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!

Add “Chasing the Dragon” into that super-long title, too.

I was talking to Graeme (Savage Critic(s)/io9) McMillan over email a few weeks back and he mentioned how he wasn’t sure that being a fan and being nostalgiac were two different things. It ties into the first shock of experiencing certain things. To paraphrase and extrapolate on his point a bit, you end up chasing the dragon.

My response was in the negative– nostalgia is obviously something that old people have for old boring comics. It’s new comics being written like old comics because that’s the way it used to be. It’s Hal Jordan being Green Lantern again, Superman’s dad dying, and all that continuity cop crap. It’s strip-mining the past to tell stories today. I’m the kind of fan that likes the new hotness, not that old and busted crap that somebody’s grandpa wrote.

The long and short of it is that I’m a liar and Graeme McMillan is right.

I had this realization a few days ago. Despite working with video games all day, I’ll throw on a game I like and fool around for an hour or so to relax and chill out. One of the games I’ve been screwing around with for the past week or two is Spider-Man: Web of Shadows on Xbox 360.

Now, I’m a huge Spider-Man fan. He’s my favorite hero, even beating out the Flash, and I’ll generally try anything he’s in. Spider-Man 2 was an excellent Xbox title and easily the best movie tie-in, but the franchise has suffered since then. Ultimate Spider-Man had a great style, but the chase scenes were a lot like being forced to pull splinters– necessary and amazingly annoying. Spider-Man 3 was better than the movie, but still featured gameplay that was kind of like waking up to find Jabba the Hutt’s butt in your face.

So, for some reason, I was a little interested in Web of Shadows. It had Spidey, Venom, an interesting story, and more than a few cameos. Luke Cage, Black Widow, Wolverine, and Moon Knight all show up. I figured that I’d at least give the game a go, since they’re marketing it directly at me and all.

Turns out that I can only stand to play the game for 15-30 minutes at a time. It’s buggy, the characters are annoying, the missions are repetitive, and the tutorials are terrible. The lock-on system varies between being too sensitive (“Hey awesome I locked on a dude two blocks behind me, screwing up the camera and my current fight”) and terrible (“oh what’s this i can’t lock onto a guy directly in front of me?”). The auto-upgrade system doesn’t tell you what it upgrades or when, and the manual upgrades have clunky menus, making it a pain to get new skills. The new skills you just bought? Generic thugs will block them all day like they were some kind of kung fu master, making your brand new Maximum Spider attack or Ultimate Web Throw completely useless.

Playing it for more than around half an hour brings all of these screaming to the forefront of my brain, but I kept going back to the game this week. The animation on Spider-Man is great, and the web slinging is sublime. It’s the best it’s ever been, and I sometimes spend ten out of those fifteen-to-thirty minutes just swinging around the fake New York.

I was airing these grievances to a few of my FBB4l brethren and Pedro, always trying to one-up a Brothers, told me “Why are you playing a garbage game?” Every time Pedro reads a bad comic and complains about it, I ask him the same thing. It was a fair point, and one that made me rethink my position on the game.

Basically, WoS adds in one good gameplay mechanic (web swinging) and then layers on cameo after cameo in an attempt to keep me interested. These cameos lead to boring tutorials (“hey go beat up 15 of these guys”) which lead to boring missions (“all right go beat 20 of these same guys”) which lead to worse boss fights (“do this three minute sequence six times in a row while you fight wolverine”) which lead to the next cameo. It’s garbage. The game is weak and not even remotely worth the sixty bucks. I’d rather they just put the city and web slinging on Xbox Live Arcade and charge ten bucks for that.

On the other hand, post-One More Day Spider-Man is exactly what I want out of Spider-Man comics. It isn’t perfect, but it’s easily the best Spider-Man has been since Kraven’s Last Hunt, which was back when Peter and MJ first got married. Mephisto getting rid of the marriage is a sticking point, I guess, but it’s been blown out of proportion. I think that if the stories are going to be this good, then losing a marriage that had stagnated? Net gain.

Moving all of that to the side– the stories are much better than they have been before now. I wasn’t a Dan Slott fan before his run on Amazing Spider-Man. His first go at She-Hulk was okay, until he got bogged down in continuity cop and fanboyisms. But Spider-Man? For some reason, Dan Slott’s Spider-Man is a lot of fun.

That’s a theme that’s run throughout Brand New Day and onward. “Spider-Man is fun.” He’s young, he makes mistakes, and he’s down to earth. He’s clearly experienced enough to hold his own, he’s smart enough to improvise solutions to weird problems, and he enjoys his life, despite the Parker Luck. He’s comfortable in his own skin.

He’s got a strong supporting cast again, including Harry Osborn, the best character who isn’t named J Jonah Jameson. Peter’s got a best friend again, which gives him something to bounce off of, and he’s got girl trouble. We’ve got more than just Aunt May and MJ, though both of them are present in one way or another.

The art is amazing. I don’t think I have to say more. If you don’t like John Romita Jr, Marcos Martin, Chris Bachalo, Barry Kitson, or the other cats who have put pen to paper (or stylus to Wacom), something is wrong with your brain.

Finally, the pace is excellent. Shipping three times a month gives the book an entirely different feel. Story lines pop up and end within a month. Subplots percolate in the background, old school style, and there are a lot of them. Despite all of this, the book is very manageable. You won’t miss out on a reference because you missed an issue six months ago. It keeps you in the information you need.

The first few months were dedicated to creating new villains, rather than reusing old ones over and over again. This resulted in both having an interesting new series of characters for Spidey to interact with, but also making the return of the old villains in New Ways to Die a blockbuster occasion.

After the latest issue, where we get this scene:

Amazing Spider-Man is pretty much everything I want out of a Spider-Man comic. It’s a great mix of funny, fun, and action. Spider-Man looks amazing. We get expressive eye lenses and half spidey masks, a couple of personal favorites, Ben Urich, an Aunt May who isn’t just an old lady, and by the way, did I mention the amazing art?

You want to know the difference between why I pushed and played Web of Shadows long after I was tired of it (two hours, for the record) and why I love reading Amazing Spider-Man these days?

Nothing. I’m a fan of Spider-Man, and it makes me happy to see that this character who introduced me to comics is once again receiving the quality I think he deserves. It’s nostalgia. It’s being a fan. I am a fan of Spider-Man because I was once a fan of Spider-Man.

That has waxed and waned over the years. I quit JMS’s run after JRjr left, which turned out to be a great idea, since the next two years were pretty much crap. The Clone Saga helped chase me away from comics when it was getting going. For a while, I liked X-Men more than Spidey, but quickly came back around when the art got better. Save for Paul Jenkins and early JMS, the majority of Spider-Man books printed between say, 1994 and 2008 are not worth your time. There are a few exceptions– Todd Dezago and Mike Wieringo had a fun run, for example. However, you aren’t missing much if you don’t buy that Spider-Man trade collecting, say, Maximum Carnage or anything Howard Mackie ever had a hand in.

Now, though, it’s back in full force. I look forward to picking up Amazing Spider-Man three weeks out of the month. I know I’l get a treat that pleases me and the me from however long ago I started reading comics.

What’s kinda funny is that Tucker Stone wrote about this same thing on Wednesday, though I found it on Sunday morning.

The moral of the story is that Graeme McMillan and Joe Quesada are both right.

Halloween was just a couple days ago, but I still feel the need to post this from one of today’s stories.

The Spider-Man and Captain America costumes are sort of okay, but that Wolverine kid’s got the height accuracy.

We’ve seen Venom deal with Spider-Man a couple times, then cross paths with the Punisher and at some point help put an end to Carnage’s plot to destroy New York City. Now what?

Well… more crossovers, I’m afraid. First off is The Madness, a 3-parter by Ann Nocenti (words) and Kelley Jones (art). In on-going terms, this would be Venom #10-12, ending off his first year as an anti-hero.

The Madness centers around two very strong concepts that appeal to me, but unfortunately they’re bogged down by ridiculousness. The first idea is Venom vs. Juggernaut. That’s just my character bias.

Then there’s the idea of more Parker-to-Brock escalation. In that last story, Pyre was to Venom as Venom was to Spider-Man. Same concept here. Spider-Man’s a pretty sane guy, so the idea of a sentient costume added to his person messed with his head and forced him to take action. Brock, on the other hand, was totally cool with it. So this story goes to the next step. Instead of Venom being made of two beings, he’s suddenly made of three. This third being, while granting extra strength, is so extreme that even Eddie Brock needs to take notice.

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In the prologue, I discussed Venom: Deathtrap: The Vault, which reader Mark Cook was quick to point out was just an Avengers graphic novel that Marvel re-released with Venom’s name stamped on it. I forgot to bring up one panel that always stuck out at me featuring Iron Man. He seemed to resemble a certain cartoon talkshow host.

“Look, listen everybody… please? Listen to me. I have a hit song about a knife and, yes, I am the head of an international peacekeeping organization.”

Venom had spent several years terrorizing Spider-Man whenever he could, but Marvel deemed him popular enough to get his own series. That would be all well and good, but he’s driven by his insatiable hunger for Spider-Man’s brains. How do you cut away from that?

The answer is to get character creator David Michelinie together with Mark Bagley and write two issues of Amazing Spider-Man. Of course, Michelinie is the creator in theory. There’s a lot of debate over who truly created the concept, but at the very least, Michelinie came up with who he was as a character. Between this story and the one following, he’d lay down the groundwork for the other writers intent on writing Venom.

It takes place in Amazing Spider-Man #374 and #375. Look at that cover. People talk about how great MacFarlane’s Venom is, but I personally consider Bagley’s take to be the definitive version.

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I was raised in a black, church-going, military family. My grandfather did 30 years in the Air Force, my mom did a few, my dad was in Gulf War I, I’ve had various relative enlist, and it seems like everybody I knew from high school is either married or joined some branch of the military. I guess all of this is just to say that I’m not coming at Amazing Spider-Man #574 from the position of a total neophyte or someone who doesn’t know nothing about nothing. I tend to pay attention to those things, if only because all three things are so close to my heart.

The crux of ASM #574 is that Flash Thompson was sent to Iraq, with the surprise revelation that he lost his legs rescuing a fellow soldier. The issue tells the story of Flash’s motivations during the story, even while massaging continuity (Vietnam quietly replaced with an unnamed jungle) and bringing the character up to date.

Overall, I really enjoyed the issue. Other than one hollow note (the origin of the name Flash comes from a high school date), this is probably Guggenheim’s strongest piece of writing to date. Careful attention is paid to the reality and treatment of the military in the book, including a desk-driving general and slang. These aren’t your cardboard cut-out soldiers. We don’t get the guy with the kid at home, or the crazy war-thirsty jerkoff. The little attention given to them paints them as just regular people.

It’s Flash’s story, though, and the issue is mostly told in the first person, as Flash tells his story to the general who is reviewing him for a Medal of Honor. It’s in an issue of Spider-Man because Flash is Spidey’s number one fan, and the text shows how Spider-Man has influenced Flash’s life over the years. When Flash needed a hero, his abusive father was found lacking. Instead, he looked to Spider-Man, resulting in iconic shots of Spider-Man versus the Sinister Six, or lifting a heavy thing, or fighting the Kingpin head-on, and so on, when Flash needed that extra motivation.

It isn’t clear in the text whether Spidey was on his mind during the action itself, or simply making parallels in the retelling, but both work thematically. Guggenheim is walking a fine line here, and could easily tip over into equating the exploits of Spider-Man, a fictional character, with the very real soldiers over in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Instead, I found that it was just a story about where heroism comes from.

Everyone has someone or something that they look up to. It’s that person in the back of your mind who inspires you, or whose memory you want to live up to, whether it’s What Would Jesus Do or I Wanna Be Like Mike. It’s a very human thing to look outside yourself for strength, and I think that this book does a good job of doing that. Flash’s father was abusive, so he was right out as far as heroes go. Spider-Man, however, was young, capable, and an easy target for a young guy who needed help. Flash latched on and became a huge fanboy. When he needed to push, he could look to Spidey.

I can see how this could ruffle some feathers, but I thought it was done perfectly respectfully. Nowhere is anyone but Flash’s motivations attributed to Spider-Man, and it’s always in an inspirational manner. It isn’t about how awesome Spider-Man is, but rather about how important heroes are to people, albeit illustrated on a very small scale.

This issue prompted me to put some real thought as to whether or not it was appropriate for comics, and superhero comics in particular, to address real world issues. One man’s “respectfully handled” is another man’s “complete travesty.” Why can we do World War II comics by the boatload, but more modern issues are taboo? Is it the time and distance that separates us and makes it seem less real? Is the War on Terror, or Insert Cause/Injustice/Action of Your Choice Here, somehow more real and troubling than the Big One?

I don’t think so, and I think this issue is a good reason why. If you can do your best to treat an issue respectfully, do the research (we can call it “due diligence” so we can pretend to be adults), and generally just put your best foot forward, I don’t think that any subject is taboo.

I believe that fiction is important. As much as I hate to quote a Superman comic to support a point, I have to say that one of my favorite Superman moments is in Action Comics #775, where Superman defeats the hot cynical superteam of the moment and says, “Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us.”

The fictional nature of something does not decrease its importance any more than relating something fictional to something real insults the real thing. Sometimes you have to push toward that fictional ideal to get the job done. Sometimes it’s your father, sometimes it’s Spider-Man. There is little difference between the two, and both serve different purposes for different people. Sometimes, dreams are just what you need.

I’ve personally known people who were big on the Punisher, Sgt Rock, or (X character) who spent some time in Iraq. We didn’t spend a lot, or really any, time talking about how the adventures of Clint Barton helped them in the field, but people generally have pet heroes, or tattoos of heroes, for specific reasons. One guy in Iraq using Spider-Man as inspiration? I can buy that.

I was thinking about a few things this weekend, and I realized that I have a superhero Type.

I’m partial to speedsters. I like all the Flashes, though Wally is the best, and I’m cool with Quicksilver. I even like Doc Rocket over in Youngblood and Velocity in Cyberforce.

There’s just something about someone whose power is to run fast that appeals to me. I like running, though I don’t do it often enough, but I don’t think it’s a “I wish I could do that!” sort of thing. I think it’s more that speedsters tend to have cool visual appearances. Of course, pretty much all of them have lightning bolts or red in their design somewheres, but the running always looks graet. Some get afterimages, some get blurs, and the best appear in single panel more than once and carry on conversations that way. The best of the best have smoking shoes.

I was going to say that my other Type was archery-based characters, but that isn’t true at all. I actively dislike Green Arrow, Red Arrow is the dumbest, and Speedy is annoying and terrible. Connor Hawke is interesting, though kind of a cipher. No, the Type I like are marksmen.

Hawkeye, Shaft (from Youngblood), Deadshot, Bullseye, and I’m sure there are others. They’re awesome. Anything in their hands is a deadly weapon, and trick shots are the order of the day. I like seeing the creativity you have to use when writing these guys. It isn’t enough to go “Oh, boxing glove arrow!” nowadays. Everyone’s seen that. What’s next?

I wasn’t a Hawkeye fan until recently. Fabian Nicieza wrote a pretty good (and short-lived) series a few years back, and Bendis started using him in his Avengers titles. Somewhere along the line, though, I must’ve become a fan, because this scene from SI #7 got a rise out of me:

(WE CARE A LOT!) About the gamblers and the pushers and the geeks
(WE CARE A LOT!) About the smack and crack and whack that hits the streets
(WE CARE A LOT!) About the welfare of all you boys and girls
(WE CARE A LOT!) About you people ‘cause we’re out to save the world! Yeah!
Well, it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it

— Faith No More, “We Care a Lot”

I’m going to do a little history lesson here. While yes, it is about Venom, for this first part, it’s more about me, my interest in comics and this very site.

We all have our stories about how we got into comics. Whether it be because someone lent you a copy of Killing Joke or your father read you issues of Rom: Spaceknight when you just a kid, we all have something to say about it. For me, it was sometime in early 1994. In our neighborhood, we had this place called The Great American Party Store which had party supplies and was THE place to go every October for Halloween costumes and decorations.

They also sold comics and as I looked through the area out of boredom, I came across Venom: The Madness #3.

I may not have been into comics, but thanks to television and videogames, I knew who Venom and Juggernaut were. Juggernaut was that awesome domed dude from that X-Men cartoon that I watched all the time and Venom was that bastard who would randomly jump out and attack me in the Genesis Spider-Man game. I never was able to beat him on the Daily Bugle level. Still, I found his evil Spider-Man design magnetic. When I saw this cover, it blew my mind.

Venom’s a good guy now? And he’s fighting the Juggernaut?! This rules!

What, I was 13 at the time. What do you expect?

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So there’s this comic character I liked from a couple years back who I knew wasn’t long for the world. True to my prediction, he didn’t do anything outside of ten issues worth of appearances, outside of appearing in the background. I knew that the guy was completely gone from everyone’s mind and would MAYBE appear in an issue of Avengers: The Initiative, if that.

When Rifftrax released their sample for their take on The Happening, I found myself taken aback.

It’s about 18 seconds in.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that reference so surreal.

I understand this post may have completely wasted your time, so enjoy this as well.

You have no idea how many times I’ve watched this thing.

I just started to like Cable. The first arc was way too slow (which is why I picked it back up with the newest issue), and I’m still not 100% convinced on the Bishop turn, but I’m interested enough to keep reading. I want to say something, though.

Now, I like Richard Corben. I’m coming around on Cable. But, and don’t read this the wrong way, I hate dead babies. I can’t think of a good usage of them in comics and I honestly think it’s kind of dumb and needlessly shocking. Ohh, look how bad that guy is, he’s gonna kill a baby.

This is actually the second dead baby I’ve seen in comics this week, with Rogue’s Revenge featuring a baby getting disintegrated or time travelled or zapped out of existence or whatever– it was still dumb.

Ultimate Edit has come and gone. I hope you had as much fun reading it as we had making it. Rereading some of the stuff, I notice how awkward bits of the dialogue come off. There are some references that are either obscure or too outdated to work months later. For the hell of it, let’s look back on the series with some Ultimate Edit Annotations.

As for how the Edit got started, I had posted on the Batman’s Shameful Secret sub-forum at Something Awful about how I was playing with the idea of giving Ultimates 3 the same treatment that MightyGodKing gave Civil War among others and Funnybook Babylon gave Infinite Crisis #4. ManiacClown, who I knew only as the guy with the rapping Etrigan avatar, insisted I go through with it and asked to volunteer.

I later emailed MightyGodKing about whether I was stepping on his toes with this. Though he hadn’t read the first issue yet, he was debating between that and the also awful Countdown: Arena #1. He was leaning towards Arena and ultimately went with it, leaving me free to take apart Loeb’s latest work.

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