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[Ultimate Comics] Divided We Fall
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Ultimates has been pretty damn fantastic since it launched and Reed has been an incredibly effective villain
Steaaaaaaam
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
And then he builds The City. And everything goes south. Its particularly frustrating because Ultimate, on the whole, has had a really good grip on the futurism concept, I mean, they got Iron Man so, utterly, RIGHT, most of the time, that seeing a legitimate super-science society failing, so utterly, is frustrating.
An emergent AI being that subservient? No way. Just no way. Theres a counterargument to be made that Reed set it up that way, possibly maintaining a death grip on the society as a whole, but then they throw in the "I had to fight to get smarter just to keep up" bit, showing he should merely be the first among equals, with a bit of cult of personality going.
Let alone responding as SLOW as it does? Why doesnt it have a thousand little laser sniper rifles springing up when those missiles are coming in? They make it VERY clear, again and again, that the heart of City tech is rapid speed nanotech construction. Other than that, tetraton grade shields, and good data warfare, I just plain dont see a thousand years of super-science tech speed. Sure, sure, time-warp location fucks with physics and keeps him from developing this or that direction... None of which is discussed at all, ever, and is purely fanwank.
They even pointedly emphasize the power of data warfare, and then fail to have him simply reach out and turn the airplanes and nuclear submarines off.
And knives, man. Torso exposing exosuits and knives. He MET Iron man a few times! Reed knows the value of body armor! They should all be using mile long railguns and metal gear scale armor, bare minimum. Theres absolutely no logic whatsoever for the Children's battle motif in the slightest.
Really now? You know exactly how the subject of nothing but speculative fiction should behave? No.
Why didn't the City have a million rifles or whatever defending the city from the nukes?
It has been stated that The City is completely impregnable. They can't sense anything coming in or going out. In making the City completely unreadable it makes sense that Reed would not be able to "see" outside. That the shield goes both ways. You may be asking yourself why Reed would deny himself the power of a Data War of seeing what the enemy has coming. My question to you is why does he need it? America used every last nuke in the arsenal and the City absorbed most of it. What it didn't was barely a scratch. Reed has nothing to fear from the outside world.
Except America gaining its tech. If somehow scientists in America could use the information they gain from scanning the City to gain its technology Reed would really have a fight on his hands. Like this? America just through everything it had at him and it barely pissed him off.
Metal Gear style armor would be terrible in a realistic fight so I find it laughable that as your whole problem with The City seems to be that it's not realistic to you you have brought up those Mech as what they should do instead.
Reed fights almost exclusively far ranged. He's devoured all of Europe and it would appear his Sword have done very little of it. The City just absorbs things.
The times he's engaged with his men directly have all had reasons for it. Using his Flyers to cut Odin and the World tree off for example. Or the many times the enemy steps right into the city. Any true long range attack however is limited by his choice to be completely unreadable.
As for his Swords, they are designed to fight the one things that can harm him. Metahumans. Things that could still harm his men even with full armor. So he appears to have taken the other route. Make them fast and capable of powerful attacks.
Combine a goal of making the best possible weapon out of the human and very little interest in that individuals life and you get the Sword.
Also I just don't think this makes any sense at all
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As to "not a scratch", it took "92% of the City's energy reserves" to hold it off. They even lost a fair bit of actual landscape and had a number of nurseries burn. It was not 'without a scratch'. If any other nuclear nation had chipped in a few dozen (or hundred) warheads, The City would have been entirely wiped out, cleanly.
I actually like your argument for the nature of his Swords, but I have a real problem with back mounted exo frames as a design, and was just pointing out a full scale mecha as a counterpoint concept. They do show that he lost Children because of this design - some of them did get killed in that last melee.
He also disproves the outward blindness concept shortly after the Children first emerge, by going on about how they very closely watch the skies and have full sensor sweeps up to quite a ways out. Which is a shame, it would have been a perfectly valid concept, to say nothing of The Children just not thinking of it due to being a shell locked society for so long. Them having bad sensor tech makes perfectly fine sense, I give you.
This is all part of why it frustrates me so badly - the authors made significant effort for Reed not to be a Marty Stu in all this. He's obviously wielding an ego the size of the sun, and thats given him a number of blindspots, to say nothing of the overall subservience of his so brilliant Children. That sort of crushingly powerful ego is why I have a problem with The City as an /emergent/ AI having been given free run. Its too powerful and too fast thinking in any sensible interpretation to be predictable, and strikes me as a powerful incongruity with the rest of the theme.
and and interview with BW
http://www.comicvine.com/news/exclusive-interview-new-character-designs-for-ultimate-comics-x-men/144668/
that image is over 1 MB and the limit is 500k
Also, I asked Wood on twitter if there was a reason for Johnny being omitted from the pic / omitted from the interview and he replied with "yes". Which of course could mean anything, but here's hoping to a new F4 ongoing
edit: nvm, he added that he is still in the book.
Or just give him normal shorts, not bizarre low crotch, high sides underwear he has on.
The characterizations are only the start of the problems with the writing on AvX, but since this isn't the bitching thread:
Wood's very good about replying on Twitter. When he was announced as the writer on Ultimate X-Men, I pointed out that the team was short any minorities. I also pointed out that he said he missed his Generation X cast, with Synch and Monet not making Ultimate debuts yet.
He said the lack of minorities was a good point.
I'm hoping for a Synch debut. *cross fingers*
I write news there. It is fun.
...damn.
There are some really great newer artists popping up lately in comics. Pichelli and Manapul are easily my two favorites recently.
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Didn't have Synch have basically the exact same powers Hope does now? Would be interesting to see what would happen if he returned to the regular Marvel U. Not that the whole duplicating powers thing is new - there is a guy in X-Factor that has the powers of every mutant on the planet, but will never be mentioned outside of a Peter David book.
Pretty much. Synch was Omega-level for his time, and Hope bears that idea out.
I write news there. It is fun.
Ultimates: Europe mostly gone. China gone. Washington, DC gone.
Ultimate X-Men: Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, pretty much gone.
Ultimate X-Men #11:
Ultimates #10:
Damn Ultimate Comics!
I write news there. It is fun.
Also, China aint gone, it's the "SEAR" area that is gone, (they make mention that China is still around in Ultimates #5 or #6).
You can start with the latest relaunch, which has hardcovers out for the first arcs of each book
Ultimates
Hawkeye(which is a miniseries that takes place along with the first arc of Ultimates)
X-Men
Spider-Man
Cover to Ultimates #11
Cover to Spider-Men #4
Thanks for info.
That's the kind of Spidey we need in movies.
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The new trailer suggests we are getting just that.
I was going to point this out as well.
I write news there. It is fun.
I wasn't sure if I was going to go, but "oh god tiny knives, my secret fear, please don't hurt the spider-man" sold me HARD.
Mentallo
Only time will tell how similar the two are.
My Band "The Wicked Girls" http://soundcloud.com/the-wicked-girls/sets
Very curious about that.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)