On the Fifth Day of Ultimate Edit, my true love gave to me: something stupid about Twinkies. I don’t know. We’re almost done here. Here’s the first half of the issue’s final scene, involving Magneto’s embarrassments.

On another note, ManiacClown really, really wanted me to insert a reference to Ghetto Man into this segment. I ultimately said no because it didn’t come off right and few would get the joke. I think it’s the least I can do to take a second and link you fine folks to Ghetto Man roasting the Justice League, featuring Ed McMahon.

We’ll finish it off tomorrow.

Day Seven!

Yesterday, the big Venom fight had come to a conclusion, Wasp and Hawkeye got at each other’s throats and everyone’s favorite Alabama prom couple copped attitude at Captain America. Now we got a lot of talking. Sorry. The next three pages aren’t the most exciting.

Just want to make a note that some people have missed. Neither me nor ManiacClown are the guy that did the famous Civil War parody. That was MightyGodKing. I appreciate the compliment, though.

More fun on Monday.

Day Six!
Day Seven!

As we last left our heroes… Wait. Nobody really looks up to these jokers. As we last left our vigilante protagonists, Venom was kicking their asses. Then Valkyrie flew down from left field and tried chopping him up. It didn’t take. Venom has the sword and has a decent idea of how to use it.

In that first image, at the very bottom, am I the only one who thinks that Venom looks like he’s wearing a monocle? “We want to look rich!”

Once again, thanks to ManiacClown. That ham thing was his brainchild.

Tomorrow = more.

Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

The Venom Marathon continues! In yesterday’s episode, Venom effortlessly shrugged off several dozen bullets with little discomfort. The Ultimates decided that perhaps tiny lasers and brass knuckles could stop him. They thought wrong. Now let’s get back to the action.

Cutting room floor: collaborator ManiacClown really wanted me to have Valkyrie jump into action while yelling, “DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! Sweater Puppy Power!” but I vetoed it. I figured I’d mention in here to give it at least give his idea a little love.

Join us for more fun tomorrow. Santa Claus is coming to town.

Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Last time in Ultimates 3 #1, Vanessa from King of Fighters had sex with a dying man on video and then Venom showed up for no raisin. With the help of ManiacClown, join me in looking at the next three pages of this epic.

More tomorrow. See you then.

Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

About a year or so ago, I recall explaining Jeph Loeb to somebody. The guy I was talking to only read Marvel, so he didn’t understand why I found Loeb’s writing so annoying. The only thing he knew of him was Loeb’s old Batman stuff, which of course, was very good. This was before Fallen Son, Wolverine and it’s not like he was going to read the then-new miniseries Onslaught Reborn anyway.

I explained it via Superman/Batman and how ridiculous it got after Jeph’s son tragically died of cancer. Loeb’s writing took a turn for the worse to the point that he only relies on his whole “Toss everyone into the mix and watch it sell despite quality” gimmick to get by. He still gets high profile comic jobs that will continue to do well based on both the topic and the great artists he’s usually paired with. No matter how bad his Hulk run is, it will capitalize on both the McGuinness art and the phenomenon of Greg Pak’s amazing Planet/World War Hulk epic. Wolverine was unreadable, but it’s Wolverine and the pages looked amazing.

My friend didn’t care much about Superman or Batman, so my explanation of why it was so bad towards the end of Loeb’s run didn’t work. To better explain, I jokingly came up with Jeph Loeb’s Spider-Man/Wolverine. A hypothetical comic where in one story they would face Doctor Octopus, who has for some reason taken over the Hand. Or a story where Ben Reilly returns with an adamantium skeleton. Or a story with Mary Jane becoming the new Phoenix. If anything else, I knew that there would be some kind of story arc where Venom and Magneto would team up. Such a concept makes no sense in any way, but that would never stop Loeb from shoehorning those two popular villains together for the sake of another epic crossover filled with random guest appearances.

I was only half joking when I suggested it, and yet here it is. Much has been said about Jeph Loeb and MAD!’s Ultimates 3 #1. Very few of it good. It’s nice of them to wait until December to release this, as we can be sure that this is really the worst comic of the year. In a year where Mary Marvel turned slutty and fought a demon made of dead babies who threatened to eat her poop, it was still toppled by this muddy comic that can only be considered the Ultimate line’s first great step into self-destruction.

This comic needs its own special take. Much like Christopher Bird‘s deservingly popular take on Civil War, I teamed up with Something Awful forum member ManiacClown to create Ultimate Edit. Speaking of Mr. Bird, he was gracious enough to help me find a font that doesn’t scrape the eyes. Nice guy.

That’s it for today. Join us tomorrow for the next three pages.

Day Two!
Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

There were two, count ’em, two Marvel comics this week that featured sex tapes as a plot point.

One was Ultimates 3 #1, a comic so thoroughly bad that the only thing I can really praise is that there is an Ultimate Black Panther now, though he jobs like a chump to College Sophomore Eddie Brock in the Venom Costume.

I guess I can’t praise that at all.

Was the newly deAsianed Wasp honestly letting Captain America know that it’s the 21st century now and his pitiful 1940s-era brain just doesn’t get that incest is all to the good?

I mean, what was that all about?

Also it’s kind of awesome how Wasp goes out and buys Tony Stark’s sex tape and screens it in front of all his buddies for what’s apparently the first time they’ve heard about it?

“Hey guys, check this out! Tony Stark and his dead murdering traitor of a fiancee are getting it on! PS Tony what’s the deal with this tape I just bought?”

Great writing, that.

The other book is The Order #5, words by Matt Fraction and art by Khari Evans over Barry Kitson’s layouts.

In the words of one syllable: Wow. Two syllables: Holy wow.

My hands down favorite panel in the book is the one at the top of this page:

He draws the most beautiful sneers I’ve ever seen. The body language is so dead on, too.

Marvel? Push this guy. He is the next big thing. He’s got a funky style that isn’t too far off from the superhero standard while still being pretty awesomely distinct. His talking heads are wonderful, too. Give him a go on a Bendis-written Luke Cage series if you gotta. You know that Bendis would write that in a hot minute.

Do everything you can to make him a star, but please don’t let him draw anything Loeb or Millar writes because I’d like to enjoy the story as well as his awesome art.

Just give me (us) more of his art, that’s all I want.

(Note: This was originally meant to be a few paragraphs, only it stretched into a full rant about a series of things. I’m not a Spider-Man expert and haven’t read every single thing he’s been in for the past few years. Forgive me if my information is off. But I feel that I know enough for my ire to be justified.)

Back when Marvel was in the latter days of the Spider-Man Clone Saga, the writers all got together to brainstorm a good way to end this massive story arc. They needed something big. A lot of the ideas weren’t so good, like revealing a big chunk of it to be a virtual reality program or have Peter Parker go public with being a clone or just kill off Ben during Onslaught. Some were a bit better, like revealing that Judas Traveler was Seward Trainer from the future and that Seward betrayed Peter into thinking he was a clone all this time. The most interesting and best way to keep both Peter and Ben fans happy turned out to be a time loop.

See, Ben would start remembering events that happened to Peter. Being buried alive by Kraven or fighting Venom. Then, during a big villain gathering climactic finale, Carnage would mortally wound the Judas Traveler and Scryer would reveal his true self. He is Mephisto, orchestrating this whole mess.

As part of this craziness, Peter is sent back in time five years with a distorted memory. Hence, neither is the clone. Peter Parker and Ben Reilly are both Spider-Man, just aged a bit differently. Not the best story ever, but it wasn’t too bad.

There were a handful of reasons why this idea was turned down. Ben should be more aged if this was true, but considering the healing part of his powers and the relatively less stressful life he’s had in those five years, I could buy that they’d still look the same. Then there are a couple continuity issues, like how Mephisto is supposed to be dead around that time. But the main reason why it was tossed out?

Mephisto doesn’t really belong in a Spider-Man story!

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Back when I was doing reviews on the old Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat comics, I found that there were comics made based on other one-on-one fighting games, such as Virtua Fighter and Tekken. I scored these two one-shots and sat on them for a while, knowing that they would be best saved for a rainy day. More than that, something seemed off about reviewing these two alone. I needed a third comic to round it out. One day, when reading about Street Fighter on Wikipedia, fate smacked me in the face.

Being a D-level comic blogger like I am, rather than turn away from this ink-and-paper demon spawn, I reacted with, “I need to own this!” I don’t know. Since this 4th Letter gig, I’ve been finding myself going out of my way just to read pure shit. Chris Eckert has the market cornered in making fun of Countdown, and yet I find myself wanting in. That’s why when the series finishes, I plan on reading the entire series in one go backwards Memento style! You know. For science. I might even try reading World War Hulk: Gamma Corps with all the text whited out. It might be interesting in a self-torturing way.

Let’s get DC’s Street Fighter: The Movie out of the way, because believe it or not, it’s going to get worse. A lot has been said about the movie. There are a ton of things wrong with it, but the most complained-about part is the complete lack of loyalty to the source.

The game’s story: A serious martial artist and his less-serious best friend go around the world to train and build themselves up as the greatest street fighters. The more serious one is hunted down by a megalomaniac out to exploit the martial artist’s physical potential. This villain is targeted by many, including an American military man and a Chinese Interpol agent who each harbor a personal vendetta. This all comes to a head in a one-on-one fighting tournament, featuring great fighters from all over the globe.

The movie’s story: A megalomaniac takes a bunch of hostages in Thailand. A military man with an American tattoo, despite having a foreign accent thicker than Double Stuffed Oreos, leads a world-wide military team into Thailand to save the day. Two weasely weapon salesmen, a Chinese news reporter and her camera men (who happen to be a sumo wrestler and a boxer) get involved. Plus a scientist turns one of the main character’s friends into a green monster.

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Johanna Draper Carlson nails one of my problems with Alan Moore’s latest works.

I also, and I cringe at the potential response to this but I’m going to say it anyway, outgrew this kind of fanfiction years ago. When I was a kid, my impulse was to match up the casts of favorite TV shows (because I was a child of the 80s). It’s not that much more clever when Mr. Moore does it with literary figures, except in his case, you need a scorecard to recognize some of the more obscure ones. It’s also not very creative to think that simply having character A from book series B meet character C from TV series D makes for sufficient story. It doesn’t.

I haven’t read Black Dossier yet, nor Lost Girls, and you know what? I kind of don’t want to. I’ve gone into why I can’t get into Alan Moore, and LoEG seems to just be more of the same.

LoEG is continuity porn for literature geeks.

I’m tired of continuity porn and I’m tired of pastiche.

Stop being so clever, Mr. Moore, and write stories with real plots with your own characters.

Amen to that.