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!

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!

Welcome back!

In our last installment, Hawkeye and Iron Man continued to talk about stuff (their favorite bands, chicks who’ve broken their hearts, the Matrix) until a bunch of angry dudes with superpowers showed up randomly. Sucks especially for Hawkeye, since nearly everyone on the opposing team appears to be bulletproof.

How will our heroes (if you can call them that) get out of this alive?! HOW?!

Join ManiacClown and I tomorrow as we watch the Ultimates continue to fight the Defenders. Then we get a special appearance by everyone’s favorite Ultimate Edit mainstay! Then again, I’m only assuming he is.

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

Yesterday, Iron Man flew by a burning building to have a heart-to-heart with Hawkeye, who seemed down. With everything squared away over the course of two pages, Hawkeye is in better spirits. Read on as stuff happens.

Thanks go out to ManiacClown, who continues to be confused at the length of Clint’s ammo compared to the depth of his magazines.

More fighting tomorrow.

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

It had to happen. Jeph Loeb returns to the Ultimates cast with his new series New Ultimates, this time accompanied by Frank Cho. Naturally, ManiacClown and I have returned to take it to task. For those who are lost, check out the previous installments of Ultimate Edit and Ultimatum Edit. Go on, I’ll wait.

Now, then. Let’s get this show on the road.

We’ll continue tomorrow as Tony and Clint make some new friends. Wow, two pages into a Loeb comic and there hasn’t been an action sequence two-page spread yet. Somebody get Guinness on the phone.

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

I understand that the layout of this site kind of sucks when you’re looking to read through a series of something. Sure, you can click one of the tags, but then you have to sort through it all backwards. That’s no fun. That, and it takes me forever to update the Contents page.

If you notice on the right side, under “Pages”, there are two new links: 4th Letter Masterworks: Ultimate Edit (includes Ultimatum Edit) and We Care a Lot: A Venom Retrospective. These are links to both article series in their entirety, with paragraph descriptions for the Venom stuff. Hopefully this will make things easier for fans of the respective articles. Plus it’s better for those of you who like to spread the links around. Hint hint.

You may notice the title of the latest We Care a Lot article as “The Sammy Hagar of Cannibalism”. I feel the need to expand on this.

Venom symbiote = Van Halen
Eddie Brock = David Lee Roth
Mac Gargan = Sammy Hagar
Angelo Fortunato = Gary Cherone

See? Fits like a glove.

And just a reminder, if you have the Facebook, check us out!

It took about nine months, but the comic miniseries Ultimatum had finally finished, meaning that the 4th Letter fan-favorite Ultimatum Edit is kaput as well. As always, ManiacClown and I had a blast and we hope you enjoyed it as well.

Thing is, we make a lot of references to random things that I’m sure fly over the heads of many. To help in retrospect, here’s a little page-by-page guide to what was going on in our heads.

WEEK ONE

Page 1

– The narration box is quoting the horrible Fantastic Four cartoon theme from the mid-90’s.

– The events Reed and Sue discuss are based on the Ultimate Fantastic Four/X-Men Annual two-parter that acted as a prelude to Ultimatum. It involves a bunch of superheroes from the future coming to the present in an attempt to change their reality, as their status quo has Invisible Woman ruling the world alongside Namor with an iron fist. In one scene, the regular Sue got in Wolverine’s face by unsheathing claws just like his, but made of her invisible force fields. She didn’t slice him or anything. She just whipped them out to threaten him. THEY ARE INVISIBLE!

– Thing is bringing up how that robot looks an awful lot like the scanner droids from the beginning of Empire Strikes Back.

Read the rest of this entry �

Here it is. Part 35. The final chapter.

Previously, Magneto threw a big hissy fit and killed a bunch of the world. Then the heroes took their sweet-ass time to get to Avalon to stop him. Only they sent a bunch of metal-using heroes to go after Magneto with no strategy of what to do against him other than “let Wolverine do it”. Thanks to Nick Fury showing him THE TRUTH, Magneto gave up and Cyclops blew his head off in response. Then Cyclops’ head blew up. Then Dr. Doom’s head blew up.

But who did kill Cyclops? Was it some angry mutant-hating sniper? Or was it something else?

Special thanks to David Uzumeri for inadvertently giving me the inspiration for the last couple pages. And of course, thanks to ManiacClown for his help throughout and for being a good sport.

If you’re up for it, give us a visit tomorrow to see the Ultimatum Edit Annotations.

The Annotations!