[mburbank]

First of all, damn fine aticle, proto. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Reading your synopsis/interpretation put a fine point on what irritated me most about this book.

I disagree strongly with a previous poster, and think Milar did truly excellent work on his run. His ultimates were fully written charcaters with complictaed, adult motivations and emotions. His Iron man wasn't just a central casting drunk, he was a genius with a terminal condition who was drinking. A hedonist most of the time carefully putting certain aspects of his character up front and daring people to guess what he cared about and how much. It was the only, only, only time I've evr seen iron man written well.

I could go on about how Milar handled other characters, but I won't. My main point is that he wrote them well. Loeb gave everybody, villians and heroes, a cliched pose of grim determination, and then layered on a single trait for each onwe with a clumsy brush. Hawkeye is deathwish guy. Wasp is Now I'm In harge Girl. Cap is I Have a secret plan guy. Thor is angry sex guy. Valkery is hot teenager. Its all so infantile, like a middleschool class role playing and seeing who they cabn shock by how much they know about sex and drugs and other things they've seen in movies.