The Four Color Media Monitor

Slash Film posted a fluff-coated take on a time when Marvel's Ultimate line turned Susan Storm into a villainess combined with Kang the Conqueror:

Once, the villain of "Secret Wars" was to have been time-traveling Kang the Conqueror — until Kang actor Jonathan Majors was convicted of assault and harassment, and then fired. What if I told you that, in one universe, Kang is just a mask worn by Sue Storm? Nope, I'm not kidding.

This happened in Marvel's original "Ultimate" universe. ("Earth-1610," not to be confused with the new "Ultimate" world Earth-6160.) In this universe, it was Kang, not Thanos, who attempted to gather up the Infinity Gems, and she wanted to "save" the universe, not kill half of it.

As I recall, Kang's real name is supposed to be Nathaniel Richards, though from what I've read of the Marvel 616 universe to date, I cannot recall reading anything where it was suggested or implied he was a descendant of the Richards/Storm families proper. As for this alternate world take, I'm not impressed, and this is getting tiresome already to see these kind of "explorations" constantly being a focus.

...To understand how Sue Storm became Kang, you have to understand how Reed Richards fell to the dark side first. These days, Earth-1610 Reed Richards is one of Marvel Comics' greatest villains: the Maker.

"Ultimate Fantastic Four" ran 60 issues, from 2004 to 2009. Unlike the other three major titles at the time ("Ultimate Spider-Man," "Ultimate X-Men" and "The Ultimates"), it didn't relaunch or continue after the world-shattering crossover "Ultimatum." Instead, the Four broke up and Sue dumped Reed.

In the 2010 "Ultimate Comics: Doomsday" mini-series by Brian Michael Bendis and Rafa Sandoval, Reed snaps. He fakes his own death and, from a base in the Negative Zone, begins staging terrorist attacks. "Doomsday" ends with Reed defeated by his former teammates and trapped in the Negative Zone, but he wouldn't stay gone for long.

Jonathan Hickman, writing mini-series "Ultimate Fallout," depicted Reed returning to Earth and beginning his crusade anew. He founded the Children of Tomorrow, an evil version of mainstream Reed Richards' Future Foundation, and became the main villain of Hickman and Esad Ribic's "Ultimate Comics: Ultimates." While Hickman didn't begin Reed's arc, he's the one who created "the Maker" as fans know him today. Ribic's Maker costume became Reed's new go-to look, too.

It's now been 15-ish years and Reed has stayed evil, a truly remarkable feat in superhero comics. Reed as the Maker is the status quo now, not a subversion of it. He's a truly terrifying villain, as well, with Reed's usual proud stick-in-the-mud know-it-all attitude combined with a vicious sadism. Utterly unfettered, the Maker doesn't just callously do evil for the greater good, no, he relishes in hurting others and takes his time as he does it. He's not trying to build a utopia where he's solved every problem mankind faces, but just a world where he can control everything. That Reed could've been, and was, a good-hearted hero only makes his current self more unsettling.

Hickman had previously written "Fantastic Four" — his first story featured Reed meeting several variants of himself, "the Council of Reeds." Reed's, and the story's, conclusion is that he needs his family to ground him. So, I get why Hickman liked the idea of a Reed who severed all his emotional ties and decided to change the world by becoming a monster.

Well I don't get anything but that a would-be auteur's apparently obsessed with the idea of turning goodies into baddies for shock's sake. If this is what Hickman thinks makes for fantastic storytelling, he's not a true fan of Marvel, so much as he is somebody who think it's fun to soil the image of the first Silver Age breakthrough for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Also note how the pseudo-fan columnist sugarcoats everything about Bendis, and you know something's wrong. The columnist tells more about Sue as Kang:

Kang gathers a team of fellow fallen heroes — the Maker, Quicksilver, and the Hulk — and leads them as the Dark Ultimates. They seize most of the Gems, and soon the world itself. The comic gives a new origin for the Infinity Gems; rather than ancient cosmic keystones created together, they are "scar tissue," successively generated after disasters on Earth. Tony Stark's brain tumor, introduced all the way back in Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's original "The Ultimates," is retconned to be an Infinity Gem that was growing in his head.

The Gems can still alter reality, though, which is why Kang wants them. Reed's actions as the Maker generated some of the eight Gems they needed, in fact. However, the Dark Ultimates fail and Kang decides to go further back in time to rewrite history. The destruction she foresaw, which turns out to be Galactus, soon arrives in "Cataclysm: The Ultimates' Last Stand." The "Ultimate" universe ended in 2015 without Kang ever returning, and it currently appears unlikely that she will.

That's actually a good thing. The Ultimate line is better off forgotten, and at this point, it wouldn't be surprising if that did turn out to be the case. Near the end of the article:

So, how did Kang — one of the Avengers' great nemeses — only debut 13 years into the "Ultimate" Universe, and be so radically altered? "Ultimate Marvel" was meant to update the classic stories to be cool for kids of the 1990s. Kang, for his garish costume alone, would've been too silly for the original "Ultimates."

Really? Well that's because these PC advocates want it to be considered "too silly", much as they've practically led to a situation where even Superman and Spider-Man would be considered too silly as heroes by today's standards. When it comes to villains, though, it shouldn't matter all that much if their costumes come in dreadful-looking colors, because we're not supposed to be rooting for them...except that tragically, that's what today's entertainment scene is all about - glamorizing villainy instead of lionizing heroism. Say, does the columnist also think the Green Goblin is too silly, based on the colors of his costume? Maybe even a monster like the Bi-Beast in the Hulk is too silly for him! Which naturally beggars the query - why do these phonies even write about comicdom to start with?

All these villainizations of heroes and even co-stars has gone way too far, and it makes little differences whether it occurs in an alternate universe or a flagship universe, what matters is that it's insulting to the creators of the classic stories, and also dispiriting for fans of the same. Even for new audiences, it can be discouraging, because it sullies everything the original stories were all about, and aren't we supposed to be rooting for these folks? We can't if they're depicted so repellently. Unfortunately, that's what the modern editors and publishers clearly had in mind. If anything like this turns up in the latest Marvel movies, it'll be yet another artistic humiliation.

Labels: bad editors, dreadful writers, Fantastic Four, golden calf of villainy, history, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, women of marvel