the vynsane asylum

I kick myself for not getting into comics ohhhh...about three years ago when Ultimate Spidey and Ultimate X-Men kicked off. But I have managed to track down all the issues of The Ultimates and I've been picking up the Ultimate Spidey TPBs.

Ultimates is like a hardcore dysfunctional Avengers. Bruce Banner is nuts and Hulked out on purpose in order to give the Ultimates somebody to fight. Hank Pym is into domestic violence with his wife and isn't above spraying her with raid and attacking her with ants. Captain America is even more displaced then before having come out of stasis into the 21st century instead of the 60's. But he compensates by losing his temper and kicking his own people's asses, so far both Banner and Pym have been on the recieving end of a Red White and Blue beat down. Ultimate Tony Stark has a horrendous drinking problem and a brain tumor.

Ultimate Spidey turns the whole Spidey mythos on its head. Bendis writing is classic. Awkward pauses and empty panels are priceless.

I haven't picked up any UltXM yet.

I really hope they keep the number of books in this universe low. So far, besides the three main books, theres been a few Limited Series:Ultimate War, a showdown between the X-Men and the Ultimates, Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra, the upcoming Six, a Spidey/Ultimates team up against a new Sinister Six, and a poorly drawn Ultimate Team-Up book, that I think was cancelled. Then theres Ultimate Adventures, but I don't know what that is...

the only ultimate ongoing i read is the ultimates... which IS the ultimate comic book out there... holy crap, the fight cap had with giant man was sooooo cool... and how much more of a soldier he is...

other than that, i only have read ultimate daredevil/elektra, which was cool, and ultimate war, which sucked ass hard! amazing spider-man is so good right now, i don't need any other spidey, and new x-men is the same deal - if only they could get quietly to do two issues of art in a row...[roll]

Yeah, Ult Cap has some kind of bizarre 1940s code of honor going on, but he resorts to violence at the drop of a hat! Like when he came in and gave a hard boot to the face of Banner!
"No, you're fine. We'll just chech that gash on your cheek."
"What gas--" WHAMMO! Combat boot in the kisser!

Ultimate Spidey is worth checking out. Where Amazing is like Peter's awkward 30something lifestyle, Ultimate is his awkward high school years all over again. Both are excellently written.

I may pick up that DD/Elektra series. It's over at the comic shop relatively cheap.

Funny. The only Ultimate books I have are one random issue of Ultimate X-Men (before I realized it weren't canon) and the Free Comic Book Day reprints of X-Men 1 and Spider-Man 1. I've thumbed through several others, but haven't bought. I hear everyone going on about these, but I'm not impressed. (The art's pretty, true, but when comics are $3 each, pretty art by anyone other than the Wild Man won't hook me.)

Now if there's ever an Ultimate Iron Fist or if Ultimate X-Men brings about some of the other cooler characters (Nightcrawler, Jubilee, Gambit, etc), I might--MIGHT--reconsider.

I'm kinda hoping Frank Castle shows up in Ultimate Spidey as a homicide detective. And keep him as a homicide detective for about 30 issues before you kill his family and turn him into ol' skull chest....

Why don't they make. . . .

Ultimate Sleepwalker! Now that's one I'd buy.

Ultimate Dazzler!

Ultimate Night Thrasher!

Ultimate Machine Man! (Actually, that one has so many possibilities, I'd like to strike it from my silly list.)

Or the one that's just screaming to be made: Ultimate NFL Superpro!

I'm not sure why there isn't an Ultimate Four yet. They keep referring to Reed Richards in all the other books, but I don't know if they all got bombarded with the cosmic rays yet or what.

And if that happends, that means somewhere down the road, a big ass Galactus confrontation with ALL the Ultimate Heroes. And Ultimate Surfer, too.

This might sound odd, but I'd much rather write an Ultimate title than read one. They must be a lot of fun to do.

Just got Ultimate DD/Elektra 1,2, and 3. But I can't find the last one, so I'm like WHAT HAPPENS!

It'd be cool if Daredevil didn't show up again for a few years. The only thing that bugs me about the Ultimate series is that they take the cream of the past 40+ years or Marvel continuity and shoehorn it into this new continuity, so like Spidey has fought all his foes and Venom showed up in like six months. And the X-Men have done everything except the Dark Phoenix saga, it seems. Everything is on fast forward...

Getting it all in there before the creators jump ship and the whole thing falters like Valiant....

Some characters that haven't shown up yet made Ultimate appearances in the Team Up set, 16 issues worth. The guests were as follows:

Wolverine (1)
Hulk (2,3)
Iron Man (4,5)
Punisher(6,7,8)
Daredevil (7,8)
FF (9)
Man Thing (10)
X-Men (11)
Dr. Strange (12, 13)
Black Widow (14)
Master of Kung Fu (15,16).

It only went 16 issues, so that was the full run. Not sure if the Hulk they used (who was green) was the same one they're using in Ultimates, and there was some concern that the Sam Jackson Nick Fury had ALREADY conflicted with Ultimate continuity, but I can't find where. I don't think it happened in this series.

That Team Up set was lame. I flipped throught it and the art was horrid ( at least the issues I looked at).

It was hit and miss, Bendis collaborated with different artists for each arc. The Punisher and DD run was done by Bill Sienkewicz, the FF by Jim Mahfood, and the Iron Man by Mike Allred. These artists are all aquired tastes, no doubt, but I'd go as far as to say they're talented. Sean McKeever's Dr. Strange book wasn't my style, that's for sure, and Clugsten-Major on the X-Men team up a little too nouveau for me as well.

Peronally, Im a fan of the classics. Some of the best pages ever were Neal Adams on X-Men (covers too, his issues between 55 and 65 of Uncanny are absurd), and Jim Steranko. Totally revolutionary, those 2 made comics look like film. Beautiful. Makes me want to start trying to find the Adams Batman stuff, but I think I'll have to stick to trades and collections.

Yeah. Neal Adams is killer. He redefined the look of heroes back in the day. Before they were all puffed out chests, and he turned the musculature into an artform. Every deltoid, every tricep, leapt off the page.

I wish they would reprint ALL his Batman stuff.

It looked for a while like Marvel would reprint just about everything, but they seem to have stopped for some reason.

I can live with b&w to get good reading copies of some otherwise pricey or htf issues.

And Batman, jiminy friggin' cricket. I think there's only a total of 20 issues that are available in reprints, and 5 are chapters from Hush!

EP, it's happening (the Neal Adams collection of Bat-Shit that is). Volume 1 of "Batman Illustrated By Neal Adams" ships on September 3. I was looking for something like this on ebay, and found one good auction that had a great description. Features a hard cover, and every Adams bat work from 1967-69, some 30 or so issues of Brave and Bold, Batman, World's Finest and Detective. Many of the stories have other heroes in them as well, making this a real score. Volumes 2 and 3 to follow. Approx 40 bucks per book. I think I'm going to get them, based on the price of the single issues in nice shape I was finding on ebay. These 3, along with my pending Bob Kane hardcover of the first 25 Batman stories should work wonders in terms of catching me up with some of the more important stuff in Bat History.