Gavok note: This guest article comes from longtime ThWiP contributor MK Stangeland Jr., otherwise known as Space Jawa.

I could open with a bit about how great IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series has been, but I’ll let you read Gavok’s summary on the series if you need a real introduction.

Ready to move on? Good.

Let’s talk about Shredder, shall we? Because for all the things he may be – leader of the Foot Clan, the turtles arch-nemesis, ruthless as can be – he also happens to have some significant flaws.

One of these is a talent for making enemies who want him dead, especially in IDW’s current series. Which is kind of a bad deal since so many of theses people arguably have the ability to pull it off, too. At least, if you ignore his potential immortality. Which is why I can’t help but get the feeling that in spite of how hard it is to kill him, it’s not a question of if someone will snuff him out soon, but who?

So why don’t we take a moment to look at the likely suspects (and a few unlikely ones as well) and see just who might have what it takes to actually pull it off?

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Guest article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

(Quick warning to all you readers: may want to save this one for home. Some images are possibly less than work-appropriate.)

Years back, I bought, and then wrote about, a weird miniseries called Marville. It was a six-issue title that had a quasi-seventh issue. As far as I could ever tell, not finding a copy of it myself, the final issue was nothing but instructions on how to submit a pitch to the soon-to-be-relaunched Epic Comics imprint of Marvel. That relaunch would basically be about as much of a fiasco as Marville itself. I started looking around for as much information on it as I could. It seemed like a good idea – be a line that would allow for creator-owned works in the Marvel wheelhouse, and let some young upstarts work on properties which didn’t get much attention.

From what I can find, a total of fourteen issues were published under Epic before it was shut down and abandoned a year later.

I’ve looked around for any backissues, just to see what the quality of what came out was like, but the only thing I ever found, or that most people would have heard of from the line, was a Mark Millar miniseries. It was called Trouble. And I may be the only man on this Earth who liked it. (Yes, I know that the nerd-Hulk was apparently a fan in a later Ultimates story. I said our Earth for a reason, you pedant.)

I’m exaggerating a little – someone else out there has to like it. For some reason it got a hardcover trade last year, 8 after its initial publication. It’s the first time that a solicited collection of the series actually came to market. (Apparently one was announced and then quietly canned due to the book’s weak sales.) Still, it’s easily a unique work among the rest of Millar’s catalog. I’ve heard a lot of his work referred to as “popcorn flick” comics, especially since he began writing books to be turned into films directly – well, Trouble is basically “romantic comedy comics”. Or maybe something a little less mature, “teen sex comedy” comics. It’s got a real American Pie vibe to it.

And yes, just because I’m sure some of you are thinking it right now – this is the book where a young May gets teen pregnant and has a baby named Peter. I don’t hold this against the book for a single instant, since it’s pretty apparent that it’s not that May and that Peter.

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Guest article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett

JSA: The Unholy Three
Written by: Dan Jolley & Tony Harris
Art by: Tony Harris, Ray Snyder, JD Mettler
Focuses on: Every damn hero they could think to cram into it (so, the JSA and change)
Self-contained/Multiple books: Multiple books (is a sequel)
Published in: 2003
Central premise: The Bat, The Clock, and The Super-Man, Clark Kent, have to track down a pair of Soviet KGB agents gone rogue looking for a weapon called “The Trigger”.
Martian Manhunter Out of Fucking Nowhere? Nope.

This is draft number one two three four of this article. Rereading The Unholy Three, I realized something: the first issue is really good (in fact, it contains a scene that my brain had thought was the end of Liberty File), and works even better on a second reading. The second is where all my dislike came from. Let’s get into it and hopefully this isn’t going to lead to me scrapping the whole damn thing again…

We come in on an abandoned theater, where a man is being tortured for information. The place is Berlin, the year is 1948. A second gentleman enters…

…and we’re off.

Meanwhile, in Gotham City, Bruce “The Bat” Wayne is writing in his journal again. He hasn’t felt the need to since the war ended, but his recent activities leave him with few people to talk to, as he begins trying to clean up the eternally-strange streets of Gotham.

This one isn’t nearly as egregious as later examples, but this is where we get the start of Unholy Three shoving in every reference it can to other DC characters. Look at that, we’ve got three villains in passing in one dialogue bubble.

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Guest article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett

When we last left off, our heroes were… oh, that’s right, it looked like the war had gone to hell and in the aftermath of the brawl in the desert, The Owl was injured and currently resides in a nearby hospital.

The two spies are to meet with a field officer for debriefing, Terry Sloane. I’ll bet some of you will be absolutely shocked to discover that he has a mocking nickname from his underlings, “Mister Terrific”. As Terry dines with a beautiful woman, the two spies go to check up on a local contact.

And thus we meet the antagonist of book two, a Nazi spy/torturer known as the Scarecrow. He’s already killed the Owl (who held out against his techniques before dying), but the dead contact has given him all the intel he needs. The Bat cautions that he’s dealt with the bastard before and they need to use guns. The Hour ignores this, pops his pill, and lets everything go to hell.

The Bat and the Hour chase after the Nazi, and Terry is left with Eva in his arms. The ring he had been palming to propose to her does him little good as she slips away.

Cut back to: 1939, somewhere inside Germany. Hitler attends a demonstration by one of his scientists, who believes he can open a wormhole to other times, places, or dimensions. Something unseen emerges from the portal – something bulletproof. As the few guards in the room are cut down by their own ricocheting ammunition, Hitler places a pistol to the back of the other survivor’s head and fires, walking forward to greet the being, and give him a name.

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Gavok note: Back in 2010, Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett decided to review just about every DC Elseworlds title he could get through. Due to personal scheduling issues, he had to take a break, but now he’s back in the saddle and ready to go. Glad to have him back.

I could go on about how awful I am with deadlines or make excuses, but nobody cares, you’re here for the alternate realities. So how about a string of some really good Batman-centric books, eh?

JSA: The Liberty File
Written by: Dan Jolley & Tony Harris
Art by: Tony Harris & Ray Snyder
Focuses on: Batman narrating, various JSA reimaginings
Self-contained/Multiple books: Multiple books (one sequel)
Published in: 2000
Central premise: Bruce Wayne, “The Bat”, is an Allied spy trying to follow the trail of a new weapon the Nazis have developed. Two partners are assigned to the lone maverick due to the case’s importance: Rex “The Clock” Tyler, and Charles “The Owl” McNider.
Martian Manhunter Out of Fucking Nowhere? Quite.

The Liberty File is easily in my favorite Elseworlds (thus far? probably of the entire run) because it manages to pull off well a concept that gets screwed up often: a harder Batman. But it makes sense. This is a man who’s wanted by every enemy that knows of him in a wartime era, while behind enemy lines. He has reason to be paranoid. Working alone is what keeps him safest.

There’s also the fact that this is a Bruce Wayne who knows the value of a gun. They’ve saved his life in the field, and, well… Bruce himself sums it up at one point:

Despite that, the book never dips into anything ill-advised in his narration (which we later discover is being written in an actual journal he burns the pages from after writing, from one of the army psych team’s recommendation). It has a bit of a pulp novel feel in places, honestly, and the tone is consistently solid. Anyhow, I should actually discuss the story itself here.

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Gavok note: For the past year or so in my This Week in Panels series, panels for Ultimate Spider-Man have been supplied every month by regular reader Michael Stangeland, otherwise known as Space Jawa. With Ultimate Peter Parker’s corpse still a bit fresh, Jawa wanted to touch on his perspective of the mini-event. Since we’re always open to reader guest articles, I was more than happy to oblige.

I’ll admit right off the bat that when I first heard about Bendis’ The Death of Spider-Man story arc, I was concerned. Initially, it was worry about the titular character actually biting it, in spite of how he’s been around since the launch of Marvel’s Ultimate line-up. So it’s entirely possible that my reaction to how the story actually went there and did what’s previously only been done in a few dozen different issues of What-If?.

However, I’d also like to be able to think that I’m not that close-minded. After all, I was willing to see the entirety of the story arc through before passing final judgment, and I recognize that sometimes, character death is for the best, and a lot of great things can come out of it. After all, look at what Brubaker did with killing off Steve Rogers (before he brought him back, of course).

And for a world to truly move forwards, sometimes the characters we know and love have to move on so the next generation of great characters can take their turn in the spotlight and provide new story opportunities. When I first read Lord of the Rings back when I was in grade school, my gut reaction was to be disappointed that Bilbo wouldn’t be the main character again. Fortunately, I moved past that quickly enough and was able to get through the entirety of JRR Tolkien’s masterpiece.

So I’m hoping that I’m being honest with myself that the real reason for my distaste for the whole Death of Spider-Man arc is truly in reaction to how it was carried out rather than the end result. If it looks otherwise after I’ve said my piece, I encourage you to call me out on it.

I wish I could say that the use of “proudly” wasn’t meant to be serious.

The first major problem with Death of Spider-Man shows up in the very first three pages of the story. The major driving force behind Ultimate Pete’s death is that Norman Osborn is back from the dead. Of course, characters coming back from the dead isn’t anything that comics are unfamiliar with.

Problem is, this is Marvel’s Ultimate Comics universe. And if I’m not mistaken, one of the major points that has been made about the UC is that when characters die, they stay dead. Something that brings it even closer to being set in the “real world” than the classic 616 universe.

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Guest article series by Gabriel “TheJoker138″ Coleman, who apologizes for having to deal with a million papers and finals when he should be writing up more of these. Stupid priorities.

This episode starts out in the cobalt mines, with Shang Tsung summoning Quan Chi, who appears with Siann (the redhead from the previous episode), while Not Jade watches from the shadows. Quan is a bit pissed about being summoned, but his curiosity about why Shang has summoned him won out, so he came. Not Jade tries to attack Siann, but she blocks it and grabs her by the neck before she’s able to actually do anything. Shang says that she’s of no importance and to ignore her, but his offer of an alliance is important. One could say this is a… Deadly Alliance? But no, they don’t say that, they call it the unholy alliance, stop being silly.

At the training post, Kung Lao is meditating. His visions start as memories of Jen, but quickly turn into nightmares of her murder by Scorpion and his own death at the hands of Goro. Speaking of Goro, we go back to Outworld now and get a brief shot of either him, or another Shokan, watching over the mines.

Goro looks really short here

Shang and Quan are sitting quietly as Not Jade and Siann have a shouting match with each other. Shang says if they don’t shut up he’ll kill them both and Quan sends Siann away to avoid further incident. Quan really doesn’t care about Kung Lao dying, as all he wanted from him was his soul, which is out of his reach and asks what Shang could possibly have to offer him. Shang says he’ll teach him the secret of taking souls by force, as he can do and this is enough to grab Quan’s interest. He still doesn’t understand what Shang needs of him though. Shang is vague about his plan, but says that it needs both of their power and it still might be dangerous. The temptation is great enough that Quan accepts, on the condition that he gets Kung Lao’s soul when it’s all over. Shang agrees.

At the training post, there’s some actual training going on, which is the first of this we’ve seen. It is just between Siro and Taja though, so the whole “find new warriors to help in Mortal Kombat” seems to still be in the planning stages. They make a bet that if one can defeat the other in a single move, the loser has to be the other’s slave for 24 hours. Siro wins of course, because Taja is useless. Kung tells them that they need to stop messing around and take things more seriously. He’s in a pretty bad mood, what with the visions and all, an storms off. Raiden confronts him in the marketplace and Kung lets him know that the visions are back. Raiden tells him that as long as he’s afraid, the visions will never leave. They have a conversation about how Kung doesn’t want to accept the responsibility of being Mortal Kombat champion and Raiden tells him that quitting is the best idea he’s ever heard. Kung will quit, he’ll quit, they’ll all quit and it’ll be great. Raiden is a dick and I love it. Raiden then tells him that maybe he should actually find some new fighters to train, so that he doesn’t have to shoulder the responsibility all by himself, but Kung says he hasn’t because no one else could ever be as good as he is. Raiden laughs in his face and disappears.

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Guest article series by Gabriel “TheJoker138″ Coleman.

Holy shit, there’s an on-screen title that’s actually accurate. I’m seriously amazed. Anyway, we open up this week’s episode at a restaurant in the marketplace, where our trio of heroes are having dinner. Taja is still dressed like a golfer/tennis player in her pink polo shirt, Siro is hitting on the waitress and Kung is getting ready to leave, as he needs to rest up before going to the monastery the next morning. After he leaves, Taja and Siro have a brief discussion about why Siro is always so polite. He says the ladies love it. By the way, the waitress he’s hitting on is actually pretty conservatively dressed for this series:

What, are you a member of the Young Earthrealm Republicans or something? Prude.

Outside, Kung is on his way home when a woman runs up to him begging him for help, because another woman is being killed in an alley. They get there and two women are indeed attacking another one. These two are dressed more in line with the norm of this series:

Hey! It’s Jaime Pressly!

The woman who brought Kung to the alley ends up snapping the neck of the woman who was being attacked and reveals herself to be the third in this little group. The three of them all attack Kung, one of them even doing the Liu Kang flying kick attack from the games. Also, there’s kind of a creepy amount of upskirt shots in this fight, to the point where it kind of feels like I’m watching some creepy anime. Kung takes out two of them easily, but the third gets the upper hand on him. As she’s about to go in for the kill, Taja runs up and punches her square in the face. It’s nice to see Taja not being totally useless for once. Siro is with her and they scare the trio of women off. They ask Kung what happened and why they attacked him and he has no clue. Siro goes off to tell the guards about the murder, while Kung and Taja head home to deal with his wounds.

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Guest article series by Gabriel “TheJoker138″ Coleman.

Let’s get right into it again, because this is a short, boring episode where almost nothing of import happens. First off, there’s totally an on-screen title card again, that is once again in a totally different style than all of them before it, in a different spot than previous ones (they were all at the beginning, this is after the opening teaser) and is wrong:

I showed you the last one cause I thought it was weird. I’m showing you this one because it’s the most interesting thing in the whole episode.

Anyway, we start off with Taja in the marketplace, buying some stuff when she sees a man that she believes to be her father. She follows him into an alley and they embrace, but a portal to Outworld opens behind him and he drags her through. On the other side, her father vanishes and Not Jade is there waiting for them. Shang enters just as Taja and Not Jade are about to get into a scuffle and stops it from happening. His plan is to use Taja as bait to lure Kung Lao in and then… well, you know what he wants to do after that.

Taja, always the skeptic, still doesn’t even believe Outworld exists, which at this point is more stupid and stubborn than anything with all they’ve seen and faced. She’ll believe in guys made of oil, but not alternate dimensions that one of her best friends says he’s been to. She also doesn’t believe that it was really her father, just some trick that Shang was playing. In a twist, it appears it wasn’t just him morphing and that her father really is in the mines as a prisoner. Taja escapes from Not Jade’s grasp and runs off to try and find him. Shang tells another prisoner who is working for him to go get her and as long as he doesn’t kill her, he can do whatever he likes when he catches up.

The next morning at the training post, Kung Lao wakes up and joins Siro in the kitchen. As they’re bickering with one another about tea, they hear a strange sound outside and go to investigate. It’s a vision of Taja speaking in Shang Tsung’s voice, telling them that she’s being held prisoner and giving them a location that a portal will open that night. They’re told if they want to see her alive again, it would be wise of Kung to go through said portal.

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Guest article series by Gabriel “TheJoker138″ Coleman.

First off, I’d like to apologize that I’ve only done one of these this week so far, when I’ve been trying to crank out at least two. I’ve been busy with both class and work and also… Well, I read a brief synopsis of this episode before watching it and it sounded like the most boring thing ever. For the most part, it was, but near the end it changed to being pretty inadvertently hilarious. But regardless, putting it off wasn’t really fair to anyone actually following these and I’ll try not to let it happen again. From the synopsis I’ve been reading, I’m about one episode away from it actually starting to consistently feature characters from the games for the most part, so that should help. One more thing before we get to it, I would like to mention I have this staring me in the face, right next to one of the bus stops on the way to the college I attend:

It’s like they’re taunting me…

Oh, and another thing before we get into the actual episode. I’ve already said that this series is a bootleg I got a few years back and the quality isn’t consistent, but the one thing that has been weirding me out is the on screen titles. They’ve all been wrong and none of them have even had anything to do with what actually goes on in the episode. This one has one of these that fits both those criteria, but is also in a totally different format than the previous titles. Before, they would be on the bottom of the screen, as a single line of text that would be almost lost in the on screen credits if you weren’t paying attention. This episode has… well… see for yourself:

Taja is in this episode for all of 5 minutes

Anyways, this episode starts out at the training post, which Taja and Siro are now running the trading section of, while Kung will seemingly be handling the training parts. I somehow doubt we’re ever actually going to see anyone getting trained here though. Siro is haggling with a monk, who is an old friend of Kung’s from the monastery. Kung convinces Siro to back off a bit on his price, but after the monk leaves Siro reveals that Taja has him using a business strategy where even after giving the monk this “deal” they’ve still made a 200% profit. Kung is, of course, disapproving of this, but he promised to let them handle this end of it for a while and see if it works, so there’s not much he can do.

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