15 - I'm wondering what is going to happen to the Ultimate Marel Universe

Let me preface this by saying that I am going to free style my thoughts on this as I go, so hopefully it makes sense and is semi interesting.

So, I'm a big fan of the Marvel Ultimate line of books and have been for a long time. Since issue 30 or so of Ultimate Spiderman i was hooked on this part of marvel. I got everything except Marvel Adventures, whatever that was. Today I have almost full runs of every Ultimate book  in issue form except Ultimate Marvel Team-ups and Ultimate Vision. I think what drew me toward these books was the completest in me, with this universe just starting I actually had it within my reach to own entire runs of stories, and this was something I could not do with the normal Marvel U. Anyway the last few years there has been a lot of contraction in the UMU where in years before they grew by adding new characters through mini series, guest appearances and what not. Now since Ultimatum they seem to have done nothing but kill characters off. I do not know how I feel about this yet because I have to read in order to judge. So ill have to see how it goes as it it is coming a long. My buddy thinks that they are trying to kill off the Ultimate line, which kind of makes sense, but now I am seeing solicitations for essentially a new line of Ultimate books which kinds of blows that theory out of the water.

**spoilers**
I am sad to see that Peter Parker is dead though, but they seem to have just remade him into, supposedly, a black/Latino kid, and from what I read in the Ultimate Fallout series he seems to be the exact same character while in costume. That is, he has all the one liners fully loaded. I am super sad to see Pete go and I really do not know how you replace him, but ill probably read every issue trying to figure that out.

I did not plan on continuing with the new Ultimate X book because the premise was weird to me, but since so few issues have come out I picked it up anyway. I find it hard to really see where it is going and it seems like they are really dragging out the story by developing each new character in their own issue. I will keep getting it now to see where it is going cause I am interested in what they are trying to say, but if it suck I'll be happy anyway because they are comics.

As for the UMU overall I still love it even though most of the characters I loved are dead, and this is because even my not favorite characters are still pretty awesome.

14.2 - I Should Have Checked the Inside Cover

Let this be a lesson for any one reading this. When you are collecting comics, always check the edition of the book. The difference between first printing and second can be very very drastic for a collector. I bring this up because recently I bought, at what I thought was a steal of a price, issue 2 of TMNT the original Mirage run. It was the over size book with the indie looking cover I had seen on the early editions of TMNT, then the dude told me 20 bucks and its yours. I said 15 and he agreed. One week later I'm looking into it and I find that this book is actually a second print and I paid VF prices. Not the worse purchase I have ever made, luckily, but I thought I really had something.

14.1 - Cool New Book Witch Doctor

So, I have been excited about this new book out by Skybound an imprint of Image, called Witch Doctor, since I read the preview in Walking Dead issue 85. I has a cool premise which can be summed up by saying that it is House MD meets Hellboy; They say "House meets Fringe," but that doesn't make sense to me because Fringe deals with super science not the super natural. For 2.99 you can't beat it though. I'm on issue 2 and I'm waiting on issue 3 of this 4 part series, and I am really hoping that they can make this an ongoing series because so far it is funny and very interesting.

I love the way this comic approaches the super natural aspects of this world, even though I am not a big fan of fantasy. It doesn't just chalk everything up to magic and leave it at that, it explains things in a semi naturalistic way making it seem that the "demonic possessions" and "fairy baby kidnappings" are things that happen in the real world, normal people just don't experience these things everyday, and thus have chalked them up to magics over the years. The "possessions" are parasites and the "fairies" are humanoid insects who replaces human babies with there own in order to be reared.

As far as new comics go this is the topps and like I said I really hope this gets an on going, so I can add a new book to my list of non-superhero books (this is a very short list).

The writer, Brandon Seifert, is new to comics but worked with and for Brian Bendis at Portlan State University. I found a pretty good interview with him here and he talks a lot about the comic. The artist, Lukas Ketner, is just as new to the comic scene with doing a variant cover on Walking Dead.

I love hearing about new guys to the comic industry because it is always good to get new blood in the system. Check out the book!!

12 - Last Issue of Red Robin

You may or may not know that I am a great big Robin fan, Tim Drake specifically, and I have been since I came across issue 85 years ago. I just finished the "last" issue of Red Robin, a series after Robin that follows Tim Drake under his new persona. Overall I hadn't been to impressed with Red Robin until late in the series.

It was only in the second to last issue that they started to tease me with a bigger picture story, the whole thing with them introducing a thousand year old "villain" looking for his replacement in Tim, was awesome. It just makes me wonder if they will pursue this thread in the coming new universe. The last issue of the series was alright, but kind of a week story to end it on. It's not a real end though, right?

One issue I had with the series in the beginning besides that it spun out of the whole "Bruce was lost in time thing" was that it was Tim trying to prove Bruce was not dead. Some how he proved he was not dead by solely travelling the globe and beating up assassins while doing a surprisingly small amount of detective work. I guess they just left that part up to the readers to fill in between panels or something, but I may have just been reading too disjointedly. I'll probably go back and re-read it some time cause it is only 26 issues and I want to make sure I didn't miss anything. If I do ill probably post about it.

11.2 - Read a little further in to two books

The first is Irredeemable, by Mark Waid. I had gotten the first trade of this a few months back and thought it was pretty interesting. It has an interesting story of a Superhero going bad and what this means to his old team and how they will try and stop him. I thougth this ws a pretty good hook for the book but once I read it it did not strike me as much, it was cool, but I wasn't clamoring for the next trade. I found this second trade for 50% off at the Buckeye Comic con, and now that I have read on it definitely has me more excited for Irredeemable. The art seems better and the plot points make it more interesting than just seeing the good good guys run from the bad good guy.

The next book was Avengers Academy issues 3-5. I picked up 1 and then 2 when thy came out and they didn't hold my interest. Now I got some more and I am still thinking about the same. Just seems like an angsty emo teen team book. I might pick up more if I can get them cheap but probably will not continue with this series.

11.1 - Still Gonna Be DC Guy

Its gonna be another double post day. I'm not very good at this 30 day challenge thing, but I am achieving my true goal of just posting more regularly.

Anyway, like the title says I am a DC guy and will more than likely stay a DC guy on into the coming relaunch. Unlike most I have been kind of excited for this whole thing since I realized what they were trying to do. Initially i thought that this was a whole Zero Hours-esk thing again and I kind of blew it off, but the I started hearing more and more about the all #1 and relaunch/retool talk. I think that I am excited because of my nature to be a collector and completest. Since they are putting an end to everything essentially I have a good stopping point for my collection, and since they are going to keep putting out books with my favorite characters, I can still get new stuff which is always awesome.

oops gotta go to work.

9 - JLA: Tower Of Babel

Just finished the JLA: Tower Of Babel arc, issues 43 to 46, and I thought it was alright. I picked this up on a recommendation from CGS, they have mentioned this story a few time in the show. I say this arc is only 'alright' because the idea was very cool, but the execution could have been better. The editing took me out of the story a few time, but these might just be nit picks, when they say Ras is an Asian and when wally freaks on GL about mentioning Hal. I thought Ras was middle eastern and I would think Wally wouldn't care so much cause Hal was Barry's friend not his so much. But any who, over all I thought the idea behind the story was cool and it was a fun old read. I never really read JLA when it was coming out, and I will always pick up a story with Batman predominant in it.