Yesterday’s installment was all about the Enchantress going from place to place, brainwashing ladies and having them join her cause. I guess her one difference in her Ultimate incarnation is that she does this to women instead of men. She then starts to win over Valkyrie by showing her that Thor hasn’t been faithful to her and Hawkeye has been stealing her mustard from the fridge.

Let us continue with that scene.

“YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAH!!”

Sorry, ManiacClown insisted I add that. Tomorrow is Enchantress’ plan paying off. Watch out, fellas! Carol Danvers is going to beat you up and she doesn’t even have Ms. Marvel powers!

Day Six!
Day Seven!

Last time in our adventures, Captain America kicked a lady in the lady business and it made her mad enough to jump out a window. We’ve all been there. The Enchantress showed up and introduced herself to Zarda, whose inclusion on the team still makes people scratch their scalps.

Now this happens.

Thanks to ManiacClown, who believes Hawkeye doesn’t use the men’s room because he’s “too pretty to pee standing up”.

Next time, Enchantress keeps doing her thing.

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

-Hey, guess what movie we saw this weekend!
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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Time for another go at TWiP, including a rare couple panels from Esther. Also, reader Space Jawa tossed in a panel from Thor and the Warriors Four. If you really dig a comic that you see we aren’t reading and want to toss us a scan, by all means. Email’s on the top right.

Tossed in the few Free Comic Book Day issues I’ve had time to read.

Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine #1
Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert

Atomic Robo Free Comic Book Day
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener and others

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Iron Man 2 has been released and I checked it out last night. Personally, I enjoyed it, but doubly after having read the Alexander Irvine novelization. Much like with going from the graphic novel of Kick-Ass to the movie Kick-Ass, the transition from a weak telling of a story to a strong telling of a story can make such a difference based purely on the comparison.

I always love doing this little experiment of checking out the novelization of comic book movies, then seeing how the final product compares. I’ve been doing it for the past few years and they’ve always seemed to be based on the full version of the story. The novelization is what the movie is like before the editor cuts off chunks. Sometimes this works out for the better (Incredible Hulk). Sometimes this works out for the worse (Spider-Man 3). There’s even the first Iron Man, where the second act had to be refilmed and edited around just to make the Air Force happy.

Iron Man 2 is a different beast, since it doesn’t appear to be based on the full version of the screenplay, but of an earlier, incomplete version. There are plotholes and loose ends riddling the story that the movie is nice enough to fix. Even better, some of the climactic moments are so ridiculously underwhelming that the final cinematic output is a godsend.

Let’s take a look at what was changed.

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Sorry about the lateness. The last few days have been absolute madness for me. I was going to toss in the Free Comic Book Day stuff in this update, but since I haven’t had a chance to read much of it, and since next week is such a small comic week, I’ll save it for then.

Amazing Spider-Man #629
Roger Stern, Lee Weeks, Zeb Wells and Chris Bachalo

The Authority: The Lost Year #8
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and David Williams

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Flying solo again this week, so I’ll toss in last week’s Street Fighter II Turbo, since my shop got it in late.

Booster Gold #31
Dan Jurgens

Brightest Day #0
Geoff Johns, Peter J. Tomasi and Fernando Pasarin

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We’re a month away from the release of the two-years-awaited Iron Man 2 and only a week or so ago, the novelization came out. Like with all the other Marvel movies, I picked this one up. Surprisingly, this one isn’t written by Peter David, but by Alexander Irvine. You might recognize the name if you’ve read Daredevil Noir.

So what’s going on in the story? It takes place six months after Iron Man – although Irvine flubs that by referring to it as two years at least once – and sometime before Incredible Hulk. Tony hasn’t done too much in terms of righting wrongs as Iron Man, but he does flaunt it when possible and gets in trouble with the government because of it. They insist he should hand over the tech to them, which he totally disagrees with and points out that the rest of the world is 20 years away from reaching that level anyway. Also, Tony has a couple events marked off on his calendar and every one of them is a backdrop for an action sequence. Really, every action sequence can be summed up with, “I can’t wait for _______! I hope nothing bad happens! Oh, crap! Explosions!”

Let’s go over the characters, starting with our hero.

Tony Stark is getting ready for the Stark Expo (hey, guess what that means?), but at the same time is secretly disturbed by the realization that his arc reactor isn’t so perfect after all and it’s slowly killing him. He and JARVIS have been working on a way to reinvent the arc reactor, but so far nothing’s doing and things look grim. In response, Tony has been acting even more reckless than usual and becomes a grade-A asshole.

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The penultimate pages showed Carol Danvers and Tony Stark getting all shouty and arguey. Then Shanna the She-Devil, Ka-Zar, some tigers and the mute Black Panther who isn’t Captain America in disguise this time hang out in Central Park. Things suddenly get cold. What could this mean?

That’s all for this week. ManiacClown would strangle me if I didn’t at least feature the Farmville SHIELD image he made for a throwaway gag. Really, the guy would just give me updates about stuff I don’t understand. Never played Farmville and never plan to. Here you go.

Stay tuned for this Wednesday as my 12-day Wrestlemania Countdown begins, tough guy!

Yesterday’s adventure involved Thor having the mistress of the afterlife take care of his hammer. Then Tony Stark and Carol Danvers started going for the jugular. Let’s continue on with that.

This was one of the more difficult Ultimate Edit installments to write based on the matter of what we were critiquing. Back when we first started doing these, we laid down some ground rules and made certain things off-limits. The main one being Jeph Loeb’s personal tragedies relating to his son, Sam. The whole point here is never to make fun of Jeph Loeb the person (who I’ve heard from many is a genuinely nice guy), but of his writing.

A lot of Jeph Loeb’s writing has become very much Sam-based, and that is completely understandable. Captain America: Lost Son was more than anything Jeph’s attempt to come to terms with his son’s passing. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but I respected what he was doing. He would continue to make minor references to his son in his work, which was fine, but it’s become more and more apparent that it’s something he can’t push himself past. Most of his work revolves around it, basing the adventures on father/son relationships and the grief related to it. Hell, look at why Magneto killed everyone in Ultimatum.

For those who haven’t read the original, the Iron Man narration boxes tell the story about how Tony Stark met a young boy named Sam in a hospital who was dealing with cancer. It was the boy’s horrible experiences and eventual death that inspired Tony to become Iron Man and create the Ultimates. The whole overuse of Sam is beginning to dilute the message and the seriousness of it all, at least in my eyes. It makes me think of when Puff Daddy used to talk about Biggie Smalls so much that on one skit show, Jamie Foxx (I think) played the role of Puffy and would randomly start pointing up and yelling about Biggie. The crowd laughed pretty hard at this, showing that the whole thing has resorted to becoming self-parody. It’s disheartening to see that this is the direction Jeph Loeb has been leading into.

It’s a touchy subject, but I wanted to get it off my chest.

Enough about the serious stuff. Let’s move to stupid stuff, like Farmville.

Thanks to ManiacClown, who spent WAAAAY too long working on that Farmville image. Join us next time as the big villain shows up and more sex is had. No, not by the villain. Maybe in the next issue.

Day Seven!