X-Men vs. the Ultimates (Ultimate Nightmare) Why'd it go down like that?

[David Blue]

Excellent posting, Nas-T!

... it's too bad that we have to blame General Fury himself for his actions, when it's obvious that it was just Warren Ellis' take on Fury's personality that is so wrong.

Ah. That's a reasonable comment, and one I have no answer to.

The Ultimate trade paperbacks I have so far are the first four of Ultimate Fantastic Four, and Ultimate Galactus Book 1: nightmare, which I bought because Galactus is a Fantastic Four villain. So I met all the characters in Ultimate Galactus Book 1: nightmare for the first time in this story. So my reaction is different from someone who is used to these characters being written very differently.

Also, on your point about Sam Wilson knowing about Jean Grey. It appears that there's one thing (just one) that almost every writer to write Ultimate X-Men since Millar has blatantly forgotten (or they pretended to forget it) and that is that these X-Men, the Ultimate X-Men, are in fact public figures! EVERYone knows who they are. They have websites and message boards dedicated to them! Hell, this is what happens when Beast dies, we just forget all the X-Men geeks of the UU !!
Nas

Thanks. I didn't know this.

 

[Nas-T!]

Excellent posting, Nas-T!

Ah. That's a reasonable comment, and one I have no answer to.

Uhthankyou! Just in case you didn't know, I love to be told how excellent I am and stuff, it's kinda my thing (who else have you chatted to that's actually publicly declared themselves the "Ultimate Comics Guru" just to see what people would say!). Of course, I sort of only pop in here sometimes. I've been hanging at Ultimate Central alot more recently because I'm so behind in my comics buying and it's easier to download free Ultimate books to read until I get the actual issues in my hand (which I always do). I have the entire first Ultimates series (save for #13) on my PC as well as in hard copy:twisted: !!

The Ultimate trade paperbacks I have so far are the first four of Ultimate Fantastic Four, and Ultimate Galactus Book 1: nightmare, which I bought because Galactus is a Fantastic Four villain. So I met all the characters in Ultimate Galactus Book 1: nightmare for the first time in this story. So my reaction is different from someone who is used to these characters being written very differently.

Honestly, Fury's much less of a dillweed in The Ultimates. Yeah he's done some dodgy stuff and he doesn't like Professor X that much, but he's basically been trustworthy up till the current volume of The Ultimates (2) where he's been doing some rather dodgy things.
I seriously recommend that you grab The Ultimates volume 1 hardcover and then wait for volume 2. I was NEVER a fan of The Avengers and that's why I skipped it at first, but it really is a whole nother kinda animal. It's beautiful! Like a movie!

Thanks. I didn't know this.

No problem. A lot of people seem to forget it. Bendis basically ignored it (though he did throw in a line about Beast and his message board) but Vaughan has mentioned it sometimes. The main flaw of anyone who has written Ultimate X-Men since Millar is their handle on the personalities of their characters. Bendis, Vaughan and now Ellis have all failed to capture Wolverine as he was in Millar's run (where he tried to kill Cyclops just so he could comfort and win over Jean Grey!). They all seem to write him the same as he is (or was, I suppose) in the main MU.
Can't wait to pick up Ultimate Secret (still haven't yet) so I can read about Reed and Tony interacting! That should be cool!

Nas

 

[John Q. Public]

HOWEVER, I've also got to side with DIrishB on this one. He never said anything about this, he was just talking about the fact that the X-Men and Ultimates fought at all. The X-Men are a friggin' government-funded training school FOR The Ultimates, why on Earth would they wanna shoot at them!?

Fury doesn't fully trust the X-Men, or Dr. X. Dr. X was so wrapped up in his mutant world that he doesn't give SHIELD a call and say "Hey, I'm sending my own little black ops team into Russia to track down these signals." So Fury's team, already shooting at everything that moves and operating on adrenaline, suddenly sees three potentially dangerous mutants. When he shouts "X-Men!" I felt he was identifying targets for the rest of the team. You know, like "Skrull fighter at four o'clock."

He had a right to kill them simply because they were acting unilaterally on vital mission that is the sort of thing SHIELD is supposed to handle. He had no idea what the hell they were doing there, and every right to ask questions later.

You're really beating a dead horse with the whole play on member names thing. So far you've perverted TGO's, Bass', I think Moonmasters...well in Moony's case I can't blame you. Its only a matter of time before I become DIdiotB, isn't it?

:idea: No offense. I do it with the characters, my friends, co-workers..

Most fights don't even last long enough for people to come up with something witty to say, let alone allow them enough respite to get out more than a grunt or groan. If you're not swinging you're blocking or parrying, so its tough to get the one-liners out at the same time. Unless you're Cap and juiced up on some government-sanctioned steroids, apparently.

Wrong. Most fights start with talk. Talk that turns confrontational. Bump shoulders on the street, argue with a stranger in a bar during a game. (Try rooting openly for the Pistons during a Knicks game in NYC) Then it ratchets up until someone verbally backs down. It usually reaches the so-called tipping point when someone says "You want to take it outside, you stupid fat ****?"

Anyway, this is what I'm told by drunken barflys who hate their job. Me, I get my ideas from Spider-Man comics.

 

[Nas-T!]

Fury doesn't fully trust the X-Men, or Dr. X. Dr. X was so wrapped up in his mutant world that he doesn't give SHIELD a call and say "Hey, I'm sending my own little black ops team into Russia to track down these signals."

Who's this Dr X guy you keep ranting about, and what do you have against him? Oh wait, you meant PROFESSOR X, right? So, what, he should've called SHIELD first and told them what was going on? That'd be kinda stupid, considering how SHIELD reacts to mutants.
Fury: "Oh mutant! Shoot it or bag it!"

So Fury's team, already shooting at everything that moves and operating on adrenaline, suddenly sees three potentially dangerous mutants. When he shouts "X-Men!" I felt he was identifying targets for the rest of the team. You know, like "Skrull fighter at four o'clock."

Yeah, cos he can equate something like a Skrull (for example) to the X-Men his government funds! I think no amount of rationalizing here can stop it from being what it is: a gratuitous fight scene.

He had a right to kill them simply because they were acting unilaterally on vital mission that is the sort of thing SHIELD is supposed to handle. He had no idea what the hell they were doing there, and every right to ask questions later.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, because this is exactly how Fury normally reacts. I don't know which Nick Fury you've been reading about, but I sure as hell remember a calm and collected secret agent, not some trigger-happy butthead!

Nas

 

[DIrishB]

:idea: No offense. I do it with the characters, my friends, co-workers..

Doesn't bother me, just saying.

Wrong. Most fights start with talk. Talk that turns confrontational. Bump shoulders on the street, argue with a stranger in a bar during a game. (Try rooting openly for the Pistons during a Knicks game in NYC) Then it ratchets up until someone verbally backs down. It usually reaches the so-called tipping point when someone says "You want to take it outside, you stupid fat ****?"

I said nothing about the way fights start, I was talking about during the actual fight itself. Was that not apparent by my post? Hence the Spider-Man banter reference and directly tied to you talking about Cap distracting his opponent with words during the fight.

Anyway, this is what I'm told by drunken barflys who hate their job. Me, I get my ideas from Spider-Man comics.

I was gonna figure you got them from Neil Gaimen books. I know nothing.

 

[Blacksword]

As I said when this issue came out, there's a perfectly logical reason we can throw in for Fury acting so strangely. The transmissions didn't only affect telepaths so it only goes to figure they were affecting everyone down in that base. Fury may be hard as nails but in the end he's only human so it can easily be said that the transmissions made him ore agressive and paranoid. They certainly seem to have made Wolverine extra grumpy and Captain America more vicious than normal.

In reality it probably comes down to Ellis not knowing the characters too well, but it's easy enough to fudge an explanation given what was going on in the story.

 

[DIrishB]

As I said when this issue came out, there's a perfectly logical reason we can throw in for Fury acting so strangely. The transmissions didn't only affect telepaths so it only goes to figure they were affecting everyone down in that base. Fury may be hard as nails but in the end he's only human so it can easily be said that the transmissions made him ore agressive and paranoid. They certainly seem to have made Wolverine extra grumpy and Captain America more vicious than normal.

In reality it probably comes down to Ellis not knowing the characters too well, but it's easy enough to fudge an explanation given what was going on in the story.

Another good point. Though mostly the transmissions just seemed to scare the **** out of people so much they would kill themself, instead of trying to kill others. At least thats how it appeared. Who knows though? I can buy that explanation.

 

[E.Vi.L.]

As I said when this issue came out, there's a perfectly logical reason we can throw in for Fury acting so strangely. The transmissions didn't only affect telepaths so it only goes to figure they were affecting everyone down in that base.

Good point.

Further supporting it, every inmates of this place was clearly crazy as a loon and very agressive.

It makes no sense to use only psychopath as test subject since when you strike gold you end up with someone unusable as a supersoldier. I mean, imagine if Steve Rogers was a demented killer on deathrow when they tested the serum on him and he ended up the only one not to reject the serum...

So we have to assume that most of these test subjects were reasonably stable men that could have been used by the army. Years later, they are all rabid dogs. Isolation can only account for so much. It may makes you want to talk to a volleyball and call it Wilson, for example. But not kill the first stranger that shows up and could help you to get out.

 

[DIrishB]

Good point.

Further supporting it, every inmates of this place was clearly crazy as a loon and very agressive.

That could be to living underground for an extended amount of time, without any exposure to the outside world (think The Others from Lost), as well as the possibility of psychological changes due to the experiments performed on them, complete with alien technology grafted and implanted.

It makes no sense to use only psychopath as test subject since when you strike gold you end up with someone unusable as a supersoldier. I mean, imagine if Steve Rogers was a demented killer on deathrow when they tested the serum on him and he ended up the only one not to reject the serum...

That's assuming they were psychotic to begin with. Its most likely they were entirely normal people before becoming test subjects and being stuck underground for however long it was they were there.

So we have to assume that most of these test subjects were reasonably stable men that could have been used by the army. Years later, they are all rabid dogs. Isolation can only account for so much. It may makes you want to talk to a volleyball and call it Wilson, for example. But not kill the first stranger that shows up and could help you to get out.

Blame it on a bad side effect of the alien technology being grafted onto them then. Or maybe just because they're Russian. Aren't all Russkies bad tempered and humorless? Or is that just another stereotype?

 

[E.Vi.L.]

That's assuming they were psychotic to begin with. Its most likely they were entirely normal people before becoming test subjects (...)

Well... yeah. That's exactly the conclusion I reached. In the following paragraph. Which you also quoted.



Bottom line is they were abonormally agressive and blaming that on a side-effect of Vision's message that could have also affected the Ultimates and X-Men to a lesser degree is a reasonable assumption and is my new favorite interpretation of that situation.

 

[DIrishB]

Well... yeah. That's exactly the conclusion I reached. In the following paragraph. Which you also quoted.

Yeah, I was just pointing it out for argument's sake.

Bottom line is they were abonormally agressive and blaming that on a side-effect of Vision's message that could have also affected the Ultimates and X-Men to a lesser degree is a reasonable assumption and is my new favorite interpretation of that situation.

I agree.