Ultimate Fantastic Four Discussion

[Nathan]

I thought they were kind of neat. Very different from the original Silver Surfer.

I haven't really read it, just went through the pages, and from what little I've seen he got his ass handed to him by Captain America and electricity could hurt him.

 

[ledfloyd92]

I strongly suggest you read Ultimate Extinction. It's very good, and there's an awsome fight bewtween Iron Man, Captain Mahr Vhel, and the Surfer. The only down-side is that Gah-Lak-Tus is a bit...underwelming.

 

[Venom160]

so does everyone think of part one of the Devils arc?

 

[Colossal Spoons]

I'm about 1/2 through the God War arc. This new creative team isn't bad, they just need to not throw so many alien names and jargon at the reader so quickly. The arc should have come w/ an encyclopedia.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

so does everyone think of part one of the Devils arc?

Wow, I'm really feelin this new arc

Oh and, Thing admitting that Colossus was stronger than him.....D

 

[Charlie No-One]

How about part II? This series needs to get back on track. It is really starting to lose my interest. I might drop it.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

I haven't read Part 2 yet. I liked part 1 though, it was a step in the right direction.

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Heh, cute.

 

[harley_quinn]

is that from a newish issue?

i think that alone would make me start to pick this up, plus i really dig pencil work when it has that sorta scraggy beautiful style going on, like frank miller or even tim sale.

 

[November Rain]

I haven't read any arcs since the sixth trade book with president thor and the whole doom taking out the zombie fantastic four...

are the other two trades worth buying, they dont seem to get my attention like the first six have...

is there a new creative team behind it then or what?

 

[FatalEnergy]

So whats everyones thoughts on the current arc (silver surfer)?

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Started off with potential....going downhill.

 

[chris moore]

Yeah, Psycho man can give the Silver Surfer the power cosmic (or an ultimate analogy), but he has to use mind manipulation machine on his own people? And why was Norrin the size of a star initially when he clearly comes from a normal sized planet?

 

[Havok83]

this was my favorite Ult-title during Millar/Land run but dropped it midway through Carey's first arc

 

[Colossal Spoons]

Millar's run was epic

 

[November Rain]

again, would anyone like to give me any insight into what's happened since book six and the president thor arc?

 

[Colossal Spoons]

again, would anyone like to give me any insight into what's happened since book six and the president thor arc?

- Fought the Frightful Four and Doom sacrificed himself to keep the zombies sealed in their own dimension. Pretty sure he's whoopin zombie ass as we speak

- Fought Thanos and Ronan...pretty boring

- Fought an ancient wizard in the "Devils" arc. Def worth reading

- About to fight Psycho Man...pretty boring

 

[Kangaroo4u]

Love this comic!

 

[FatalEnergy]

- Fought the Frightful Four and Doom sacrificed himself to keep the zombies sealed in their own dimension. Pretty sure he's whoopin zombie ass as we speak

- Fought Thanos and Ronan...pretty boring

- Fought an ancient wizard in the "Devils" arc. Def worth reading

- About to fight Psycho Man...pretty boring

God war wasn't too bad, but it was a little confusing and too long.

The F.F. are forced into an uneasy alliance with the alien known as the Silver Surfer to combat the Psycho-Man, who has six billion fanatical followers…all kidnapped from their home planet—Earth. Despite their power, how can even the Fantastic Four rescue a populace from itself? The answer will shock you. Part 5 (of 5)
32 PGS./Rated A …$2.99

uhhhh, I dont remember anything shocking. It was pretty anti climactic to be honest. Weird.

Anyways I love Mark Brooks on this book.

 

[Charlie No-One]

I really can't stand this book at the moment. Depending on the next arc...I might drop it.

 

[fantastic fifth]

this was my favorite Ult-title during Millar/Land run but dropped it midway through Carey's first arc

During the anticipation for the 2nd movie - I was literally hanging out at the comic store WAITING for the next Millar/Land UFF issue - I haven't been that interested in comics for 20 years! I was really disgusted that they moved off the title. Those were the best looking recent comics I've seen. I hate sloppy art and all the anime looking stuff of today.

 

[Mogwai]

MIKE CAREY ON ULTIMATE FF #50 AND BEYOND
by Steve Ekstrom

In January, Marvel’s Ultimate Fantastic Four hits the big five-oh. With seeds planted as early as two story arcs past, Ultimate Fantastic Four #50 promises to culminate in an explosion of a year’s worth of back story, returning evil, and building tension and dissention. With artwork provided by Tyler Kirkham, writer Mike Carey pits the Ultimate Fantastic Four against Thanos, the evil ruler of Archeron. Thanos, with the unknowing aid of Reed Richards, will once again have a cosmic cube within his reach and it’s up to the Fantastic Four to stop him.

Newsarama sat down with Mike Carey to discuss the fiftieth issue; just how evil the Ultimate Thanos is; and some of the dynamics of the Ultimate line that resemble the earlier years of Marvel’s comic history.

Newsarama: Ultimate Thanos is back—and he’s ultimately a lot badder than his 616 counterpart. He’s somewhat of a semi-deity in terms of his abilities and his fear-mongering grasp over the planet Archeron. He’s also got that ability to possess people’s bodies…

Mike Carey: Actually, he has the power to move souls around—but he doesn’t have it all the time. He goes on these periodic visitations of the realm of the dead—he dies and he is reborn…endlessly. He dies for a few days or a few weeks and when he comes back he has this sort of attunement to the souls of the people around him. He can move a soul out of its body; he can put another soul into a healthier, younger body as a reward; and he can punish his enemies by putting them into aged, diseased ones. And yes, he can take over anyone else’s body when he wants it but his own energy, his power, burns out the vessels very quickly.

NRAMA: With the return of Thanos, considering he never really left, when readers think back to the end of the “God War” arc—a specter of Thanos is drifting over the head of Reed Richards as Reed begins to create what will become a Cosmic Cube. Can Accuser Ronan and some of the other characters introduced during “God War” be far behind in #50?

MC: Yes, expect to see Ronan and Tesseract again, and the Seed Nineteen combat team. Most of the supporting characters from that previous storyline will, at least, be making a cameo. We’ll see some other Halcyon seed units, too.

NRAMA: Was Thanos inspired by anything or anyone in particular? Or is the Ultimate Thanos from the dark recesses of Mike Carey’s mind?

MC: I don’t know. Well, yes, he was definitely inspired by the 616 Thanos; we definitely wanted him to have that same fixation with death or for his power to come from his affinity with death. In the 616, Thanos kind of has this love affair with the embodiment of death.

NRAMA: He kind of holds hands and makes out with death…I think they’re dating…

MC: (laughs) Something like that, yeah. She’s always kind of behind his shoulder and he’s sort of looking back yearningly at her, isn’t he? We wanted to bring that idea in—certainly. Also, there is the idea that Thanos is very similar to the Egyptian God, Horus. In Egyptian myth, when the sun sets that’s actually Horus’s barge leaving the world of the living and sailing through the world of the dead, to emerge again at dawn. Thanos is kind of the same – death is part of his life cycle.

NRAMA: This Thanos just seems so much more potent than the 616 version—a lot of people have a hard time connecting to the Ultimate Universe—do you think that more of the Ultimate books could use this sort of differentiation? Should the Ultimate Universe stray enough from original concepts that new ground is broken?

MC: You have to think in terms of both repetition and variation. We really try to create something that’s unique to the Ultimate Universe, but it should still echo the MU originals in unexpected and intriguing ways.

NRAMA: Will there be a great deal of dissention within the Fantastic Four?

MC: In a way, it’s already there. In the few arcs that have led up to the current one, we’ve got the beginnings of a very serious rift between Reed and Sue. While Reed has been possessed by Thanos, he’s been treating Sue very badly. He’s become so obsessed with the need to finish the cube that he’s been treating everyone around him like dirt which is why Sue ends up going to Siberia by herself in the Red Ghost storyline.

By the end of issue #50, the fracture lines are definitely a lot worse.

NRAMA: Will the power of the Ultimate Cosmic Cube be greater than the 616 original? There have been so many different Cosmic Cubes in the traditional Marvel Universe—heck, the Beyonder and the Molecule Man merged in an old issue of the Fantastic Four to become a Cosmic Cube—how does this Cosmic Cube hold up?

MC: The thing about the Cube is that it’s potentially a sort of infinite power. We’ve seen Reed find the power source for it—the power source is a sun in another dimension. So, essentially, he’s harnessed the power of a couple of million atom bombs going off every second—that’s the power the Cube is drawing on. This Cosmic Cube has a power level that is inconceivably greater than any other weapon that has been invented but it’s limited by the mind, the will, and the concentration of the person who is using it.

Readers will see that there are a number of different ways that the power of the Cube can work. It’s kind of obvious that Thanos has had some previous experience wielding power of this magnitude—he’s used one Cube already and Reed never has. So, at the start of that storyline, Reed is using the Cube and he’s only capable of accessing a certain portion of its power because the user is a crucial part of the circuit or process.

NRAMA: If you could isolate one dynamic that makes the Ultimate Fantastic Four unique compared to their 616 counterparts—what would it be?

MC: I guess that would have to be the contrast between the scale of their powers and their youthful inexperience – as opposed to the 616 Fantastic Four who have had many, many years to get used to their powers and the way they work. The Ultimate characters don’t have the cohesion that the traditional characters have in their team dynamic—they don’t know the nuances of each other’s moods and moves inside of the functionality as a team. They’re learning as they go.

They are almost an unstoppable force in the 616, aren’t they? The Ultimate Fantastic Four—they’re just kids still. They are all still coming to terms with some of the things that they can do. The first Ultimate FF story I wrote was “Think Tank” and in that I had Sue use an invisible force field to cushion the fall of helicopter that was falling out of the sky. Basically, Sue attempts to prevent anyone from being killed by cushioning the fall of the helicopter and then she immediately throws her guts up because of how she is connected to the force field—she, herself, is kind of struck by the helicopter. This team is still learning what they can and cannot do and what’s the best way to approach their powers.

NRAMA: Yeah, looking back at “God War” there is this moment where Reed is shot four times—and he’s not quite sure if the bullets have even passed through his body and he also, at one point, states, “I no longer require air or food,” and that he doesn’t have organs. There seems to be a different sort of focus—more of a “hard science” sort of edge—that borders realistic science.

MC: I’m just sort of following up something that was established during the Warren Ellis run on the book with Sue as the resident biologist examining the other three and realizing that, in order for their powers to work at all, there are certain things that you have to accept as given. If Reed had real organs they’d rupture every time he stretched.

NRAMA: How much carte blanche are you given with the extended mythos of the Fantastic Four and any kinds of ultimate realizations?

MC: You get a very large amount of leeway. I mean, we’re still introducing a lot of thse supporting characters and villains for the first time. There is this kind of draw—well, for me, this is the biggest draw—there is this huge freedom to experiment; to vent an exuberant imagination that characterized the 1960’s Marvel Comics. When you look at the run of the Lee/ Kirby Fantastic Four, there was this sense that you never knew what was going to be in it. It was this really wild explosion of ideas. With the Ultimate Universe, we’re trying to shock readers again with new ideas—showing a well known character from another angle or by raising the stakes the whole time.

NRAMA: It’s got to be pretty amazing to pitch ideas to an editor that alters something that’s a part of the status quo somewhere else and you get to kind of reconstruct it from scratch…

MC: One of the great assets of the Ultimate line of books has Ralph Macchio—the senior editor in the Ultimate office—whose knowledge of Silver Age Marvel books is huge. He’s like an encyclopedia and his enthusiasm is infectious. For instance, when we were coming up with the “God War” arc; which was when I was coming on board as the regular writer on the Ultimate Fantastic Four ongoing, we both wanted to come out of the gate with a really big, big story. Something really epic and grand—so, we were talking about ways we could do it and it became this sort of process of amplification. I’d come up with an idea and Ralph would find a way to top it and then I’d come back with something else again and we’d go backwards and forwards until we had something amazing. It was really an enjoyable process. Some of the notes we sent each other are featured in the back-up portion of the hardcover for “God War”.

NRAMA: Earlier, we started to talk about the noticeable amount of “hard science” that the Ultimate Fantastic Four has in contrast to the traditional title. Is there a definite effort put into using more solid scientific concepts versus abstract fictional pseudo-science?

MC: I think you almost need some kind of grounding in reality for the fantastic stuff to have its full impact. Yeah, you believe in the real science and then, when things really take off, the fantastic elements creep in and the end result has so much more punch to it.

NRAMA: How does Tyler Kirkham’s artwork stand up to the other talented artists you’ve worked with on this title?

MC: Tyler is pretty extraordinary—it has to be said. He’s done a fantastic job for a few issues now. Just like with “God War” where I was hitting Pasqual [Ferry] with 15 new characters all in the same issue—it’s the same thing here. It’s a colossal story with alien battle fleets; attacks on New York; a whole additional team of Halcyon superheroes; a huge scene with the Baxter Building and the Cosmic Cube—and he captures all of these things so well.

NRAMA: What can be expected of the Ultimate Fantastic Four post-fiftieth issue?

MC: It’ll be another Earth-based story. What we’ve tried to do is alternate the cosmic stories with Earth-based ones. We had “God War” and then we switched to Diablo in the “Devils” arc, which was like a classic time travel story—and then Silver Surfer, where the FF go to Zenn-La, was followed by the Red Ghost arc where they’re in Siberia. So, expect the next story to be on Earth. We’re going to be introducing a brand new villain—possibly a duo of villains—and the story will be playing out a lot of the emotional after-effects of the events that take place in Ultimate Fantastic Four #50 and the Cosmic Cube story; particularly between Reed and Sue.

this title really needs a facelift.

 

[FatalEnergy]

Depending on how this next issue turns out, I may drop this book until ultimatum begins.

 

[Charlie No-One]

I am dropping this.

 

[GNR]

Just re-read the first arc as well as Millar's 12 issue run.

Those are some damn good comics still.