CBR: When Words Collide - Jan 3, 2011

[CBR News]

In preparing to talk about Robert Kirkman's fascinating X-Men comics, Tim reflects on the way the Ultimate universe diverged from its original intent and how it has influenced mainstream Marvel comics today.


Full article here (http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=30150).

[Radical_dreamer]

Interesting.

So many potential takes on the UU and yet....I don't know. I dropped off in a major way after Ultimatum. I could not bother picking up a single title (and I'm a huge fan of "alternate" universes).

I'm looking forward to the next one because a lot of the issues raised here, actually happen in Kirkman's run which I'm sorry to say got beyond silly at points (Cable is Wolverine. Just....words fail me) but still managed to hit a fun page (I dug the pseudo-X lineup of Pyro, Beast, Psylocke, etc...).

[stealthwise]

You know what was about a thousand times better than Kirkman's run on UXM? The run he followed, by Brian K Vaughan.

[pacinofan]

I dunno, UXM sure did its best to get as much baggage and continuity problems as the 616 X-Men.

[LukeCage_2099]

You know what was about a thousand times better than Kirkman's run on UXM? The run he followed, by Brian K Vaughan.

co-signed...in fact, Kirkman's run killed what little remaining interest I had in UXM after Vaughn left.

[AnoleX]

co-signed...in fact, Kirkman's run killed what little remaining interest I had in UXM after Vaughn left.

I'm really looking forward to this column next week, because Robert Kirkman RUINED UXM for me. I'm very interested in what next week's installment will entail. It all wasn't horrible, but I learned what habitual comic buying was with his run. Buying comics that you want to be good, but are not. Hoping they'll get better, but never did. Purely out of habit, keeping your collection complete. I def. learned not to do that again.

Yanick Paquette was also a huge turn off for me. I didn't like his art in Young X-men either, although I will say Uncanny X-Men #512 (With the Science Team time-traveling) was nice. And, while I don't read DC titles, some of the Bat art he has done that I've seen looks great. Definite progression.

I remember buying his UXM run, and the guy behind the LCS counter was trying to persuade me to pick up the Walking Dead. (He also didn't try to hide the fact that he wasn't a fan of the current UXM) I was NOT having it at all.

I also learned that just because a writer doesn't work out for you in one arena doesn't mean they won't wow you in another.

[Lexor7]

Well said AnoleX. That pretty much sums up my feelings about the Robert Kirkman run of UXM also. By the end I was just collecting to collect.

[mlapinski]

I love a column like this that can bring perspective to multiple facets of a single topic. I particularly appreciated the casual assassination of the Ultimate design scheme and the well-summarized conflict of intent and execution.

I'm from the same comic-reading age/demographic as Tim and I have some younger cousins who, along with their friends, learned to like the X-Men through the 90s cartoon. It seems like Ult.Spidey brought a number of new readers to comics (if trade sales are any indication) but I'd be curious to hear if Ult. X-Men was truly only a fanfic echo chamber or if it ever reached a 90s primed audience.

[lead sharp]

"Morrison's "New X-Men" didn't affect the Marvel mainstream at all, really, with everything he did being quickly retconned or forgotten"

I am reminded of the scene from Life Of Brian...

SO What did Morrison's run ever do for MU?

Removed Jean Grey from the MU?

Yes all right "Removed Jean Grey from the MU?" But apart from that what did Morrison's run ever do for MU?

Set up a lasting relationship between Emma Frost and Cyclops, The Midwich Cuckoos, The destruction of Genosa, the removal of Professor X, Fantomex, the deconstruction of Magneto as a villain, Beast's cat form.

YES ALL RIGHT! BUT apart from... "Set up a lasting relationship between Emma Frost and Cyclops, The Midwich Cuckoos, The destruction of Genosa, the removal of Professor X, Fantomex, the deconstruction of Magneto as a villain, Beast's cat form."... what did Morrison's run ever do for MU?

Emma Frost's diamond form?

OH f**K off.

[Radical_dreamer]

"Morrison's "New X-Men" didn't affect the Marvel mainstream at all, really, with everything he did being quickly retconned or forgotten"

I am reminded of the scene from Life Of Brian...

SO What did Morrison's run ever do for MU?

Removed Jean Grey from the MU?

Yes all right "Removed Jean Grey from the MU?" But apart from that what did Morrison's run ever do for MU?

Set up a lasting relationship between Emma Frost and Cyclops, The Midwich Cuckoos, The destruction of Genosa, the removal of Professor X, Fantomex, the deconstruction of Magneto as a villain, Beast's cat form.

YES ALL RIGHT! BUT apart from... "Set up a lasting relationship between Emma Frost and Cyclops, The Midwich Cuckoos, The destruction of Genosa, the removal of Professor X, Fantomex, the deconstruction of Magneto as a villain, Beast's cat form."... what did Morrison's run ever do for MU?

Emma Frost's diamond form?

OH f**K off.

Those are all X-specific changes though.

Instead of Jean standing behind scott as the acting telepath whenever the Uncanny X-Men guest-star we now have Emma.

Don't get me wrong, Morrison and Whedon make up my absolute favorite X-era but he destroyed NYC (completely) and this was corrected in exactly one double-page spread.

Maybe that's how it should be though.

[Dr. Orlando]

Marvel comics wouldn't be Marvel comics if NYC couldn't spontaneously rebuild itself every so many weeks.

Revisiting the '90s in Ult. X-Men was enough to drive me away, as well. I didn't stick with that nonsense in the original (616) X-books; why should I stick with an even more nonsensical respinning that would cost even more?

In his column, Tim writes:

The saga of Cable and Bishop is not inherently different than the "Days of Future Past," in terms of quality. Those of us who grew up in the 1980s might disagree with that opinion at first, because we have a fondness of Chris Claremont and John Byrne showing Wolverine and Kitty Pryde in the future, but if you go back and reread that story, it is evocative but too brief. Underdeveloped. It impacted so many because it was something seemingly new, but it's not a story that's particularly well-told.
Perhaps I'm guilty of looking back through wistful lenses at the early-80s Claremont/Byrne run on UXM, but I would say that the "Days of Future Past" issues (UXM #141-142) were brilliant simply because they WERE evocative, and they WERE too brief. There was no convoluted mess that got slopped onto the story, no "Days of Future Past: Alpha" preliminary issue, no kludge of previouslies. There was just this gripping cover filled with the faces of dead X-Men, and Logan and Kitty with their backs to the wall. The scenes in the future were all too brief, and provided no explanation of how things came to be: the Sentinels ascendant, Magneto crippled but on the side of good, Franklin Richards all grown up...

What it meant for me was an opportunity for my mind to race with all the potential stories that existed between the "now" -- the Brotherhood's attack on Senator Kelly" -- and the then -- the dystopic world in which the X-Men were killed one by one. If this had played out over the course of half a dozen or more issues, with long, laborious future continuity points being established, it would have slammed the slam-bang pace of the story into the ground, killed the tension and quashed my imagination.

It's that kind of "What if? What now?" excitement that I really never got from the UU -- and rarely if ever get these days in any corner of the MU. That one potential nightmare future of DoFP has just become one of countless such on-panel creations; the whole trope has been beaten like a harp seal by Cable, Bishop, et al., to the point where I'd rather DoFP had never happened, if it would mean that the last 20 years or so of temporal shenanigans could have been avoided.

That Kirkman saw Ultimate X-Men as underserving '90s-era X-fans, and that he then took steps to remedy it was the end of the title for me, long before Ultimatum proved just how bad a comic book (and just how shameless the company publishing it) can be.

[semicyon]

You're such a tease!

I barely remember Kirkman's run on Ult.X-Men and was hoping someone could point out something notable. Loved your evaluation of the Ultimate universe and it's role in Marvel's creative endeavors. I was primed to see how you thought Kirkman's X-Men fit within that... and then, in old-school comic book style, you left me with a cliffhanger. Ah, well, next week.

Thanks for the interesting read!

[lead sharp]

Those are all X-specific changes though.

Instead of Jean standing behind scott as the acting telepath whenever the Uncanny X-Men guest-star we now have Emma.

Don't get me wrong, Morrison and Whedon make up my absolute favorite X-era but he destroyed NYC (completely) and this was corrected in exactly one double-page spread.

Maybe that's how it should be though.


Last I checked the X books were in the MU.

Yes now we have a powerful couple leading the mutant nation instead of a miserable husband and wife act always dieing or wanting to sleep with Wolverine.

Some of the changes/additions made have stuck longer than most in comics. I personally would like to see Jean Grey dead longer than Barry Allen.

[TimothyCallahan]

Thanks for bearing with me on this, gang. I was planning to jump right into Kirkman's X-Men (which is a problematic run, but doesn't deserve anywhere near the knocks it got at the time, or still gets, it seems), but when I started to provide content for why I'd even bother talking about his run, I ended up with 2500 words of "introduction" and I realized, "well, I guess this will be a two-parter!"

I'm glad you're looking forward to the next part, even if it's to rip me to shreds because you think Wolverine as Cable is some kind of blasphemy.

And, Lead Sharp, good points, indeed. And funny! I would say those contributions were important, but Morrison's X-Men didn't change the STYLE of the way stories in the Marvel Universe were told, and the Ultimate comics did. That was what I was talking about. Has Furry Beast really changed anything? Isn't it just a superficial change, really?

[Radical_dreamer]

Thanks for bearing with me on this, gang. I was planning to jump right into Kirkman's X-Men (which is a problematic run, but doesn't deserve anywhere near the knocks it got at the time, or still gets, it seems), but when I started to provide content for why I'd even bother talking about his run, I ended up with 2500 words of "introduction" and I realized, "well, I guess this will be a two-parter!"

I'm glad you're looking forward to the next part, even if it's to rip me to shreds because you think Wolverine as Cable is some kind of blasphemy.

And, Lead Sharp, good points, indeed. And funny! I would say those contributions were important, but Morrison's X-Men didn't change the STYLE of the way stories in the Marvel Universe were told, and the Ultimate comics did. That was what I was talking about. Has Furry Beast really changed anything? Isn't it just a superficial change, really?

The problem with "furry" Beast as a concept is that it hasn't really been addressed by any writer since Morrison, safe Whedon. It's treated exactly as you put it; as a superficial change/matter of artist interpretation that doesn't mean anything to the character.

That's not it. Hank McCoy is devolving. His mutation seems to be that every trauma to his body sends him further and further towards a pure beast that's incapable of sustaining what he values most; his intellect. If we're talking "What do you fear the most?" that's Hank's answer right there. And it's ripe for some great stories.

And just to clarify, I don't consider it blasphemy (I still don't take comics that seriously, thank heavens :) ) it was just....really, really, bad on all fronts. An ostensibly bad idea, that was, in my subjective opinion, executed just as poorly.

I don't need Cable (...the sentence could end here) to have the accurate eye be the glowing one, techno-virus, or an excess of pouches but if you're going to throw such a curve to the mythos, I need some pay-off as to why and a reasoning that goes beyond "doesn't-that-sound-badass?"

[Sijo]

I was never sure of what Marvel's intention with the Ultimate Universe was, but I got the impression they just wanted to give the new generation of comics writers a place they could play in, with their ideas that didn't quite fit the main Marvel line at the time. Fair enough, though things like Cannibal Hulk, Jingoist Cap or Incestuous Scarlet Witch only managed to keep me from reading them. But hey, as long as we still had the originals, I was OK with their making that stuff for whomever is it that enjoys it. It's only when they started allowing them to write for the main universe anyway and bringing their ideas over (to a degree) that I balked (as did many other people.) Not to say that Millar or Bendis cannot write well (they can) but what's the point then? Where do WE get our not-so-dark Marvel Heroes?

[bh123]

Perhaps I'm guilty of looking back through wistful lenses at the early-80s Claremont/Byrne run on UXM, but I would say that the "Days of Future Past" issues (UXM #141-142) were brilliant simply because they WERE evocative, and they WERE too brief. There was no convoluted mess that got slopped onto the story, no "Days of Future Past: Alpha" preliminary issue, no kludge of previouslies. There was just this gripping cover filled with the faces of dead X-Men, and Logan and Kitty with their backs to the wall. The scenes in the future were all too brief, and provided no explanation of how things came to be: the Sentinels ascendant, Magneto crippled but on the side of good, Franklin Richards all grown up...

What it meant for me was an opportunity for my mind to race with all the potential stories that existed between the "now" -- the Brotherhood's attack on Senator Kelly" -- and the then -- the dystopic world in which the X-Men were killed one by one. If this had played out over the course of half a dozen or more issues, with long, laborious future continuity points being established, it would have slammed the slam-bang pace of the story into the ground, killed the tension and quashed my imagination.

I feel exactly the same way, but you summed it up much more clearly and concisely than I could have.

I think it is worth mentioning that I did not start reading comic books until around 1985, and I didn't follow the X-Men book regularly until 1990 or so. As a result, I read the "saga" of Cable and Bishop several years before I got my hands on a copy of a trade paperback reprinting "Days of Future Past." And, guess what? I thought "Days of Future Past" was much better than all the stuff involving Cable or Bishop. Why? Because it was more or less done-in-one, and you did not have to read the X-Men books for years and years to find out who Cable was, and why Stryfe looked exactly like him, and which one turned out to be the clone, and who the "X-traitor" was, etc, etc.

Yes, Claremont used "Days of Future Past" as the kick-off for a number of stories, what with Rachel Summers and Nimrod coming to the present day, and both the X-Men and the readers left nervously wondering if mutant registration and Project Wideawake were going to end up leading to the horrific dystopian future that had been briefly glimpsed. But you were not required to read any of that. If you only read the two issue "Days of Future Past" and nothing else, you got a complete story. The end.

That is why I regard "Days of Future Past" as a much better, stronger story than all the stuff with Cable or Bishop.

[rev sully]

Happy Wednesday! Happy New FunnyBook day!

I've been blessed. I read a frak-ton of ULTIMATE floppies when I came back to funnybooks in 2001.
Still perhaps the Best Ultimate title ever...ULTIMATE MARVEL TEAM-UP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Marvel_Team-Up
then comes ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN. It will be always one of my favorite comics but I'll get to USM in a sec...

I thought that Ultimate Team-Up was one of the few "Perfect" Comics.
No bane of continuity. Different artists with the Young Firebrand Bendis.
But Spider-Man and Iron Man by Mike Allred?
Spidey & Man-Thing by John Totelben? Ahh!!! Such good comics. A small cliffhanger in a 2-parter. Then-Compared to Ultimate Spidey's monthly with that awesome Bagely & Thiebert art!
(BTW: Ultimate Spidey "lost a step" so to speak when Art Thiebert left but wasn't that a great run within that long-@$$ Bagley run?)

the upcoming AVENGERS movies & Most of this Modern MARVEL Movie Madness I think came from Millar's button & envelope pushing in ULTIMATES 1 & 2. I was on the hook every issue...
and I smelled a rat for that stinker ULTIMATES 3. Something was Rotten in Ultimate NYC, eh? I bought ULTIMATUM #1 and didn't finish. I finished Ultimate Spidey and the REQUIEM issues...which were the monthly Ultimate Spideys that Wednesday.
We were all going, "what the fr@k!" scratching our collective fanboy head after the Ultimatum. I held out for months but caved in...I bought ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #1-3 off the shelves. And I was curreent for a few months. I do like the current comic. The Bendis is still doing the Good Job. His artist pairings are good too. Nonethless I stopped buying it. I don't "feel" it anymore. Maybe I just need a break. Maybe when MJ finally becomes the Red Goblin again I'll start buying again. How frakkin cool was Bendis' Ultimate Goblins but iDigress...

Continuity killed the Ultimate Universe? Did it? I dunno...
I was just an avid Ultimate Spidey reader who got his jollies pallin' with those Mark Millar ribald Avengers and X-Men. As a weekly to monthly fan, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN was a great comic. Always shipped, never late (unless someone like totally calls me on this but I don't remember anything "Amazing" or "Spectacular"). Always entertained. Never "felt" like the other Ultimate Properties. It never had to worry about "what was going on over at Ultimate F4" or "Ult. X-men" too much with the Exception of Kitty Pride who was an awesome addition to Peter Parker's life and the cast of USM.
I never read much beyond the initial Warren Ellis' Ultimate F4. His Ultimate Galactus never did it for me and I love Uncle Warren. Warren Ellis' Ultimate Reed Richards got quoted in F4:Rise of the Silver Surfer movie... the Ultimate F4 line was the Only Good part of that movie

Oh yeah...those Ultimate X-Men.
All the Mark Millar stuff is Holy.
The art by the Kurbert Bros? Exhaulted.
I bragged to people how the colors LEPT! off the pages and how motion & blurr effects were so 21st century & revolutionary.
I pretty much stopped paying attention to Ultimate X-Men at Brian K. Vaughan's...BKV's stuff just wasn't doing it for me. Yeah...

But I love reading the dissecting of the Ultimate MARVEL Property. Good things...the bad things. Looking forward to next week's article, Tim. thanks & Happy New Year.

crea shakti,
Rev. Sully