Yesterday had Kitty Pryde find the torn mask of Spider-Man and then Dr. Strange and Dormammu started doing one of their magic fighting skits. And Dormammu’s in the middle of a song. Don’t forget about that.

“THEY CALL HULK THE STREAK! HULK STRONGEST ONE THERE IS ON TWO FEET!”

You know what’s even stupider about this? We’re not going to get to the climactic battle with Dormammu. Chances are, that’s going to be left for Ultimate Fantastic Four: Requiem and left out of the main book.

Hulk’s rampage will continue next time. Come on back tomorrow. ManiacClown and I will be waiting for you.

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

I’m sure you remember yesterday… or maybe not. I mean, nothing really happened due to it being just a cover, a recap and a page of Hulk breaking stuff. At least here we’ll get somewhere.

Blame ManiacClown for the Yo Gabba Gabba thing. The dude’s a dad, so I guess that’s his excuse. Still, he showed me clips from that show of Biz Markie talking to children while being stoned out of his mind, so I can’t hate on it.

If you want some actual context on how we got from point A to point B, in the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man and Hulk stumbled upon Strange’s house, where demons and stuff were being released due to the place’s structural damage. Strange was taken over by Nightmare, who attacked the heroes, only for Hulk to pound on Nightmare until that big explosion happened. I explain this because Ultimate Spider-Man is the only comic that makes the Ultimatum situation not suck.

We’ll be back tomorrow for more from Strange and the Great Pumpkin.

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

Hey, buddy! Welcome to another week of Ultimatum Edit! It’s been a while, so I’m sure you’re a little fuzzy on what’s been going on. Let me recap for you.

Issue 1: Nightcrawler died, Dazzler died, Beast died.

Issue 2: Wasp died, Xavier died.

Issue 3: Thor died, Yellowjacked died, Cannonball died, Emma Frost died, Polaris died, Sunspot died, Blob died, Detonator (who?) died, Forge died, Longshot died.

And other characters died in other comics. That’s what’s important. Who cares about telling a story? It’s all about being SHOCKING! Whoa, did you see how bloody that one scene was? Who’s going to go next?! Whoo! Hope died a little too, by the way.

ManiacClown and I will be back tomorrow to deal with Dr. Strange. Oh, and Kitty Pryde gets a page too.

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

A couple years back, Marvel released an animated straight-to-DVD movie Ultimate Avengers, based somewhat on the popular Ultimates comic. Softening the hard series put a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, but it did have some stuff going for it. It had that great Avengers vs. Hulk fight at the end and a sweet scene where Captain America realizes just which century he’s woken up in. All in all, it wasn’t so good.

A sequel came out soon after, featuring Black Panther. I remember very little of it due to how boring it was. The highlight of it being a fun segment where Tony Stark takes a walk through his cave of infinite Iron Man armors to settle on the War Machine design.

As much as I didn’t like Ultimate Avengers 2, that doesn’t compare to the outright disgust I had at Invincible Iron Man. Holy shit. That movie is so boring that, no joke, hermanos fell asleep watching it TWICE. It’s made up of endless talking, bad CGI, lots and lots of Iron Man getting his ass handed to him and a laughable climactic battle involving the Mandarin’s ghost floating over a mind-controlled naked woman who’s defeated by Iron Man yelling “REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE!” It’s really bad. I feel sorry for anyone who purchased it based on the success of the Robert Downey Jr. movie.

Following that came Doctor Strange. This one had promise. As an origin for Strange, it went really well. The character development was tops. Too bad they decided to bog it down with so many unneeded things. They decided that magic wasn’t interesting enough, so they transferred nearly everything magic-related into kung-fu sword fighting. Then they gave Strange a squad of kung-fu action sorcerers for the sake of a body count. It would have been pretty good, ultimately, until they ruined it with the most laughable deus ex machina in movie history. The way Dr. Strange beats Dormammu is so badly written and lazy, I’m still in awe.

My personal order is Doctor Strange over Ultimate Avengers over Ultimate Avengers 2 over Invincible Iron Man. The new animated movie Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow steps over that list as the best. But does that mean it’s actually good? That’s a good question.

Read the rest of this entry �

Wednesday’s Illuminati #5 revealed something huge about the Marvel universe. Like always, I felt the need to take this big revelation and mess around with it for the sake of dumb comedy. Now, due to the revelation, I can’t even make a preview picture or else I might risk spoiling it for you. So if you haven’t read Illuminati #5 yet, don’t click on these links unless you’re sure you want me to spill the beans about how Doctor Strange is actually a figment of Gorilla Man’s imagination.

Ruin the Moment #1

Ruin the Moment #2

Ruin the Moment #3

Ruin the Moment #4

I may post some thoughts on the issue later, but I’m sure 98% of the internet has beaten me to it.

Interview with Aubrey Sitterson on Marvel’s Indie Anthology.

At that time, the only name confirmed for the series was the aforementioned Dash Shaw with a Doctor Strange story. Sitterson has revealed to Newsarama additional names for the project such as Paul Pope, Johnny Ryan, James Kolchalka and Michael Kupperman. “[This project] gives us the opportunity to work with some amazing talents that we generally don’t get a chance to work with because of the types of comics that we produce,” said Quesada in “New Joe Fridays”.

They had me at Paul Pope.

I’ve been interested in Kochalka and Kupperman (Tales Designed to Thrizzle guy?) for a while now, but haven’t had a chance to scope anything but brief bits of his art in GIS or in random forum threads. This should be cool.

In fact, I want that Jacob Chabot FF story right now. Those two pages are great and that art is awesome.

I feel kind of silly making this article since it was supposed to be done months ago. There are several things that kept me from finishing it, but I’m going to take the easy way out. All the time I usually use to write these What If articles was really used to pretend I was writing for Lost. I love writing Sam the Butcher’s dialogue the most.

Starting it off, here’s a series of sig images I made for the Batman’s Shameful Secret sub-forum at Something Awful. I guess they worked.

Read the rest of this entry �

The What If issue where Storm became the Phoenix was a piece of crap, but I still respect it for one reason. It’s the only What If appearance I can recall of this guy:

Though considering his series started around the same time What If ended, it’s not so surprising.

25) WHAT IF THE NEW FANTASTIC FOUR HAD REMAINED A TEAM?

Issue: Volume 2, #78
Writer: Chuck Dixon
Artist: Enrique Alcatena
Spider-Man death: No
Background: Early in the 90’s, a fake Invisible Woman convinced Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Hulk and Ghost Rider that the Fantastic Four had died and that they needed to fill in for a bit. This led to a story involving Skrulls, monsters and Moleman that ended with the revelation that the real Fantastic Four were really alive. The fake Invisible Woman, a Skrull with limited psychic powers, tried to blast the Fantastic Four with some kind of power ring, but nothing happened. Reed had stolen the ring before she could use it. In this reality, the Skrull lady fires a second before Reed can successfully make the steal.

We begin with Wolverine, Spider-Man and Hulk mourning at the funeral and discussing how badly they screwed up. Ghost Rider appears (which Logan appreciates, since he needs to light his cigar) and says that the loss of the Fantastic Four creates a void. They should stay a team and try and fill that void in order to redeem their failure.

Read the rest of this entry �