Weekly Comics Discussion – August 17, 2005

This week’s shipping list includes some interesting titles, such as Green Lantern #3 (which wraps up the story with the latest model of Manhunter), Daredevil Vol. 4 hardcover, Ultimate Spider-Man Annual #1 (which promises to introduce a new love interest), and Ultimate X-Men #62.

7 replies on “Weekly Comics Discussion – August 17, 2005”

    • Re: Serenity

      What, no Serenity #3? Neither this week nor the next!? Woe!

      September 07, 2005, according to Dark Horse’s site…

  1. Ultimate line
    Now, I haven’t been reading these (although the one or two TPBs I’ve read were excellent) but I’m curious: the early stuff in, say, Ultimate Spider-Man was a close parallel to the original story, but there was plenty of creative license — more like it was “inspired by” rather than a “remake”. As the series goes on, does it continue to do this? If not, how much (and how quickly) does it diverge?

    IIRC, I did read one good story in there (involving the Kingpin) that I quite doubt was in the original series.

    Anyway, just curious what they’re doing with the whole thing.

    • Re: Ultimate line

      Now, I haven’t been reading these (although the one or two TPBs I’ve read were excellent) but I’m curious: the early stuff in, say, Ultimate Spider-Man was a close parallel to the original story, but there was plenty of creative license — more like it was “inspired by” rather than a “remake”. As the series goes on, does it continue to do this? If not, how much (and how quickly) does it diverge?

      Everything diverges from the primary Marvel continuity in the Ultimate titles – or, at least, everything except the primary characters themselves. For example, as you probably know, Ultimate Spider-Man was still bitten by a radioactive spider, his Uncle Ben still died thanks to his inaction, and he’s driven by that loss to fight crime. From there, the story takes the characters created in the primary Marvel line, changes their origins, and goes from there. Doctor Octopus is still a guy with crazy mechanical arms but the way in which he becomes connected to them is very different. Venom is still a big black&white version of Spider-Man with the teeth and the tongue, but the way he comes into being is very different…etc.

      The same holds true for Ultimate X-Men, The Ultimates (Avengers) and Ultimate Fantastic Four (the other three ongoing series). So far, I’ve found them all worth reading and the “freshened-up” stories have been anywhere from at least “okay” (a few arcs in UXM I’ve found weak but still decent) to “awesome” (I *love* USM). I heartily recommend picking up the trades, particularly of USM and Ultimates.

      For me, I’d prioritize them like this: Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimates, Ultimate Fantastic Four, and finally Ultimate X-Men. Despite putting UXM at the end, it’s still a good series…I’m probably just something of an X burn-out.

      • Re: Ultimate line
        I might have been unclear – when I said the primary characters stay the same, that might be a little misleading. While some of the characters remain pretty intact in terms of their attitudes and characteristics (Spider-Man and Reed Richards come to mind), others do seem to have some very different things going on in their heads. They’re all pretty recognizable but some do things very differently. A good example is Captain America who is very comfortable with guns and killing and/or hurting very badly his enemies, traits I actually consider appropriate to the character considering that “just yesterday” he was fighting World War II.

        It’s unquestionably a very different world.

      • Re: Ultimate line
        I agree with Babbster’s assessment. The speciall event miniseries have also been good. USM is the best as Bendis seems to have found a good mix between serious and fun for the stories. It is going to be interesting to see how the results of the Annual playout in the regular series.

  2. General Grievous
    The fourth and final issue of the Star Wars General Grievous mini-series is out this week. After reading the entire series, I would say that it was not worth the money.

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