Previously on Ultimate Edit, punk was declared officially dead. Meanwhile, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Captain America each hopped into action. Yeah, guys! Go punch out that storm!
Let’s see what’s going on with the surviving members of the Fantastic Four. Keep in mind that the first page is referring to the Ultimate Fantastic Four/X-Men crossover arc that acted as a prelude to this story. So if you haven’t read it, just be glad you have no idea what they’re discussing.
That last thumbnail makes Reed look like George Bush Sr.
Once again, ManiacClown has been a non-factor what with him being all busy and stuff. Why do I even feel the need to mention him and bold his name? Is it a cry for help?
Tomorrow, we’ll finish off the Reed/Namor fight and take a trip to sunny Latveria. See you then!
Yesterday saw various baseball games called off due to rain. Plus Human Torch and his dad drowned. Hey, if it means I don’t have to look at Johnny Storm’s ugly hair anymore, I’m for it.
Now, some more devastation.
ManiacClown was too busy with real-life work to help out, but he did insist on making a JFK Jr. joke in terms of Angel flying underwater. Not cool, man. Not cool. Though, to be fair, I was planning on referring to Ultimatum’s disaster as “9/11 and Katrina have a baby”.
Tomorrow it’s all about Reed and Sue with a little bit of Namor tossed in there for you.
Our last installment showed that New York City is screwed. How screwed are they? Let’s watch.
Maniac Clown and I will return tomorrow to bear witness to even more comic character deaths. Of course, these deaths are only going to be major characters. Millions of innocent civilians are dropping like flies, but they don’t know any heroes, so we don’t need to see their bodies.
Yesterday was literally the calm before the storm, as we got to briefly check in with the Fantastic Four, the Ultimates, as well as Spider-Man and his amazing friends. You know, that’s pretty rare for a Loeb comic. We got FIVE single pages without the sudden, blatant two-page spread. It’s a start.
Now let’s push forward.
Huh. I didn’t intend this, but if you look at those thumbnails, it looks like Thor has suddenly transformed into a big, bald guy.
Thanks to ManiacClown. The second page was more or less his baby. Now it’s stuck in my head.
Tomorrow it’s time for the tragedy to begin. I mean tragedy in terms of the story. I mean… You know what I mean!
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?
There was never any good old days
They are today, they are tomorrow
It’s a stupid thing we say
Cursing tomorrow with sorrow
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.
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.
In the penultimate installment, Quicksilver sacrificed himself for his father by taking an arrow to the chest. The irony is that he would have been able to run in there in time to catch the arrow with his hands if he didn’t have that limp from being shot in the knees by Magneto back in Ultimate War! Good going, Master of Magnetism.
Here’s the rest.
And that does it. My eternal thanks to ManiacClown for writing this with me from issue #1. Thanks to hermanos for the site to showcase this and his never ending support. Thanks to the MightyGodKing himself, Christopher Bird, for his guidance. Thanks to Jeph Loeb, the Joel Schumacher of comics, for giving us such an easy target.
And especially thanks to all of you readers out there who enjoyed it. Even those of you who didn’t enjoy it. You gave it a shot anyway, so I can’t argue.
Now, will there be some kind of Ultimatum Edit in the near future? Hm… we’ll see.
BUT! I can do you one better. I’m sure many of you have heard of Rifftrax, the website second coming of Mystery Science Theater 3000, headed by Mike Nelson and the rest. Some of you may have heard of iRiffs, the new feature on the site. Now any moron with a microphone and time on his hands can put together his own Rifftrax selections for the public to purchase and enjoy.
I am one of these morons.
That’s right. Me, Nick “ManiacClown” Zachariasen and my old friend James Howard will be making fun of things video/audio-style. Here we’re just starting off with Japoteurs, a somewhat racist Superman cartoon from the 40’s. But we have a lot more in the works, so stay tuned once the iRiffs section is up and running.
Tomorrow or so, I’ll probably have some kind of annotations thing for Ultimate Edit up. So if you’re into that kind of stuff, check it out.
Again, thanks for reading, folks. It’s been a blast.
In the last installment, Ant Man said something really unbearably stupid. Let’s move on as the Ultimates confront Magneto, not with actions, but with words.
So, yeah, if you were wondering where I was going with that inner dialogue about Iron Man’s spine, there you go.
Thanks to writing partner ManiacClown for coming up with too much usable dialogue so that I had to make the text all scrunched up and awkward looking to fit in some word bubbles. Thanks a lot, jerk!
Tomorrow is the big conclusion. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
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.
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.
