Yesterday’s exploits involved the weak revelation of who Black Panther is, Juggernaut got busted up and some shadowy figure woke up Valkyrie. Let’s see more of what Valkyrie’s up to.

Ultimate Clor’s font has nothing to do with Ultimates 3 at all, to tell the truth. It’s just that ManiacClown and I agreed that being an evil robot thunder god with long hair, a beard and an axe-hammer is one of the most metal things possible and deserved to speak in “Die Nasty” text (aka the KISS font).

Tomorrow we get… ah, damn it. Tomorrow we get that scene.

Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

In yesterday’s crackerjack installment, Ultron just kept talking about his backstory. He was in love with Scarlet Witch, so he killed her. As Kyle Gass would put it, Ultron is total love-knife material.

Let’s continue, shall we?

I should note that prior to this issue’s release, ManiacClown forced me to watch Maximum Overdrive. Hence, he insists that we shove in as many references to it as possible. Just a warning.

More tomorrow, but you already know that.

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

Continuing from yesterday’s installment, Hawkeye is getting a thrashing at the hands of Sabretooth. Now some of Ka-Zar’s little buddies join in the fight.

It’s funny. A day or so before this issue came out, I thought about how surprising it was that Loeb hadn’t resorted to a Juggernaut cameo yet. There goes that surprise.

Apologies to ManiacClown, as I ended up cutting a gag of his based around Gimpy Cain Marko being referred to as “the Buggernaut”.

Join us tomorrow for more from Valkyrie. Can’t wait.

Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

As you may recall from yesterday, Magneto, his kids and his wacky neighbor Xavier took off towards Australia. They couldn’t have stressed harder that it was a flashback if they tried. They crashed and ran into those guys from the Ewok movies. That was then, this is now…

Actually, never mind. This first page is about “then” too.

As always, thanks to ManiacClown, who came up with that recap page. We’ll be back tomorrow to talk about robots. Plus more from Hawkeye. You kids love Hawkeye, don’t you?

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

After three months of peace, we’re back. If you’re new to Ultimate Edit or you forgot about what the hell’s been going on in those earlier issues, here’s the rundown:

In issue 1, Venom showed up for no reason and beat up everyone until Thor remembered that he was Thor and toasted him. Then Scarlet Witch got shot dead. Quicksilver was a sad mutant panda. Also, there were rumors at the time that Nighthawk from Squadron Supreme was going to end up in the Ultimate Marvel universe, thereby making him an immediate suspect for being Black Panther, but that proved wrong, so my bad on that. Then again, that speculation came from before we saw how blatant the hints were that Black Panther is Captain America.

Then came issue 2, where Hawkeye bullied Spider-Man around and the Ultimates got in an ACTION-PACKED fight against the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Magneto and Quicksilver left with Scarlet Witch’s corpse and Wolverine showed up because… to hell with it. I think I’ve exhausted every Wolverine/cameo joke there is.

He stuck around for the third issue, where he talked forever about his connections to Magneto’s family. A whole lot of them went to the Savage Land and Iron Man started beating on Wasp. Turns out that Iron Man is an evil robot.

Now back to the story.

Huh. So the late-80’s was so long ago that it’s depicted as being black and white? I feel old now.

Thanks again to ManiacClown for helping make the magic.

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

Getting love from the Scans_Daily crew, it’s the final installment of Ultimate Edit Week 3. Yesterday we saw Iron Man show off the magic Wanda-killing bullet to Wasp, right after everyone left for the Savage Land. So, what now?

(You really should read yesterday’s last page before continuing here.)

If you have any of those songs stuck in your head now, I consider this a job well done. ManiacClown will join me again the next time an issue drops, but in the meantime, I’ll still be around writing my usual brand of blogduggery. I have a handful of articles that are just sitting there, half done. I really should do something about that.

Thanks for reading.

Ultimate Edit Week 4!
Ultimate Edit Week 5

When it comes to doing countdowns of the best What If issue, I’m not the first. A couple years ago, Wizard magazine had their own top ten list. Here is their version:

10) What If Captain America Were Revived Today? (volume 1)
9) What If the Beast Continued to Mutate?
8) What If the X-Men Lost Inferno?
7) What If the Fantastic Four Had Not Gained Their Superpowers?
6) What If Pheonix Had Not Died? (volume 1)
5) Humor issue (volume 1)
4) What If Daredevil Killed the Kingpin?
3) What If the Hulk Went Berserk?
2) What If Conan the Barbarian Were Stranded in the 20th Century?
1) What If the Alien Costume Had Possessed Spider-Man?

Does this list coincide with my list? Not very much. Only two of those issues make it into my top ten. Three of them aren’t even on my list in the first place (I already talked about why #7 sucked). One of them is in this article.

Back to the real list. Read the rest of this entry �

It’s time to begin. Er… now that I’ve done two prelude articles before starting this off, I now realize that I don’t have anything to say for an intro. I could always go over the history of the series. Yeah, let’s do that.

What If first started in 1977 with the issue What If Spider-Man Had Joined the Fantastic Four?, based on the very first issue of Amazing Spider-Man. The series lasted for seven years until ending with issue #47, What If Loki Had Found the Hammer of Thor? For the most part, the quality remained about the same.

Several years after cancellation, a special was released called What If Iron Man Had Been a Traitor? While not exactly a classic, it seemed to have helped bring the rebirth of the series as volume 2 started the very next year, 1989. Volume 2 followed the same structure of the first volume: Uatu the Watcher would go on a monologue about who he is and what he does, followed by spelling out just what the issue’s story is about. Like I mentioned a couple articles back, this is a good way to learn Marvel history. Me, I just found out Shang Chi’s backstory days ago. Before that all I knew about him was that he’s some martial artist guy without fear and his name makes him sound like Shang Tsung and Quan Chi from Mortal Kombat did the Fusion Dance.

I can’t be alone in this, can I? Read the rest of this entry �