#also the nick fury reveal at the end of that arc is legitimately cool

[kiragecko]

Ultimate Comics: A Retrospective

Ultimate Comics was a Marvel alternate universe that existed from 2000 to 2015. They were some of the first comics I ever read, and I wanted to talk a little about the various titles (that I remember) and what I think about them.

Ultimate Spider-Man -

Everyone says this is the best Ultimate series. It is.

It is also tonally different from the rest of the line, which leads to some fascinating crossovers. (66-67 is a fun one with Wolverine.)

Rather than reinventing the characters, it's pretty faithful to them, though Peter may be slightly less of a jerk than canon. It introduces most of Peter's canon cast, but writes them into a 14-15 year old's life, rather that the 'older teen'(/30 year old) of the original comics. A bit slow moving at times, and everyone talks like they're on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but its a GOOD SERIES. And it's Spider-Man.

Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man -

This is also a good series, and a worthy successor to the previous one. Miles is wonderful. However, I'm not thick skinned enough for comics. I couldn't forgive Marvel for Ultimatum, and even though this series was really good at respecting Peter's death and writing a new Spider-man fully aware of the weight of his legacy, I was MAD. Stupid apocalyptic cross-over events. Stupid hyper-violence. I HATE IT.

Ultimate X-Men 1-33

Must a series be good? This one is not.

It's as soulless and obsessed with being cool as the Ultimates (see below), but instead of partner abuse, incest, and cannibalism, it's gleefully reveling in torture and young adults being incredibly petty dicks to each other.

I personally find gratuitous torture more intriguing than partner abuse. The Weapon X arc is compelling to a certain type of reader. (Me, for example.)

However, Ultimates at least had some partial characters and a few archetypes. Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men doesn't even have different varieties of dickishness. Not a single personality to be found. Just cardboard cutouts there to deliver quips.

(13 and 14 are a fill-in about Gambit and are really sweet, despite being by Chuck Austen. This version of Gambit will never return. Neither will this version of Chuck Austen. But I found them worth reading.)

Ultimate X-Men 34-100

The series could not recover from having zero characters. The lineup was too high profile to switch out for characters with actual personalities, but also utterly uninteresting for anything other than flashy action movie violence. I stuck around for another 40 or so issues, but the only ones worth reading are the Spider-Man crossover in 34-39, where Peter Parker tries to help out Wolverine and really struggles with the genre shift to ultraviolent action thriller. Everyone should read that. It's great!

The Ultimates -

Okay, this mini-series actually has cool stuff in it. It is drastically weakened by being WAY too focused on that cool stuff, but I ... look, I absolutely don't recommend it, but I enjoyed it when I was 18.

This is the Ultimate version of the Avengers. The Avengers movie is heavily based on these guys.

Things that are cool:

Ultimate Thor is FASCINATING. Hippie cult leader who may be delusional about actually being Thor. Not really a superhero, but sort of helps out. Mark Millar doesn't respect liberals (or anyone else), but the character kind of gets away from him and is good anyways? (All that lovely ambiguity will quickly be lost. But this bit was good.)

Ultimate Iron Man is Movie Iron Man. He's got all the early movie version's flaws and strengths. His quips are often very good. He was interesting enough that I read his first mini. (A mistake. More later.)

Things that are mixed:

Ultimate Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are ... look, I liked melodrama as a young adult. These guys were consistently my favourite parts of the first 2 minis. They're not good people. They only pretend to do heroics (and even the pretense is perfunctory). It's heavily implied that they're in an incestual relationship. But even cowering from their abusive father is done with such flair and emotion! Mark Millar writes good hooks for hurt/comfort, okay?

Ultimate Black Widow and Hawkeye are ... the basis for the movie versions. That means these guys are responsible for Hawkeye having an awful buzzcut, no expression, and a wife and kids. These guys are also the reason the movie versions are so intertwined in each other and so heavily tied to SHIELD. Black Widow is the female with the closest thing to a personality in this mini.

Things that aren't cool:

Ultimate Captain America is fundamentally broken. Fails as Captain America. This is Jingoistic post-9/11 Americans at their worst. Attracted to a lady married to someone else and super creepy about it. Takes SUCH JOY in beating up her husband when the man turns out to be abusive - like, it's not about her at all, he just likes hurting people. A bad person.

Ultimate Wasp and Giant-Man are the aforementioned wife and abusive husband. She is a macguffin with an INCREDIBLE costume. He gets far too much screen time for such a pathetic abusive piece of slime.

The Ultimate Hulk shouldn't be a mass murderer. Bruce is pathetic, and watching him with his ex is ... bad. Why does Mark Millar hate everyone he writes?

Things that matter:

Not the plot. It's an early 2000s action movie. All flash, no substance.

The Ultimates 2:

More of the same, but not as good. Still ultra-nationalistic. Still soulless. The Maximoff twins remain an uncomfortable delight while doing nothing. Hawkeye's small children's dead bodies are graphically shown on panel. Nobody is likeable or a character, Tony's stupid opinions aren't as forgiveable, and Thor is absent most of the miniseries.

The Ultimates 3:

Jeff Loeb tries to ape Millar's style. He gets the grossness and violence right! He misses badly on the subtlety, which is REALLY impressive, since Millar isn't known for it. (The Hulk eats people, you guys.) Thankfully, I bowed out after number 2.

Ultimate Fantastic Four -

Mediocre. Non-descript. Nothing new to say, but not good at what made the original work. (Family. It has always been about family.) The lackluster movie does a slightly better job. I don't care about these characters until Ultimate Reed goes evil (far after this series), and then I hate him.

Ultimate Iron Man -

??? What? I ...

I like Ender's Game. I do not think the writer of Ender's Game should being trying to integrate into a shared universe. This isn't Tony Stark, and it ruins the character for anyone else to use. Why are all his nerves brain tissue???

Ultimate Daredevil and Elektra and Ultimate Elektra -

Reading these made me slightly interested in Daredevil comics. But only so I could see a better version of these characters. Boring. (I satisfied the faint interest by watching the Daredevil movie. The one you all complain about. Much more interesting than this.)

Ultimate Comics: Thor -

Wanted to like it more than I did. It's okay, but too grounded to get away with the shallowness of Millar's stuff, and too attached to Millar's stuff to work as something real. Mark Millar does not create anything worth building on, because all his creations are hollow facades.

Ultimatum -

HATE IT. BURN IT WITH FIRE!!!!!!!!!

People writing about things they don't like are awful. People who delight in destroying other people's toys are the worst. This series taught me not to trust alternate universes, because the higher ups consider them disposable.

Just an excuse to make the ending of all their books as unsatisfying as possible.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream - Spider-Man: Far From Home/Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

It really is a good time to be a Spider-Fan.

This guy is hitting all the right notes lately: he’s got a great video game beloved by all who plays it, he’s one of the golden boys of the MCU after only a handful of appearances, and he featured in one of, if not THE greatest animated movie of all time. Now if only his comics would undo One More Day and they renewed Spectacular Spider-Man and gave it the finale it deserves, things would be absolutely perfect.

So with me being a big Spider-Man fan, I think it’s about time I talked about his greatest cinematic achievments: Into the Spider-Verse and Far From Home. That’s right, Spidey is so good he’s conquered two mediums and delivered his best stories within a year of each other. My only regret is not talking about both of these films sooner, but I suppose that just gives me the opportunity to praise them both at once.

The greatest common factor these two movies have between each other, and what makes both films infinitely relatable and entertaining, is how both films feature a young protagonist who has great responsibility thrust upon them and they must find some way to deal with it. In the case of Peter, he is saddled with the pressure of being able to live up to his mentor, Tony Stark, in the wake of Endgame’s finale and Tony’s sacrifice. Frankly, Peter just wants to be a normal teenager, get the girl, and have a good vacation – it’s perfectly understandable, and while it may come off as a bit selfish, Peter is still a young man, a young man who has suffered through numerous traumas in his life and is probably upset he can’t just be normal for once. Of course over the course of the film he remembers that with great power comes great responsibility, and he rises up to save the day.

Miles, on the other hand, while initially a bit confused and unsure of himself and what to do, really does want to live up to the memory of Spider-Man, who he only knew a brief time before his death. However, he lacks training, he doesn’t understand his own powers, and he just lacks faith in himself. The entire movie builds up his character, his relationships to others, and all he does so that moment when he takes his “leap of faith” is well-earned and solidifes the moment when he goes from merely being a Spider-Boy to truly earning the name of Spider-Man. I find it very interesting how the two Spider-Men in the two best Spidey movies have sort of opposite motivations – one is being crushed by the pressure to be a world-saving hero while only wanting to be normal, while the other wants to live up to the destiny thrust upon him but initially lacks the skill and finesse to do so – before coming to the same sort of ending. More than the man in the comics who sold his marriage to a demon because he couldn’t deal with the consequences of his actions, these Spideys realize the immortal phrase from Uncle Ben that I need not repeat.

Of course, what would a hero be without a villain to oppose them? Thankfully, both films deliver some of the best superhero movie villains anyone could ask for. Far From Home is a bit more focused, giving us one major antagonist: Mysterio, in the least shocking movie twist of all time. But it truly is a testament to how great an actor Jake Gyllenhaal is and how good a character Mysterio is that he is able to sell you on all of his hero garbage right up until the reveal, and even afterwards he never once drops that affable charm and charisma that belies his true nature as a petty sociopath. Mysterio has always been a character who has struggled to find good use in the comics due to writers not knowing how to use him; he does not have that problem here.

Into the Spider-Verse, on the other hand, goes for what most Spider-Man movies tend to do: cram a bunch of villains in and see what sticks. Thankfully, they manage to hit home runs three out of six times and only whiff twice. Let’s get the less impressive villains out of the way first: Tombstone and Scorpion. While Scorpion’s design is cool and he gets some decent fight scenes, he really could be swapped out with a generic mook and it really wouldn’t make any difference either way. Tombstone, on the other hand, is an absolutely pointless waste of a character, which is a real shame. He’s the bodyguard for a guy who killed Spider-Man with his bare hands and has superhumans and cyborgs under his employ, he’s frankly a bit superfluous. Green Goblin is the only middle ground villain, one who isn’t amazing but is certainly cool enough in his own right to leave an impression despite only having a single scene. His monstrous design really goes a long to selling his threat level and his brutal fight with the original Peter really is impressive. Sadly, he dies at the end of the fight and is quickly overshadowed.

Then we have the two side villains that really work: Prowler and Dock Ock. Prowler is the obvious one, as due to him being Miles’ uncle he adds a sort of tragic emotional connection, one that is only exacerbated once Prowler hesitates in killing his nephew and ends up becoming Miles’ stand-in for Uncle Ben. Dock Ock is a bit surprising, seeing as she is a somewhat unique take, essentially a genderbent original character version of Otto Ocatavius, complete with all that implies (yes, I am talking about the relationship with Aunt May). She’s been the big breakout villain of the movie, and with good reason: she’s cool, she’s cunning, and she’s hot, all hallmarks of a quality villain beloved by the masses.

And then we come to the big one, and I do mean big: Kingpin. Here, his size and intimidation is played up for all its worth, turning him into an absolute mountain of a man and giving him one of the slickest designs I have ever seen. He’s a brutal, ruthless thug, but he’s also given a legitimately tragic and heartbreaking reason to his actions, and while it certainly doesn’t redeem him, it does make him an interesting and complex character. If nothing else, it’s just really nice to see Liev Schreiber finally get to be the villain in a good superhero movie and a good animated movie villain, after getting the shaft in both regards on two previous occasions.

The ensemble casts of both films are great. Far From Home ropes in Maria Hill and Nick Fury, and finally gives Hill some more to do while letting Fury have a lot more fun and taking a more direct approach than usual. Aside from that, all the returning characters are improved – Happy is nicer, funnier, and a better mentor; Dash is still a jerk but he’s toned down and has a bit of tragedy to him; and MJ is fleshed out, given a personality, and has excellent chemistry with Peter. And then there is Peter’s best buddy Ned, who gets ne of the funniest romantic arcs I have ever seen in a movie. And I’d be remiss to not mention Peter’s bumbling teachers, who deliver some more top quality humor to the proceedings. I think it would be best to state now that Far From Home is honestly really funny, with pretty much all of its humor hitting the bullseye, and a lot of that has to do with just how well these people play their parts and dive into their characters with the sort of fun conviction you’d want out of Spider-Man characters.

Into the Spider-Verse has the heavily advertised Spider-Ham, Peni Parker, and Spider-Man Noir, but they actually only appear in the last third of the film and really only stick around to showcase how good the animation can handle other styles, fuel jokes, and help fight in some awesome fight scenes. Frankly, this is enough; they don’t really stick around long enough to overshadow Miles, but they’re also around just long enough to establish personalities and endear themselves to the audience. Out of the three, I find Peni to be the least interesting due to changing her mecha’s design from the more Evangelion-esque one from the comics as well as her just not really grabbing my attention all too much, but it’s easy to see why she has fans. Personally, I preferred the cartoony antics of Spider-Ham and the noir-tinged grittiness of Noir. Also, Noir is voiced by Nicolas Cage and Ham is John Mulaney. It would be a challenge for me to not love them.

The major supporting characters are Peter B. Parker and Gwen Stacy, and both manage to be great in their own right while, again, not overshadowing Miles, with Peter especially being an absolute blast, giving us the miserable, chubby, downbeat Peter we never knew we needed and having him go through a full arc of his own where Miles helps him overcome his hangups as much as Peter helps Miles. Gwen is a fun character, but she sadly doesn’t get quite as much of an arc as Peter, but that will definitely be expanded upon in sequels; she’s still a solid sidekick here. The rest of the supporting cast, such as Miles’ dad, are solid characters, and the film also gives what may be the best version of Aunt May ever (though all Aunt Mays are great and let no one tell you different); I don’t really think the supporting cast is quite as good as Far From Home’s overall, but it certainly does have memorable characters that will stick with you.

Before wrapping up, I of course have to address this: Spider-Verse has some of the most amazing animation I have ever seen. It truly captures that look of being taken right from a comic book, and there are just so many clever visuals and shots that it’s simply astounding. This is the pinnacle of CGI, and revolutionary in the field of stylized CGI. I hope other studios take notes on how to make CGI look good and stylish like this.

Into the Spider-Verse is just a stunning piece of animation. It has good characters, a solid plot, a lot of great humor, a lot of great emotion, and some really decent morals, all while paying tribute to the comics and the Raimi films and giving us some closure by adapting bits of the unused Raimi Spider-Man 4. It’s a beautiful tribute to everything we know and love of Spider-Man while also being a fantastic “passing the torch” story that gives Miles his own time to shine in the spotlight. This movie is basically what Big Hero 6 tried to be, but where that movie kind of stumbled over itself and felt more like a TV pilot for a series on the big screen, this feels like a fully fledged story unto itself. It also has one of the most beautifully poignant Stan Lee cameos ever, as well as what may be the greatest joke in Spider-Man history after the credits. If you love Spider-Man, see this movie. If you love animation, see this movie. If you love movies, see this movie. This might very well be the greatest animated film of all time, and it deserves to be seen.

Far From Home, meanwhile, is a fantastic achievement in live action Spidey cinema. It gives us a wonderful supporting cast, a love interest who actually has chemistry and isn’t a boring damsel that disgraces the name of her comic counterpart, an awesome villain, and genuine funny moments, and for once all of these things are in the same moment! This really solidifies MCU Spider-Man as being a fun, fresh take on a character who has been done to death in almost every medium; it keeps most of what we love while changing some details here and there so that Spider-Man can resonate more with modern audiences. What they do change tends to be for the better, too – I really have no problem, unlike a lot of people, with Tony “taking Uncle Ben’s place,” for a variety of reasons but not the least of which is the fact I’m frankly tired of seeing Uncle Ben die. Having him merely be the long dead motivator for Peter’s early heroics is enough for me. This is absolutely peak MCU, and a fantastic epilogue to the Infinity Saga. If you’re invested in the MCU or Spider-Man at all, this movie will be right up your alley. If you still need more convincing: they combined Raimi Jameson and PS4 Game Jameson into a character, and Simmons still plays him.

Both of these films are the cream of the crop when it comes to cinematic versions of Spider-Man, with Far From Home sitting comfortably up there with Spider-Man 2, if not surpassing it, and Into the Spider-Verse frankly taking on a league of its own, Both projects really alter the course of what can be done with Spider-Man, and it has me excited for all the future works involving the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man we might be seeing soon. With Spider-Verse getting sequels and spinoffs and Far From Home absolutely getting a sequel, it’s safe to say that anyone who loves Spidey will have plenty to love for years to come. And the best part is we will never have to worry about either Spidey making deals with Mephisto.