i’ve still getting caught up on the last three months of comics that i’ve been ignoring because i’ve been* dead broke, so all i can say for certain is that marvel is destroying the ultimate universe, and relaunching it later this summer as like ‘ultimate comics’, which is stupid and wierd. so instead of being a marvel imprint like epic or max, it’s becoming a subsidiary studio with it’s own branding, that happens to publish comic books about marvel characters.

so we’re going to get like ‘ultimate comics: spiderman #1’ and it will still be bendis (and hopefully immonen because they are kicking ass together) and probably just a sequel to the last 130 issues of ultimate spiderman? but whatever, you know?

meanwhile jeff leob, who’s gone off the fucking rails, is writing ultimatum and it’s being reviewed as offensively awful, which means i can’t wait to get the fucking trade and read it. i mean, secret invasion was awful, but it was just bad. it was boring. ultimatum sounds like a provacation, and it’s not like i can convince marvel not to publish shit like this.

they’re already publishing plenty of books that aren’t anything like this, in fact. right now beta rey bill is trying to kill galactus, fraction is writing several good books monthly, jeff parker several more, jason aaron is taking his crazy ghost rider schtick and doing wolverine, and fucking jonathan hickman is going to take over fantastic four. fuck yes, you know?

but at the same time. can’t you just change the name? you don’t have to let jeff leob write an extraordinarily juvenile slaughterhouse out of the changeover, and if this either a: is a building point like the currently destroyed wildstorm universe (in which case, you fucking hacks, just do ultimate age of apocalypse and rip off your own material) or b: a complete reboot of the ultimate universe (in which case, don’t let it get away from you again) then i’m even less likely to ever care again.

ultimate spidey i’d been meaning to pick up for years, and when immonen jumped on i was hooked instantly. xmen went off the rails years ago and just started redoing one crappy claremont idea after another as their ‘ultimate’ incarnation. i bought six gorgeous issues by yanick paquette recently, but it wasn’t that great and he left immediately. oh great, they accidentally got a good fill-in artist. WEAK.

the authority was always more compelling to me than the ultimates, and ultimate fantastic four stopped being good the moment ellis left the book. (that jae lee bit was pretty smooth, but he could make youngblood a praiseworthy comic book.) so yeah. with uf4 being cancelled, i hope instead of bringing that back they just incorporate them into the new bendis spiderman incarnation.

bendis writing the human torch into usm as spidey’s friend was a solid addition and made both characters stronger. seeing him take on the whole four, and with immonen drawing them again, would be fucking fantastic. hell, just have bendis write ultimate comics: the new ultimates and have fraction take over on the mainline avengers.

*still am!