Ultimatum Edit Week 4: Day Seven
June 13th, 2009 by Gavok | Tags: captain america, cyclops, hawkeye, jean grey, jeph loeb, magneto, Marvel comics, storm, ultimate edit, ultimates, ultimatum, valkyrie, wolverine, x-menYesterday’s installment of Ultimatum Edit brought our remaining heroes to Magneto’s lair. Magneto showed that he has balls of steel (which he can manipulate) by not blowing their planes out of the sky. Then Angel died gratuitous Loeb death #529 and Sabretooth got shot in the eye, which is as much of an inconvenience as Superman’s cellophane S was to Non.
Let’s take it home.
And there we go. Funny how Cap and Valkyrie are more of a threat to Magneto than Thor after all. ManiacClown insisted I didn’t make any jokes about how it looks like Valkyrie has the runs during that silhouette panel where Magneto cuts her, so good on him.
And if you’re rightfully wondering about that sound effect that I inserted into that scene, well, I couldn’t help myself. You see, it’s a ridiculous piece from a ridiculous sequence in a ridiculous comic that I will be reviewing in the coming days. Want a peek? Knock yourself out. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Phew. Only one more issue of this left.
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- Ultimatum Edit Week 2: Day Six
- New Ultimate Edit Week 2: Day Five
I love how in the first of these Magneto’s remaining arm apparently works, but only upside-down. Way to go, “artist.”
Gavok and ManiacClown, thanks for making this thing funny!! i honestly tought Ultimatum 3 was the worst thing ever but this is even worst!! O_o if not for you i could never read it 😀
So let me see if I understand. The master of magnetism lost his arm to a metal sword and then got bonked in the head with a metal shield. Time to demote him to “Magneto, Flunkie of Ferromagnetism.”
Once again, I thank Gavok and ManiacClown for replacing the bad senseless with the good senseless.
And I just thought of something: since Spider-Man died, does that mean that the entire Ultimate Marvel universe is a giant “What If?” I half-expect Uatu to pop up and say, “This answers the question, ‘What if you don’t floss after each meal?'”
Dear Valkyrie, Hawkeye, and maybe even Captain America,
You guys know you can adapt your fighting styles to include weapons that aren’t made of metal, right? Hells bells Clint, you already switched from guns to arrow guns and now apparently a stringless bow of some kind. Just take off the damn arrowhead and shoot him in the face. Cap, nice job with the boots. Val, maybe find a stone spear or hammer or something.
Ah W4, you have forgotten that he could magnetically control Thor’s stone hammer through….something. This evens out EVERYTHING!
In all seriousness, though, Magneto’s power requires so much writer bullshitting, massive scaling, and very, very, VERY liberal guidelines as to what constitutes a metal to be even remotely plausible as a threat that it’s downright scary.
Stealing Thor’s hammer seems to be a popular trick for Loeb’s Villain Sues. Rulk did it by jumping really high, which made gravity disappear so he could lift the hammer. Then you have things like this, where the heroes’ inability to remember that Magneto can control metal weapons evens out with Magneto’s inability to remember he can control metal weapons. I can only assume there’s a 14-year-old fanfic writer getting secret royalty checks, or perhaps that Jeph Loeb has pictures has pictures of Marvel’s entire entire editorial staff doing something illegal to a llama.
*holds head in hands*
Then again, the only reason I’ve read any Ultimate comics in years is because of these great edits, so really, it’s a net gain. Gavok and ManiacClown, thank you for squeezing shit into diamonds.
Oh, and if you do want to get technical about Magneto’s powers, it’s worth pointing out that magnetism only affects a very few types of metal, as is well-known by anyone whose ever owned a refrigerator. I realize the vagueness over what Magneto can actually do is a tradition going back to when Stan Lee first had Angel bounce off a magnetic field, but that’s just always bugged me.
Of course, there’s a difference between not being able to control a nonferrous sword and simply not choosing to until after your damn arm’s been chopped off. The time Ultimate Magneto was defeated by a guy made out of steel is no longer his worst moment.
While people have pointed out that Magneto is fighting a girl with a metal sword, a guy with a metal shield, and a guy with a metal arrowhead, let me point out that he is also fighting a guy with metal bones, a guy with a metal visor, and a guy in a metal suit.
I would like it if the twist as to why Magneto is acting this way is that he no longer has small scale magnetic powers, only epic scale magnetic control. So, he can use magnetism to make tidal waves and snow and stuff (Science!) but up close he has to use his hands to snap peoples necks and hit people with hammers and swords and his detached arm (tis but a flesh wound!).
@Adam:
But… that would be smart. Not like Jeph Loeb at all.
On the note of epic scale, magnetism isn’t even impressive, even if you’re absurdly lenient with “well, that’s magnetic,” unless you go the extra step and make the scale of the power absolutely absurd. Magneto can’t just move metal around, he can lift floating asteroid things the size of small moons. It’s like giving Pyro the ability to produce city-sized blocks of flame on a whim and eradicate states if he feels pressed. Except that producing flame is legitimately useful even on a small-mid scale.
I like how creative some manga writers will get with powers. For example, there was this guy in JJBA who had magnet powers, but he never once threw shit around or levitated. He would drain the iron out of a person’s body, sapping their lifeforce, and he covered his body with a layer of fine, pigmented particles, turning invisible. All done with magnetism.
Come to think of it though, this is the same series that used the “we only use 10% of our brains” thing to justify body horror vampires who can shoot pressurized liquid lasers from their eyes and survive headless at the bottom of the sea.
That’d be over-doing scope rather than scale, I’d guess, and honestly it sounds way more interesting. Equally bullshitty, but more interesting than “oh no, magneto is mysteriously surrounded with a “magnetic shield” again!”
My god. Are these things really happening? I haven’t read a Marvel comic in a little while, and I really wouldn’t believe the things that I’m seeing if I weren’t seeing them. The lunatics are really in charge of the asylum up there.