hickman is the person who loves Cannonball and Sunspot second-best in the world, after DJP

Now Sunspot is rich playboy AIM leader and Cannonball has a kid!

in fairness, Sunspot was always a rich playboy

they basically made him the mutant Tony Stark, which at the end of the day I'm okay with

I'm also glad they're remembering Bobby isn't a dummy, cf the most recent Avengers World and his manipulation of the deposed AIM leaders

He's the angry South American, Cannonball is the joking Southerner
-- most writers

Any more thoughts after week 3? Quality control seems to be irregularly high for a summer crossover. I'm enjoying it. Not too much gloom and gore - so far everything seems to be in a very Peter David-esque "cheerful adventure" mould. Battleworld seems like an interesting place to stop off for a few months - unlike most parallel universe stories, it doesn't feel like it's just marking time until the inevitable continuity reset.

And even though I'm not familiar with a lot of the characters, it's all quite beginner-friendly - in content, if not in marketing.

I'm racing toward the end of the Ultimate line (just about to start Death of Spider-Man) so I'll hopefully be caught up somewhat soon. Probably not, but hopefully.

(Relating to that: I should say that, while it was overall pretty bad and the infamously awful parts were just as awful as expected, Ultimatum wasn't quite the shitshow I thought it would be (and some of the non-Loeb stuff was all right). My expectations were perhaps a bit diminished, though, since Ultimates 3 honestly is one of the worst comics I've ever read in a lifetime of reading comics. But then I was pleasantly surprised by Ultimate X, which is easily the best Loeb thing I've read. Nothing particularly special but quite a leap in basic storytelling competence, and with some of the most gorgeous work I've seen from Art Adams. I guess even a stopped clock can accidentally crap out a decent story now and again.)

Can't remember if this has been linked yet -- http://www.vulture.com/2015/05/secret-history-of-ultimate-marvel.html

(I reached out to Loeb for an interview but was told he would only speak with me if we didn’t discuss Ultimates 3 or Ultimatum.)

thanks for the link, pretty good article

Yeah I enjoyed that too.

Holy shit that sounds like the worst run ever.

It's a good article, but it's hamstrung by its premise: this is what changed, and it worked, so that must have been what was wrong in the first place. In 1999, "Why has Franklin been a kid for 30 years?" wouldn't even have been in the top ten reasons why not to read Marvel.

Marvel's generally had the right attitude to its age: There's too much story for any even moderately old character, so you use what works, and ignore what doesn't, and if someone reminds you that Nick Fury fought in the second world war then CheesyGrin.gif. It's always DC that's had the fretting about generations and legacies.

I am a little surprised that they missed one of the funniest (because Marvel never has and never has had any shame) consequences of the Ultimate's successful influence on the MCU - Normal 616 Nick Fury's lovechild with an African American woman was found and rose swiftly through the ranks of SHIELD to director, bringing with him a likeness to Samuel L Jackson and his friend Phil Coulson.

that was a heck of a coincidence wasn't it

true - they neglected to point out the effects the movies have had on the books like that silliness

I wwonder if it's supposed to be the infinity formula that gave him African American sperm

Anal retentive comics query: anyone know how to pick up the Miller run of Daredevil with the old Lynn Varley colouring? I've tried with the reoloured version but it's just so bleargh. Even the torr3nce have the shitty 90s colouring.

quarter box iirc

LOTS OF REVELATIONS THIS WEEK

Lynn Varley didn't colour Miller's original Daredevil run (I think it was mostly Tatjana Wood) - Varley's first colouring work was on Ronin.

Marvel's generally had the right attitude to its age: There's too much story for any even moderately old character, so you use what works, and ignore what doesn't, and if someone reminds you that Nick Fury fought in the second world war then CheesyGrin.gif.

^^^
frustrates me so much that the big two don't commit to this approach. continuity is so fucking stupid.

a little continuity is cool - i like it when characters refer to other characters and other stories i've read. it's just that it doesn't need to be 100% consistent.

yeah, it's fine to use continuity when it serves a narrative purpose - writer wants to refer to x event for y reason, to help frame the story or provide context, sure - but it shouldn't be restrictive or a built-in requirement

also having been blissfully unaware of Ultimates (I haven't read a Marvel comic since 1991 or so) that article was a helpful summary of what sounds like a bunch of horrible bullshit that I'm glad I avoided

OTM in general on just ignoring bothersome continuity. But Nick Fury having fought in WWII is awesome in my book. It might need a better explanation than 'infinity formula' but I like the idea of this immortal soldier who has been fighting against remnants of nazis for seventy years. Hickman's Secret Warriors was an awesome book with that idea. Someone probably needs to write a series about how SHIELD fits in with FBI and CIA and COINTELPRO and all that stuff, though. Secret Warriors vol 2! Hickman has time after Secret Wars.

I actually like the insanity of attempting to maintain continuity over a decades-long project. But at the same time, writers should be able gloss over the stupid stuff without having to do pointless retcons.

some of the coolest stories as of late have been continuity heavy - like RIP which wasn't just drawing from old stories but specifically from old stories that had never really been integrated into modern DC batman.

SHIELD was behind all that stuff except the bad stuff which was HYDRA behind SHIELD behind all that stuff.

Ultimate wasn't all bad - obviously Bendis writes a pretty good Spiderman (and a great JJJ) - but it was clear from early on (more so with Millar's X-Men I guess) that most of what was going to happen was that every piece of shit backstory was some writer's favourite, which they'd feel they needed to bring back (sometimes with a radikal remake) to make everything right.

I'd also rep for Ultimate Galactus trilogy, but I might be alone there.

continuity is great if it's a tool and not a fence

Millar Ultimates is p dope iirc