Ultimate FF #1
Apr. 18th, 2014 02:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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doomfansThis issue is mostly a setup issue, and Ultimate Doom only appears at the end, so it's a bit difficult to form an opinion on it at this stage.
But First, A Brief History of Ultimate Doom
Apparently, they were initially going for a more 'realistic' take on Doom in the Ultimateverse, so his name was changed to "Victor Van Damme" and his backstory is frankly a lot more boring and generic; instead of being raised by loving Gypsy parents killed under an oppressive regime, he was raised by a cold, abusive aristocratic father who was allegedly descended from Vlad Tepes Dracula. (Most annoyingly, despite the fact that Doom's mother is by far the most important of his two parents to his 616 backstory, in Ultimateverse she is completely absent from his story and never once mentioned. Yay, updating for the 21st century!)
On the other hand, his history with the F4 is a bit more interesting in this universe. In the UU, Reed and Victor are both students at the Baxter Building, an academy for genius kids run by Franklin Storm, Sue and Johnny's father. (Sue is a genius biologist in this universe; Johnny is basically just a student there because of his dad.) Reed is at the school from age 11 until he's 21, and Victor is there for a similar length of time. Victor keeps to himself among the students and for the first four years he barely says a word to Reed until one day, in an interesting reversal of 616 canon, he marches into Reed's room to correct a mistake in his equations.
Reed is initially pissed, but realises Victor is right, and proposes that the two of them help each other out with their projects. From then on they are, if not outright friends, then definitely study buddies, and work together for the next five plus years.
In this universe, Victor is also caught up in the accident that gives the F4 their powers. Reed is trying to open a portal to the negative zone, and invites the Storms and his childhood friend Ben Grimm to witness the test. However, Victor is convinced that the numbers are wrong and it's going to end in disaster.
It's never actually proven who's right in this universe: Reed believes Victor sabotaged his test; Victor believes Reed was the one who screwed up and he was just trying to fix things. Either way, it of course goes Horribly Wrong, and the F4 get their 616 universe powers - but this time Victor gets powers too. His body turns to steel, with a goat-legged look; he can fire needles from his arms and breathe poison, and no longer has a sense of pain. Naturally, he's not particularly happy about this, and becomes an enemy of the F4.
After a few minor clashes, Doom plants a magical parasite in Johnny Storm to force Reed to ask him for help, and makes Reed agree to a body swap as his price for fixing it. But the parasite turns out to be too dangerous to contain, and after Victor evicts it, it latches onto Reed-in-Doom's-body as the most powerful host around. There's also an incursion from a portal to the Zombieverse going on at this time (Reed's fault) so Reed plans to sacrifice himself by entering the portal and sealing it from the inside. However, Victor swaps their bodies back so he can be the one to make a heroic sacrifice instead, and walks into the Zombieverse portal, never to be seen again.
...Except he does actually show up again, as the master manipulator behind the Ultimatum storyline, at the end of which he's apparently killed by Ben Grimm. However, since Ultimatum is a crappy, crappy incoherent deathfest that A, fails to explain how Doom even got back, and B, Did Not Do The Research, resulting in a death scene with Ben crushing Doom's head that would only work if he was a man in armour rather than solid metal like he is in the UU, it's a popular theory that this Doom was an impostor, and the real Doom was still in the Zombieverse the whole time.
Whether this new series is running with that explanation for how he can be back, we will see...
Ultimate FF #1
So, anyway, Ultimate FF. I haven't really read much Ultimateverse stuff since Ultimatum, so all I'm really vaguely aware of is that Ultimate Reed went evil, and there was some sort of event called Cataclysm recently. This story opens with some construction workers in 'New Jersey, site of Galactus event', whatever that was. They pick up some weird seismic readings, something erupts through the ground, and then we cut to our heroes arriving a short while later.
Our heroes are apparently a team of geniuses: Sue Storm, Tony Stark and Sam Wilson/the Falcon, while supporting them up in the Helicarrier or some other floating base type thingie are Phil Coulson and Danny Ketch/Machine Man, who the captions tell me is a "deceased field agent/biomechanical hybrid of alien origin". (Also according to the captions, Sue is the head of the Future Foundation and Coulson is a Director, but I have no clue what the Future Foundation is in Ultimate Universe terms. Maybe a replacement for the Baxter school? I don't know. Presumably later issues will clue me in.)
Anyway, they go to investigate the anomaly, which has formed a dome trapping a dozen workers. They enter the dome, and find the workers have been mutated into monsters. Fighty time! They try to close the dimensional rift that's causing the anomaly, but can't do it. Tony and Sam are knocked unconscious; leaving Sue trying to hold off the monsters with a failing forcefield.
Meanwhile, the support team have no comms with the trio in the dome, and soon get edgy about it. They debate who they can send in after them: Machine Man says, "You got the smartest people on Earth to help you, and then, you have one of 'em in lockup, twiddling his weird-shaped thumbs. One who saved the damn world. Pull. Him. Out."
We're obviously being set up to think that it's Evil Reed Richards, and Sue clearly thinks so too when someone mysterious arrives to their rescue, collapsing the portal from within with a black hole. (Tony is sure he would totally have thought of that any minute.) She's convinced that "Reed" will kill the mutated workers rather than save them, and starts yelling at him not to hurt them, but instead the workers revert back and are left unharmed. She yells that it doesn't make them even and they don't need him, but of course, as we know, it's not actually Reed:
So, there you have it. Plot-wise, it's a little hard to rate, since this issue is all setup for a reveal that was already spoiled in the pre-publicity anyway. The dialogue's not bad, and gives a little bit of a sense of the field team's characters, though the supporting team are mostly just expositing this issue. Tony in particular definitely feels like Ult-verse Tony (complete with last 'dying' words: "I should have dated more supermodels.") and has a little bit of back and forth banter with Falcon, while Sue comes off as hardened and sharp after her experiences with Reed.
On the other hand, the art really does it no favours whatsoever. There are two pencillers credited, so I'm not sure if it's one on figures, one on backgrounds or what, but definitely the character art is super-scratchy and very uneven - some characters look decent in some panels, but the faces are very variable, and Sue in particular does not come off well most of the time. The colouring doesn't really help either: with the blue and purple uniforms it's all very murky and dull for much of the action.
So far I'm cautiously on board writing-wise and curious to see what they'll do with Doom, but wow, I hope they change artists fairly soon, because this artwork is just not working for me at all.
But First, A Brief History of Ultimate Doom
Apparently, they were initially going for a more 'realistic' take on Doom in the Ultimateverse, so his name was changed to "Victor Van Damme" and his backstory is frankly a lot more boring and generic; instead of being raised by loving Gypsy parents killed under an oppressive regime, he was raised by a cold, abusive aristocratic father who was allegedly descended from Vlad Tepes Dracula. (Most annoyingly, despite the fact that Doom's mother is by far the most important of his two parents to his 616 backstory, in Ultimateverse she is completely absent from his story and never once mentioned. Yay, updating for the 21st century!)
On the other hand, his history with the F4 is a bit more interesting in this universe. In the UU, Reed and Victor are both students at the Baxter Building, an academy for genius kids run by Franklin Storm, Sue and Johnny's father. (Sue is a genius biologist in this universe; Johnny is basically just a student there because of his dad.) Reed is at the school from age 11 until he's 21, and Victor is there for a similar length of time. Victor keeps to himself among the students and for the first four years he barely says a word to Reed until one day, in an interesting reversal of 616 canon, he marches into Reed's room to correct a mistake in his equations.
Reed is initially pissed, but realises Victor is right, and proposes that the two of them help each other out with their projects. From then on they are, if not outright friends, then definitely study buddies, and work together for the next five plus years.
In this universe, Victor is also caught up in the accident that gives the F4 their powers. Reed is trying to open a portal to the negative zone, and invites the Storms and his childhood friend Ben Grimm to witness the test. However, Victor is convinced that the numbers are wrong and it's going to end in disaster.
It's never actually proven who's right in this universe: Reed believes Victor sabotaged his test; Victor believes Reed was the one who screwed up and he was just trying to fix things. Either way, it of course goes Horribly Wrong, and the F4 get their 616 universe powers - but this time Victor gets powers too. His body turns to steel, with a goat-legged look; he can fire needles from his arms and breathe poison, and no longer has a sense of pain. Naturally, he's not particularly happy about this, and becomes an enemy of the F4.
After a few minor clashes, Doom plants a magical parasite in Johnny Storm to force Reed to ask him for help, and makes Reed agree to a body swap as his price for fixing it. But the parasite turns out to be too dangerous to contain, and after Victor evicts it, it latches onto Reed-in-Doom's-body as the most powerful host around. There's also an incursion from a portal to the Zombieverse going on at this time (Reed's fault) so Reed plans to sacrifice himself by entering the portal and sealing it from the inside. However, Victor swaps their bodies back so he can be the one to make a heroic sacrifice instead, and walks into the Zombieverse portal, never to be seen again.
...Except he does actually show up again, as the master manipulator behind the Ultimatum storyline, at the end of which he's apparently killed by Ben Grimm. However, since Ultimatum is a crappy, crappy incoherent deathfest that A, fails to explain how Doom even got back, and B, Did Not Do The Research, resulting in a death scene with Ben crushing Doom's head that would only work if he was a man in armour rather than solid metal like he is in the UU, it's a popular theory that this Doom was an impostor, and the real Doom was still in the Zombieverse the whole time.
Whether this new series is running with that explanation for how he can be back, we will see...
Ultimate FF #1
So, anyway, Ultimate FF. I haven't really read much Ultimateverse stuff since Ultimatum, so all I'm really vaguely aware of is that Ultimate Reed went evil, and there was some sort of event called Cataclysm recently. This story opens with some construction workers in 'New Jersey, site of Galactus event', whatever that was. They pick up some weird seismic readings, something erupts through the ground, and then we cut to our heroes arriving a short while later.
Our heroes are apparently a team of geniuses: Sue Storm, Tony Stark and Sam Wilson/the Falcon, while supporting them up in the Helicarrier or some other floating base type thingie are Phil Coulson and Danny Ketch/Machine Man, who the captions tell me is a "deceased field agent/biomechanical hybrid of alien origin". (Also according to the captions, Sue is the head of the Future Foundation and Coulson is a Director, but I have no clue what the Future Foundation is in Ultimate Universe terms. Maybe a replacement for the Baxter school? I don't know. Presumably later issues will clue me in.)
Anyway, they go to investigate the anomaly, which has formed a dome trapping a dozen workers. They enter the dome, and find the workers have been mutated into monsters. Fighty time! They try to close the dimensional rift that's causing the anomaly, but can't do it. Tony and Sam are knocked unconscious; leaving Sue trying to hold off the monsters with a failing forcefield.
Meanwhile, the support team have no comms with the trio in the dome, and soon get edgy about it. They debate who they can send in after them: Machine Man says, "You got the smartest people on Earth to help you, and then, you have one of 'em in lockup, twiddling his weird-shaped thumbs. One who saved the damn world. Pull. Him. Out."
We're obviously being set up to think that it's Evil Reed Richards, and Sue clearly thinks so too when someone mysterious arrives to their rescue, collapsing the portal from within with a black hole. (Tony is sure he would totally have thought of that any minute.) She's convinced that "Reed" will kill the mutated workers rather than save them, and starts yelling at him not to hurt them, but instead the workers revert back and are left unharmed. She yells that it doesn't make them even and they don't need him, but of course, as we know, it's not actually Reed:
So, there you have it. Plot-wise, it's a little hard to rate, since this issue is all setup for a reveal that was already spoiled in the pre-publicity anyway. The dialogue's not bad, and gives a little bit of a sense of the field team's characters, though the supporting team are mostly just expositing this issue. Tony in particular definitely feels like Ult-verse Tony (complete with last 'dying' words: "I should have dated more supermodels.") and has a little bit of back and forth banter with Falcon, while Sue comes off as hardened and sharp after her experiences with Reed.
On the other hand, the art really does it no favours whatsoever. There are two pencillers credited, so I'm not sure if it's one on figures, one on backgrounds or what, but definitely the character art is super-scratchy and very uneven - some characters look decent in some panels, but the faces are very variable, and Sue in particular does not come off well most of the time. The colouring doesn't really help either: with the blue and purple uniforms it's all very murky and dull for much of the action.
So far I'm cautiously on board writing-wise and curious to see what they'll do with Doom, but wow, I hope they change artists fairly soon, because this artwork is just not working for me at all.
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no subject
Date: 2014-04-18 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-19 12:27 am (UTC)I prefer black-haired Victor to the red-haired Victor you occasionally see in 616 stuff (which I think is just a misinterpretation of the colouring in Secret Wars, where unmasked Victor's hair looks kind of reddish because hey, 80s comics didn't have many shades of brown to choose from). But yeah, it is a bit disconcerting - he looks a bit like a young Tony Stark with the little goatee there. Both Ultimate Victor and Ultimate Reed have blue eyes, as well, which irked me a little bit because they're among the few major characters from the early Marvel books that actually have brown! It's funny how a modern updating of the comics sometimes falls back on stuff that's more clichéd than the originals.
I hope the art improves or they switch artists fairly soon - this seems like a decent start writing-wise, but I'm a bit concerned that this kind of rough art is going to put people off the book before it gets a chance to go anywhere.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-19 09:14 pm (UTC)I hope this book gets better art soon and that they change Sue's costume, because it's kind of a mess right now.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-19 09:39 pm (UTC)It's quite hard to know anyone's "proper" eye colour in comics because the colourists seem to get it wrong pretty often, but it tends to stand out to me with Doom because it's the only part of his face you ever see. He occasionally gets given green eyes, I suppose because it matches his colour scheme, but they're definitely supposed to be brown. (And blue just seems to be the default colour that everyone ends up with whenever the colourist's not sure.)
no subject
Date: 2014-04-19 11:02 pm (UTC)I suppose you could argue that some type of brown eyes can look green-ish when the person wears green, but really, isn't there a character bible somewhere at Marvel? (It's comics! Everyone has blue eyes, I guess.)
no subject
Date: 2014-04-19 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-20 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-20 11:00 pm (UTC)I love Marko Djurdjevic's version, which is kind of skull like and close-fitted and a bit different from most takes:
Jim Cheung's version in Children's Crusade was pretty good too. And my favourite of the old school Doom masks was definitely John Byrne's:
And ooh, if we're picking favourite panels from Books of Doom, I have a whole bunch! (And scans of my favourite pages, so, picspam.) The handshake panel's definitely a good one, and I adore this whole bit for so many reasons:
Also, angry college Doom:
Doom in his bandages:
This one's maybe not quite as well-drawn as my other faves, but the imagery stuck with me for years after the first time I read the book (so I also really love that Jim Cheung did a callback to it in his double page spread of Doom's background in Children's Crusade):
I love the look for teeny baby four-year-old Doom, too - not many artists can draw pre-teen kids at all convincingly, but the progression of Victor growing up through BoD was really great:
no subject
Date: 2014-04-21 08:46 pm (UTC)I love both these takes on the Doom mask, although I think I might have slightly more success pulling of Djurdjevic's than Byrne's. My style is somewhere between the two, although nowhere near as good. /cool story
Teen!Victor is so happy and carefree. What happened to him? I would honestly love to read an AU where Werner doesn't die and what that means for who Victor grows up to be.
To be fair, Victor has good reasons to be angry at Reed at that point.
Those are good panels and I really felt for Victor there. (I still think it's sortof hilarious that he did his impersonation of HGWells' Invisible Man for months, yet doesn't see anything wrong with Valeria recognising him anyway.)
That is a great panel and also one of my faves. (I hadn't even noticed the call-back. That is awesome.)
I think Victor tends to look slightly older or younger in BoD than the age he's supposed to be, but not by much and he always look like the same person, which is very hard to pull off.
Do you have any other favourite Doom panels?
no subject
Date: 2014-04-21 10:12 pm (UTC)He so does. The original Valeria, Morgan, Wanda... there was even a Secret Wars AU where the characters were left on Battleworld and Doom had a child with the Enchantress. Hmm, brunette Gypsy witches with magical powers, wherever might he get that preference from...? ;)
Teen!Victor is so happy and carefree. What happened to him? I would honestly love to read an AU where Werner doesn't die and what that means for who Victor grows up to be.
One of the things I love about Books of Doom is the way that it actually shows Victor beginning to heal from the various emotional blows he takes before things go wrong again; he and his father gradually get over the death of his mother and become a happy family again, and when Valeria finds him after the accident he even seems to have started coming to terms with that... but then something always comes along to make things worse just as he's starting to recover. It really emphasizes that it wasn't just any one thing that made him Doom but a whole chain of tragic events that might have been averted if things had gone differently at any point.
I've always wanted to see a Werner lives AU, definitely. Even more than that, I would love a Fantastic Four story where they travel back to this era in Latveria's past, or where Doom is de-aged to his childhood self, because I really don't think Reed and the others know much at all about this era of his life, and I'd be fascinated to see what they made of young Victor and the loving parents he had before tragedy struck. (And Valeria's namesake! Do they even know where Doom got that name from, or why it has sentimental value to him? I don't think they do.)
To be fair, Victor has good reasons to be angry at Reed at that point.
This part of the origin story has always fascinated me, because it's not a retcon added later to give things more nuance, it's right there in the Lee/Kirby version of the origin in Fantastic Four Annual #2 - Reed very definitely barged into Victor's private rooms and read his project notes without permission, which is not just rude and pushy but I would think gives Victor grounds to try and get him kicked out of college! The readers might know that Reed is harmlessly enthusiastic rather than spying or cheating, but Victor has every reason to be suspicious and outraged - and yet it's nearly always framed as Victor's pride being at fault, with no mention of Reed's terrible people skills. (Which is one of several reasons I love Dwayne McDuffie's Fantastic Four special, where he actually has Reed address that and admit feeling bad about the arrogant way he handled things.)
I think Victor tends to look slightly older or younger in BoD than the age he's supposed to be, but not by much and he always look like the same person, which is very hard to pull off.
Yeah, it's not always quite perfect age-wise (I think he's only supposed to be about 11 in that water-splashing sequence, for instance, and while on the next page he actually looks that age, in the panels I posted I'd say he looks more like early teens). But considering most comic artists can't seem to draw any stage between babies and ten-year-olds (you would never guess from any of the F4 and FF artwork that Franklin's more than twice Valeria's age) or just draw creepy miniature adults, I'm still pretty impressed. Particularly, as you say, since he manages to have Victor age from toddler to college student with the shape of his face changing a lot and yet always makes him look like the same boy.
Ooh, favourite Doom panels... I have folders full of scanned pages I've collected from various Doctor Doom stories. I might go through them and see if I can put together a picspam post.