Ultimate Edit has come and gone. I hope you had as much fun reading it as we had making it. Rereading some of the stuff, I notice how awkward bits of the dialogue come off. There are some references that are either obscure or too outdated to work months later. For the hell of it, let’s look back on the series with some Ultimate Edit Annotations.

As for how the Edit got started, I had posted on the Batman’s Shameful Secret sub-forum at Something Awful about how I was playing with the idea of giving Ultimates 3 the same treatment that MightyGodKing gave Civil War among others and Funnybook Babylon gave Infinite Crisis #4. ManiacClown, who I knew only as the guy with the rapping Etrigan avatar, insisted I go through with it and asked to volunteer.

I later emailed MightyGodKing about whether I was stepping on his toes with this. Though he hadn’t read the first issue yet, he was debating between that and the also awful Countdown: Arena #1. He was leaning towards Arena and ultimately went with it, leaving me free to take apart Loeb’s latest work.

WEEK 1:

Cover:

– Iron Man’s complaint about being “made of brains” is from Orson Scott Card’s rather bizarre take on the character in Ultimate Iron Man. Rather than having just a brain in his skull, Tony Stark’s brain lived throughout the inside of his body. I’m not even going to get into the weird blue skin thing he had going on.

– The way Black Panther was written came from my own major mistake. At the time, Ultimate Power was going on and they made a big deal about how by the end of the series, someone from the Squadron Supreme world would end up in the Ultimate world and vice-versa. The frontrunner from the Squadron world seemed to be Emil Burbank, who appeared to be absent in the Hyperion miniseries’ chaotic future.

There were rumors that not only was Nighthawk going to be the one making the trade, but that he was going to be Black Panther. It seemed to fit, especially with a solicited cover of Ultimate Power that showed Captain America and Nighthawk going at it. Since the Nighthawk name was already taken by that guy in the Ultimate Defenders, it would make sense that the Surpeme Nighthawk would adopt a new identity. Not to mention that both Nighthawk and Black Panther are often described as “the black Batman”.

If you haven’t read anything from the Squadron Supreme line, here’s the gist of Nighthawk. He’s just like Bruce Wayne, only black. His rich parents were killed as part of a hate crime and it warped him. He fights crime, but he’s horribly racist against white people and will occasionally let black criminals slide. He improves his behavior over time, but he’s still known for his anti-white disposition. Hence, all his racial lines from Ultimate Edit.

In the end, I was wrong on both accounts. Zarda was the one who made the jump to the Ultimate universe (though she hasn’t appeared since) and Captain America was Black Panther. The latter was very obvious since issue #1, but I thought it was so obvious it had to be a red herring. Hopefully this is the longest explanation in this article.

– Hey, I just noticed that Hank Pym NEVER wears that outfit outside of this cover. What the fuck?

– Wasp and Wolverine’s dialogue is the usual catchphrase from I Love Lucy, though that’s pretty obvious. It’s more apt than whatever angry expression Wolverine’s supposed to be conveying.

– Mystique’s line is a paraphrase from Space Ghost: Coast to Coast as Space Ghost tells Sarah Jessica Parker that he personally created every aspect of his show. For her. For Christmas.

– Magneto’s line is a reference to Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, as the titular character breaks the fourth wall and shockingly becomes aware of the readers.

– Whenever Madrox and his dupes were around, I tried to have them quote Agent Smith from the Matrix movies. Unfortunately, he didn’t have as many cool multiple lines as I had remembered.

– To close it out, Sabretooth is reciting the Thundercats theme.

Page 1:

– The joke about the Bruce Banner sex tape is another foul up on my end. Back then, the rumors had started circulating about how the Iron Man and Incredible Hulk movies were going to be linked together. Unfortunately, parts of the rumors were unfounded. The big part of it was that there was going to be one scene that would happen in both movies, featuring Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

– Black Widow’s obviously referencing Rocky and Bullwinkle on that sex tape, but “Yumski” is a reference to the amazingly awful Thor/Valkyrie make-out session that happens later in the real issue. As she makes out with Thor, Valkyrie mutters, “Yummmmmm” with hearts floating around her word bubble.

– I had Quicksilver bring up the animated movie Invincible Iron Man because as he says, it’s a boring piece of crap.

– This is the internet, so I can only assume that you know what “Two Girls One Cup” and Tay Zonday, performer of “Chocolate Rain” are about. If not, go seek out the latter (aka James Urkel Jones) on YouTube. The former… yeah, probably not.

Page 2:

– Tony Stark is labeled “Fighting Robot Iron Man”, a reference to the theme song from the Mega Man animated series.

Page 3:

– The dialogue here is based on a hype interview Loeb did where he heavily hinted that Clint Barton would become Ultimate Bullseye. This immediately annoyed comic fans, who knew that there already was an Ultimate Bullseye in continuity.

Page 4:

– Black Panther’s yelling is based on a PvP online comic where Batman goes around Gotham, so deranged and obsessed with his dead parents that he keeps screaming, “MY PARENTS ARE DEAAAAAD!”

Page 5:

– This rant is a shot at JMS’s run on Squadron Supreme, which ended abruptly during a major fight scene. Instead, they just went straight into Ultimate Power, which was funny, since they were trying to hype a series that didn’t exist anymore.

Page 6:

– Venom tossing Black Panther into the distance is a reference to Super Smash Brothers, namely the death scream Jigglypuff makes before exploding off into the distance.

Page 8:

– Much like how she was shacking up with Thor, Valkyrie initially got down with Hank Pym as part of putting the Defenders together.

– “Here comes the Quinjet,” relates to the way parents try to feed babies by pretending the spoon is an airplane. It’s pretty blatant, but I think I had to explain the joke to ManiacClown at one point.

Page 9:

– As he flies down, Thor recites Supertramp’s “Breakfast in America” translated into Thorspeak.

Page 10:

– Ah, the first appearance of Santa Thor. That was all ManiacClown’s idea. He insisted that Thor act like Santa Claus. It was either that or have him speak with a different accent in each scene, but I knew the Santa thing had more legs.

– I should mention that sometime before this issue, Bendis mentioned somewhere that he had no intention of ever writing Venom again in Ultimate Spider-Man and that the only way he was ever going to show up again was with somebody else on the book. Funny how that turned out.

– Hawkeye mentions his intent to kill Karen Page, thus cementing his need to be Ultimate Bullseye.

– I think the Patrick Swayze leap speaks for itself, don’t you?

Page 11:

– No, I don’t know why I have Pietro and Wanda as hardcore Booster Gold fans throughout Ultimate Edit. I guess I just needed to have them talk about something mundane and I had just read the latest issue of his comic.

– Force Works was a short-lived and rather unpopular hero team that existed during the 90’s, run by Iron Man.

Page 14:

– All those Twinkie jokes came from this page. Once I saw the white gunk on Hank’s lips and the glazed look over his eyes, I knew what I had to do. I initially was set to make it strictly just the overdose scene and Hawkeye’s excuse for hunting Spider-Man, but ManiacClown insisted that we make it a running gag tying everything together. If I weren’t there to hold him back, he would have had a Twinkie joke on every other page.

Page 16:

– The Shoryuken is a jumping uppercut move from Capcom’s Street Fighter series. You may remember it from that one scene everyone posts about how funny Deadpool is. It’s even funnier the 48th time somebody shows it to you!

Page 18:

– “Chickenslut” is a term coined by Gail Simone in Welcome to Tranquility. I rolled with it.

Page 20:

– The gag is from Identity Crisis, on the page where Batman embraces the crying Robin as the narration explains, “Batman and Robin. Orphans.”

WEEK 2:

Page 1:

– Spider-Man seems to be obsessed with movies written by one Jeph Loeb.

– It’s been said that Bendis was very protective of Ultimate Spider-Man and fought back when Loeb tried to take it over. This could be considered Loeb’s revenge.

– “Crap diggity!” is a line from Thinkin’ Lincoln that I love too much not to sneak into everyday conversation.

Page 4:

– Spider-Man sprays white goo in Hawkeye’s direction, prompting the line, “Isn’t this the same way you killed off Mary Jane?” Reference to Spider-Man: Reign where Mary Jane died from constant injection of Peter Parker’s radioactive man-juice.

– Andy Kaufman had an alter-ego Tony Clifton, an overweight louse of an entertainer who would go out and antagonize the crowd. Once people started to get wise that Andy and Tony were the same guy, Andy had his friend Bob Zmuda play Tony Clifton to mess with the audience’s heads.

Page 6:

– “Chasing the dragon” is a term describing people tripping out on heroin. With Spider-Man being involved, “Dragon Man” seemed like a good enough substitute.

– Jim Morrison is known as the Lizard King. Doc Connors is the Lizard. Ever see them in the same room at the same time? I think not!

Page 7:

– I think we were originally going to leave the recap pages alone, but I had the idea of doing a Days of Future Past parody and we kept it going.

– Sifl & Olly are there just to be there. They were really one of the last good things to come out of MTV. God, I miss that show.

Page 8:

– I’m a fan of referencing the Superfriends narrator, hence that opening narration.

– Eminem did his “Real Slim Shady” music video where he had a roomful of clones hang out with him. Later at one of the MTV award shows, he had a bunch of guys dressed like him follow him around like an army. Makes sense to turn it into a Madrox joke.

Page 10:

– Tony’s line is taken directly from Achewood, where Ray was toasted out of his mind. Sure, Ray had hit a bong and Tony was really drunk, but we can work past that as a nation.

– Rhyno at Batman’s Shameful Secret had the horrific idea that Valkyrie got her powers from ingesting Thor’s man-goo. It sounded ridiculous, but at the same time we were all scared that Loeb would actually go through with something so awful. At the very least, the very concept fit as a good enough punchline. Just as long as she stays away from Spider-Man. We’ve seen where that leads.

Page 14:

– Half of this page is just references to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but we’ve all seen that 300 times. Even then it’s never enough.

– Valkyrie’s last line is a take on MC Hammer’s “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em”.

Page 17:

– Hawkeye refers to his gun as a “WT1307”. 1307 is believed to be the year where William Tell shot the apple off someone’s head with an arrow.

Page 19:

– As you can guess, Cap is making reference to beating the crap out of Hank Pym after he hospitalized Wasp back in the first volume.

– Brett Ratner directed the third X-Men movie where despite having a pretty charismatic performance, Multiple Man only appeared for two scenes.

WEEK 3:

Cover:

– Wolverine’s quote is a variation on Jesse Ventura’s, “I don’t have time to bleed!” from Predator.

Page 1:

– The headshots come from Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers. The Newsboy Legion was a retconned team of kids who solved mysteries back in the day. On their final case, they stumbled onto the plot of the Sheeda, the main villains of the series. They also ran afoul of Zor the Terrible Time Taylor, a magician who is sort of supposed to be Alan Moore. Being Alan Moore, he writes the children’s adulthoods and turns them into dark, deconstructed shadows of their former selves. This led to a quick recap of what happened to who.

Page 2:

– The narration and that little head belong to the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future, who comes from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

– Alan Alda played a character named Hawkeye. Get it?

Page 5:

– That beaver-moose thing is all ManiacClown’s doing. I don’t even know.

Page 6:

– I went to college in Rochester. It’s a frozen Hell just like wherever Wolverine is on that page.

Page 7:

– Originally I accidentally put that Magda’s boobs were filled with helium, which screwed up the joke, since it was brought to my attention that helium isn’t flammable. Nipped that in the bud. At least I didn’t do it the Jeph Loeb way where he makes some kind of half-assed excuse in the next issue.

Page 8:

– The Raging Storm is an attack that Geese Howard regularly performs in the Fatal Fury and King of Fighters fighting games. He slams his hands into the ground and a huge column of energy explodes upward.

Page 9:

– Again, you’re on the internet, so I really shouldn’t have to explain the Nigerian prince email scams.

– Wanda’s referencing Ellen Degeneres’ old sitcom from the 90’s. I remember it being watchable, but once she came out of the closet, the show became nothing but stories about her dealing with her homosexuality. It stopped being funny and was cancelled soon after.

Page 12:

– Quick reference to the time Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet to turn Wolverine’s skeleton into spongy rubber, therefore killing him. Quick and simple.

Page 16:

– Most of Iron Man’s dialogue is from an internet meme and music video where some malfunctioning robots push people down stairs in order to protect them from the Terrible Secret of Space. I got a decent amount of shit for this gag with the accusation of pandering to the Something Awful crowd. Totally honest, I didn’t even know the whole thing came from there in the first place.

Page 19:

– Listen, I’m a wrestling fan. You can’t expect me to discuss the Savage Land without making some kind of Macho Man reference. Dig it!

– Hawkeye is singing “Mambo Number 5” by Lou Bega, who Scarlet Witch had erased from history. At the end of the series, when Hawkeye tries to kill Magneto, I was going to originally use that as his motivation.

WEEK 4:

Page 1:

– The monster on the wing thing is based on The Twilight Zone episode where a man on a plane saw a creature destroying the wing but nobody believed him. On the show he was played by William Shatner, but in the movie the role was played by John Lithgow. Coincidentally, Shatner would play Lithgow’s boss years later on Third Rock from the Sun.

Page 8:

– Around the time of the issue, there were these ads in comics about Ultimate Origins that took up several pages. I decided to go with it, replacing generic images of Hulk and Spider-Man with some of the more laughable out-of-context images from the Ultimate line. The first is from an Ultimate Spider-Man comic where Peter and Logan have switched minds. That’s Peter’s reaction to his new manhood. After that, we have a sequence from Ultimate X-Men where Colossus EATS THE FUCK out of a sandwich. There really is no context. He’s just totally into that sandwich. Next is Ultimate Fantastic Four, where we have one of Land’s more laughable porn-based facial expressions. In the last one, there’s a quote about how everything ties together. Who ties everything together than actor Kevin Bacon?

Say, when’s the last time you’ve seen Kevin Bacon in anything?

Page 11:

– Giving Hawkeye a Yoda death scene was ManiacClown’s idea. No, I’m not saying this entry Yoda style. Fuck that.

Page 13:

– The Juggernaut Punch is yet another Capcom fighting move. It’s a running punch that Juggernaut performs after the player presses down, forward and punch, as mentioned by Panther.

– Being that Battlestar Galactica is the big, popular show these days, I don’t have to explain what a Cylon is. Master Blaster, for those who haven’t seen the movie, is from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Blaster is a large, hulking, mentally challenged monster and Master is a super-intelligent midget that commands him. Writing this, I suddenly regret not writing Wolverine as screaming that Juggernaut “has the mind of a child” after the helmet gets knocked off in the last issue.

ManiacClown wanted Wolverine to refer to him as the Buggernaut, but I won that fight.

Page 14:

– I think it’s illegal to make Juggernaut jokes and NOT bring up the “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” movie. With Cap knocking him out in the following issue, I was going to have him say, “You know who you are? You’re my BITCH, Juggernaut!” but it came across as too forced.

Page 17:

– Mastermind is singing “Sunglasses at Night” by Corey Hart, like all good men.

Page 21:

– Thor’s rant is based on the recent revelation that when Colossus had overpowered Magneto’s magnetism in an early issue, he was doing so while on some kind of mutant steroid. From all accounts, it was an awful story.

Page 24:

– As he puts his robot Iron Man together, Ultron sings the Black Sabbath “Iron Man” song.

– Iron Man loads “ribs.exe”, a reference to the Ultimate Avengers blooper reel that appears on the Ultimate Avengers 2 DVD. In it, Iron Man is constantly shilling Tony Stark’s House of Ribs.

WEEK 5:

Cover:

– Cap’s line is quoted from Guy Gardner’s centered appearance on the cover of the first issue of Giffen and DeMatteis’ Justice League International run.

– The subtitle is based on an image floating around the internet that shows a couple dozen grim black people in suits staring forward from behind a podium with the text, “The negro community frowns upon your shenanigans.”

Page 1:

– The narration box has lyrics from the song used at the end of Dr. Strangelove and the final episode of Freakazoid. ManiacClown wanted to have the characters singing it on the cover, but I couldn’t get it to look right.

– Ultron’s use of a “war journal” is taken from America’s sweetheart Frank Castle.

– “As far back as I can remember…” is a reference to the opening of Goodfellas and nearly every Goodfeathers skit on Animaniacs.

– Ultron tends to call humans “meatbags” and “fleshy ones”. The former is taken from HK-47, a violent droid from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The latter is taken from Aaron Stack, the Machine Man, as depicted in Nextwave and all appearances afterwards.

– “DSL” stands for “dick sucking lips” for the five of you who couldn’t figure out the joke.

Page 2:

– It’s hard to make fun of a flashback when they copy and paste art and reuse the old dialogue. So instead, we just used dialogue from other parts of Ultimate Edit to confuse the story-telling Ultron.

– Though Venom busting through the wall is from the first issue, his speech is Wolverine’s from the third issue.

– Quicksilver yelling at Captain America happened towards the end of the first issue, but his dialogue comes from Hawkeye after Venom’s defeat in the same issue.

– Wasp stands over the defeated Venom and says stuff that wacky sitcom neighbor Charles Xavier said in the beginning of the fourth issue.

– “HO HO HALT!” is something Thor said during the third issue.

Page 3:

– Q is a character from Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, who appears as a tall man in a trench coat, fedora and robot face. He doesn’t speak and even in his ending they don’t explain anything about who or what he really is. Speculation suggests he’s related to the final boss of Street Fighter 4.

– Wanda’s flashback speech is just Ultron’s from two pages back. Quicksilver then proceeds to bring up Black Widow’s, “Yumski,” and Black Panther’s, “MY BLACK PARENTS ARE DEAD!!”

– Ultron begins narrating references to Taxi Driver, which may have gone unnoticed if we hadn’t tossed in the, “You talkin’ to me,” bit.

– “Shot Through the Heart” is a Bon Jovi song. I’m from New Jersey. Deal with it.

– The last line is reference to John Hinckley, Jr., who went and shot President Reagan in a crazed attempt to impress Jodi Foster.

Page 4:

– This is where we start our never-ending onslaught of Maximum Overdrive references. The movie, if you haven’t seen it, is about a green gas cloud being carried over to Earth by a comet. Immediately, it takes control of all machines and tries to murder all humans. The main targets of control are the trucks. The most iconic of all the evil trucks is one for Happy Toyz Co. that depicts a giant Green Goblin face over the grill.

– During Ultron’s Magneto impression, he says, “X-Chickens, welcome to die! Haha!” That’s from the Konami X-Men arcade game from back in the day. For some reason Magneto had some of the most laughable lines.

– The exchange between Hank and Jan at the bottom is taken from Maximum Overdrive. More specifically, it’s from Emilio Estevez discussing their hope that soon the green gas will leave Earth.

Page 5:

– The gag this time is Mega Man 4. Made sense with the new release of Mega Man 9.

Page 6:

– Magneto’s rant against the revolution is from Viking Elmer Fudd murdering Bugs Bunny in What’s Opera, Doc? Originally, I was going to have him scream, “POWAAA! UNLIMITED POWAAAA!” like Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith.

Page 7:

– On the subject of cartoons where the smartass main character gets killed, Juggernaut’s opening dialogue is based on Lonesome Lenny, a large dog that successfully crushes the life out of Screwy Squirrel.

Page 8:

– Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a movie from the 60’s starring Sidney Poitier as a black man brought over to meet his fiancé’s apprehensive white parents.

Page 9:

– While we won’t know for a while who that shadowy figure of energy is supposed to be, we decided that for now he’s just the Void, otherwise known as the dark counter-being to the Sentry. They look the same at least.

Page 12:

– Ultron makes yet another Maximum Overdrive reference. In the opening minute of the film, a man played by director Stephen King is told by an ATM that he’s an asshole. Shocked, he calls his wife over.

Page 13:

– Thor makes a quick shout-out to Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas.

– Robo-Thor speaks in the KISS text, but speaks the lyrics from Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”. ManiacClown wanted to go with some KISS lyrics, especially for “God of Thunder”, but “Immigrant Song” sounded better with the context.

Page 14:

– One more Capcom reference. In the Marvel vs. Capcom games, Iron Man’s known for his winning declaration, “Superior tech!” while War Machine is prone to announcing, “Here’s my Sunday best!” before launching his Proton Cannon attack.

Page 15:

– “YOU CAN’T! WE MADE YOU!” is a repeated quote by a drunk waitress in Maximum Overdrive. She eventually gets so fed up that she goes after a bunch of trucks with a missile launcher, but a military vehicle takes her out with a machine gun.

– Wolverine brings up how MAD! inadvertently(?) drew Hulk as Doomsday for that panel.

– The not-quite-dark-enough censor bars is a nod to the recent All-Star Batman & Robin controversy.

Page 17:

– Wasp’s use of “preversions” to insinuate Magneto’s part of the plot is taken from Dr. Strangelove.

– Legion, for those who forgot, is Xavier’s son, who went back in time to kill Magneto, only to have Xavier sacrifice himself and die, thereby starting off the Age of Apocalypse.

Page 18:

– Quicksilver and Magneto continue singing the “Cats and the Cradle”, which Magneto tried singing to Pietro back in the second issue.

Page 19:

– ManiacClown wanted Wasp to discuss how Magneto’s castle has nitrous, but I had to go with a Simpsons gag. I stole it from when Homer and Bart escaped from an angry mob via a parade float that only moved five miles per hour. Principal Skinner reacted by shouting, “They’re very… slowly… getting… away…!” Perhaps Magneto’s on his way to the old mill to get some cider.

– Iron Man’s talking about the current Blue Beetle, who gets his powers from an alien scarab that’s latched onto his spine. Much like Venom, the scarab exists as a living costume that tries to make its host Jaime Reyes take the more violent options. The blue shapes around Tony is the scarab speaking to him. It’s saying, “Hey Tony” in their first panel and, “Yep!” in the second.

Page 20:

– Narration refers to Howl’s Moving Castle, which I know absolutely nothing about past the title.

Page 21:

– With Pym’s angry, “You and the internet!” line, I was inspired by Funnybook Babylon’s Chris Eckert who gets absolutely steamed whenever somebody alludes to 616 Hank Pym as being a wife-beater because he smacked Jan the same amount of times that Spider-Man’s smacked Mary Jane (once) and yet that’s all people remember him for.

Page 22:

– Back during Mark Millar’s Ultimate Fantastic Four run, Doom ended up doing the noble deed of absorbing a demon fetus into himself and escaping into the Marvel Zombies universe to keep the Ultimate world safe. It’s there that he met with the Galactus Zombies and got into a confrontation with no resolution. Since then, a Doombot has been shown in Ultimate Power and there’s been no explanation anywhere about how he escaped from the cosmic zombies.

– Also, when introduced, Ultimate Doom was designed with goat legs. Since Greg Land had nothing to trace, he just started drawing Doom as his normal 616 self with normal legs because he had pictures and statues to use as templates. The explanations for his leg surgery has been ignored.

– Happy Toyz Co is the company listed on the side of the Green Goblin truck in Maximum Overdrive. Also, the narration at the end of the page is almost word-for-word based on the ending text of the movie. Instead, it was a Russian satellite destroying a UFO.

Page 23:

– ManiacClown came up with this and sent it to me as a possible ad to appear in the middle of Week 5. I found it to be so hilarious that I insisted we use it to close out the entire shebang.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Similar Posts:

• Ultimate Edit Week 2: Day Six
• Ultimate Edit Week 4: Day One
• Ultimate Edit Week 4: Day Five
• New Ultimate Edit Week 5: Day Three
• New Ultimate Edit Week 1: Day Four

Posted in 4thletter exclusives, Lists, Ultimate Edit Week by Gavok |