Broken Frontier

Aaron went to Wizard World Panels with hopes and dreams and came back with . . . well, he came back.

We were twenty minutes outside of Chicago when the . . . now, now, this is a website for the kiddies too.  Sorry Hunter, no homage today.  Let’s just relax.  As has been mentioned once or twice on one or two websites across the internet, there wasn’t a lot going on in the way of major announcements on the panels at this convention.  That doesn’t mean they were lame however.  Well, “Cup O Joe” wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be—I was even lulled into sleep once or twice.  Then again, I had a long night on Friday.  But that story is for another time . . . if you’re lucky.

Back to the story at hand.  Marvel’s Ultimate Panel, ultimately giving very little new information, was one of the funniest things I’ve been privy to in ages.  Jeph Loeb and Joe Quesada have a remarkable rapport.  While slinging jabs and insults at one another, they managed to reveal a few shiny bits of info.  Probably the most intriguing of the short list was the future of Ultimate Wolverine, or rather, Ultimate Wolverine.  I’m not going to explain the italics.  You should get it.  That’s right; Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner will be doing an Ultimate Wolverine mini-series telling his origin.  And while Loeb was quick to say he enjoyed Paul Jenkins’ Origin mini from a few years ago, he also felt it read “like a Dickens novel, not a story about a guy who went ‘snikt.’”  If that gives you any indication of what Loeb is planning on doing, then you are probably as eager to see it as I am.

Further down the line, the two fervently explained Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk as well as Ultimates 2 will one day (sooner than later if they can be trusted) be complete.  We were shown a glimpse of Joe Madureira’s work for Ultimates 3 showcasing Ultimate Black Panther and something looking suspiciously like Venom . . . .  They talked about the upcoming Ultimate Power which will be written in three parts by Brian Michael Bendis, J. Michael Straczynski, and Loeb respectively.  Naturally, this series will have things like long-standing repercussions, etc, etc, etc.  Or, in Loeb’s words, “Some will live, some will die, and some will be changed forever.”  Or at least until whatever happens within those pages is ret-conned. 

For me though, the best bit of information was the fact that Jeph Loeb has issues with DC as well as crazy conservative hawk fanboys and that there will never be a crossover between Marvel and DC as long as Quesada runs things at the House of Ideas.  I don’t know why that is, but apparently some VP at DC made that comment a year or so ago and things don’t look to be changing anytime soon.  Well, that’s about it for the Ultimate Panel, and as I said before, I fell asleep at Quesada’s so there was neery any new information there.