So Pirates vs. Ninjas... diametrically opposed... how does it play out?

go Pirates, especially the psyco ones
YARR!!




btw i am an Ultimate U fan

Yeah, I watched some ot the show last night and taped it last night. I fully expect to be crying again tonight.

to close that note

Om Ami Dewa Hri

Don't go to sleep, army boy.

My moment to strike is soon at hand!

oh crap, now we gotta brawl.

i am proud member of the air force, or the branch where you get to sit on your ass all day goofing off online, as opposed to being stuck out in sea or in the desert getting sand up your butts.

and go pirates! yarr!

Quite simply, yes. I need to know the history. I do not enjoy watching TV shows unless I started watching from the first episode of season one. I am unable to enjoy watching sequels to movies I haven't seen. I am much the same way with comics. Knowing everything is very important to me.

What was the nature of the relationship, exactly? Were they a thing? Did Iceman want them to be a thing but Havok got in the way? Were Lorna and Alex a thing but Bobby tried to horn in and he failed? Were they a threesome and Bobby got kicked out? Did this relationship have something to do with Lorna's green hair color?

If this were a brand new arc I'd simply sit and wait for the answers to come. I have something to look forward to. Since it was not, and I do not have access to the back issues where this happened, I have nothing to look forward to.

I suppose I could google it, but that'd prolly just whet my appetite in the way that hearing a friend tell me what happened on a missed tv series episode just makes me want to watch it more.

It's fine to have loose ends. They give the reader something to look forward to. Something to be excited about. In the case where the loose end leads to the far flung past, however, there is nothing to look forward to. Nothing to be excited about. There is only sadness and despair because I know that no matter how long I wait, answers are not coming. They already came, and I missed them.

Honestly, I'll drop Ultimate X-men once they start delving into multiple universes.

I'm fine with it until they do.

(And I know they've time-traveled and multi-universed in Fantastic Four, which means it's only a matter of time, but HOPEFULLY it's a LONG matter of time.)

The FF has ALWAYS dealt with Multiple Universes, though. It's their "schtick."

Spidey fights goons and goons with superpowers.

X-men fight mutants.

FF fight aliens.

As long as the Ultimate universe never meets the Marvel Universe, I'm happy.

That's fine, just don't accuse Marvel of being inaccessible to new readers because you're a stickler for details. That's your personality quirk, so don't try to make it out to be everyone else's problem.

If they don't tell you what the nature of the relationship was, you don't need to know. No matter where you jump into a story, the information you need becomes clear as it becomes important. The only thing you miss is the forshadowing.

Both regular Marvel titles and Ultimate titles have arcs. Are you arguing that every issue of every comic should be self contained?

Again, if the characters are referencing a past event in a way that isn't important to the current story, you can just ignore it and move on. If they reference a past event in a way that is important to the story, than you don't need to know anything more than what they tell you.

It's the difference between information you need to know and information you want to know.

so how soon wil the ultimate U have to reset thing? when UXM reaches 100, or 150 issues, do you think that new readers will be able to follow along? will they just scrap that line and then do superior x-men?

Yeah, you know, cause X-Men had only 100-150 issues when Ultimate X came out.

Seriously, I could devote less a day to reading 100-150 issues and be done with it.

I could devote a week to reading the entirety of X-Men, and, assuming I didn't have to reread everything that has to do with the extended Cyke family to clarify the time-travel and all without screaming at the comic book, "HAVE YOU EVER LOOKED AT ANYTHING TO DO WITH MODERN PHYSICS?!?!", then I STILL wouldn't be done.

Let's do a little Q and A. How many X-titles have their been that deal with the X-Men? Can we get a total issue count?



How many are there that deal with Ultimate X-Men?



I can see Biz' argument about how you don't NEED to know everything. However, I agree with Ukyo, that it definitely helps to have read it all. After all, when they were referencing someone coming back in Astonishing X-Men, do you think I would've been nearly as excited and surprised if I didn't think it was going to be Jean Grey, which the knowledge that she comes back repeatedly is a detail that was left out (because anyone that knows X-Men knows this). This is within a story arc. Hell, this was within it's own SERIES. But without previous knowledge, I feel like I would've missed a LOT.

Seriously, Cyke, I'd kick your ass, but your avvie is just too damned sexy.

I think what you mean to say is-

"Seriously, Cyke, I'd try to kick your ass, but your avvie is just too damned sexy."

yes my avvie is sexy, stolen things are so much better!

I'm not trying to say that everyone is exactly like me. I don't believe that everyone else puts as much importance on this as I do. That said, I'd be very surprised if new readers don't take it into consideration at all when deciding whether to start buying a title or not. In fact, it's probably one of the main considerations for people who have little to no background knowledge of a title at all.

You said it yourself: The storylines are continuous. Each new arc builds on the one that came before it. Each facet of a character is shaped by the events that happened to that character in the past. It's unrealistic to expect someone to come into a comic book that's been running for decades and expect them to be able to get a handle on what's happening, especially these days when stories are starting to get more and more complex (though not necessarily better).

A lot of people who used to collect comics find it hard to go back after stopping for a couple of years. One of the local card shops is also a comic shop, and lots of questions are always coming up from old-timers coming back:

Why is Iceman all angsty now? Didn't he used to be such a joker? Ditto for Spidey. Why is Cyclops with Emma Frost? Isn't he supposed to love Jean Grey? When did Peter and Mary Jane get married? Why did they separate? How did they get back together? Didn't Aunt May die? Who is Gwen Stacy? Why are there new avengers? What happened to the old ones? Where's Thor? Why is Juggernaut with the X-Men? Is he not a supervillain anymore? Why or why not? Since when is Mystique Nightcrawler's mother? I thought she was Rogue's mother. Is Magneto dead, alive, catatonic, or what?

And these are questions coming from people who actually do have background knowledge on a title. How much harder would it be for someone who has no idea at all what has gone before? Spiderman's off-hand comment to Wolverine about asking Cyclops if Logan can be trusted around his wife alone requires that the reader be familiar with the whole Logan/Jean thing, not to mention the fact that it requires the reader to know who Cyclops is.

No. I don't understand why you would think that.

I am simply arguing that the vast history behind the old comic book storylines and characters makes it hard to understand them unless you're familiar with the history itself. I am not arguing about how things should be. I am simply arguing about how things are.

and how is that different than the ultimate U, if i just started reading right now in the ultimate U, would i be able to know exactly what is going on?

pretty soon the ultimate U will be just as unfriendly to new readers as the real marvel U.

I think that is one of the most exciting things about comic books, both for the audience and the artists/writers. It is a medium that demands two things: immediacy to connect to the new readers and loyalty to connect to the historians.

One question: Which is most like a comic book?

1. A soap opera.

2. A myth.

3. A gossip session.

4. An ongoing novel.

5. An ego massage.

6. A magnet for joyous communication amongst cool kids like us.