Anyway, during my breaks of playing Mega Man 9 while cursing in extreme fury every ten seconds, I’ve been working on my write-up of the 52 Graphic Audio. Just wondering, are there any requests for samples? Keep in mind that unfortunately, due to constraints, the only stories covered are Booster’s, Montoya’s and Black Adam’s.
Even back in the day, before I even really read comics, I had somehow heard of Scud: The Disposable Assassin. I’m not really sure how. I didn’t have any diehard comic-reading friends. I’ve never even touched a Sega Saturn, so I wouldn’t have paid attention to his game. Yet somehow I knew of the series and what the main character looked like despite the series having less than two years’ worth of issues during its initial run while being published by an independent company. That’s pretty impressive.
In all the years I’ve been into comics, I never thought about getting into the series because all I had ever heard of it was that it was jarringly unfinished. I’m a guy who enjoys closure, so that would have bugged the hell out of me. Luckily, series creator Rob Schrab finally got around to finishing the series off ten years after the fact with four additional issues.
I learned this when the Barnes and Noble I work for got in Scud: The Disposable Assassin: The Whole Shebang. That’s the funny thing about being the comic guy at the book store. You’d see something pop up in the receiving department and buy it yourself. Then when the store gets in a second copy in to replace it, you’ve already convinced a co-worker to pick it up. It’s a while before the book-buying public gets a chance to see it.
I picked up Whole Shebang on a whim. I remember hearing enough good things about the series and the art looked fun, so why not. I got through the whole book, filled with 25 and a half issues, in about a week and I had a complete blast doing so. I highly recommend it.
The comic takes place a couple decades into the future where murder is perfectly legal, at least in America. Street corners have vending machines that offer disposable assassins referred to as Scuds. Upon completing their mission and killing their target, they self-destruct. Our Scud is part of the company’s “Heart Breaker Series” and is hired to take out a nightmarish female mutant creature named Jeff. Midway into the mission, he discovers the sign on his back warning bystanders about his eventual self-destruction. Not wanting to die, he instead wounds Jeff, calls 911 and has the monster put on life-support. Scud gets to live, but he also needs to pull assassin jobs to pay for the life-support.
I’d be blogging, but I’m in Tokyo right now, getting my Lupe Fiasco on. I leave you in Gavin and Esther’s very capable hands for the next week or so.
I am taking suggestions for things to buy, however. The only thing I have planned is to hit the BAPE store and find a bookstore that carries art books. What’s on must-read or must-have status these days?
Like most comics collectors I have a completist urge. I want the whole run, the whole story, every single issue that a certain writer or artist has done. I’m also cheap, and picky. Many times, these urges war with each other. I’ve already owned up to playing favorites with characters. Usually, it’s not the art or the writing that makes me drop a book, but something that I don’t like happening with a character. This can run the gamut from a bad romantic pairing, to a death, to simple out of character moments.
Completists: what books have you dropped, and why?
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.
Well, here it is! The last day.
In the penultimate installment, Quicksilver sacrificed himself for his father by taking an arrow to the chest. The irony is that he would have been able to run in there in time to catch the arrow with his hands if he didn’t have that limp from being shot in the knees by Magneto back in Ultimate War! Good going, Master of Magnetism.
Here’s the rest.
And that does it. My eternal thanks to ManiacClown for writing this with me from issue #1. Thanks to hermanos for the site to showcase this and his never ending support. Thanks to the MightyGodKing himself, Christopher Bird, for his guidance. Thanks to Jeph Loeb, the Joel Schumacher of comics, for giving us such an easy target.
And especially thanks to all of you readers out there who enjoyed it. Even those of you who didn’t enjoy it. You gave it a shot anyway, so I can’t argue.
Now, will there be some kind of Ultimatum Edit in the near future? Hm… we’ll see.
BUT! I can do you one better. I’m sure many of you have heard of Rifftrax, the website second coming of Mystery Science Theater 3000, headed by Mike Nelson and the rest. Some of you may have heard of iRiffs, the new feature on the site. Now any moron with a microphone and time on his hands can put together his own Rifftrax selections for the public to purchase and enjoy.
I am one of these morons.
That’s right. Me, Nick “ManiacClown” Zachariasen and my old friend James Howard will be making fun of things video/audio-style. Here we’re just starting off with Japoteurs, a somewhat racist Superman cartoon from the 40’s. But we have a lot more in the works, so stay tuned once the iRiffs section is up and running.
Tomorrow or so, I’ll probably have some kind of annotations thing for Ultimate Edit up. So if you’re into that kind of stuff, check it out.
Again, thanks for reading, folks. It’s been a blast.
Variety reports that because of the success of Smallville and, I’m thinking, the death of the last executive to okay the Birds of Prey series, the CW will be ‘prepping’ The Graysons, a story about a young acrobat in the years before he will become Batman’s sidekick.
That’s right. You know him, you love him, and his name is . . .
Home stretch time.
In the last installment, Ant Man said something really unbearably stupid. Let’s move on as the Ultimates confront Magneto, not with actions, but with words.
So, yeah, if you were wondering where I was going with that inner dialogue about Iron Man’s spine, there you go.
Thanks to writing partner ManiacClown for coming up with too much usable dialogue so that I had to make the text all scrunched up and awkward looking to fit in some word bubbles. Thanks a lot, jerk!
Tomorrow is the big conclusion. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
If you didn’t miss out on yesterday’s happenings, you probably remember Valkyrie defeating her mutant captors and Yellowjacketron’s army making a fool out of Magneto. Luckily for Magneto, the cavalry has arrived in the form of the Ultimates! Hurray for two-page splash pages!
By the way, if you’re wondering just what was really said in that scene, I’d be more than happy to explain it.
“Don’t you know how close we are to being you? I’d rather not kill you, Jan. My experimentation on your DNA has only begun. Besides… you’re almost like a mother to me.”
“Then I guess that makes me… THE MOTHERFUCKER!”
Jeph Loeb, everybody. Let’s give him a hand.
On another note, people are all excited about the new Thor movie and the announcement of Kenneth Branagh as the director. Personally, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not that he’s the director, mind you, but that they’re making a Thor movie. We already did have a Thor movie! Don’t you remember?
Thanks again to my editing associate ManiacClown. We’ll be back tomorrow and a very special installment the day after that.
