Thinking back to yesterday, I seem to recall Thor slaughtering Unus and then being easily beaten by Magneto. Now ManiacClown and I are back to finish off yet another fun week.
In case you were wondering, the original, untouched version of that last page has Ultron ranting about vibrators. Yes, really.
Thanks for reading. Unless we get another delay or two, get set for Week 5 in August.
Yesterday, Valkyrie got knocked out of the sky by Pyro and then Mastermind mastered her mind. Then Pyro received the nomination for Most Out-of-Character in a Jeph Loeb Production. Congratulations, Mr. Allerdyce.
Now we go to a Lord of the Rings battle sequence that’s reduced to three pages because MAD! can’t fit any more into his hefty schedule.
Tomorrow we’ll get a little conclusion to this scene, as well as more fun with robots to close out the week.
Thanks to ManiacClown, who’s good at translating our thoughts into Thor-speak.
In our last installment, Hawkeye was saved by Ka-Zar, Shanna and a couple hungry tigers. Then Wolverine and Black Panther got punked by a guy calling himself the Juggernaut. Now we focus on Valkyrie.
Maybe in the next issue, we’ll see Ultimate Deadpool giving all his money to a mutant charity.
Get ready for tomorrow because that’s when ManiacClown and I will cover the EPIC* battle between Thor and Magneto!
*It isn’t epic by any means
Continuing from yesterday’s installment, Hawkeye is getting a thrashing at the hands of Sabretooth. Now some of Ka-Zar’s little buddies join in the fight.
It’s funny. A day or so before this issue came out, I thought about how surprising it was that Loeb hadn’t resorted to a Juggernaut cameo yet. There goes that surprise.
Apologies to ManiacClown, as I ended up cutting a gag of his based around Gimpy Cain Marko being referred to as “the Buggernaut”.
Join us tomorrow for more from Valkyrie. Can’t wait.
It was only yesterday when we saw some of the Ultimates just kind of hang out in the jungle. Then Captain America rescued Wasp from the clutches of a robotic Iron Man double. That’s about it.
This issue is a very special one. I’ve decided to fit in a couple pages of ads for you. Namely, Marvel’s ads for Ultimate Origins. Sure, the first issue already came out, but better late than never.
ManiacClown and I will continue with Hawkeye’s emergency intestinal surgery tomorrow. See you then.
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!
As you may recall from yesterday, Magneto, his kids and his wacky neighbor Xavier took off towards Australia. They couldn’t have stressed harder that it was a flashback if they tried. They crashed and ran into those guys from the Ewok movies. That was then, this is now…
Actually, never mind. This first page is about “then” too.
As always, thanks to ManiacClown, who came up with that recap page. We’ll be back tomorrow to talk about robots. Plus more from Hawkeye. You kids love Hawkeye, don’t you?
Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!
After three months of peace, we’re back. If you’re new to Ultimate Edit or you forgot about what the hell’s been going on in those earlier issues, here’s the rundown:
In issue 1, Venom showed up for no reason and beat up everyone until Thor remembered that he was Thor and toasted him. Then Scarlet Witch got shot dead. Quicksilver was a sad mutant panda. Also, there were rumors at the time that Nighthawk from Squadron Supreme was going to end up in the Ultimate Marvel universe, thereby making him an immediate suspect for being Black Panther, but that proved wrong, so my bad on that. Then again, that speculation came from before we saw how blatant the hints were that Black Panther is Captain America.
Then came issue 2, where Hawkeye bullied Spider-Man around and the Ultimates got in an ACTION-PACKED fight against the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Magneto and Quicksilver left with Scarlet Witch’s corpse and Wolverine showed up because… to hell with it. I think I’ve exhausted every Wolverine/cameo joke there is.
He stuck around for the third issue, where he talked forever about his connections to Magneto’s family. A whole lot of them went to the Savage Land and Iron Man started beating on Wasp. Turns out that Iron Man is an evil robot.
Now back to the story.
Huh. So the late-80’s was so long ago that it’s depicted as being black and white? I feel old now.
Thanks again to ManiacClown for helping make the magic.
Day Two!
Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!
I was flipping through a trade for Avengers: Disassembled earlier when I came across this ad for the then-upcoming Young Avengers.
Three years after the fact, I have to say that this is a brilliant page. That one little tagline about how it isn’t what we think ends up having three different definitions.
First, you may initially think that these guys are the young versions of the Avengers. Like the Muppet Babies with battle armor. Obviously, that’s not the case.
Second, there’s the fact that a series entitled Young Avengers sounds like it has to suck. It turned out to be really rad, but the very concept sounds like it has every reason to fail. I recall asking internet friend A.o.D. about how the series was after two issues. His response was something to the effect of, “It’s trying hard to convince you that this is a good idea. I have to say it’s doing a good job.”
Those two were more immediate definitions. The other one wouldn’t be realized for quite a while. All four of those guys aren’t what you think in terms of what they’re supposedly based on.
Patriot may seem like Young Captain America, but he was lying. He didn’t have any Super Soldier Serum in him for a while. Even when he did, it was from the lesser-known Captain America: his grandfather, Isaiah Bradley.
Asgardian may have had the name and magic to suggest that he had some kind of link to Thor, but that was debunked once he changed his name to Wiccan and discovered that he’s really the son of Scarlet Witch. Somehow. I forgot how that whole thing worked out.
Iron Lad looked like he could be related to Iron Man on the surface, but he turned out to be a young Kang the Conquerer wearing Vision as armor. Now he’s just Vision with young Kang’s personality, albeit with his face blown off. Stupid Skrulls.
Speaking of Skrulls, we then have Hulkling, who has nothing to do with the Hulk other than aping his form. Instead, it turns out he’s the extremely powerful offspring of Captain Marvel and the Skrull Princess Anelle. No gamma radiation for him.
The Black Captain America, Scarlet Witch, Vision and Captain Marvel. The original four Young Avengers may live in the footsteps of heroes, but not in the way you think they would.
It’s a busy time for the Hulk. Not only is his movie at the top of the box office charts, smashing up the Happening, but he’s getting a lot of play for a character who currently only has a supporting role in his own book. A shitty book, but at least he has connections elsewhere. Incredible Hercules, co-starring Hulk’s little buddy Amadeus Cho, is one of Marvel’s best books right now. Skaar: Son of Hulk just started up and last week gave us a one-shot by Jeff Parker about futuristic warrior feminist Thundra going back in time to scrape some DNA off Hulk and make a green futuristic warrior feminist daughter. Then you have Wolverine, where we see that 50 years in the future, Hulk’s inbred grandchildren rule California with an iron fist. Whatever that’s all about.
Hulk is becoming like the gamma irradiated Wilt Chamberlain of Marvel.
A few weeks ago at work, we got a bunch of Hulk books for kids to tie in with the new movie. Junior novelizations, picture books, coloring books and so on. One thing we got was an activity book that came with a tiny little Hulk figure, held onto the cover with a plastic shell. The figure is supposed to be tossed into water, where it will expand into six times its original size.
Being that some (most) children are little bastards, one of the copies of that activity book got trashed. The plastic covering got torn off and it became unsellable. I pulled that copy of the book to be sent back to the publisher, but decided to at least put that Hulk figure to good use. I called over my manager and we got a cup of water, filled it up and dropped the Hulk in there, ready for the mild thrill of watching it grow like one of Rita’s creations.
…nothing happened.
Going back to the book, we found that we needed to wait up to ten days for it to grow. Christ, what’s the freaking point? If I felt like waiting over a week for some pointless green thing to grow, I’d buy a Chia Pet.
Could you imagine how lame Hulk would be if Banner had to wait ten days to transform, like some kind of superhero Brady Law? “Sorry, Tony. I’d love to help you and the guys fight Kang the Conquerer, but I have three more days of making myself angry before I can be any help. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Small Wonder marathon I need to get back to.”
Enough days have passed and the Hulk has indeed grown quite a bit. Although he may be bigger and stronger, Hulk has certainly seen better days.
You ever read Marvel Ruins where instead of becoming a green-skin giant, the gamma bomb turned Bruce Banner into a mountain of tumors? If you haven’t, don’t. The comic sucks. But I can’t shake the memory from looking at this thing. Maybe his bicep isn’t angry enough.
Those black lines are supposed to be ridges in his forehead, but I can’t help but think of them as cartoony eyes. Like something Kirby would have. In fact, it reminds me of Roast Beef from Achewood.
Poor, poor SpongeHulk Tornpants. Maybe he can get a job working for Dr. Frankenstein or move into a bell tower.
Caught the midnight showing of Incredible Hulk tonight. Very fun movie that’s definitely better than the Ang Lee non-prequel. It flows nicely and the action wasn’t too brief, as it sometimes felt in Iron Man. Not to say it’s better than Iron Man, because it isn’t, but there’s no shame in that. Besides, this is the second episode of the Avengers Movie Saga and it does feel right in that respect.
Several weeks back I read the Peter David novelization, as I’m wont to do, so I already had been spoiled in terms of the plot. While there are few surprises, there’s still the interesting experience of seeing stuff that was in the original version of the story that got cut out. I’ve done this before, of course, with Spider-Man 3 and Iron Man. The former was originally a solid story until important chunks of it got cut out. The latter remained good, despite a subplot cut out because of the Air Force’s say so.
With Incredible Hulk, the good outweighed the bad in terms of cuts. God, did it ever. Yes, there was definitely some stuff that should have stayed in there. No doubt. It’s just that a lot of scenes that got ousted had the potential to be really bad. Really bad. I’m talking Superman’s cellophane S projectile bad. I’m talking Matt Murdock fighting Elektra at the playground bad. I’m talking the entirety of Rise of the Silver Surfer bad. It’s cool that I count that movie as one long, horrible scene, right?
Word on the street is that there are 70 minutes of stuff cut. It’ll probably be seen in DVD form. Whether or not that makes for a better movie remains to be seen. The deleted scenes below, filled with spoilers, don’t seem to sum up to 70 minutes, but when it comes to cutting them being a good or bad idea, I’ll let you be the judge.
