Comparing the Ultimates: Millar, Loeb, Hickman, Humphries

[thecrimson]

See, that'll always be the discussion. I'd have to go through and re-read Millar's entire tenure on both UXM and Ultimates, but there were always a bunch of things that made me think the opposite. Wanda trying to seduce Cyclops and flirting with the Ultron come to mind immediately, and I'm sure if I looked I could find Pietro doing the same elsewhere. No doubt their relationship was weird and kinda made you feel uncomfortable as you were reading, but I always thought it was a by product of their abusive father. I even wanna say they said that somewhere, maybe in Ultimate War or something, but I may have come up with that on my own lol.

Plus, that cover is blatantly obnoxious. Millar and Hitch were obviously trolling us lol.

I don't know, I might need to do the same. It's been a long time since I last read The Ultimates or UXM. Though I want to say flirting with other people doesn't necessarily indicate the opposite. Girls are, in my opinion, notorious flirters.

[sage6paths]

See, that'll always be the discussion. I'd have to go through and re-read Millar's entire tenure on both UXM and Ultimates, but there were always a bunch of things that made me think the opposite. Wanda trying to seduce Cyclops and flirting with the Ultron come to mind immediately, and I'm sure if I looked I could find Pietro doing the same elsewhere. No doubt their relationship was weird and kinda made you feel uncomfortable as you were reading, but I always thought it was a by product of their abusive father. I even wanna say they said that somewhere, maybe in Ultimate War or something, but I may have come up with that on my own lol.



Plus, that cover is blatantly obnoxious. Millar and Hitch were obviously trolling us lol.

Dude she is flirting with Ultron an effing Robot. That alone shows something is wrong and incest is not far behind.

[taylor51]

I don't know, I might need to do the same. It's been a long time since I last read The Ultimates or UXM. Though I want to say flirting with other people doesn't necessarily indicate the opposite. Girls are, in my opinion, notorious flirters.

Yeah, but you gotta factor in the limited panel space that writers have to tell their story. Events have to serve some functional purpose or you break the flow of what's happening. Pietro's reaction to Wanda flirting with the robot is a humorous "uh, what are you doing?", rather than a "why are you cheating on me!?" rant, which communicates to me that they're not an item. Same with Wanda and Cyke (lol): the scene doesn't paint a "oooh, this is wrong, because I'm my brother's girlfriend" picture, it's just showing Wanda hitting on a guy.

I hope that makes sense lol.

[taylor51]

Dude she is flirting with Ultron an effing Robot. That alone shows something is wrong and incest is not far behind.

Wanda is MARRIED to a robot in 616. It was an in joke, but it still serves the purpose of what I was saying.

[thecrimson]

Yeah, but you gotta factor in the limited panel space that writers have to tell their story. Events have to serve some functional purpose or you break the flow of what's happening. Pietro's reaction to Wanda flirting with the robot is a humorous "uh, what are you doing?", rather than a "why are you cheating on me!?" rant, which communicates to me that they're not an item. Same with Wanda and Cyke (lol): the scene doesn't paint a "oooh, this is wrong, because I'm my brother's girlfriend" picture, it's just showing Wanda hitting on a guy.

I hope that makes sense lol.

I think that's why he doesn't go for a rant. He had nothing to fear from her flirting with a machine.

EDIT: Also, flirting doesn't equal cheating.

[Plawsky]

Haha, for sure. There's just been a BAZILLION discussions over this, so I wasn't sure if people'd roll their eyes at me or not lol.

Obviously you've never seen the hundreds of long (though extremely well written and brilliant!) posts I've made. I'm all for other people doing the same. That's what we're here for, after all.

Some things I feel Ultimates 3 did well:
-First of all: sexy, sexy, SEXY Joe Mad art. Man, I'd forgotten just how good Ultimates 3 looks

Yeah, it's pretty art, but it completely disregards previous character designs all over the place. And I'm not crazy about it from a story telling standpoint, especially when contrasted with Hitch's art before it. I will say that I think the Thor design is great, but it's not Ultimate Thor.

-You know, Loeb catches a lot of flack for mis-characterizing Ultimate Universe characters as their Classic Marvel selves. I'll address that more thoroughly in detail later, but I've gotta say that I don't think people give him enough credit.

For me, it's not as much that he writes them as their "Classic Marvel" selves, but that he doesn't write them as the Ultimate versions that were in Ultimates 1 and 2. The only character that feels like a Classic version of the character is Thor.

1).Hawkeye hating the world and having a death wish, which I feel was a pretty valid character development in the wake of having his entire family killed in front of him

Angry with a death wish makes sense, but he was never unprofessional before. He would never do anything that would jeopardize the mission, and he hadn't previously been seen as hostile towards his teammates. There are a dozen ways Loeb could have better shown us that Clint was having a tough time with his family's death than being angry at the Ultimates.

2). Cap's "old fashioned fish out of water" characterization, which, while slightly one-dimensional, takes its cues directly from what Millar was doing with Cap in Ultimates 2

The "fish out of water" side of Cap is all that Loeb focused on, though. There was none of the soft side of Steve that Millar had before. And him pretending to be Black Panther still makes no sense. The Ultimate Cap Annual helps this some, but it's still stupid that he would lie to his teammates and girlfriend.

3). Hank Pym's unappreciated/can't catch a break/right place-wrong time plot line is, again, right up Millar's alley while still having its own flavor

But why would he become a drug addict all of a sudden? He was self destructive before, to an extent, but nothing like that. During Ultimates 2, he was seeking redemption as much as possible. In Ultimates 3, despite being allowed to live with the Ultimates rather than be locked up in the Triskelion, he hasn't improved at all. There's no reason shown for him to get worse like that.

4). The edgy team atmosphere/interpersonal relationships were preserved pretty well

Sort of. But again, everyone was at odds for very little reason. The team was never that dysfunctional before this. At the very least, they would at least band together for the missions and be heroic, but they were hardly even a team in Ultimates 3.

5). The Brotherhood was referenced specifically as a terrorist organization, all of which felt pretty continuous to me as I was reading

Yeah, that made sense. But Pyro had no reason to be there.

-Thematic Departure From Complex, Politicized Military Conflicts:

That's not really what bothers me about Ultimates 3. Loeb didn't have to follow Millar's themes, but it's still the same book, so something's got to stay. What was once a character focused story about Earth's Mightiest Heroes was suddenly little more than a fight book. There was very little character development and the plot was hardly a smart one. Things like the Venom robot were put in to fill a fight quota while barely tying in to the story.

-De-Ultimizing Thor

People will deflect blame to Bendis (who only wrote two lines for Thor in Power, and they were not overly "god-like") or JMS, but that hardly absolves Loeb of any guilt. Thor was, for no reason, changed into something he wasn't. Ok, so Asgard is confirmed now. So what? That doesn't mean Thor would abandon everything that he stood for before. HE knew it was real all along. He told the team about Odin, Loki, and the fire monster he fought in his spare time. He needed no convincing. If he was confident of Asgard's existence during Ultimates 1 and 2, why did that change only because the rest of the world finally believed him?

Even worse, why the hell was Valkyrie there? I get that Loeb had a plan for her (one that took three years to get around to), but her appearance was hardly seamless. And the Thor that we had known before Ultimates 3 would never have let Valkyrie affect him like that.

-Making Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch "In Love:"

That's not my problem with their characterization. Though I think Loeb abandoning the subtlety was unnecessary and, like most of his other drastic changes, could have been done in a much smoother way. The problem with Wanda and Pietro in Ultimates 3 was that they were suddenly anti-Ultimates. Despite being distant from their peers, they were never against them. After they switched sides in Ultimate X-Men, they were always with the good guys. They turned down their father's offers to rejoin him on more than one occasion. Why did Quicksilver all of a sudden become some evil mastermind?

-Loeb wrote an EPIC evil Magneto story.

This story had already been told in Return of the King. The only difference this time is that it worked. Ultimatum might as well have been called "What If Magneto had succeeded in Return of the King?" The Doomsday Plan executed in Ultimatum was no different than the plan Magneto had in Millar's final X-Men arc; nothing brilliant about it.

Giant Man finally gets some redemption by sacrificing himself to take out the army of Suicide Madrox

I agree with the thoughts on Pym's death, but it was only made fitting because of the pointless, shock value death of Wasp. And amidst a few dozen other deaths, it's hard to really assign any importance to one individual's final moments.

Wolverine takes it to the limit to ensure Magneto's death. Loeb really killed it in that scene, blasting Wolverine down to his skeleton, de-adamantiumizing him then atomizing his bones. That would pretty much be the only believeable way to kill off Wolverine

Again, I think this was a good death, even though the logic is pushing it, but it works for me. However, he killed the emotional beat here - the ONLY one he was able to write into the story - by attempting some lame comic relief from Hulk. And, again, it would have been better if it wasn't buried underneath the pointless deaths of so many other characters.

The deaths became little more than a joke by the end of the series. Character deaths deserve to have importance. When characters are dying in every issue, the few decent character moments that do happen only leave me feeling empty.

poorly focused/underdeveloped subplots, pedestrian melodrama, half the cast accomplishing little more than serving as iconic wallpaper, suspect dialogue in parts

See, these are the things that really stand in the way of these stories. Loeb just tried to do too much in such a short space.

If he had left out a few subplots, he could have built up the main story better. Did we really need to have Doom reveal himself at the end of Ultimates 3? Or focus a good bit of the story on "Black Panther"? That space could have been used to expand on Ultron's takeover of the Ultimates.

If he had left out the unnecessary new characters, the existing characters could have actually received development. Again, why was Black Panther here? What did Valkyrie or Ka-Zar and Shanna add to the story?

The dialogue is just bad... there's really nothing more to be said. There's so much throughout the whole story that is inexcusable. From Hank Pym's "I'm the mother f***er" in Ultimates 3 to Thor's "you will always be nothing more than a goat's turd" in New Ultimates. Dialogue that bad takes me out of the story and really shows how poor the writing is.

All in all, there's just too much bad - on what might as well be an objective level - to redeem Loeb's Ultimates run. No matter how good a plot is (and Ultimates 3 really wasn't), there are some flaws that will drag the story down. But you do present a good point - there is some decent stuff in his run that is rarely mentioned. But it's nowhere near enough.

[thecrimson]

If he had left out the unnecessary new characters, the existing characters could have actually received development. Again, why was Black Panther here? What did Valkyrie or Ka-Zar and Shanna add to the story?

Could they have been necessary? Or are you saying no new characters should have been introduced at all?

[Plawsky]

Could they have been necessary? Or are you saying no new characters should have been introduced at all?

There's nothing wrong with introducing characters if they have a purpose. But these characters didn't have one. If Black Panther's appearance would have been, in any way, pertinent to the plot of Loeb's run, I would have had a problem with it. But he was nothing more than a background character and an excuse for a pointless hidden identity for Cap in Ultimates 3.

[Time_to_Zap]

Wanda is MARRIED to a robot in 616. It was an in joke, but it still serves the purpose of what I was saying.

Dude she is flirting with Ultron an effing Robot. That alone shows something is wrong and incest is not far behind.

Everyone always gets all automatically disgusted at Quicksilver/Wanda. I dunno...I mean, they had a really complicated relationship. I don't think it was right or wrong, it just was.

Now, Vision/Wanda, I think, is kinda sweet...that a robot could develop feelings for somebody, who could return them...well, it's like, the ultimate barrier crossing in terms of a consensual romantic relationship, isn't it? For a robot to overcome its origins as a machine to be able to have romantic feelings...

I dunno, I'm rambling. Just don't be too hasty to judge Wanda, both 616 and Ult.

[thecrimson]

Everyone always gets all automatically disgusted at Quicksilver/Wanda. I dunno...I mean, they had a really complicated relationship. I don't think it was right or wrong, it just was.

There...tends to be an acceptable reason why people get disgusted.

[taylor51]

Obviously you've never seen the hundreds of long (though extremely well written and brilliant!) posts I've made. I'm all for other people doing the same. That's what we're here for, after all.

Awesome response :). Before I start mine, everyone should realize that I recognize I'm sitting on shaky ground and/or that my argument is nigh impossibly indefensible. I don't know why I liked it so much lol. Anything that I don't respond to basically means I have nothing to say to it other than shake my head and say "yeah..."

Yeah, it's pretty art, but it completely disregards previous character designs all over the place. And I'm not crazy about it from a story telling standpoint, especially when contrasted with Hitch's art before it. I will say that I think the Thor design is great, but it's not Ultimate Thor.

On the errors: noted? :) I really tried to not be a continuity stickler on this read through, so maybe that's why it didn't bother me as much as it did initially. Or maybe it's just because I knew it was there so my expectations were already gone. Either way, I just read past the errors.

So far as your comments about storytelling goes... That's the problem with a follow up to Ultimates I+II: they truly were comic book perfection, or as close as you can come to it anyway, so anything less than perfection comes off as garbage in comparison. It probably boils down to preference, but I think his style not only worked well for the story being told, but brought something more out of it than was actually there. Maybe I'm just starstruck, I don't know.

For me, it's not as much that he writes them as their "Classic Marvel" selves, but that he doesn't write them as the Ultimate versions that were in Ultimates 1 and 2. The only character that feels like a Classic version of the character is Thor.

The "fish out of water" side of Cap is all that Loeb focused on, though. There was none of the soft side of Steve that Millar had before. And him pretending to be Black Panther still makes no sense. The Ultimate Cap Annual helps this some, but it's still stupid that he would lie to his teammates and girlfriend.

But why would [Hank Pym] become a drug addict all of a sudden? He was self destructive before, to an extent, but nothing like that. During Ultimates 2, he was seeking redemption as much as possible. In Ultimates 3, despite being allowed to live with the Ultimates rather than be locked up in the Triskelion, he hasn't improved at all. There's no reason shown for him to get worse like that.

Sort of. But again, everyone was at odds for very little reason. The team was never that dysfunctional before this. At the very least, they would at least band together for the missions and be heroic, but they were hardly even a team in Ultimates 3.

I understand where you're coming from on the character development side. I mean really, you're absolutely right; the nuance and depth present under Millar just WAS. NOT. THERE. What I was trying to communicate is that, while characters took a backseat under Loeb, the dumbed down versions that what we got mostly played within previously established boundaries... Or at least I thought so. Maybe it's the difference between intelligent and functional uses of characters, which I was okay with. Maybe that's the only way to enjoy U3: turning your brain off lol.

I think the other two points might be a little off base though. I thought Black Panther was conscripted into Ultimates service by Fury, and Cap did the double thing so that he could go home without SHIELD getting after him? Granted, it's still kinda a hackneyed plan, but it's continuous at least. So far as Hank goes... Ultron poisoned him to make it look like a binge OD.

Angry with a death wish makes sense, but [Hawkeye] was never unprofessional before. He would never do anything that would jeopardize the mission, and he hadn't previously been seen as hostile towards his teammates. There are a dozen ways Loeb could have better shown us that Clint was having a tough time with his family's death than being angry at the Ultimates.

He was betrayed by a teammate, so maybe that prompted the lone wolf stuff. I dunno. I can see it... Maybe if I turn my head to the left and squint ;).

People will deflect blame to Bendis (who only wrote two lines for Thor in Power, and they were not overly "god-like") or JMS, but that hardly absolves Loeb of any guilt. Thor was, for no reason, changed into something he wasn't. Ok, so Asgard is confirmed now. So what? That doesn't mean Thor would abandon everything that he stood for before. HE knew it was real all along. He told the team about Odin, Loki, and the fire monster he fought in his spare time. He needed no convincing. If he was confident of Asgard's existence during Ultimates 1 and 2, why did that change only because the rest of the world finally believed him?

Even worse, why the hell was Valkyrie there? I get that Loeb had a plan for her (one that took three years to get around to), but her appearance was hardly seamless. And the Thor that we had known before Ultimates 3 would never have let Valkyrie affect him like that.

Actually... No contest lol. Thank you for reminding me how badly Loeb jacked that up. Like I said, I'm happy Hickman cleared the air.

That's not my problem with their characterization. Though I think Loeb abandoning the subtlety was unnecessary and, like most of his other drastic changes, could have been done in a much smoother way. The problem with Wanda and Pietro in Ultimates 3 was that they were suddenly anti-Ultimates. Despite being distant from their peers, they were never against them. After they switched sides in Ultimate X-Men, they were always with the good guys. They turned down their father's offers to rejoin him on more than one occasion. Why did Quicksilver all of a sudden become some evil mastermind?

See my above thoughts on the characterization bit. It's bluntly executed, but I read his antagonism towards Cap as separate from his defection, and him switching sides as his grief talking. I actually liked the Magneto-Quicksilver moment that we got, because I think it exemplifies Magneto's relationship with his children pretty well: Magneto still loves his kids even though they strongly oppose his ideology and Pietro and Wanda still love Magneto even though they think their father is a monster. That might ride on the established relationship dynamic more than what Loeb actually delivered though.

Your remarks about his becoming an evil mastermind are spot, so no contest there.

This story had already been told in Return of the King. The only difference this time is that it worked. Ultimatum might as well have been called "What If Magneto had succeeded in Return of the King?" The Doomsday Plan executed in Ultimatum was no different than the plan Magneto had in Millar's final X-Men arc; nothing brilliant about it.

You speak the truth, but again... Rarely do we ever see the villain succeed on this wide a scale.

I agree with the thoughts on Pym's death, but it was only made fitting because of the pointless, shock value death of Wasp. And amidst a few dozen other deaths, it's hard to really assign any importance to one individual's final moments.

Again, I think [Wolverine's] was a good death, even though the logic is pushing it, but it works for me. However, he killed the emotional beat here - the ONLY one he was able to write into the story - by attempting some lame comic relief from Hulk. And, again, it would have been better if it wasn't buried underneath the pointless deaths of so many other characters.

The deaths became little more than a joke by the end of the series. Character deaths deserve to have importance. When characters are dying in every issue, the few decent character moments that do happen only leave me feeling empty.

Eh. Hank stepped up and did something heroic despite people's expectations of him. I don't think Wasp's death had much bearing on the scene. I also disagree on your comments relative to Wolverine's death; he got his full page spread with everyone reacting to his death, then the scene had changed to show what else was going on elsewhere. When we got back to Magneto and co, Fury dropped his bomb on him, maintaining the sober atmosphere.

Obviously the thinly veiled creative agenda behind the story red shirted a lot of characters and it hurt. Not much I can say about that in total, but I think those two scenes worked for what they were worth. The thing is, we don't know how much control Loeb had over who lived and who died. Assuming he HAD to kill them all... I don't know how he would have done so meaningfully. That's part of what I was referencing when I said the story shines when you look past "event syndrome."

[taylor51]

See, these are the things that really stand in the way of these stories. Loeb just tried to do too much in such a short space.

If he had left out a few subplots, he could have built up the main story better. Did we really need to have Doom reveal himself at the end of Ultimates 3? Or focus a good bit of the story on "Black Panther"? That space could have been used to expand on Ultron's takeover of the Ultimates.

If he had left out the unnecessary new characters, the existing characters could have actually received development. Again, why was Black Panther here? What did Valkyrie or Ka-Zar and Shanna add to the story?

Doom's presence contributes nothing to the plot. His rudimentary-at-best plan to rule the world a). comes completely out of nowhere and b) contradicts the previously established plot point that Ultron became sentient because Scarlet Witch zapped him. It feels like Loeb wrote his story first, then shoehorned Doom in later to expedite getting Fury back and killing Doom off. Both his and Quicksilver's reveals are the biggest wtf of the series, imo.

Valkyrie... was random, but I could stomach her as an element of intrigue. Ka-Zar and Shanna's presence becomes pointless later on, but I feel it was justified by the Savage Land plot. They were there to help gang up on Magneto. It was self contained and a little silly, but yeah...

The dialogue is just bad... there's really nothing more to be said. There's so much throughout the whole story that is inexcusable. From Hank Pym's "I'm the mother f***er" in Ultimates 3 to Thor's "you will always be nothing more than a goat's turd" in New Ultimates. Dialogue that bad takes me out of the story and really shows how poor the writing is.

For the record, I'm actually leaving New Ultimates out of this discussion. I'd have to re-read it.

And yes... The dialogue was terrible at times.

All in all, there's just too much bad - on what might as well be an objective level - to redeem Loeb's Ultimates run. No matter how good a plot is (and Ultimates 3 really wasn't), there are some flaws that will drag the story down. But you do present a good point - there is some decent stuff in his run that is rarely mentioned. But it's nowhere near enough.

I dunno. There's room on my movie shelf for both The Godfather and The Rundown lol. Maybe it's getting by on the fact that it's really ballsy, or because I really like this as an evil Magneto story. Who knows.

[Plawsky]

Maybe that's the only way to enjoy U3: turning your brain off lol.

And that's one of the problems. This is the Ultimates. It's not a Michael Bay franchise. This was a book that prided itself of being more than just another superhero book. The kind of storytelling demonstrated in Ultimates 3 has a place in comics, but it was not what the Ultimates is supposed to represent as a book.

I think the other two points might be a little off base though. I thought Black Panther was conscripted into Ultimates service by Fury, and Cap did the double thing so that he could go home without SHIELD getting after him? Granted, it's still kinda a hackneyed plan, but it's continuous at least.

Yeah, but the Captain America Annual didn't come out until after Ultimates 3. At that time, the readers had no idea who Ultimate Black Panther was. Then, even if you read the Annual first, the plot makes little sense, because Cap had no reason to hide it from the team. It was just a mystery for the sake of having a mystery.

So far as Hank goes... Ultron poisoned him to make it look like a binge OD.

True, but I always read that as being a little bit of both. If Hank hadn't been popping pills before then, Jan should have been more thrown off by the overdose. Ultron just played into the problem he already had.

But that is assuming, so it could go either way, I suppose.

You speak the truth, but again... Rarely do we ever see the villain succeed on this wide a scale.

I don't disagree with that, I was merely pointing out that the plan itself was nothing new, it was taken straight from Millar's Return of the King.

Eh. Hank stepped up and did something heroic despite people's expectations of him. I don't think Wasp's death had much bearing on the scene.

Right, but one of the main reasons he did so was because Janet was gone now. I'm not disagreeing that it was a good moment - because it was. I just wish the story could have gotten there in a better way.

I also disagree on your comments relative to Wolverine's death; he got his full page spread with everyone reacting to his death, then the scene had changed to show what else was going on elsewhere. When we got back to Magneto and co, Fury dropped his bomb on him, maintaining the sober atmosphere.

You're right, that was a decent moment. It was the page after Magneto's death that I was thinking about, ruined with "Hulk is hungry."

Valkyrie... was random, but I could stomach her as an element of intrigue.

I agree, but it hardly went anywhere. If she had done more, I would have been fine with her presence. Really, it would have just taken an explanation for why the heck she was suddenly with the team.

Ka-Zar and Shanna's presence becomes pointless later on, but I feel it was justified by the Savage Land plot. They were there to help gang up on Magneto. It was self contained and a little silly, but yeah...

Yeah, they were fine for the brief moment in the Savage Land, but why'd they stick around? This is more of a problem with New Ultimates, though. They could not have been more useless in that story. Their tiger did more than they did.

[Trallis]

People bashing Miles are being snobby comic elitists ;). Don't worry, I'm working on an awesome thread for why Miles is good for USM's long term health/relevance.

I think you're right.. Keeping Peter Parker going as Ultimate Spider-Man would just result in Peter starting to grow up and become more and more similar to the Amazing Spider-Man. Amazing Spider-Man's awesome but we already have him. We don't need another Spider-Man in his 20s going on endless adventures. What was unique about Ultimate Spider-Man has already been told. A story like his can have an end, because if it continues it's not unique anymore. The Ultimate Universe gave him an honorable and epic death and finished his story. In the meantime, we still get to have a Spider-Man. Not only was it a good thing to do, it would have been dumb not to do it.

[taylor51]

And that's one of the problems. This is the Ultimates. It's not a Michael Bay franchise. This was a book that prided itself of being more than just another superhero book. The kind of storytelling demonstrated in Ultimates 3 has a place in comics, but it was not what the Ultimates is supposed to represent as a book.

See, I can get behind hating it as a continuation, but that feels like the same mentality behind people hating on Will Ferrel's non-comedic roles, for example. I wouldn't rate it in remotely the same class as what came before, but I still think the story warrants its place in the UU.

Either way... I'm happy Hickman has brought the series back to well written big stories.

Yeah, but the Captain America Annual didn't come out until after Ultimates 3. At that time, the readers had no idea who Ultimate Black Panther was. Then, even if you read the Annual first, the plot makes little sense, because Cap had no reason to hide it from the team. It was just a mystery for the sake of having a mystery.

Huh. I didn't know that. I actually got into comics after Ultimates 3 was published, so I read them both in trade. Interesting. That IS dumb lol.

Cap explains his reasons for playing it close to the chest in the annual though. Panther's origins were classified, so he couldn't tell anyone why he was on the team. How was he going to explain that he was doubling for him? Honestly, I think that the Cap Annual might be Loeb's best contribution to the UU. I thought T'Challa was awesome. Can't say anything about his presence in New Ultimates until I read it again though, if I even decide to.

I don't disagree with that, I was merely pointing out that the plan itself was nothing new, it was taken straight from Millar's Return of the King.

Which, in turn, took the idea from Claremont's run, I believe, and was also mentioned as a threat in Morrison's run around the same time. So far as nefarious plans go, it's a pretty good one . There were other elements there to the story. The suicide bomber Madrox, snapping Xavier's neck, realizing his ideology is pointless, etc.

You're right, that was a decent moment. It was the page after Magneto's death that I was thinking about, ruined with "Hulk is hungry."

I don't have the capability of posting scans, but that doesn't happen. Hulk says "Hulk listen to Jean Grey and smash the base!" Or something like that. Then Mystique and Sabertooth come down and try to stop them. Hulk does threaten to eat Mystique (her reaction was actually pretty hilarious lol), but the humor was derivative of the scene, not a forced attempt at slapstick.