It’s that time again. The final week of Ultimate Edit is upon is. Ten months to come out with five issues that had a two-year head start. Impressive. Unfortunately, this doesn’t beat Loeb’s other recent five-issue travesty Onslaught Reborn, illustrated by Rob Liefeld, which took well over a year for all five issues to come out.

You know, the delay of that comic hides the fact that it starts off with the end of House of M, but by the final issue, which was about a day or so later, it’s post-Civil War. What’s up with that?

Quick recap!

Issue one had Scarlet Witch get shot. Donald Blake showed up and it’s never touched on again.

Issue two had a big Ultimates vs. Brotherhood fight.

Issue three was Wolverine talking about how he used to wear an onion on his belt, as that was the style.

Issue four is about a battle in the Savage Land followed by a robot cliffhanger.

Let’s get this show on the road.

What can I say? I’m from New Jersey. I have to work in a Jovyism whenever I can.

And, as always, thanks to my collaborator (in the Vichy French sense) ManiacClown, who is indeed talking to you.

Check back in tomorrow. Especially check back on Day Seven for a special extra surprise.

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

A couple years back, Marvel released an animated straight-to-DVD movie Ultimate Avengers, based somewhat on the popular Ultimates comic. Softening the hard series put a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, but it did have some stuff going for it. It had that great Avengers vs. Hulk fight at the end and a sweet scene where Captain America realizes just which century he’s woken up in. All in all, it wasn’t so good.

A sequel came out soon after, featuring Black Panther. I remember very little of it due to how boring it was. The highlight of it being a fun segment where Tony Stark takes a walk through his cave of infinite Iron Man armors to settle on the War Machine design.

As much as I didn’t like Ultimate Avengers 2, that doesn’t compare to the outright disgust I had at Invincible Iron Man. Holy shit. That movie is so boring that, no joke, hermanos fell asleep watching it TWICE. It’s made up of endless talking, bad CGI, lots and lots of Iron Man getting his ass handed to him and a laughable climactic battle involving the Mandarin’s ghost floating over a mind-controlled naked woman who’s defeated by Iron Man yelling “REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE!” It’s really bad. I feel sorry for anyone who purchased it based on the success of the Robert Downey Jr. movie.

Following that came Doctor Strange. This one had promise. As an origin for Strange, it went really well. The character development was tops. Too bad they decided to bog it down with so many unneeded things. They decided that magic wasn’t interesting enough, so they transferred nearly everything magic-related into kung-fu sword fighting. Then they gave Strange a squad of kung-fu action sorcerers for the sake of a body count. It would have been pretty good, ultimately, until they ruined it with the most laughable deus ex machina in movie history. The way Dr. Strange beats Dormammu is so badly written and lazy, I’m still in awe.

My personal order is Doctor Strange over Ultimate Avengers over Ultimate Avengers 2 over Invincible Iron Man. The new animated movie Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow steps over that list as the best. But does that mean it’s actually good? That’s a good question.

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I haven’t really seen anyone talk much about the new Squadron Supreme 2 miniseries, so I thought I’d take a crack at it.

To really get into my thoughts on the first issue of the new miniseries, you have to look back at what brought us here in the first place. The original concept of the Squadron Supreme was brought to us by Roy Thomas as part of an Avengers storyline. The team would be the first example of what would eventually become a very hackneyed comic book cliché of one company copying another company’s characters and changing their names to keep things legally clean. Sometimes this works, like the time Plastic Man trained with an invisible monk, a super-strong monk and a fire monk. Most of the time it doesn’t work, like when Superman and Batman had to face the Ultimates/Avengers-based Maximums or when Garth Ennis thinks up yet another Superman knock-off for the sake of making fun.

The Squadron Supreme, of course, was based on the Justice League. It was a cool idea at the time and their alternate universe was instrumental in the Defenders. It was there that they laid down the groundwork for Mark Gruenwald’s opus maxi-series based on the Squadron Supreme universe.

If you haven’t read the original Squadron Supreme series, I’d suggest you do. It’s not the best comic ever, but in light of the last few years in comics, it comes across as an interesting bridge between the older days of superhero morality and the more sensitive times of now. It mainly dealt with the team taking over the government and giving themselves a year to fix up the damage they had caused during a mind-control episode. The big deal of their plan to change the world is that they used a special machine to alter the minds of their villains to make them good. The moral dilemmas weren’t lost on the story, as some heroes left due to disagreeing with the situation and one member of the team got kicked off for using the same machine on another teammate to make her love him. In the end, it became a Civil War situation with Hyperion’s side up against Nighthawk’s side.

The Squadron Supreme world could never successfully follow up on that series. There were stories here and there, including an arc in Exiles, but nothing special ever truly happened with it.

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Thinking back to yesterday, I seem to recall Thor slaughtering Unus and then being easily beaten by Magneto. Now ManiacClown and I are back to finish off yet another fun week.

In case you were wondering, the original, untouched version of that last page has Ultron ranting about vibrators. Yes, really.

Thanks for reading. Unless we get another delay or two, get set for Week 5 in August.

Ultimate Edit Week 5

Yesterday, Valkyrie got knocked out of the sky by Pyro and then Mastermind mastered her mind. Then Pyro received the nomination for Most Out-of-Character in a Jeph Loeb Production. Congratulations, Mr. Allerdyce.

Now we go to a Lord of the Rings battle sequence that’s reduced to three pages because MAD! can’t fit any more into his hefty schedule.

Tomorrow we’ll get a little conclusion to this scene, as well as more fun with robots to close out the week.

Thanks to ManiacClown, who’s good at translating our thoughts into Thor-speak.

Day Seven!

In our last installment, Hawkeye was saved by Ka-Zar, Shanna and a couple hungry tigers. Then Wolverine and Black Panther got punked by a guy calling himself the Juggernaut. Now we focus on Valkyrie.

Maybe in the next issue, we’ll see Ultimate Deadpool giving all his money to a mutant charity.

Get ready for tomorrow because that’s when ManiacClown and I will cover the EPIC* battle between Thor and Magneto!

*It isn’t epic by any means

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!

It was only yesterday when we saw some of the Ultimates just kind of hang out in the jungle. Then Captain America rescued Wasp from the clutches of a robotic Iron Man double. That’s about it.

This issue is a very special one. I’ve decided to fit in a couple pages of ads for you. Namely, Marvel’s ads for Ultimate Origins. Sure, the first issue already came out, but better late than never.

ManiacClown and I will continue with Hawkeye’s emergency intestinal surgery tomorrow. See you then.

Day Four!
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!