:lol:
I prefer Ultimate Shocker as at least he is meant to be joke unlike 616 shocker who every time i read a story with him in it he is meant to be serious but is a joke.
My idea of ultimate shocker's vibrates is he is too stupid to make them. I think he stole them from someone.
I don't think 616 Shocker is a bad character. Let's look at the personality section of Socker's wiki:
"While most Spider-Man villains usually shift from their original goals to a vendetta against Spider-Man, the Shocker is still concerned largely with making a living and protecting his reputation. As such, the character is usually portrayed as behaving in a more professional manner than the majority of his maniacal peers.
Shocker has a notably rational personality among Spider-Man's enemies. He has often been shown to recognize his own limitations amongst a universe of super-powered individuals."
Not very villain needs to be an evil psychopath or a power mad egomanic with bizzare psychological hang-ups, the Shocker having a professional personality rather than a blood thirsty is what makes him uniqueamongst the Spider-rogues.
You are correct in questioning the logic.
True, just because 'one-dimensional' is the way in 616, doesn't mean it is an excuse to do the same in the Ultimate Universe.
But my point isn't that writers shouldn't aspire to do better, but that it seems like some people are framing the issue as if the existing crap-titude of Spider-Man villains is an injustice to the existing 616 characters.
Still isn't the UU supposed to be different than the 616 universe. Improving some of these B-list villains would be different. Besides some 616 villains like Vulture, Chameleon and Doc Ock have had their backstories expanded and were given motives to explain why they were criminals in the 80s/90s. considering the UU is supposed more of planned universe, I don't see why the same can't be done for USM rogues.
My second point is that having a compelling rogues gallery isn't as fundamentally important to the Spider-Man books as it is to say, the X-Men (with their social commentary bent). The book has almost always been about the troubles of Peter Parker compounded by the superhuman dimwits who act as nuisances and monkey-wrenches into his problems by making him late for dates, snatching away important opportunities, messing his class attendance...
Batman has enough of character to be interesting on this own (in Batman Year One he just fought corrupt cops and gangsters and was still interest). His drive and emotional pain makes him a great character on his own, but having the greatest, most interesting collection of villains in comic books makes him an even better character. The only rogues gallery that can come close to Batman's is Spider-Man's and it is true shame that the Ultimate version of Spider-Man rogues gallery is, so disappointing.
The other villains act as both exceptional and exception --- an intentional point of contrast --- and 'exception' isn't necessarily a bad thing. Clearly, Daredevil does not suffer from a rogues gallery filled with cybernetic stilts-walkers and boomerang wielding hitmen --- because Matt Murdock's psychology and life is already so fundamentally messed up as to be the most compelling part of that book.
DD does have a few very interesting foes like Kingpin, Bullseye and Typhoid Mary and it would have been hard to weave the stories that made DD who he is without these villains playing the role they played.
Besides I think there is nothing wrong with taking an existing rogues gallery and revamping them. I'm not a fan of the Flash, but DC fans say Geoff Johns took a rather lame rogues gallery and made into the third best rogues gallery in comics. Why can't that be done eslewhere? Let's look at DD's rogues gallery, if there is any reason to create a UDD title it would be this, to update and improve his rogues gallery, even a fifth rate loser like Man-Bull could become an interesting character in the UU, by making him a victim of circumstance rather another stupid thug. There are no bad characters, only bad writers.
What the exceptional villains do for both these characters is act as 'major events': OMG, they have compelling backstories, they are emotionally connected to the hero, they are not just public threats but personal threats!
i still think a problem with uSM is that because the villains have no personality that come across as cardboard cutouts the hero merely knocks over rather than interesting characters in their own right. Can you tell what personality traits make Ultimate Vulture, Sandman or Electro any different from eachother?
On the other hand, I think you're overselling Bruce Timm & Co's work on the Batman villains. They very well DID develop Mr. Freeze (as well as Clayface) in a manner that exceeds the comic book incarnation. But that's just two examples. He didn't pretend to make Killer Croc anything more than he was, and characters like Man-Bat, Clock King and Mad Hatter merely had the pathos of their plight heightened.
If Bendis improved even one villain the way Timm improved Mr. Freeze, it be an improvement. At this point besides Hobgoblin, is there any villain in the UU that has any sort of pathos? Besides i disagree with your comments about some the villains, the thing bTAs Clock King has in common with his comic book counterpart is his codename, everything esle is different about him and Hatter even his pathos heighten is still improvement, unlike Bendis who takes villains that be made more threaten or given more pathos and making them throw way characters.
Forgive me, but I failed to elaborate.
What I meant was, if this thread was about Ultimate characters without backstories and motives, let's talk about something OTHER than Spider-Man villains. It was a compound statement suggesting that we also look at the banality of Forge or Multiple Man, instead of narrowing our focus entirely on USM.
But see this just the problem, throughtout the UU a Silver Age approach to characters is given, the heroes get the backstory and the character development, while the villains are merely evil for evil's sake and are interchangible at the end of the day. Its the same case in almost every UU tilte. There might as well be an Ultimate "Masters of Evil" because that is how deep most of the UU villain are with a few exceptions. I keep on brining up USM rogues for a reason, Spider-Man is supposed to have one of the best rogues galleries in comics and to see him fight such bland villains in the uSM is unforgivable.
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