EARLY look at Ultimates 3 #2.

I like what his plan is for each character. I hope he can make it work :)
 
Ice said:
From Wizarduniverse.com.

Source: Deep Throat. :shifty:



Click for larger preview.​



They also talk about the team in the link.
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I really like Mad's pencils for Spider-Man in that pic. Probably the most fluid I've ever seen Ultimate Spidey rendered. I like it.

SeAcoW said:
I like what his plan is for each character. I hope he can make it work :)
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I agree, except for Wasp. I'll wait to see how it plays out, but her as team leader seems a little forced and nonsense. She's probably the least experienced on the team overall (concerning the veteran Ultimates...can't speak for Valkyrie or Black Panther). Not against the idea, it could lead to some interesting story opportunities, but from that article I'm wary. We'll see how it works next month.
 
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I think Mad is a decent enough artist. Not a great one, but the problem is that he can't do storytelling to save his life. All he can do is pin-ups.
 
I like the Spidey pic too - and I agree with Ourchair. His storytelling seems to decline as his artistic skill increases.

Jeph Loeb said:
At the end of the first issue, something terrible happens, and the reason for it and the goals of the villains—who may or may not be the Brotherhood—is part of the mystery,"
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So basically: we won't know anything at the end of the first issue. Something "bad" happens as a cliffhanger and we won't know who or why this happened. It'll just happen for no reason. :|

So there will be one plot point in the first issue. This is going to be like HUSH isn't it?

Random events will occur throughout the series that make no sense, except for the main hero(es) going, "It's all connected" every tenth page to reinforce the idea that there's actually a plot. In the mean time, Loeb will pretzel a series of video-game-level-like encounters between every hero and every villain he wants to see Joe Mad draw. At the end of each bizarre encounter, we'll get a scene explaining how it's somehow connected, but we don't know why.

Then it'll turn out the one responsible not only makes no sense, but doesn't seem to possess the ability to do it. But (s)he'll have a monologue for a page about how they managed to pull of the plot.

This is precisely how it will all go.

I would love to be wrong. I would love this to be as good as Ultimates 1. I really, really, want it to.

But look at it so far - the fight with Venom makes no sense on any level. As action choreography, it's a ****ty version of HULK DOES MANHATTAN or THE PASSION PLAY. It lacks the emotional resonance that comes from fighting a villain who's also a teammate (in the case of Hulk and Thor); it lacks the kinetic involvement in superheroes brawling through a huge metropolis; and it also lacks creativity in that they seem to be fighting against a backdrop of a city, but thankfully, in a park where there's nothing to interact with. It doesn't make sense in terms of continuity; Valkyrie seems to have powers, and Venom has a spider-symbol on his chest.

Now, let's be a bit fair: Maybe this fight isn't meant to be anything like HULK DOES MANHATTAN nor THE PASSION PLAY. These two were the climactic action sequence to a 6-part arc that has no proper fight for the first 4-issues. As a result, the build-up requires the fight to last an entire issue. This fight with Venom, in all likelihood, is the opening half a dozen pages designed to 'set the scene' and the tone of the title. So I suppose it would be fairer to compare it to the WW2 opening of THE ULTIMATES - and it's quite obvious it lacks the scope, detail, and exhilaration of a heroic charge on a heavily fortified enemy base. This looks like a fight scene. Nothing more and nothing less.

And as for the continuity - the whole point, I'm sure, is that it's meant to be mysterious and enticing: how come all these characters are so different? The problem is that these 'mysteries' will be revealed through nothing but exposition, not as events that turn story. What's more, is that it isn't mysterious but rather, disorientating. Instead of going, "Wow! Valkyrie might take down Venom!" we've all gone, "Why does she have powers?" I think Loeb wants us to do both: be excited by the action, and curious about the mystery. But I feel that those two points are somewhat antithetical: the former requires you to switch off your brain and feel the adrenaline rush as the story twists your heartstrings at frenetic pace; whereas the latter wants you to stop and question what's going on. Let's also not forget it's a selling point. The curiosity of the scene is meant to make people pick up the title to find out why everyone is different. I sadly, didn't find it piquing my interest, but rather found the sheer barrage of kinetic spectacle to be boring instead of stimulating.

Now, I'm sure I'm being excessively harsh. We've seen maybe, half a dozen pages and a couple of soundbites. So maybe, I'm wrong in my initial assessment, and ULITMATES 3 will be mega-awesome.

Or maybe my rant above can be justifiably applied to any Loeb-penned comic and therefore I have to wonder why I should expect anything different.

The reason I'm so upset is I do really like Joe Mad's artwork, and it kills me when the story is nigh-unreadable. I wanted to pick up MIGHTY AVENGERS for Frank Cho, but Bendis' writing put me off it.

Ah well, here's hoping that this comic does what everyone wants it to do for them. Good luck to it.
 
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Bass said:
Random events will occur throughout the series that make no sense, except for the main hero(es) going, "It's all connected" every tenth page to reinforce the idea that there's actually a plot. In the mean time, Loeb will pretzel a series of video-game-level-like encounters between every hero and every villain he wants to see Joe Mad draw. At the end of each bizarre encounter, we'll get a scene explaining how it's somehow connected, but we don't know why.

Then it'll turn out the one responsible not only makes no sense, but doesn't seem to possess the ability to do it. But (s)he'll have a monologue for a page about how they managed to pull of the plot.

This is precisely how it will all go.
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I agree with this and have nothing to add except, "Gee this reminds me of the days when I used to read Amazing Spider-Man during the Clone Saga."

Bass said:
But look at it so far - the fight with Venom makes no sense on any level. As action choreography, it's a ****ty version of HULK DOES MANHATTAN or THE PASSION PLAY. It lacks the emotional resonance that comes from fighting a villain who's also a teammate (in the case of Hulk and Thor); it lacks the kinetic involvement in superheroes brawling through a huge metropolis; and it also lacks creativity in that they seem to be fighting against a backdrop of a city, but thankfully, in a park where there's nothing to interact with. It doesn't make sense in terms of continuity; Valkyrie seems to have powers, and Venom has a spider-symbol on his chest.
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Oh my god. Serious artistic semantical critique. About comic books. You ****ing nerd. :rockon:
 
ourchair said:
I think Mad is a decent enough artist. Not a great one, but the problem is that he can't do storytelling to save his life. All he can do is pin-ups.
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I can believe it. I don't believe I've ever read anything he did art for (except a few issues of Battle Chasers at a friends...I was unimpressed). I do like his Spidey, though. It is quite pin-up-ish, I agree.

Bass said:
It doesn't make sense in terms of continuity; Valkyrie seems to have powers, and Venom has a spider-symbol on his chest.
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...the only part of your post I could find fault with. It may not make much sense, but in the interview its mentioned Valkyrie somehow obtained Thor-level powers despite previously being powerless...and apparently Thor and Valkyrie are an item... :sick:

Also, in the Ultimate Spider-Man game--which despite the continuity mistakes in the USM Silver Sable arc is still in continuity--its established how and why Venom now has the spider symbol on the costume. I guess this is the first attempt at reinforcing the game's placement in Ultimate continuity. Of course, its probably unintentional on Loeb and Mad's parts.
 
DIrishB said:
...the only part of your post I could find fault with. It may not make much sense, but in the interview its mentioned Valkyrie somehow obtained Thor-level powers despite previously being powerless...
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I know. We all realized that from the spread because of the flying horse. My point is, the question is, "How did she get those powers?" is supposed another one of those mysteries like why Hawkeye's got a bullseye on his head. It's not a particularly good or interesting mystery, but it seems the title's going for a barrage of action and of mysteries at the same time, small or little.

DIrishB said:
Also, in the Ultimate Spider-Man game--which despite the continuity mistakes in the USM Silver Sable arc is still in continuity--its established how and why Venom now has the spider symbol on the costume. I guess this is the first attempt at reinforcing the game's placement in Ultimate continuity. Of course, its probably unintentional on Loeb and Mad's parts.
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Oh, who knows? Thor's suit doesn't light up and Hawkeye looks like Gungrave in a mask. It just feels completely random, in the same way X3 felt nothing like X1 or X2 (granted, I preferred X3 to 1&2 but even I was jarred by just how ******* different it was - I was happy, but jarred).
 
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DIrishB said:
...the only part of your post I could find fault with. It may not make much sense, but in the interview its mentioned Valkyrie somehow obtained Thor-level powers despite previously being powerless...and apparently Thor and Valkyrie are an item... :sick:
Click to expand...
Assuming we're not told this somewhere in the story of Ultimates 3 (and to be fair, I think we will be), I think it's rather silly for us to expect to take into consideration information gleaned from interviews, since not everybody reads every single piece of press rabidly.

Bass said:
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS.
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I'm basically saying it's hilarious AND awesome that you actually studied the art and took it apart in a very academically intelligent fashion.[/QUOTE]

Bass said:
Or maybe my rant above can be justifiably applied to any Loeb-penned comic and therefore I have to wonder why I should expect anything different.
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Yes.

Even in Loeb's 'best' work such as Hulk: Gray, Spider-Man: Blue and Daredevil: Yellow... nothing happens. He doesn't use events to move a plot or reveal it. There's no causal relationship between what a hero does and what happens or whatever. Plot just reveals itself rather than engage in any narrative momentum.
 
ourchair said:
I'm basically saying it's hilarious AND awesome that you actually studied the art and took it apart in a very academically intelligent fashion.
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Obviously not as academically intelligent as you responded to my post. :wink:

ourchair said:
Yes.

Even in Loeb's 'best' work such as Hulk: Gray, Spider-Man: Blue and Daredevil: Yellow... nothing happens. He doesn't use events to move a plot or reveal it. There's no causal relationship between what a hero does and what happens or whatever. Plot just reveals itself rather than engage in any narrative momentum.
Click to expand...

Stuff just... happens. And then the narrator goes, "It's connected." :|

He's the Michael Bay of comics. Completely and utterly.
 
I was getting a Hush feeling out of this as well.

It does seem like it's going to be linked to one villian

But on the plus side, knowing Loeb's idea of dragging out every character he can, maybe we will see more Hawk Owl and Woody in this.
 
Ultimate Houde said:
I was getting a Hush feeling out of this as well.

It does seem like it's going to be linked to one villian

But on the plus side, knowing Loeb's idea of dragging out every character he can, maybe we will see more Hawk Owl and Woody in this.
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No the one villain behind stupid random attacks will take up Ultimatum, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimates 3 and 4, and Ultimate X-Men since "everything's connected."

So instead of a really cool self contained 12 issue arc like the other volumes this one will pour out into the other titles, which isn't too bad a thing....but the Liberators or Chitari would have been cooler than some mystery awesome man who does nothing but sit at home and plan every random encounter.
 
Foolsfolly said:
No the one villain behind stupid random attacks will take up Ultimatum, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimates 3 and 4, and Ultimate X-Men since "everything's connected."

So instead of a really cool self contained 12 issue arc like the other volumes this one will pour out into the other titles, which isn't too bad a thing....but the Liberators or Chitari would have been cooler than some mystery awesome man who does nothing but sit at home and plan every random encounter.
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Oh great.

The villain is going to be a dungeon master.
 
You know, I really, really hope that Loeb and Mad prove me wrong by making Ultimates 3 up to par with the series so far. However, I don't see that happening. Mostly because Marvel seems dead set on making Loeb the writer of every ongoing series, and a workload like that means that story quality will suffer. Also, as stated in this thread enough already, "everything's connected" does not do it for me.

That being said, my comic book wishlist includes bringing Millar and Hitch back to Ultimates as soon as humanly possible. I have no problem with delays when the story kicks as much *** as Uv1 and Uv2 did.
 
DIrishB said:
I agree, except for Wasp. I'll wait to see how it plays out, but her as team leader seems a little forced and nonsense. She's probably the least experienced on the team overall (concerning the veteran Ultimates...can't speak for Valkyrie or Black Panther). Not against the idea, it could lead to some interesting story opportunities, but from that article I'm wary. We'll see how it works next month.
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That struck me as odd, as well. I still haven't read the ending of Ultimates2 in depth (I'm waiting for the HC, although I skimmed the second trade when it came out), so maybe I'm missing something that would make passing Wasp the team leadership actually make sense.

Bass said:
But look at it so far - the fight with Venom makes no sense on any level. As action choreography, it's a ****ty version of HULK DOES MANHATTAN or THE PASSION PLAY. It lacks the emotional resonance that comes from fighting a villain who's also a teammate (in the case of Hulk and Thor); it lacks the kinetic involvement in superheroes brawling through a huge metropolis; and it also lacks creativity in that they seem to be fighting against a backdrop of a city, but thankfully, in a park where there's nothing to interact with.
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Bass, you're a great guy and I often find myself agreeing with you, but right now I'm really tired of watching the Ultimates beat on each other. Honestly, if they can't get along and settle their problems without pounding on a fellow teammate, the group should be disbanded and let's just start over. (I never want to have to read another issue like Ultimates2 #5 again. Far too painful, even though I know they're all fictional characters.)

That said, I really don't see Venom or even the Brotherhood of Mutants as being the kind of global threat the Ultimates were formed to fight, so I'm kind of not getting the point to most of this upcoming arc, anyway.... It'll depend on the writing, I suppose.

DIrishB said:
It may not make much sense, but in the interview its mentioned Valkyrie somehow obtained Thor-level powers despite previously being powerless...and apparently Thor and Valkyrie are an item... :sick:
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The impression I got from the interivew is that Thor and pretty much anyone female are an item. :roll:

Obviously, he and I need to have A Talk....
 
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