Marvel's Ultimates is Weird

The latest comic in my reread of my whole collection is the collected first storyline of the Ultimates, the Ultimate Marvel version of the Avengers, from 2002. I'm three issues in, but it's a weird book, in both good ways but perhaps more bad ways. It's one of very few Ultimate Marvel books I still have from back then, and I'm not sure I'll keep it after this read.

To start with, it's written by Mark Millar, whose work I don't particularly enjoy, apart from Superman: Red Son and a couple of issues of the Authority. It's drawn by Bryan Hitch, whose work I do enjoy, and who brings the same widescreen sensibility to the Ultimates that he evinced in his run on the Authority with Warren Ellis, and in his run on JLA with Mark Waid. Overall, the book looks gorgeous, with some beautiful splash pages and some good action - the first issue, where we see Captain America's last mission in WWII, is colored a bit oddly, so that it all looks muddy, but the rest looks amazing.

The team consists of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Wasp and Giant Man, plus the Hulk in a support role (as Bruce Banner) and as an antagonist (when he inevitably hulks out). That provides one of several cognitive dissonances, because I'm reading this with the memory of the first MCU Avengers movie. There are definite overlaps between these versions of the characters and the movie versions, but they're not totally the same, which accounts for the whiplash. This book also has the version of Nick Fury that looks like Samuel L Jackson, which was brought to life in the actual movies.

Part of why I don't like Millar's writing is that everything is extreme and amped up. Iron Man is pretty recognizable from the movies (I'm not sure if he's meant to look like Robert Downey Jr, but there's at least one reference to the actor), in terms of his womanizing and partying. Giant Man is on prozac, because I guess Millar thought that would be modern or something? Thor is positioned as an environmental activist who's suspicious of Fury's motives, which I suppose allows Millar to claim he's putting his own politics into the book.

The portrayal I find least easy to enjoy is this book's version of Captain America. He's described as having "John Glenn's buzz-cut cool and John McCain's politics", which even back in 2002 was a red flag for me. There's a lot of comments where Cap calls people sissies or girls or whatever, and he's generally an asshole (cf that panel where they finally turn Hulk back into Banner and Cap kicks him in the face).

Obviously a guy from the 1940s who suddenly wakes up in 2002 (or 2012) wouldn't be a weekly guest on MSNBC or Air America, but this version has none of the vulnerability that Chris Evans brought to the character in the movies. Instead of the skinny nerd who became Cap because he hated bullies, this version feels like a bully himself.

I blame all this on Millar because he's that kind of self-proclaimed left-of-center person who uses that as a smokescreen to write a lot of gross stuff. Of course there's a difference between the art and the artist, but Millar always seems a little too pleased with himself when he's transgressing.

And more to the point, all this stuff dates the book horribly. In the third issue, SHIELD unveils the Ultimates and Cap in his new uniform, and there's an appearance from George W Bush. Hitch's drawings of Bush are weirdly stiff, because they're taken from photos, but even with all of Trump's outrages, just seeing Bush is off-putting. The regular Marvel Universe generally did a better job of not putting actual politicians into the books (the less said about that time Spider-Man hung out with Barack Obama, the better), and I wish Millar had done the same.

Anyway, it's a flawed book, but it's fascinating as a time capsule of what Marvel thought was cool in 2002, as well as an embryonic form of the Avengers we'd later see in the movies. It's also an attempt to make the Avengers cool, something that they definitely weren't in the regular Marvel Universe up until then. In fact, the best description of the 90s version of the team that I've heard is as a repository for characters whose books have been cancelled - that came from Max Carleton speaking on Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, and it feels so right.

I lost touch with the Ultimate Universe not long after this, and I no longer have the Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men issues I bought when they came out. I'm given to understand that it was a weird time (apparently Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were in an incestuous relationship, which was treated as "modern" by the characters at the time, rather than deeply fucked up. Blame Jeph Loeb, who was writing it by then), but on the positive side it gave us the Miles Morales version of Spidey, so I can't complain too much.

But one of the pleasures of reading old comics is seeing how they fit into their cultural milieu, and the first arc of the Ultimates definitely transports me back to the early days of the War on Terror. Your mileage may vary as to whether you want to be transported back to then.

A Day at the Renaissance Faire

A thing I've always aspired to is taking advantage of all the cultural stuff I have nearby, wherever I live. Admittedly it's a little easier to do when I live in a big city like London than when I live in a suburb like Palo Alto. But suburban places mean cars, and cars means getting out to places that aren't well-served by public transportation. And today that meant visiting the Northern California Renaissance Faire, in Hollister, which is one of those towns to which you're probably never going to get a train connection or bus depot.

(BTW, I have a number of thoughts about urbanization and suburbs vs urban places, but I'll address that in another blog post sometime)

I knew about the RenFaire because I saw the edge of it once when driving back from Southern California. It's always hosted right next to Casa de Fruta, which has become one of my perennial stops whenever I drive down, and this year I'd seen billboards for it, so I decided to check it out. I got a few friends out, driving down with one and meeting the others there.

I also had a bit of an idea about Renaissance Faires, because of a sort of jokey tone about them in popular culture. You're led to expect a lot of nerds with neckbeards and cod-English accents, playing dress-up and waving swords around. And there was some of that! But also, everyone seemed super nice and happy to be enjoying a day out. There was food and drink - not much of it too medieval, unless they had poke and root beer floats back then - but also stalls selling trinkets, from D&D dice sets to carved wooden mugs and drinking vessels. You could even pay to shoot arrows, fire crossbows and throw knives, shuriken or axes at wooden targets.

I took advantage of the archery booth (because I always play a ranger in D&D, of course), and despite never having picked up a bow before, a nice lady working the booth coached me on how to nock the arrow, draw the string and release. I may have hit the target only once, but thanks to her most of the rest of my shots still flew straight. Though the less said about my attempts at flinging throwing stars, the better.

We caught a little bit of the joust, but the sun and crowd got to me and we went exploring again. There was also commedia dell'arte, sword-fighting, and all kinds of foolishness. I was sorely tempted by a massage, but opted against.

But if I seemed dismissive about the nerds and the cod-medieval accents, I don't intend for that. Sure, I heard some guy holding forth to his friend about publishing in BiOS, but what do you expect a) in the Silicon Valley and b) at a RenFaire in general? Sometimes it's nice to be surrounded by nerds just openly enjoying themselves.

The other nice thing about it, I have to admit, is the large number of attractive women all over, most of them wearing costumes. There were faeries, as well as fairies, elves and pirates and assassins. As I left the grounds I even saw a woman dressed up as a knight, which was quite cool. I've probably still internalized a lot of the messaging I got when I was young, that women wouldn't be interested in nerd-stuff, so I was glad to see, once again, that this isn't true. And maybe one time I would like to go and chat some of these ladies up...

The main thing is that my friends all seemed quite pleased to have done this thing, and that I'd pushed for us to do it, even if it's a bit of a drive and a hassle to get into the grounds. It's easy to fall into the routine of going to bars or coffee shops or movies, or even of just not doing those things as a group, so at least we had a nice day out together. And now I want to go learn archery for real.

A Mid-Term Report on X-Men Evolution

My usual rule is not to write about a show that I'm watching until I've finished it, but there are extenuating circumstances this time around. I'm only halfway through X-Men: Evolution, the second animated show about Marvel's mutant flagship, but given that I'm probably going to let my Disney Plus subscription lapse next week, I figured I'd write down my thoughts so far.

I think I've gone on record as not having been the biggest fan of the original animated series from 1992 (hereafter to be called X92). Whereas Batman: The Animated Series had a bold new design for the characters and a visual aesthetic borrowed from the Tim Burton movies, X92's visual language was a bit more nondescript - the character designs were the then-current looks that Jim Lee came up with for his and Chris Claremont's 1991 relaunch, but the animation style was pretty generic 90s Saturday morning. At least for the first four seasons: season 5 featured a notable decline in animation quality, as 10 new episodes were ordered and animated by a cut-rate animation house.

X-Men Evolution was meant to be a complete reimagining: instead of a team of adults, the core team (Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Rogue and new character Spyke) would be kids learning how to use their powers and navigate teenage life. Storm and Wolverine were teachers at the Xavier Institute, which was also a nice touch, and they'd be joined by Beast later in the second season. A new set of younger characters, mostly based on the New Mutants, would also join in Season 2.

The bad guys, or antagonists, were a group of mutant misfits drawn from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (just the Brotherhood here), led first by Mystique and then by Magneto. But they weren't "evil mutants", because characters would switch between the X-Men and the Brotherhood, and there were themes like Shadowcat's kinda relationship with Avalanche that meant the relationship wasn't just trying to kill one another.

The big thing I like from this show, at least so far, is how it treats Cyclops and Jean. Cyclops is the victim of character assassination in the movies and X92 - if someone hates him, it's a good bet that they first encountered him in the original animated series. Here he gets more personality, kind of a dork, kind of a regular kid who likes cars and is in love with his best friend, but he's not the authority figure and killjoy from X92. Jean, meanwhile, is the popular girl who's also cool, but who's still prone to making mistakes and getting jealous (like when her friend Taryn moves in on Cyclops - meow). This version of Jean is quite a bit better than the X92 version who just yells "Scott!" and faints whenever she uses her powers.

I can't deny it: the development of their feelings for one another is my favorite plot thread in Season 2 of Evolution, and I can't wait to see how it plays out in the third and fourth seasons.

The other thing I like is the theme of the characters choosing whether to be X-Men or Brotherhood members. Avalanche tries to join the X-Men once, Boom-Boom joins the Brotherhood (and then leaves), and the two teams have to work together a couple of times. That question of how to be, and how to use their powers, is central to the X-theme in a way that X92 never really managed, as far as I could tell.

Now, I don't want to over-romanticize this show. It's clearly a kids show from the early 2000s, with sometimes dodgy animation, character designs and writing. Boom-Boom looks off-model most of the time, there are times when the movement looks cheap, and some of the plots make little sense.

But if you can get beyond those issues, it's a good reimagining of the concept that highlights the themes well. And it introduces one of my favorite characters, X-23, although not until Season 3. I'm looking forward to seeing if the subsequent seasons are as fun, as well as the 2009 follow-up, Wolverine and the X-Men. I have to do something while I wait for season 2 of X97, but as I got to the midpoint of Evolution, I couldn't help thinking that this show would also be ripe for a reboot. 

Anyone at Marvel want to take that on?