#neo!tony

[starker-sorbet]

The Matrix au with Tony as Neo and Peter as Trinity

[orangedodge]

A year in, and what stands out most for me about the new Ultimate Universe is how the Maker has no grand ambitions behind stealing an entire Earth and rewriting its history. It's all about revenging slights, and striking back against everyone who wounded his ego.

In the old Ultimate Universe, the Maker's story--as created by Brian Bendis and developed by Jonathan Hickman and Al Ewing--was one that offered the question of what if Reed Richards was wrong? What if Victor von Doom had been right all along? From the beginning he was a character who overestimated his own competency, desperately needing to be the smartest man in every room, needing to believe that the hard working boy genius would easily overthrow the privileged elites surrounding him and make everything his.

He couldn't handle that his aristocratic classmate, Victor, had a better grasp of the fundamental math than he did, and out of jealousy and insecurity ignored his warnings. He spent years quietly resenting that his celebrated mentor's daughter, Sue's, accomplishments in the biosciences were spoken of in the same breath as his own. And most of all, he despised that Anthony Stark, the personification of everything he hated in the world, really was "just smarter than [him.]"

In the old Ultimate Universe, Tony Stark made Reed feel like a child. He was never able to exist out of Tony's shadow, and define himself as the unrivaled intellect he saw himself as. In the new Ultimate Universe, the Maker has altered the timeline so that Tony is the insecure young boy, and--had he not underestimated Howard Stark--he would have been the one to never step outside the overbearing father figure's shadow.

In the shared grand finale of Jonathan Hickman's run on Fantastic Four and New Avengers both, the Reed Richards of Earth-616 was indisputably the better Reed Richards than his Earth-1610 counterpart. He built the life for himself that the Maker believed should have been given to him by right, and though Mr Fantastic didn't always fully appreciate what he had, he got where he did without abandoning his empathy and compassion for the people around him.

Most of all, unlike the Maker, the Reed Richards of Earth-616 was Right, and his version of Victor was wrong. And so when the Maker built the new world, he not only obliterated the identity of the local Reed Richards, forcing him to live trapped forever within the iron mask of Dr. Doom, but he made sure that in this world, the space flight would be a failure. Just so that "Doom" would be wrong, and it would cost him everything.

In Ultimate Spider-Man, Peter Parker was the golden child of the Avengers community, warmly accepted in a way that the Maker never was, his potential for greatness constantly praised by Stark, Fury, Thor, the big men at the top whose recognition Reed always wanted. In the new Ultimate Spider-Man, more than removing a potential threat to himself in the form of Spider-Man, the Maker stole that life from him by subjecting him to a mundane existence that he (Reed) would think is worthless, while setting himself up at the very top of what was once their shared community.

We see this pattern in the supporting characters as well. The Nick Fury of Earth-1610 was always one step ahead of his Reed Richards, and held it over him. The Nick Fury of the Maker's new world is brainwashed and hypnotized, forced to live unknowingly through the same sequence of events, the same failed rebellions, all scripted by Reed himself, over and over again, allowed to realize the truth only briefly before each end.

In Ultimate Enemy, Reed Richards rebels against the world he believed was oppressing him. He was summarily rejected, exiled, and defeated, by his closest friends and family. He went on to create the City of the Children of Tomorrow, which warred with present day humanity only to be defeated again and again. At the same time, Ultimate Comics X-Men would depict Kitty Pryde leading an armed insurrection against the US government, supported by all of her friends, before going on to collectively found the mutant nation of Utopia, which endured until the end of the Ultimate Universe.

Given Jonathan Hickman's work with the X-Men, I think the image of the mutant communist-anarchist city arising spontaneously in a barren wasteland, standing opposite the Maker's carefully planned, meticulously engineered, city of post-human supermen that endlessly consume the land around them should be a resonant one. Only now in the new world, Reed's artificial civilization won out, and its the mutants who are destroyed in failed uprising. In Ultimate Wolverine, Kitty is living in exile in Russia, hunted by Logan, Piotr Rasputin, and Illyana Rasputina, the three characters she is most closely associated with among fans. It's like Reed gave his own self-inflicted downfall to someone he's met only twice (but who annoyed him profoundly enough that he couldn't help himself).

But its Bobby da Costa that suffers under the full brunt of the Maker's pettiness. Following the third Secret Wars, the Maker sets up shop on Earth-616 and tries to play at being the foe of Eternity and Galactus, only for Bobby to just dispense with him on the pages of Al Ewing's US Avengers. Like Nick, da Costa is someone who sees through Reed's schemes and plans around him with ease. Like Stark, he was simply smarter than Reed was, and didn't need to even try to get the better of him. He dismantled everything the Maker had built, and subjected him to the final indignity of throwing him in prison, never thinking about him again. Reed didn't even get to be nemesis to a new hero, he just got jumped and locked away without a care by someone that was playing on another level from him.

In the new Ultimate Universe, da Costa's father has a role in Reed's inner circle, thanks to the superhuman strength that he acquires from stealing Bobby's blood. The man that humiliated him, now depersoned and treated as a mere consumable commodity. He's forced to go everywhere with his father, never leaving his side, and Reed never has to look at him or worry about him at all.

I think its honestly great character work. Ultimate Reed really is one of the premiere villains of the shared setting in how he get to play the urbane villain--but an insecure one, and ultimately an incredibly small and petty one--in the same way that the comics used to use a Victor von Doom, or an Erik Lehnsherr, before giving them too much growth and development of character for it to work anymore.

[artgate-blog]

Tony Scherman

expectant Diva

1986

[public---mags]

Fast Forward | Raphael Saadiq for Vibe Magazine June 2002

[culturalappreciator]

[questintheskies]

[japanesecds]

Tony! Toni! Toné! – House Of Music

Released: 09 Dec 1996 Japan

[nowimnothing-rx]

'Dead souls keep calling me pt. 2'

By Casper Tricoteux, Oct 10 2024

PRINTS AVAILABLE NOW

[problematic-faves-appreciation]

Anyone else can't get enough of ships where Character A only has eyes for Character B? They're CharacterBromantic! Bonus points if they both feel that way about each other.

Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw are the classic example of this ship dynamic!

Put your ships in the tags, my ultimate fave is Anakin Skywalker/Padme Amidala. Anakin's a Padméromantic. :)

[starker-sorbet]

Matrix au with Tony as Agent Smith and Peter as Neo

[musiquariumology]

Tony! Toni! Toné! - Let's Get Down (Official Music Video)

[schlock-luster-video]

On March 18, 1977, God Told Me To ... was re-released in the United States.

[dme-tv1]

Toni Esther talks Lamar SC, dad influence, Beyond Mars, Soule' Cafe, SA...

[cultlifecollective-blog]

SCARFACE

[plazainkfish]

[helmar-weiss]

🎉 Heute startet das REWAG Nacht in Blau Festival @derversorger.rewag im Stadtpark in Regensburg @stadtregensburg

🌟 Freut euch auf ein abwechslungsreiches Programm.

FREITAG 02.08.24

Grüne Bühne 18:00 Uhr @duo.con.calore 19:15 Uhr @imtromtus.quartet 20:15 Uhr @izefirelli

Blaue Bühne 18:00 Uhr Alberto & Daniela Rosas Llerena 19:00 Uhr Ensemble KMFR 20:15 Uhr @germangents

SAMSTAG 03.08.24 Grüne Bühne 17:00 @cultural.disaster 17:45 @acoustic_gravity 20:15 Uhr @funkindustry

Blaue Bühne 17:00 Uhr @tony.tara 18:00 Uhr @thetroubleshooters 20:30 Uhr @espanacircoeste

Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie 17:00 Uhr – 22:00 Uhr @kunstforumostdeutschegalerie

#rewag#tonytara#nachtinblau#regensburg