The Four Color Media Monitor

Here's IGN's list of what they claim is the "best" of the year, and they too added at least one lame choice, Marvel's new take on the Ultimates:

There’s an argument to be made for including each of Marvel’s current Ultimate comics on this list. The new line really is the best thing Marvel published in 2024, putting fresh spins on old favorites like Spider-Man and Black Panther.

That said, no series has done more to realize the wide-open potential of this new universe than Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri’s The Ultimates. In this series, the clock is ticking down until the return of The Maker (the evil Reed Richards from the original Ultimate Universe). With two years until doomsday arrives, a teenage Tony Stark and a very different version of Doctor Doom set about assembling a team of heroes capable of resisting The Maker’s Council and freeing the world from their powerful grip.

No current superhero series speaks to the state of the world in 2024 quite like The Ultimates. It’s a story about resistance in an age of disinformation and autocracy. It reinvents some of Marvel’s most iconic heroes in often radical ways. It’s an incredibly exciting read, month after month. And that’s what makes The Ultimates IGN’s pick for the best comic book series of 2024.

And that's a telling sign this puff piece was written in reaction to Donald Trump's reelection. All coming from people who don't worry about serious issues like Islamic terrorism, favoratism to transsexuality at women and children's expense, not to mention how illegal immigration in the USA has caused serious harm. Most of these propagandists don't explain clearly what they mean by disinformation either, and probably say what they do as revenge for what Trump called "fake news". That's hardly a clever example.

Regarding a teen Tony Stark, didn't that kind of plot come about towards the end of Iron Man's 1968-96 volume, in what wasn't considered a great storyline combined with The Crossing tale from the Avengers? So it's silly to think it would work much better now, or, why should it work under a direction as pretentious as what the writers of the Ultimates turn out? The original run was embarrassing, based on how it regurgitated the whole Hank Pym-as-abuser storyline from 1981, all for cheap sensationalism. What's so special about stories like those that isn't so special about say, Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman's wedding from the mid-60s? On which note, it's also grating how on the one hand, they think everybody will be delighted by an evil version of Reed Richards, and on the other hand, how Dr. Doom is a goodie?!? I'm sorry, but that too was one of the most aggravating things about the Ultimate line, and if memory serves, it was originally advertised as family-friendly, yet it wound up being definitely unsuitable for children. One more reason why this overrated alternate universe line is worthless.

So now it appears some propagandists are "co-opting" comics like these as icons based on the political/ideological structure they're built upon. Nothing new, obviously, but does make clear why quality collapsed while divisive leftism took its place.

Labels: Avengers, Black Panther, Fantastic Four, golden calf of LGBT, golden calf of villainy, Iron Man, islam and jihad, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, politics, Spider-Man, terrorism