To the Man Without Fear AKA Longest Post EVER!
TheManWithoutFear said:
Ultimate Daredevil is going to happen eventually ... If you read the team-ups you know how good both Daredevil and Punisher would be.
This is the silliest logic, really. You already know I love Daredevil. I go absolutely insane batsh** loco like a monkey on speed for it, and if that amount of hyperbole doesn't mean anything, then you're going to hate me for the next few paragraphs.
TheManWithoutFear said:
The Ultimate Universe is missing one big dynamic and that lies within those two characters and eventually they're gonna use them over Vampires and Demons with flaming skulls.
There is absolutely NO certainty when it comes to second guessing the editorial decisions of Marvel in general. And while I agree with you that multiple corners of the Ultimate Universe have yet to be explored, suggesting that Daredevil is GOING to beat vampires and flaming skulls in the race towards Ultimatization is just plain deterministic hoo-ha. There WILL be demons and flaming skulls at some point, and whether that comes BEFORE or AFTER Ultimate Daredevil is something we CAN'T predict with absolute certainty. And in fact, I don't particularly care which one comes first, even if I AM admittedly more partial to Daredevil than demons and vampires.
TheManWithoutFear said:
So if you don't read Daredevil and you don't want it because then you'd feel you'd be forced to pick up another title just say you're not interested. Don't be like "well the Ultimate Universe was created because"
You know maybe you ARE on to something there, MwoF. It's pretty lame to cling onto an editorial mantra as the justification for our own opinions. After all, dumb editorial mantras like the Comics Code Authority led to the creation of such absurdities as graphically sanitized and bloodless battles between adamantium claw wielding mutants and murderous gun-toting vigilantes.
But guess what, an editorial responsibilities lie not only in continuity maintenance or established industrial codes, but a real responsible approach to the business AND art of publishing. And that means NOT exploiting the audience with redundant titles, saturating the market with them and diluting the franchise.
Let me digress with a little story: My partner in Ultimatization,
compound and I were recently discussing Mark Millar (an absolute favorite writer of ours) and I pointed out how many of his worst critics hate him precisely because of his "shallow liberalism" attitude towards plot and themes. Millar frequently criticizes the degradation of society, morals and values and the rise of an uptight culture and he does it in such over the top ways.
But what
compound and I agreed on is that it's because Millar, for all his entertaining craziness is problematic to these critics simply because he NEVER suggests any alternatives or any real messages to what he criticizes whether it's America's increasingly irresponsible use of power (
The Ultimates) or the destabilization of conventional family values (
Wanted).
Your proposal of an Ultimate Daredevil WOULD BE more interesting, POSSIBLY exciting, but you suggest nothing that would make it nothing more than a redundant product within a comic book market that is still trying to recover from the implosion of the late 90s. You propose nothing, elaborate little and enthuse none, I say NONE of us here.
And before you call me out for saying NONE are enthused, let me point out that those who have concurred with your excitement over an Ultimate Daredevil merely CONCEDE to anticipation for an ultracool character's transition to this high concept continuity and NOT to your nonexistent suggestions of what that would be.
But wait! I remembered you DO suggest ideas about Ultimate Daredevil, but as I've said before, not particularly interesting ones. In fact, most of them are some variation of the one you also posted on this thread:
TheManWithoutFear said:
I think someone brought up an interesting point when they said that Miller's Daredevil was tainted by following writers, and most fans would agree too. There's your proof of what about Daredevil's history needs to be fixed and what will probably happen they'll jump from basic Frank Millar to Bendis' Daredevil (Probably some Nocenti bits added too) and that's how Ultimate Daredevil will be with some slight changes.
Well, I feel ashamed to go back and be a hypocrite on what I just said, but from MY SUBJECTIVE opinion of what the Ultimate Universe is about, it is NOT about "fixing".
You are correct in asserting that not ALL of the Ultimate Universe's products are the radical reinventions that they are purported to be. (
Ultimate Spider-Man is particularly guilty of this, I'll admit) but the narratives of both Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Spider-Man are sufficiently flexible enough that a chronological restart affects everything.
USM is deceptively straightforward, but I think some fail to recognize that Spider-Man, and his core theme of "great power/great responsibility", placed within this new context now allows Bendis to explore the meaning of heroism and trying to grow into a man not within our chaotic contemporary society of moral ambiguity and mediated image. The "moral ambiguity" concept is deceptively simple, but it holds because USM is caught within a world where the struggle to do good is never clear cut, something which is a pet theme of Bendis' and one he explores in a completely DIFFERENT way in DD (but I'll get into that some other day.)
But all you've proposed is a "reedited" version of DD continuity, taking out all the "undesirable bits". It's a bloody DIRECTOR'S CUT! With NEW ART! And in DIGITAL COLOR, not that crude crap that Lynn Varley used to do for Frank Miller!
We don't need THAT. What we need from Ultimate Daredevil is something that recontextualizes what makes the character so strong in the first place. Is this Man TRULY "Without Fear"? What do his blind eyes see that others cannot? How is he a man of debate and a man of violence? Why does a Catholic dress like a devil? What is it about him that drives him to cleanse his city of social cancer with both his fists and his mind? (Hint, it's not responsibility, vengeance or virtue).
TheManWithoutFear said:
..... Yeah, all right, The UU was created to make money end of story because with the success of the movies they knew it'd work.
And to that I say, balderdash. The Ultimate imprint began long before many of the Marvel movies made a whole heaping ton of cash. To suggest an ad hoc, ergo propter hoc (after it, therefore because of it) sequence between the movies and the Ultimate line is not only fallacious but chronologically erroneous. As for the
X-Men movie that came out a couple years before
Ultimate X-Men, Marvel was in such a terrible financial state at that it's been generally acknowledged that those early years of Ultimate-ness were not necessarily about BOLD NEW REINVENTIONS (which they weren't, to be honest) as they were about their press release-stated motive that rebooting the continuity was the only way to gain new readers (and even that goal was problematic itself).
TheManWithoutFear said:
Does anyone see the pattern that whenever a thread is brought up about more Ultimate Titles, Daredevil is always the topic of conversation. Go ahead and blame it on me all you want but I didn't start it this time (or a few other times in the past). It's easy to pick on the guy with the username MWoF.
Yes, WE DO pick on you quite a bit. Maybe even moreso than you deserve. I'd like to think it's more wink wink nudge nudge than you're making it out to be. But if you'd care to look past your own self-image of "The Underdog" that no one listens to and constantly dismisses, the UC poster who is "Without Fear" to champion his favorite superhero, then perhaps you'll realize why:
You're a zealot NOT an evangelist.
As I've iterated before, (and will do so again) I love Daredevil. If they sold Daredevil towels, t-shirts, underwear, condoms and cereal, I'd buy it. And as a piece of graphic literature, I'd recommend it to a LOT of people. But I'd extol the virtues, preach the strength, illustrate the thematic resonance, pontificate on the solid dichotomies established by the Holy Prophets Miller, Bendis, et al. But I know that there's a fine line between being an effective preacher and the one who has an unending homily that everyone sleeps off on during mass.
A zealot is NOT necessarily a bad thing. It suggests one has a genuine passion for the object (in this case, Daredevil) concerned, which you most certainly have. But zeal ALONE doesn't get you very far in preaching the utmost coolness that is Daredevil. You'd better have the words for it. Just ask any evangelist.
