The comic book industry has been in trouble for a while, and I can’t figure out why. If box office records from the last decade are any indicator, every person in America is a geek. This is, of course, discounting people who buy tickets just to see Kirsten Dunst’s nipples through a soggy shirt. Actually, scratch that, I would imagine a lot of return viewers for just that reason were geeks.
Doesn’t matter. My point is, how has every single box-office-shredding movie since 2002 been comic book related (with the exception of the Labor Day-destroying Halloween remake – horror’s still got it, baby, you just gotta know when to release it!), and yet no one is actually reading the books? Oh, I’m sure every time another comic book flick with a nine-figure budget is released, sales of the trades for that particular title go up for a month or so, but where are the return readers? Where are the newly created fans? Paying $3.50 a gallon for gasoline, most likely. Thanks, Republicans.
Aside from being poor thanks to woeful mismanagement of the country and a global economy that has turned on America like antibodies on a tumor, a lot of lagging readership has to do with people not wanting to catch up on 50 years worth of back story. The old guard readers grew up and decided comics were part of the childish things that they stupidly threw away when they began their depressing downward-spiral into being a bitter, distrusting, miserable, money-grubbing, racist asshole adult. The new blood looked into it, said, “The villain in this one is a Nazi made of bees? Who the hell is this old bald guy in the chicken suit? Is he trying to give Spider Man coupons for KFC? You really want me to catch up on all that just to get in on the death rattle?” and caused every good comics shop to get rid of all their hard-to-fucking-find-as-it-is back issues to set up gaming tables and sell nothing but Warhammer and Magic: The Gathering cards. Fuck you, Wizards of the Coast. I hate you and you ruined my life, in much the same way I mislike Nirvana because they’re the reason David Geffen dropped the infinitely superior Galactic Cowboys from his label and forced them to spend their career in obscurity on Metal Blade (P.S., Brian Slagel, what the fuck was signing the Goo Goo Dolls all about?).
This, in part, is why Marvel created the Ultimate Universe. Essentially a contemporary re-booting of the old titles, with a more scientific and rational (theoretically, anyway – a guy who turns into a giant green monster is still a guy who turns into a giant green monster, whether it be from a chemical serum or gamma radiation) explanation for the characters’ superpowers, as well as a more realistic interaction between the real world and the supers. Which brings us to the Ultimate Avengers (or just The Ultimates, in the comics).
Formed by Nick Fury, commander of S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers are assembled under the umbrella of the U.S. government to protect the country. Captain America, the original super hero, created with a strength-enhancing formula in the 1940’s to fight Nazis, frozen in a block of ice and reanimated in present day; Iron Man, billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (new and improved with 15% more alcoholism and a brain tumor!) wears bionic armor outfitted with insane amounts of weaponry and gadgets, and possessing incredible strength; The Hulk, mild-mannered Bruce Banner, trying to re-create the super-soldier formula that made Captain America, accidentally turns himself into an uncontrollable sociopathic monster with almost limitless power and invulnerability; Thor, Norse Thunder God and son of Odin, or just a crazy Norwegian hippy with a big, scary hammer?; Giant Man/Ant Man, Hank Pym can make himself grow 60 feet tall…or shrink down and control ants, either way it’s kinda retarded; The Wasp, Jan Pym, probably the most useless hero, can make herself smaller and weaker, and deliver “wasp stings”, which, judging from the way they’re represented, are akin to being smacked on the arm with a lit sparkler – oooh. Also present are ex-X-Men Quicksilver the speedster and Scarlet Witch, who can alter probability by doing really hard math in her head (because that’s so much less ridiculous than just being able to do magic), as well as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Black Widow, a former Soviet spy and all-round vixen, and Hawkeye…a really good archer. That’ll really stick it to a terrorist with a nuclear weapon. Shoot him in the ass with an arrow.
The animated film in question leaves Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch out of the equation, adds in the Black Panther (one of the more retarded minority characters, Brother Voodoo is way cooler), and dispenses with the complex political issues and graphic (for a Marvel title, anyway) violence that makes The Ultimates comics so incredibly kickass, and goes instead for a simplified version of the alien invasion plot from the story in print.
The current Black Panther is killed by Captain America’s old nemesis, Kleiser, who is really a member of a shape-shifting alien species called the Chitauri. When his son, T’Challa, comes to his old buddy Nick Fury for help, the Avengers find evidence that the Chitauri invasion they averted in the first movie is not so averted as they had hoped. And then the giant dome of slime envelops New York City and alien ships start attacking the tribal fortress that T’Challa calls home. Good thing the Chitauri’s vibranium exoskeletons are vulnerable to gamma radiation, which The Hulk just so happens to be brimming with. Now, if only they can find a way to deliver that radiation as a weapon. Cue Tony Stark in full War Machine gear, carrying a giant gamma radiation cannon.
If the Ultimates comics weren’t so badass, this movie would probably seem a lot better. As it is, a few hundred pages of stuff is compressed into a movie running under 75 minutes (what is it with these animation studios being incapable of delivering a properly fleshed-out feature-length movie?). Giant Man and the Wasp are antagonistic toward each other, but it’s never really explained why (although it may have been a content issue – they didn’t want to ward off younger viewers by slapping a mature audiences label on a cartoon movie for depictions of a domestic dispute including heavy man-on-wife violence ending in Hank trying to make a swarm of ants eat Jan). Hawkeye is left out totally, probably because his story arc involves his entire family, including young children and an infant, being brutally murdered. Totally glossed over is The Hulk’s rampage through New York City, considering he was put on trial and supposedly executed in the middle of the ocean via thermonuclear device because he killed 800 civilians, beat the living shit out of the Avengers, and threatened to rape Betty Ross to death. Speaking of Hulk, after all the buildup to his breaking out of confinement in the movie, he only gets about twenty seconds of screen time and only smashes ONE DAMN ALIEN SHIP! WHERE THE HELL IS MY HULK SMASH? And there’s no Loki and Surtur and the Midgard Serpent and an army of trolls fighting Thor and an army of gilded Aesir. As awesome as War Machine is, he’s just not quite enough compensation for all that. And adding the Black Panther? Why erase half the back story and fill it in with one that has nothing to do with the rest of the characters?
I dunno. Maybe I just expect too much out of my cartoons. Coming from source material that has so much emotional impact and mature character development, only to have it glossed over for a guy who inexplicably turns his face into a panther, it’s a little disappointing, you know? That, and I think a serious(ish) subject like this deserves a higher class of animation than what you see on any given Saturday morning cartoon. As much as I dislike anime on principle, and hate the way a lot of the characters are drawn, the backgrounds and everything else are given such an exquisite level of realism and detail, I have a hard time accepting an animated feature that doesn’t have that quality. Basically, I’m saying every animated show aimed at older audiences should look like and be as awesome as Cowboy Bebop, or just go home. Now that’s a tough standard to hold up to.
The Moral of the Story: What’s the capital of Texas? How many legs has spiders got? Can you tell Hulk the formula for Coca-Cola? You know your problem, ugly-b-movie-reviewer-guy? YOU THINK TOO MUCH!
Sequel to: Ultimate Avengers
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