So after hunting down a comic book store, (Comic book stores are few and far between in the UK unlike the US and Canada.) I found one in Central London just round the corner from where I worked, I poped in to see what they had
I remembered just before I stop buying comics almost 10 years ago. Marvel Comics had rebooted two of their most popular lines. (Spider-man and the X-men) This meant, they where starting form fresh with no history and able to go in any direction they wanted.
I have the first few issues of both new lines called Ultimate Spider-Man & Ultimate X-men, I knew that 10 years would not have a lot of history to them, so it would be easy to catch back up with them. However as I stood in the comic book store I found that both lines where no where to be seen in the last month collection of new issue the store had.
After talking to one of the girls that worked in the store I learnt that Marvel had brought the Ultimate lines to a close in 2009. However not all was lost as Marvel set up a sub-publisher call Ultimate Comics, The Ultimate lines would be carried in these books.
So I picked up a copy of Ultimate Comics: Ultimate Spider-man, in this I learnt that the world has changed Spider-Man is now recognised as a Hero and most of the X-men are dead, including everyone favourite X-men Wolverine!!
So this leads me to find all the back issues of Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-men. Of course I could not buy them all as I don’t have the cash for it. So I did read up what had happened on WIKI and found some issue floating around on the web to get me back up to speed.
Both titles did some very interesting things during their run and the big conclusion in Ultimatum. Ultimate Comic’s picks up six months after the events in Ultimatum.
As I said before Spider-man is now a hero instead of everyone trying to kill him or arrest him, Mutants have to had themselves over to the authorities or be shot on sight.
I read all the issue of Ultimate Comics: Ultimate Spider-Man, Johnny Strom from the Fantastic Four and Bobby Drake (Iceman) from the X-men are now living with Peter Parker and Aunt May, Aunt May know all about Peter alter ego.
I have also picked up the first three issues of the bi-monthly Ultimate Comics: Ultimate X, which is following Jen Gray, and Wolverines son, so it will be interesting to see where that story lines goes.
One things for sure Marvel know how to “Make mine MARVEL!!”
I didn't know they did away with the Ultimate line. I used to read Ultimate Spider-Man back when it was first out. I quit when I joined the Army because it was too hard to keep track of comic releases between training, field problems and combat deployments. It was pretty cool, they changed a lot of things, like Peter and Mary Jane meeting in high school and Spider-man and Dr. Octopus both got their powers because of Norman Osborn. Of course, originally, neither Mary Jane nor Norman were part of the "early years" of Spider-Man, both characters came about quite a bit later, though Norman was probably before Mary Jane.
ReplyDeleteAnywho, it was a pretty sweet comic. In fact, I might need to see if I can get all of them in graphic novel form, now that I know there's only 9 years' worth. I see them all the time at Barnes & Noble but I haven't picked any of them up. (damn, you've got me feeling all nostalgic and stuff) One thing I like about them is that they only had 1 line each of the "Ultimates," unlike the regular Spider-Man and X-Men lines, which had more than one (IE: Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man) and the stories tended to vary from line to line.
yeah the multiply lines was a pain as there was so many story lines and they crossed over. It's to the point of when do they get time to sleep. LOL
ReplyDeleteThere are two Avenger lines with Ultimate Comics. but one is not reguler and comes out in mini sersie forums.
As for the Ultimate spider-man graphic novels. I got the first three. very enjoyable. Ultimate Spider-man ran for 133 issues. so there are not to many graphic novel to get.
Cool. Yeah, I definitely gotta get the Ultimate Spider-Man graphic novels. I really enjoyed the ones I read back in the day. Spidey has always been one of my favorites, probably because he was the dorky kid (like me) who got super powers and became a super hero. That's just awesome, IMO. Though, as you say, there's too much history in the original comic lines.
ReplyDeleteI used to have a book with the first 10 issues of the original Spidey from the '60s but I don't have that anymore. I'll have to see if I can find some of the early ones also. Back when Peter was in high school (long before there were multiple lines) are some of the best of the original ones, IMO. He used to use science more to defeat his enemies, like when he fought Doc Ock in the early days (I think it was issue 3, 4 or 5) he used a compound he created to fuse Ock's arms together. Cool stuff. :D