Yesterday gave us the brief reunion of Thor and his undead squeeze Valkyrie, whose wings will make putting on shirts a total chore. With everything taken care of, threat-wise, we still have the epilogue to work through. Shanna, Ka-Zar and Black Panther have moved on to greener pastures. They aren’t the only ones leaving.

ManiacClown insisted I namedrop “Twinkies” somewhere in there. The dude just can’t let it go, but whatever. I like the challenge. As for what Zarda’s talking about, the Supreme Power: Hyperion miniseries from a few years ago showed a dark future where Hyperion, Zarda and a lot of superheroes rule over the world with Nighthawk being the only remaining opposition. Like with the end of Howard Chaykin’s Squadron Supreme series, Loeb’s exit from Ultimate stuff calls for a moment of, “Crap, we have to force things back to the status quo so that future stuff can happen.”

Tomorrow is about putting an end to this for good and also tying up that one loose end that really should have had a bigger impact on the story.

Day Seven!

Welcome to the final week of Ultimate Edit. Boy, it’s been some ride, eh? It’s been just over three years with fifteen issues to its name, but it’s about time to bury it. I guess we were already “burying” it, but– you know what I mean.

So to sum up. A bunch of former D-list heroes have been amped up as villains and fight the Ultimates before being forgotten about completely. Then Loki and Enchantress come to Earth with a big troll army and wrecked stuff for a bit. Enchantress magically coaxes some of the female Ultimates to help them out and capture the staple members of the team. That way, the lesser good guys could look important by rescuing the heroes worth a damn. Valkyrie breaks free from the spell and gets herself killed by Loki, but then Thor shows up and goes on a rampage. He targets everyone and Loki’s all, “Haha! All part of the plan, beyotch!”

And now, the rest of the story…

Thanks to ManiacClown who wanted Loki and Thor to discuss how Hela looks like the ladies in mommy’s lingerie scrolls. We’ll be back tomorrow with some of those other characters nobody cares about. Don’t worry, they’ll be gone by the end of the week.

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

The Holiday Wars Continue! Yesterday, Thor went through Zarda like a hot knife through butter and now it’s Iron Man’s turn. Join us as we take a quick trip to Hela’s place where pants appear to be completely optional for all women.

Man, that “Mila Kunis” running gag really doesn’t have legs past the initial gag. Oh, well. By tomorrow’s installment, Loeb will realize that he really needs to move the story forward and we’ll finally get some Thor vs. Loki action.

Thanks to ManiacClown, who has a better idea than I do about whatever Hela is talking about.

Day Six!
Day Seven!

Yesterday had the lesser Ultimates rescue the marquee Ultimates and give Hell to Loki’s mindless minions. Now we move to the realm of the undead and get an overdue dose of Thor.

Oh no she didn’t! We’ll pick up on that tomorrow.

Thanks to ManiacClown, who I imagine has some semblance of a clue of what Thor and Hela are talking about. He also thinks that the above headshot of Thor has a Nathan Explosion quality to it.

Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Yesterday’s action really escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast! It jumped up a notch. There were dragons, a man on fire and Black Panther killed a guy!

T’challa, if you’re reading this, you should find yourself a safehouse or a relative close by. Lay low for a while, because you’re probably wanted for murder.

Plus Hawkeye walked in on Tony and Carol post-coitus.

Thanks to ManiacClown for agreeing with me that, yeah, that does sort of look like Mila Kunis. Vindication is fun.

Amora and Valkyrie will continue their girl talk tomorrow. See you then.

Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Our last installment featured the end of the Ultimates vs. Defenders fight with Son of Satan stealing Mjolnir from a very stupid Valkyrie and then escaping with the rest. Meanwhile, Thor has gotten bored of being king of the mountain and wants to escape the land of the dead. Hela will grant him that wish, but she wants something in return.

This first page might be a little not-work-safe.

Real talk: despite all the crap I give Loeb, I found the original scene between Tony and Carol to be really well-written.

Thanks to ManiacClown, who can’t get past how much Ka-Zar looks like Skwisgaar Skwigelf from Metalocalypse. Join us tomorrow as we finish that scene, get an aside from Captain America and Zarda, then see what Ka-Zar and Shanna are up to.

Day Six!
Day Seven!

What happened on Day Three? Let’s see, the duo of Hawkeye and Iron Man were doing pretty badly against the Defenders until Captain America showed up with what seemed to be Xena Warrior Princess and the Glamazon Beth Phoenix. They turn the tide and start whipping some Defender tail. A tail that Hellcat surprisingly does not have. During all this, Zarda punches Luke Cage in the nuts and prevents the possibility of Ultimate Danielle Cage.

We move forward.

Here is a quick cutting room floor panel. The expression on his face sells it so well:

Thanks to ManiacClown for the Thor dialogue. Speaking of Thor, I only noticed during the editing, but Frank Cho snuck in some uncensored bare breasts on that page. I blacked it out, but in the original spread you can see it in-between the panel of Thor sitting on the throne and the panel of Hela unmasking. I guess Frank Cho is to boobs as Leinil Yu is to Howard the Duck.

More bare breasts tomorrow, but these will be the comic book hair-draped-over-the-nipples kind.

Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

And we return. As you may recall, the last installment had the X-Men being dysfunctional as always. Then we saw Thor and Captain America fight side-by-side against the Army of Darkness in order to save the life of Valkyrie.

In terms of cutting room floor jokes, ManiacClown wanted to have Danvers complain that she can accept being killed by Magneto or Doom, but not a C-lister like Multiple Man. Then after a series of shots, “BLAM! D-lister. BLAM! E-lister. BLAM!”

Tomorrow we have… Okay, let me break it down for you. The first issue had a variant cover of Dazzler. The second one had a variant cover of Xavier. We saw what happened with those two. This issue’s variant has Yellowjacket. You know you want to read tomorrow’s update.

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!

Greetings. Yesterday, we saw Reed Richards (the man with no brain), Dr. Doom (the tin man with no heart) and Zarda (the woman with no characterization) banding together to go find the eye-patch Wizard. Then we saw Thor fly around, looking for Valkyrie. Does he find her? We’ll find out in just a moment.

Hope you’re not too burned out by the holidays.

Those are some tiny, tiny panties.

ManiacClown is like the Babel Fish of Thor-speak, so God bless him. He’s also informed me that Hela isn’t connected to Valhalla at all.

We’ll be back tomorrow with the first Ultimatum Edit of the New Year. And there’s no better way to celebrate than with a page so awful that it dwarfs both that above Hela page AND that one Ultimates 3 Hank Pym page in pure badness.

Day Six!
Day Seven!