The Ultimates, Vol. 1 & 2

Top Ten Comic Series.

Playing with alternate versions of established characters is a common past time for comic writers. Marvel has What If?, DC has Elseworlds and various other ways for a particular writer to put his own stamp on a character.

Marvel's Ultimate line is probably the most successful re-imagining of an entire world I've ever come across (The MAX line might be better, but it does not re-create the whole Marvel world). The Ultimate line has done its best to place Marvel's primary characters into a realistic world. I think they've largely succeeded in this, with a list of caveats I won't bother to discuss.

Among the Ultimate line, the best was (emphasis past tense) The Ultimates, the new version of the Avengers. I think the redesign here is a brilliant triumph, and while the plotting and art in general are great, I`m going to focus here on the redesign itself.

The Ultimates are a military unit, the member's own claims occasionally to the contrary. They were developed by the U.S. government, for the sake of the U.S. government. And really, who else would have the funds or the ability to put together a real-life superhero group?

It is this intimate connection to the powers that be that provides a great foil for the re-creation of Thor. I've never really enjoyed the character of Thor; his speech has always annoyed me. Ultimate Thor is an entirely new beast - probably the character with the most radical changes. No longer does he speak in ye olde english; it's contemporary English for him now. No longer is he high and mighty; he's leftist activist, and for this reason, has no interest in joining a group of U.S. military lackeys.

Thor has a great story line early on in the series concerning his godhood. The Ultimate world, being a place that is only just now being introduced to superheroes and mutants, has no more experience with genuine magic than our world does. So, Thor's allies are rightfully skeptical about his claims to godhood.

This really highlights a difference between the Ultimate and the old school Marvel worlds. If a character shows up in the old school marvel world and claims to be a god, well, maybe he is; there are certainly enough of them around. In the Ultimate world, however, the government agency SHIELD has a file on Thor. It appears his real name is Thorlief Golmen, and that he was a nurse who suffered a complete mental breakdown and finally managed to steal super-soldier equipment. Liar, lunatic or lord?

Another character to recieve a great revamp was the Hulk. He's a one-note character in any universe, the the Ultimate line finally took what is in my opinion the obvious route and made him all about sexual frustration. Bruce Banner is a nice guy, in the worst possible way. He elicits the worst kind of hateful pity from both characters and readers. He knows this, too, but he's too pathetic to actually express any anger about it. And so the Hulk comes out, and suddenly Hulk goes from a one-note character (smashing) to a two-note character (raping and eating). Some great humour is pulled out of the Hulk's preference for cannibalism.

Captain America, another character I've always had a distaste for, receives only a minimal revamp. He's the same old highly competent, patrotic military officer. His highlights in this series are all the times he is obviously willing to fight dirty; if kicking a guy in the balls is the way to bring him down, then Cap will do it. His hard, violent pragmatism is a nice outgrowth of his nationalism. I think the main change with Cap is character design. Gone is that ridiculous chain mail and those retarded Robin Hood boots.

Iron Man's redesign is particularly fantastic. Even as a kid, I hated designs of Iron Man that actually displayed muscles like his abs and biceps. The guy wears a suit of armor, not tights. Ultimate Tony Stark himself is still identical to the core of the pre-fascist Marvel Tony Stark (Orson Scott Card`s prattling aside), but the armor is very, very different. Now he looks like a robot, or a jet that requires a great deal of time for pre-flight preparation. The armor isn`t quite as invincible as the classic armor, either. Visually, this is certainly my favorite character. Alas, in volume three, the armor is much closer in appearance to the classic armor.

Finally, we have a pair of characters that are, classically, a complete waste of panel space. Quicksilver has always been a transparent Flash rip-off, and the Scarlett Witch`s powers are nothing other than deus ex machina waiting to happen. The Ultimates, though, pull these characters off wonderfully. How? With strong suggestions of old-blood, Imperial Family Style incest. A pair of useless characters has been transformed into a creepy, hilariously obnoxious favorite duo.

As I`ve suggested, Volume Three of the Ultimates is excreble. A shame.

How long will it be before I get to number eight on the list...

Infinity Gauntlet

Back in 1991, I was fairly new to comics. I was dabbling in the X-Men, especially the Jim Lee series that began later the same year. I basically just like awesome fights and Rob Liefield's giant boobs were as yet uninteresting to me.

So one day, on the strength of the awesome cover, I bought #3 of 6. I put together the basic story line: The villain Thanos had pieced together all six infinity gems, which granted him unlimited power. Thanos was all but God. The point of all this was for Thanos to win the love of embodied Death. In #2, he snapped his fingers and killed exactly half of the life in the universe as an offering to his love. That was unbearably dramatic for my 11 year old mind.

The real action didn't really begin until #4, though. The most powerful of the heroes - roughly 30 of them - that weren't raptured in #2 descended upon Thanos en masse. What resulted was a vicious slaughter, a level of violence I had never come across in comics before. Because I didn't realize that comics basically cheat concerning death, and so none of the deaths would be permanent, this also was unbearably dramatic.

At the time, the art hit the spot for me. I would have been too young to appreciate any fancy. Everything was crisp, clean and bright. Some characters, such as the Silver Surfer, have been through several artistic iterations; the two most common begin the Greek godlike, perfectly sculpted body, the other being a thinner, slightly more melancholic version. IG wisely used the much flasher Greek god version.

So anyways, the heros and Thanos get down to business. He handily wipes out most of the heroes, but has a little bit of help from his girlfriend that he created ex-nihilo.

Let's look at some of the best images. As I said, I had been reading the X-Men, and Cyclops was my favourite character. I identified with him for whatever nerdy reason. Cyclops was one of the few heroes to get one over on Thanos; Cyclops poured his force beams onto Thanos, then switched them off at an opportune time; Thanos lost his balance and fell flat on his face. Ha!

Thanos's retaliation:

Yeah, that's right, he suffocates Cyclops to death. Christ, that scared me. Seeing my favourite character choke to death like that trigged two of my old phobias - claustrophobia and lack of oxygen. I was really hoping Captain America would succeed in his rescue attempt, but I still felt the terrible inevitability of it all.

There was one other X-Man involved in this attack. Back in the day, when Wolverine wasn't everywhere and thus still had a little mystique, this page was a truly fist pumping affair:

He stabs Thanos right in the chest, and the bastard smiles. Come on, try to imagine seeing this as an 11 year old. Anyways, I was always a little bit disappointed with Wolverine's death: his bones turned to rubber.

So I mentioned Thanos's ex nihilo girlfriend. Meet her hand:


All that red stuff on the end of the rock? That's what's left of Spider-Man's face.

Also, she collected an official Ironman souvenir:
That would be his head. Which she tore off. I'll bet that won't happen to Robert Downey Jr.

So all the heroes fall, save Captain America. I have no great love for this character. I think his costume is stupid. I also think jingoism is stupid. But clearly, this is regular universe Cap's greatest moment:


The silent walk up. The square jaw. The smoking body of Quasar providing some much needed colour to the scene.

Ah, the lost cause. It doesn't get much more romantic than this. Cap is the perfect character to deliver this line.

All through this series, a character named Adam Warlock has been in the background, leading the war against Thanos. Warlock is a brilliant schemer, an old nemesis of Thanos. He's willing the role the dice and play for the whole pot; this entire battle has been nothing other than a lead up to this moment:

The Silver Surfer swoops in and attempts to steal the gauntlet from Thanos. He fails.

See what I said about the Surfer's Greek god body? It's visually pleasing, but these days strikes me as a bit generic. I've actually come to prefer the more streamlined version.

So what happens to Cap? He's the last one left alive. He stands definately in front of a virtual God. What grand martyr's death awaits him?


NO LOOK BITCH SLAP. Presumably this shatter Cap's skull.

Anyways, plot stuff happens and Thanos loses the gauntlet. The scene I'm going to point out here beccomes a pivotal point for Thanos's character. He remains a complete jerk, but he becomes something of an anti-hero. Only in Annihilation does he truly return to his villainous ways, and even then he has a limit.

Hmm... the text is a bit too small. This is Warlock pointing out to Thanos that in the end, he constantly sabotages himself. It's a nice little nod the Thanos's unconscious. With this knowledge in hand, Thanos helps Warlock return all things to the status quo.

Fun stuff. The sequels, Infinity War and Infinity Crusade, weren't quite as cool but I still really enjoyed them.

Up next: The Ultimates!

Top 10 Comic Series

So not long after discovering bit torrents, I discovered that one could download comics this way. I hadn't read comics for several years, but having any number of free comics right at my finger tips was just too much temptation. I had read in various sources about comics like The Invisibles and Preacher, and maybe a year before the Constantine movie came out, so I had read the Hellblazer TP Son of Man, which was ace.

I downloaded a ton of comics while I was in Korea from the amazing site Demonoid.com. Alas, the copyright monkeys (may their souls rot in hell) have shut Demonoid down, and comics are now far less accessible on the web. So I've actually resorted to *gasp* buying some comics. Which kinda sucks, since the comic store I live next to never orders enough copies of anything.

I recently had the idea to do reviews of my ten favourite comic series. I mean this to be quite broad; you'll see what I mean below.

This is my basic list, which is subject to change. Over the next few weeks I'll write out proper reviews, complete with images.

10. Infinity Gauntlet - I think this was the first truly great in-continuity crossover. I was too young to understand how comics worked at the time, so the slaughter of the heroes in #4 was pretty traumatic to me.

9. The Ultimates, Vol. 1 & 2 - The Avengers re-interpreted as a paramilitary unit. Thor is a leftist hippie, and the Hulk is STRAIGHT. Volume 3 seems to be intentionally destroying any coolness the Ultimates once had, but the first two Volumes are easily the second best non-regular Marvel universe stories I've ever read. The best is #7 on this list.

8. Scott Pilgrim - "See, I've grazed you!" "How appropriate, you fight like a cow!" I've only read the first two volumes, but I will definately track down the rest. Draw in a vaguely manga style by a London, Ontario native, Scott Pilgrim is hilarious and cool, and his life is precious. Status: awesome.

7. Garth Ennis' run on The Punisher. From the hilarious Welcome Back Frank in which Frank drop kicks an armless, legless old woman* into a burning house to the infuriatingly brutal darkness of The Slavers, Ennis has a serious triumph on his hands.

6. Annihilation - The finest mainstream, in-continuity comic story, ever. Hands down. Not even the sequel Conquest has topped it so far. Annihilation gathered up obscure, second rate characters from the wider Marvel universe and dropped them into a hopeless battle against a seemingly infinitely large military force. The broad collection of genres and themes all mixed into this series make it a truly excellent work.

5. Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits - Another Garth Ennis story. Is there a pattern here? John Constantine finds himself dying of cancer, visits old friends, makes new ones, drinks great beer, and scams the lords of hell. Good times.

4. Preacher - Jessie Custard used to be the Lord's servant -now he's the Lord's worst enemy. A 66 issue run of booze, sex and violence. A wicked sense of humour. Probably the funniest R-rated comic you'll ever read.

3. Naussica of the Valley of Wind - A sprawling, epic story from Hayao Miyazaki, the anime genius. I have to admit that Naussica is probably the most magnetic comic character I've ever come across. Charismatic and invincible. In the hands of any other writer, such a perfect character would be facile; Miyazaki manages to create a wonderful hero. If the conclusion of this series doesn't make you want to dance, you have no soul.

2. The Invisibles - Grant Morrison's 5 year long sigil. An impossibly cool collection of ontological terrorists, trannie witches, and kung-fu fighters. The Matrix stole all its best ideas from this series.

1. Ichi The Killer - A spot of the 'ol ultra violence. A sadomasochistic Yakuza rampages through the city looking for his missing boss, a boss that has already been sliced up the the masochistic Ichi. Brilliant art, and a great meditation on love and hope. The best comic series I've ever read. There is love in this violence.

*Don't worry, she totally deserved it.