Thor is always saying shit out of line. Like when he accused Iron Man of not caring about black people other than Rhodey as he hammered him into the distance. I bet he likes having Namor’s fish stick in his mouth.

I guess I should put down some set-up first. This is from Avengers/JLA #4, written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by George Perez. It came out a little bit before Marvel and DC made some of their bigger modern changes. The team rosters were still more classic than in recent years, still before the days of Disassembled and Crisis of Conscience. Hal Jordan was still the Spectre.

I won’t go too deep into the story, but it involves Krona making a bet with the Grandmaster that puts the two super-teams on opposing sides. Not that that needs too much extra effort, though, as Captain America and Superman seem to have it in for each other. Superman sees mutant hatred, Dr. Doom, the Hulk and the Punisher running wild and considers the Avengers a bunch of failures. Captain America sees how the people in the DC world worship the Justice League to the point of museums and monuments and considers them little better than world conquerors. This leads into more than one throwdown, including a fight where Superman beats up Thor.

Fast-forward a bit. To save reality from Krona, the Grandmaster has been pushing the two worlds closer together. Reality rewrites itself again and again. The Avengers and Justice League go from being from two distant alternate realities to neighboring realities. Then they go from two teams that visit each other’s worlds on a regular basis to two teams that co-exist in the same world. Few are able to see through the lies.

Finally, the two teams find the Grandmaster, who wants the heroes to go stop Krona from destroying both their worlds. Due to reality being rewritten over and over, the teams are both down to their more base, classic rosters and identities and want to know exactly what they’re fighting for. Using the last of his powers, Grandmaster shows them a series of screens that broadcasts their histories. Despite all their victories, it focuses mainly on these heroes watching the losses that are meant to be. Tony Stark’s alcoholism, Aquaman’s loss of hand, Bane breaking Batman’s back, Doomsday killing Superman, Captain America losing his abilities and failing in his attempt to rely on armor tech, Odin’s death, Jason Todd’s death, and so on. The more important ones here are that Barry Allen sees that he’s going to die, Scarlet Witch and Vision see that their children will be creations from Wanda’s own madness, Giant Man sees the smack that he will never live down and Hal Jordan sees his descent into becoming Parallax.

And yet, in the end, the two sides decide that it is not up to them to judge the realities they are saving. They band together and plot against Krona. Superman suggests Captain America lead them, which he agrees to.

I swear, when I was intending to write this article, I thought these pages were more than two. Three, maybe four. They’re just so dense with dialogue that it’s bursting at the seams. That’s George Perez for you, I guess.

All five of those different conversations are aces, especially when you notice the segues. Notice how each conversation ends with another character in the shot. It took me forever to see Captain America in the background window. What I really loved about this scene is the stuff with Hal and Barry.

How messed up it has to be for these two. Barry knows that win or lose, he’s going to be dead within hours. It’s depressing, but not nearly as bad as what Hal has to be going through. Barry goes out honorably. Hal knows that not only is he going to die, but first he’s going to go crazy and take out a bunch of his friends before becoming the Darth Vader of the DC Universe. And he’s fighting to preserve that! It’s fucked.

Maybe it’s just me, but you can read the weight of it in Hal’s oath. The way he seems so less enthused compared to all the other times. Is it defeat? Sadness? Intent to do his best one last time? Shame? Bitterness? Is it that he realizes that the very oath he’s reciting has been proven to be nothing more than a lie?

But there they are, Hal and Barry, supporting each other. Just by the mutual reassurance, the two doomed friends are all but removed of that weight. It’s a nice, bittersweet scene, but sadly loses something thanks to their later resurrections.

I think I decided about including these pages for this installment because of all of that going on these days. Personally, I feel totally fine with Hal coming back (Green Lantern is more of a job position than identity, allowing Kyle to thrive on his own, though admittedly to a lesser extent). I can’t bring myself to care about Barry Allen’s return, outside of a couple choice moments in Final Crisis. Unless Steve Rogers stays away from the Captain America mantle and becomes the new leader of SHIELD/HAMMER for an extended period of time, I feel like his death could have lasted another three years. And Bart Allen… shit, I don’t know. That poor guy got messed up so much since Geoff Johns got his hands on him that I can’t say what’s best for him at this point.

Bottom line: I guess I feel like in scenes like this, the finality of one fictional character’s death strengthens the quality of life. But that’s me.

Back to the Avengers/JLA comic, there was one panel I’ve always loved for a stupid reason.

Look at Captain America. That’s the moment I realized that Steve Rogers has balls made of vibranium. He goes on to threaten Superman with such confidence that even now, my brain is trying to come up with ways for that outcome to be a possibility. I’ll get back to you on that. Cool as that is, that’s not why I bring it up.

I don’t know if this was a subtle way to intentionally foreshadow Avengers: Disassembled, but let’s see what happens when we remove the guys on the right.

Hey, now!

By the way, I still miss Hal’s kickass white hair tufts.

Yesterday’s installment featured Thor and Captain America talking about financing or whatever, followed by Iron Man and Ms. Less-Than-Marvel taking on Multiple Man. Then an arrow shot out. Who could it possibly be?!

In Ultimate X-Men #100, they killed off Ultimate Madrox, so in one fell swoop we get rid of the Matrix and Rocky Horror jokes. Due to the latter, ManiacClown is currently inconsolable.

Join us tomorrow as we close out yet another week.

Day Seven!

Back for round three.

Yesterday we had Magneto strangle Mystique and then throw a rogue Madrox dupe out the window, where he promptly exploded. I hope they weren’t really in space or else he’d have just doomed them all. What an anti-climax that would be. Even still, by tossing Madrox out the window, Magneto’s letting all the heat out.

Now it’s time for some Yellowjacket and Hawkeye action. It’s best to remember exactly what gruesome sight they’re following up on.

ManiacClown wanted me to fit in a Bad Taste reference in regards to the first page, but only after the fact did he realize he meant Dead Alive. That scamp.

Isn’t it kind of convenient that Pym keeps his special technology to save Janet’s life in the Triskelion rather than the now-destroyed building where his lab was and he was under house arrest in?

Tomorrow we get more X-Men drama. Whee.

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

Yesterday’s installment was all about Thor going into the afterlife to go save Valkyrie. I don’t even know what she’s doing in Valhalla in the first place. She died by drowning. You don’t get into Valhalla for weak garbage like that.

No matter. We continue Thor’s quest and move onto that scene. God help us.

ManiacClown is entirely to blame for the second page. I’ve seen Rocky Horror Picture Show maybe once in my life and that was years ago. That was enough.

Tomorrow we finish the week off with a confrontation between Xavier and Magneto. Surely, it will fail to capture the greatness of their battle from the second Japanese X-Men cartoon intro, where they fight by blasting Xavier’s mind rays against Magneto’s magnetic rays.

Day Seven!

After a little recap, yesterday saw Iron Man try to save Captain America’s life in the way you save a man on fire by stomping on them. Then we had Carol Danvers’ gigantic guns.

With the disaster still fresh, we now join Yellowjacket and Hawkeye, followed soon after with Thing and Invisible Woman.

Hey, by the way, if you’re reposting these images on another site, please be nice enough to at least post a link to us. That includes you, Banhammer.

ManiacClown insisted that Giant Man use the line “Olly, Olly, X-Men free!” but that’s so corny that even I feel like punching my monitor.

I’m also disappointed that at no point during the Thing segment did I have a chance to fit the line, “Oh, Aunt Petunia. Oh, forgive me. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me…”

Join us tomorrow as Zarda appears and reminds me of how horrendous Squadron Supreme has become in the last couple years. Have any of you been reading that junk?

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

Our last installment showed that New York City is screwed. How screwed are they? Let’s watch.

Maniac Clown and I will return tomorrow to bear witness to even more comic character deaths. Of course, these deaths are only going to be major characters. Millions of innocent civilians are dropping like flies, but they don’t know any heroes, so we don’t need to see their bodies.

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

If we are here not to do
What you and I wanna do
And go forever crazy with it
Why the hell are we even here?

When we stand here in a row
Looking like a bunch of heroes
I know that-ah deep inside
Nothing more but bunch of zeros

— “Ultimate” by Gogol Bordello

We couldn’t stay away.

After the job that ManiacClown and I did with Jeph Loeb and Joe Mad’s Ultimates 3, we decided that we would give the follow-up event Ultimatum a shot. When I say we’d give it a shot, I don’t mean that we were sure we were going to target it from the very beginning. More that we were going to give it a shot of being passable and leaving it alone.

As it got closer to the release, we knew that although it was nice to be generous, it was going to be all for naught. Between the Ultimate Captain America Annual that showed Ultimate Black Panther’s origin and the laughable X-Men/Fantastic Four crossover written by Loeb’s Heroes buddies, we could tell that the writing was on the wall. Loeb was referring to Ultimatum as the story that would destroy the Ultimate universe and sadly, he’s already been doing that. Ultimate Spider-Man remains the only thing worth reading.

The Loeb backlash has already started somewhat. He’s been axed from Heroes. From what I understand, those burned by the first six issues of Hulk have left in droves. Don’t they realize that Hulk, who has become Joe Fixit again for no reason, is fighting Sentry, Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel because they’re sort of Marvel’s version of the DC Trinity? That’s compelling stuff! I’m not even sure how well Ultimatum will do in the long run, since it’s not really latching onto Millar’s Ultimates run’s success like Loeb’s last foray. And, you know, there are far better comic events going on with Secret Invasion and Final Crisis. Then again, now that he’s off Heroes he has more time to write comics. Stupid double-edge sword.

Enough rambling. Let’s get down to business.

Join us tomorrow for more exposition!

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

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.

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.

Day Seven!