Discussion YMMV / UltimateMarvel

My problem is that your entry amounts to censorship. You are trying to censor the fact that some audiences specifically dislike the Ultimate Marvel's faux-realistic aesthetic which is listed under Seinfelf Is Unfunny. And your argument about CGI being cheap is trying to denigrate the MCU and its great achievement in bringing all the fantastic elements back to comic book movies. You do this for every entry on the YMMV page, and remove reasonable criticisms that you disagree with. The page has to reflect some balance, both why the Ultimate Marvel succeeded initially and why it fell out of favor.

1) I made a generalization about the MCU as a whole in its first two phases. I don't think I was wrong to do that. And using 2016 as some arbitrary cut-off point is cheap and pointless. When I make a generalization I am talking about the MCU as a whole. And in any case even in Ultimate Marvel you had magic. Doctor Strange's enemies Dormammu and Nightmare showed up and played key roles in Ultimatum tie-ins and appeared before in Ultimate Spider-Man, and the Defenders arc ends with them realizing that the Asgardians and Norse gods are real. And even in the case of Iron Man, it's mostly based on 616. It's inspired by Warren Ellis' EXTREMIS story where the origin was transplanted to Afghanistan and that carried over into Iron Man 1, and later Extremis was adapted into Iron Man 3. The characterization of Tony in Iron Man 1 takes some inspiration from Ultimate Tony but it also borrows from classic Tony, and is mostly original. Ultimate Iron Man's origins about being a blue-skinned brain all over body wasn't used, Tony the Tumor wasn't used, and most of the story elements concerning Ultimate Iron Man wasn't used.

2) The first Thor movie explicitly said, that the Asgardians see magic and science as the same thing. And in any case I said the MCU emphasized the cosmic and far-out elements and all that is true. Stuff like Infinity Stones, talking animals and trees, and so on. Focusing on magic to make your point is low cunning at its finest.

The cost of special effects IS a factor. Take, for example, the X-Men. Fox made an animated series in 1992, and did all the justice to the source material: suits, powers, storylines, everything like in the comics. It was aimed for a niche market, but showed that Fox does know and understand the comics and what makes them work. But when they made the films, they used black leather suits, superpowers were used at just the bare minimum, and even their first adaptation of the Dark Phoenix saga stayed grounded. Why? If special effects were then as cheap as nowadays, and audiences were as willing to embrace the bizarre as nowadays, why wouldn't they use comic book suits and a symphony of varied and mixed superpowers to shake the senses? Because, as I said, the path from then to now was a gradual one, MCU included. Your wording suggest that the MCU ignored it and jumped to the fantasy kirchen sink immediately, which is completely wrong.

2016 is not arbitrary: it's the year when the MCU fully embraced the supernatural. Daredevil season 2's Hand, Agents of SHIELD's Ghostrider and Dr. Strange (by order of release) are not magic with a "Doing In the Wizard" explanation but explicit magic, something that would have been a huge no-no in earlier years of the superhero genre. And I mentioned it to point that this breakpoint was much closer in time than you suggest: three years.

And note, by the way, that YMMV is still based on the real world. Do you want balance? Then acknowledge that, although some people may love the bizarre fantasy and reject the grounded super hero works, there is also people who like them (as proved by the success of the Netflix shows and other equally grounded superhero works in TV).

The special effects are now better than before, and not just cheapter. And excellent high quality special effects are still expensive. The quality has improved and is improving. But the other reason is that film-makers and producers were interested in committing to getting those elements right to start with and felt the investment was worth it. Saying otherwise is denigrating the efforts and achievement of the MCU. Fox didn't want to try to get a movie-accurate approach and so based their ideas on the Blade movie and Movie Superheroes Wear Black which carried over into the comics, not only Ultimate but also Grant Morrison's New X-Men. And even the contemporaneous X-Men Evolution cartoon went with darker costumes (and made a bigger impact on the movies than Ultimate comics did with its character X-23).

The MCU committed to getting Powered Armor and Tony Stark's gold and crimson look right from the start and avoided the Ultimate look for its armor. The year 2016 wasn't mentioned in that example you mentioned. And again the overall point is that audiences and film adaptations moved beyond the Ultimate approach, and the fact that you can now have magic and fantastic elements means that a lot of the Ultimate assumptions about Doing In the Wizard has faded away. Ultimate Marvel made Doctor Strange a shill and hack who didn't know stuff because they didn't think he would work. The movie proved them wrong. And again why do you keep ignoring the fact that I mentioned cosmic elements. Like Guardians of the Galaxy had Rocket Raccoon and Groot. You had a talking raccoon as a character in a movie. Ultimate Marvel never dared doing anything like that.

Not every entry on this page has to be balanced. You can put in entries about what made Ultimate Marvel special or what you liked but you can't do that at the expense of entries that say otherwise or express otherwise or overwrite stuff you disagree with or take issue with by introducing poorly thought out ideas like the they did it because effects were cheap and so on, and only in 2016 and so on. The Netflix shows you mention, aside from not being part of the MCU proper, were also based on street level properties (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist). So it's not remotely the same thing.

Yes, effects ARE cheaper, that is a fact of life, and I have referenced it. There are good and bad effects, but that discussion would be moot if they were still as expensive an in the turn of the century. Film studios do not do films for the art. They may be commited to improve all the time (any director should), but at the end of the day a film costs money to produce, and must generate enough revenue to justify the whole work.

As for the Guardians, that's part of the gradual aspect I already said. It did not conflict the grounded stuff elsewhere because it was all set in the space. Weird aliens, such as a talking racoon or a walking tree, can pass as acceptable breaks from reality. And even yet, it was an Used Future space setting, the truly weird space stuff wouldn't come until Ragnarok. And, again, that was in 2014. Just a bit earlier than 2016, but still much closer to 2019 than to 2000.

And note, by the way, that I did not remove the entry in its entirely. I merely removed the misconceptions from it. The main idea, that the grounded tone is not so universally embraced nowadays as it used to, was still there.

I am sorry I think your arbitrary point about dates is just Moving the Goalposts. If you stick to the films made in Phase 1, Iron Man 1 introduced "made in a cave with a box of scraps", a red and gold bright Powered Armor, SHIELD, and then they introduced Thor, Asgard, Bifrost, and Frost Giants and then they introduce Captain America in World War II, complete with Red Skull (who is 616 and nothing like his Ultimate counterpart) and HYDRA, and the Cosmic Cube (or Tesseract). The Avengers as Joss Whedon pointed out was based on the first Avengers comic where Loki manipulates Thor and others and that leads to the formation of the team. The only Ultimate bit was the Chitauri who are In Name Only dumb alien mooks, and then Thanos is involved which he wasn't in either the 616 or Ultimate. Ultimate Marvel did inspire some elements of the MCU but the MCU borrowed far more from the classic comics. The MCU always skirted hard away from Ultimate influences and geared towards something more in common with the original comics, in characterization, aesthetics, and narrative. Kevin Feige said that his main influence for the first Thor movie was J. Michael Straczynski's run on Thor in 616 and not the Ultimate stuff. JMS even has Story credit for that movie.

The first Thor movie was explicitly supernatural and cosmic. None of the Ultimate Thor stuff where they kept it ambiguous for a long time if Ultimate Thor really was the Norse god or not. You were shown from the get-go that Asgard was real, it exists, as does the Frost Giants, and Bifrost. And the word magic was used time and time again in that movie. I don't know why you are forcing this issue and trying to claim otherwise.

The problem is that you base your arguments in incredibly complex and snarled interpretations, and take and ignore facts according to your conveniences. And then, the resulting argument may or not be plausible, but in most cases it's different from the way things truly are (which usually have way simpler explanations). Case in point: you have just said that Thor is "explicitly supernatural and cosmic", and that there are no Ultimate influences in the film. On the other hand, we can find this article.

• "But in comic books, fantasy and cosmic heroes directly interacted with Earth-based, science-based heroes. For Marvel Studios, which was developing an ambitious shared cinematic universe, it was essential to create a fictional world in which fantasy-based cosmic characters could exist alongside Iron Man. If Thor didn't fit as a character in the MCU, then neither would the Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, Thanos, Captain Marvel, etc. This was the challenge in bringing Thor to the big screen. After kicking off the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with Iron Man (Favreau, 2008), before bringing the universe together in The Avengers (Whedon, 2012), Thor was Marvel Studios' biggest hurdle. It's clear when watching the film how nervous the filmmakers were to fully embrace the cosmic fantasy, and all the areas they attempted to mitigate the fantastical elements to be more acceptable to audiences."
• "Another version of Thor also existed in Marvel Comics at the time. This was the version in Marvel's Ultimate Comics line, which were modern updates of classic stories and characters. The Ultimate line was successful, and its approach and aesthetic began seeping into Marvel films around this time. Ultimate Thor is depicted without a winged helmet, without the Donald Blake persona, and many people around him think he is a very powerful human, but deluded into believing that he is a Norse god. All of these influences made their way into Thor."

And now I have find something even better: A Guide to Reading Comics: Where to Start?. The first suggestion of this 2016 report is the Ultimate Marvel series. And it clearly says "Ultimate Marvel was aimed towards millennials".

I've said what I've had to say. I don't have anything more to add other than repeat and repost earlier complaints. You cannot keep undercutting opinions you disagree with. Especially when you cite links that don't deal with the topic.

If some other troper wants to come in and add to this discussion that might be worth something.

Here is yet another one: The Legacy Of A Big-Time Superhero: Revisiting ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN (subtitle: "Mark Bagley and Brian Michael Bendis’ reinterpretation of Peter Parker has been hugely influential. But 17 years on, how does it work as a comic?"). It was written in 2017, and it is quite on topic, I would say. And yes, they do point things that are outdated nowadays (stuff of Technology Marches On and Society Marches On, which is dealt with elsewhere). But when everything is said and done, "Ultimate Spider-Man may be a bit of an artifact, but make no mistake, it is a very fine comic". And, as for the claims of the entry under discussion, they say quite the opposite thing to RJ's text: "In the process, the creators behind the books honed storytelling and design techniques that are still highly influential in contemporary cape comics today. For one example, Bryan Hitch and Mark Millar’s The Ultimates is the origin point for Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, the current trend of practical-looking superhero costumes, a notorious meme and a sizable chunk of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s initial look and feel."

1) This is about Ultimate Marvel as a whole and not USM. USM has generally the status of White Sheep and exception in an otherwise bad stable.

2) The post is about you altering and changing a bullet entry to undermine and denigrate the MCU and its change of aesthetics, and not about the relevance of Ultimate Marvel as a whole.

Regardless of whether this is or isn't an example, it's a poorly written one; it's so long and wall-of-text-y that I genuinely have no idea what it's supposed to be an example of. And this is after seeing Seinfeld Is Unfunny being linked and thinking "oh, there's no way that's what this is trying to describe."

Let me remind you that, although the MCU may have took a heavy inspiration from Ultimate Marvel, it is a franchise of its own. Another media (with its own specific tropes), another format, another creation process, another market and audience, another Characterization Marches On process, etc. There's a whole set of pages elsewhere to discuss the MCU. This page is about Ultimate Marvel and the entry "Seinfeld Is Unfunny" you added to it. Of course that we are talking about the relevance of Ultimate Marvel here, not the MCU.

In any case, I have provided several sources to justify the things I say. What if you do the same? Bring some page that discusses the millennial vision of Ultimate Marvel, and let's try to write a text that reflects their contrasting opinions. And also one to reference the part "the fact that the movies most faithful to Ultimate inspirations — The Amazing Spider-Man Series and Fantastic Four (2015) were seen as major failures in comparison to the largely 616-centric MCU" (not about the failure of those films and the success of the MCU, but about people relating Ultimate Marvel to those films rather than to the MCU).

I feel it may need to be rewritten a little, but the point remains. MCU proved that you could have as many out-there concepts and encompass many different genres as you can. In the '00s, much of the superhero fare was self-contained action flicks that did everything they could to hide the fact that they were superhero movies, them being instead marketed as general movies to obtain mass appeal because it was thought that the genre they were rooted in was too niche. That's a not a knock against all of them, but that's largely the case. For example, the people developing the X-Men movies including Singer had a disdain for the comics and didn't allow any on set. That right there proves the point.

Now, we have movies encompassing a wide variety of different genres like Science Fiction, High Fantasy, Historical Fiction, The Caper, Conspiracy Thriller, Space Opera, Afrofuturism, Teen Drama, Urban Fantasy, Planetary Romance, and throwing everything together, Science Fantasy.

Tell me if you could do genres this diverse back in the '00s with superheroes.

And while yes, the MCU gradually became more fantastic, it was still more willing to do things the others wouldn't do. Guys in colorful power armor, Norse gods, Frost Giants, MacGuffins, Super Soldiers in an Alternate History World War II fighting against Stupid Jetpack Hitler HYDRA, and all the heroes teaming up to fight aliens. This was all in Phase 1. Tellingly, the most '00s and Ultimate-influenced movie in the MCU is The Incredible Hulk, by far the least successful and memorable film.

Ultimate Marvel was created in part to be an adaptation-friendly source for later movies, including the MCU, to draw from. Doing so by removing or at least heavily toning down the fantastic aspects of comics to appeal to a broader audience. The fact is, the MCU takes much more heavily from 616, while keeping the Ultimate influences to a minimum, itself having basically faded at this point in the cycle.

No one could deny things have changed now, the point of Seinfeld Is Unfunny is to highlight this effect. With movies nowadays embracing the fantastic side of comics, it makes Ultimate Marvel appear a bit dated in the era it was in when the goal was to remove them in part for future movies to have an easy source to adapt.

Does that make the point clear?

You put it better than I did. Maybe you could rewrite a draft keeping the above criticisms in mind?

Problem is, even this purported reason for Ultimate Marvel to exist (be the source of movie adaptations, with the focus on those properties whose rights had not been sold) is denied by Word of God. See here. "You have to remember this was 2001 when we were putting this together. The idea that this might become a movie seemed preposterous as Marvel was just climbing out of bankruptcy at the time. What we didn't know was that Sam was an avid comic fan and knew all about it." As for the Avengers, he said "My first book at Marvel was a reboot of the X-Men and it launched at number 1 so they asked me what I wanted to do next. I said I wanted to reboot The Avengers and they winced because the X-Men and Spider-Man titles were their biggest sellers at the time. The Avengers family of characters, they told me, were a waste of my time and they asked me to do a Wolverine book instead. But I was really passionate about this. It was a real labour of love and I had the perfect artist in Bryan Hitch to give this book a very realistic feel that tied together all the characters in a much more natural way I felt mainstream audiences would get.

Marvel at this point had these characters scattered across different studios like New Line, Universal and one or two others so a movie was never in consideration. Their single purpose at the time was getting the comic-division back into the black as things had been quite rough for a couple of years. Anything that happened after is just because the material worked well for the mainstream and was described by readers as cinematic. Of course, we didn't realise six or seven years later we were going to see all this start to come together as a movie. Marvel weren't self-financing until 2008."

I didn't say it was the only reason, but what I meant was that Ultimate Marvel was created to be what was thought to be cinematic-appropriate, and at the time it was made, that meant doing away with the comic book tropes the superhero genre takes in stride. Many of their animated series, video games, and movies took heavy inspiration from Ultimate Marvel.

Look at the Tim Story duology, changing Victor Von Doom from the scientist-sorcerer-dictator of Latveria to an American businessman who mutated from the event that powered the F4. That takes after Ultimate Fantastic Four.

The fact is that today, trying to reinvent Doom into an American businessman that's not a scientist-sorcerer-dictator would be the cause of backdraft similar to Iron Man 3's Mandarin twist, and God help the creators of the MCU reboot if they go with an Ultimate-inspired take again.

Basically, what I'm trying to say: The steps Ultimate Marvel took to be appropriate for modern audiences now looks dated in the era that it's in. Nowadays, audiences love super science, magic, space battles, dramatic plots, alternate history, talking raccoons with sentient trees, and the Infinity Gauntlet, plus a whole heaping more, all rolled into a single franchise. This is the direct antithesis to what Ultimate Marvel was about. That's why saying its influence falling under Seinfeld Is Unfunny isn't wrong.

Well, sorry if I denigrate someone by saying so, but the MCU is not the center of the universe. The entry was based on the premise that Ultimate Marvel was created to be a source material for films, if that is debunked then it is pointless to discuss whatever the MCU does or ceases to do. As I said, that's another media, another set of tropes, another audience, another marketing strategy, another creation process, etc.

As for the usual superhero craziness, Ultimate Marvel stayed away from it... at first. Similar to the MCU, but in its own creative path, they eventually incorporated those things as well once they found their own narrative style. We have dimensional hopping (Ultimate Power, Spider-Men), time travel (Cable and Bishop, in Ultimate X-Men), rescues from the realm of the dead (Ultimatum, New Ultimates), reality warping (Loki in Ultimates, Magician in Ultimate X-Men), rogue A.I.s (the robots in Ultimates 3, Magneto's base in Ultimate X-Men), weird-looking aliens (the Kree, Captain Marvel), anthropomorphic aliens (Miles Morhames and his home dimension), space battles (the hunger, the backstory to the Ultimate Galactus trilogy), etc. Even the Infinity Gauntlet itself (Ultimate Comics: the Ultimates), and a villain killing half of the available superhero cast (Ultimatum). But, if we talk about crazy, there's little more crazy than a good old fashioned Always Chaotic Evil alien race that worked for Hitler (Ultimates 1, basically in the start of the whole thing).

So I'm desperately trying to track what you're trying to say and honestly, it's pretty tough. Here's my crack at an entry:

• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: The Ultimate Universe was done as an attempt to streamline the convoluted 616-Universe, giving it a Setting Update, grounding its reality a bit, and allowing newcomers to the franchise without decades of continuity baggage. In that regard it was fairly successful for a while, and considered a good idea, if not execution. Come the 2010's, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has accomplished the same goals with much more universal acclaim to the point that opinion on the Ultimate Universe has soured, without whilst still avoiding Doing In the Wizard by keeping many of the fantastical and cosmic elements.

That's a comparison of apples and oranges. The film industry works fundamentally different to the comic book industry, and what works in one medium may or may not work in another. It took decades for the film industry to embrace something that comics had been doing since the 1960s, and I doubt a comic book series of Titanic (1997) or Gone with the Wind would do well either.

Since these two address the same trope, i am replying to this and the Wolverine one together:

• In the case of Wolverine. The "love triangle" in the original books was always in Wolverine's mind, and down to Cyke's insecurity. Jean never voiced interest in Logan, and Scott Summers was her beau. Logan never tried to murder Cyclops or do anything crazy like that. And in the comics at least, when Wolverine met Scott and Jean, they were both in their mid-twenties, and not as young as in Ultimate X-Men. So it's not even remotely the same thing. And the MJ thing, the fact that it's treated as a joke is a point, as is the fact that the whole thing happened because Logan again creeped on Jean and she decided to take revenge in the worst possible way. Logan's attitude is creepy, lecherous, disrespective of consent, and generally sleazy, which the comics present as "typical Logan" stuff. Today playing that kind of stuff for laughs would be seen as part of the problem.

• My specific complaint about Stark was him casually bedding his interns and so on. That kind of stuff is today seen as employment harassment and extortion because of the power-disparity there. I haven't read Gambit and Rogue so I can't comment, but in any case, "other people do it" is not a valid justification or defense. The point is its Values Dissonance and worth mentioning in the appropriate place.

We will not be having a moral guardian discussion about what is wrong and what is right. Ultimate Tony Stark is simply a textbook case of The Casanova, and I have never heard about anyone complaining about it. Before we continue, I would like to see some empirical evidence that this isn't just you Complaining About Shows You Don't Like.

The fact is behavior that today we would consider unbecoming is presented without question and reproach and passed as normal. That alone qualifies it as Values Dissonance.

Except for Unfortunate Implications, YMMV doesn't need citations to start with. Since you insist, I can offer this link for the empirical evidence, that plenty take issue with the normalization of incest, Wolverine's creepy predator behavior, the cannibalism, and so on. Tony Stark's creepy boss tendencies isn't mentioned there but that might be because it's obscured by the other stuff of that comic, and it comes before the issue with the Wanda-Pietro Lannister-love.

It's okay to like something and accept that there are parts of it that are questionable or dubious. I am a stan of Star Wars prequels and they are less respectable than Ultimate Marvel, but even I admit that there are parts of that which don't work, and which tend to stand alongside and obscure the good stuff. There's good stuff in Ultimate Marvel and bad stuff too, but trying to make excuses for the latter is no credit for the former. Even Harry Potter has a list of Values Dissonance and it's way longer than Ultimate Marvel's, so it's not something to get upset over any way.

I asked about Iron Man.

I replied about Iron Man. Read my full post. I said that Values Dissonance doesn't need citations. YMMV doesn't have to reflect majority views. Please don't strawman and cherry-pick my posts otherwise I will have to report you.

What is there to report? We are not edit warring, and I'm being civil. I just find it strange that you removed Vindicated by History, which was backed by a reference, saying that "we need more empirical evidence", but then stick to the "we don't need references" principle when it is your edits the ones that are contested.

Even more interesting, that reference was ALSO from Screen Rant. Perhaps they do not think that those Wolverine moments are a problem for the Ultimate Marvel universe taken as a whole?

I prefer that you be direct about your complaints and issues, rather than trying to pick loopholes. And obviously there are websites with different writers and editors and so on, so it's not always going to reflect universal opinion.

In the case of Vindicated by History, it doesn't apply to Ultimate Marvel because these comics were critically acclaimed and commercially successful to start with. Vindicated by History largely applies to works that had weak reception and/or sales but after a period of time, people started thinking better of it and it's now become a classic. The classic example is The Empire Strikes Back which initially was seen as dubious and too serious sequel, but now everyone says it's the best. It doesn't apply to a line of comics whose reputation is that "it started out interesting, lost steam, then Ultimatum happened, and it sucks aside from USM". That's Ultimate Marvel's reputation. It hasn't been vindicated. Ultimatum isn't vindicated, Ultimate X-Men isn't vindicated, nor has Ultimate Captain America. The stuff that is liked and memorable from Ultimate Marvel, Ultimate Spider-Man mainly, were always popular and needs no vindication.

Ultimate Marvel is out of fashion these days but that shouldn't obscure the fact that at one point it was fashionable, edgy, cool, and popular. Then times changed. It's the case with every hip fad.

Ultimate Nick Fury is a pawn of Pierce and missed the boat on HYDRA. SHIELD goes from uber-organization in the Ultimate era to Demoted to Extra. Nick Fury ultimately defers to Captain America in Winter Soldier. Tony Stark takes Fury's role as Peter's mentor/handler and so on. And where Ultimate Fury is the protagonist of Ultimate Marvel, in MCU it's Iron Man.

Nick Fury is also a sober calm level-headed guy rather than the catchphrase spouting macho guy in Ultimate Marvel.

He's manipulative but not omniscient like Ultimate Marvel, and while he's shady he's nowhere near as unethical.

And the point is...? That the MCU is not a carbon copy of Ultimate Marvel, and has plots of its own? What does that have to do with anything?

Nick Fury is sober calm, level headed and a Reasonable Authority Figure in calmed situations, and a determined man when in the middle of the action. He may do controversial actions in the name of national security, and get told What the Hell, Hero? by others because of it. He's aware of many things, but not on a Big Brother style, and it's easy for the heroes to do things under his radar if the plot so requires. That is true of both MCU and Ultimate Nick Fury. Do you need examples of any of that?

Ultimate Fury does stuff like form his own black-ops units, send Wolverine to Mercy Kill a teenage mutant, and works with psychos like Tyrone Cash and Gregory Stark. MCU Fury does nothing like that.

Whatever stuff MCU Fury does is to save lives and he's shown as vulnerable and not this all-powerful all-knowing guy.

In case you missed Ant-Man and the Wasp, Ghost has been used by SHIELD as a hitman (and against her will) in those years that Fury was in charge.

Note, by the way, that Ultimate Nick Fury may be a manipulative bastard full of dirty secrets, but so is the non-ultimate one. I have also read the Secret Warriors comic, and that Fury was even worse.

The Winter Soldier clarifies that Fury was never truly in charge of SHIELD, since most of the organization was a front for HYDRA. And Ant-Man and the Ghost doesn't mention Fury anywhere once so it's moot.

Different versions of Fury are creepy in different ways. Garth Ennis' one is a pervert and sex maniac, and a Vietnam war veteran. A comic that Stan Lee himself disliked for its violence. The MCU one is not as harsh or boderline-evil as Ultimate Fury, who busted out a mass-murderer like Ultimate Red Skull and hid the fact that Cap was his babydaddy, and who apparently seduced and slept with his ex-wife's mother and her friends and wrote about it in a diary to trigger his divorce. MCU Fury is not that guy.

Also, can you group all these complaints in a single long post, that way, when you respond to something, I don't have to scroll down. It also comes across as you trying to crowd the Discussion with multiple posts so that people can't reply to each one, and you can then use non-replys to make the edits you want.

The Winter Soldier was inspired by Brubaker's run as the directors and writers openly stated. Making Bucky into the Winter Soldier was Brubaker's contribution and he even makes a Creator Cameo in that film. MCU Cap in The Winter Soldier was what made him into something more than a Vanilla Protagonist (or as Honest Trailers put it, "he's cool now").

So yeah, Brubaker's Cap definitely had a bigger impact on the MCU than Ultimate Cap did. That much is inarguable.

In case nobody told you, the MCU is an Adaptation Distillation, and takes things from many sources. Your premise that "they didn't take things from here because they took something else from there" doesn't add up. For instance, Banner turned into Hulk by trying and failing to recreate the super soldier serum, and not by being caught by the explosion of a gamma bomb. And another Millar's works, Civil War, was used for the third film. Yes, Civil War, the Marvel attempt to turn the prime universe into something that resembles the Ultimate one, with superheroes working for the government and SHIELD overseeing everything. Speaking of Millar, he did not had one but several films based on his comic book works: Civil War, Logan, Wanted, Kick-Ass, Kingsman, several upcoming Netflix films and series, etc. He has a name for himself in Hollywood, while Brubaker is just a footnote at best.

As for Honest Trailers, I saw that one, and it says "Watch as Cap and two non-superheroes end up...actually kicking a lot of ass together in a really entertaining, well-directed movie." Those are virtues of the film, not the source material. Remember as well that the whole Winter Soldier stuff is a giant red herring, the film is about something else that was concealed from trailers and merchandise. And I also saw the one for Iron Man, a grounded super hero film based on the Ultimate take on the character. Made in 2015, it says "So revisit the Marvel masterpiece that started it all, without which there would be no Marvel Cinematic Universe, no Avengers, no Guardians, no Winter Soldier, leaving Hollywood in the terrifying position of having to develop something original."

I agree that the Weapon X being a full arc should be removed. But a scene doesn't have to be image or visuals only. Dialogue and context are important part of it. The Ultimates goofing off in downtime with them fancasting their actors is a scene.

Spider-Man running off and calling the X-Men jerks (my shorthand for that symbolic swearing) is also a mostly visual scene. As is evidenced by the panels featuring their stunned and sorry reactions.

By contrast, "A in my head stands for France" is Signature Line.