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[WWLA] 'ULTIMATES 3' DIRECTORS' COMMENTARY | | Jeph Loeb and Joe Madureira dig into the sex, lies and violence behind their blockbuster hit live on stage | | | By Kiel Phegley | | Posted 3/27/2008 | |  | | ![[WWLA] 'ULTIMATES 3' DIRECTORS' COMMENTARY](http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/wizarduniverse_2062_395577301) In one of the most revealing panels at Wizard World LA, Jeph Loeb and Joe Madureira—the masterminds behind the #1 selling Ultimates 3—took the audience on a tour through the creation of the series’ first three issues. From the mystery of Black Panther to the death of the Scarlet Witch and beyond. What follows is a blow by blow take down of the team’s kick start to the new Ultimate U and what comes next in Loeb’s “Ultimatum” story.
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Ultimates 3, Issue 1, Page 1
WIZARD: You guys kick start the book with Tony Stark's sex tape. I was wondering, Joe, did you do a lot of research before drawing this sequence?
MADUREIRA: No, Jeph was pretty descriptive in the script exactly what he wanted to see. One thing that's funny about this page, though, is the strange placement of that bush that's in front of Black Panther in panel 2. I swear, somebody pointed it out to me after. Like, “What's Black Panther doing?” It does look a little odd. But, uh, yeah, I think we wanted to go a little more risque, right? Push boundaries.
LOEB: Well, it was ... you know, we wanted it to was that, first of all, staring the book with four horizontal panels which is what Mark made that whole and Hitchy did the first 2 series with and, you know, their real hallmark was pushing the violence as much as they could and that just wasn't a place that I thought this book needed to go to. We certainly didn't want to do a book that was exactly like what they did and so, you know, the idea was to start off with something that was very provocative in a way that Mark was continually pushing the boundaries of politics and that, I think I've said it before, that's not what I do best so I guess basically what I'm saying is I do sex better than war.
The one thing, to make a comparison, that your guys' take on The Ultimates reminded me of was when Mark himself took over The Authority at Wildstorm after Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch had done their big action take, and then Mark came on and said, “We've got to do something quirky and different” so people wouldn't expect the same thing. It felt like you guys did a similar think here to keep it fresh.
MADUREIRA: I'm just like, my daughter goes to a Catholic school so I'm a little embarrassed about some of the stuff in hindsight, but, uh, it could have been worse, right?
LOEB: Yeah. Well, it also could have been much different because when we first turned in those pages the guys from Marvel said, “Uh, you guys are gonna need to put balloons over all of that” and then somehow everyone forgot that but, uh, no, it was important to us that we jump off and I had a lot of conversation with Mark about where the book was going and where the characters were going and, you know, he paid us the biggest compliment that he could which was that after he read the first 2 issues, 'cause he had the scripts that he said that it was like watching a Bond movie – that they're Bond movies but they're different James Bonds and I just assume that he was talking about Daniel Craig and not Timothy Dalton, so .... | | 
Ultimates 3, Issue 1, Page 5
Now this splash was the first piece of art that had been released for the series when it was announced that you guys were doing it. For a long time we just kept seeing that there was going to be an Ultimate Black Panther and then I think the series came out and then people are saying, “What is up with Ultimate Black Panther?” Is part of the fun of the book, too, the tease aspect of it because there are so many mysteries and things going along with it?
LOEB: I prefer, I mean, anybody who's read anything that I've done, I do prefer starting stories in the middle of them. Hush begins with a kidnapping and Killer Crock running around and we never really go back to that story or why the kid was kidnapped or any of that. But, uh, you know, this was one of those stories that we were having a lot of fun with. It all will get tied up eventually but, yeah, I mean, the idea was to come back on the team and obviously some time has passed and I've said it a lot, there's a page, I don't know whether or not we're going to get to it, uh, where Jan is talking to Hank and she really just goes over all of the problems that they've had in the time period between the two things. We originally were gonna say that it was a year but when we started writing it to when Hitchy finished the book about three years ago so we just sort of jumped on it and let people guess where one thing ended and another one ...
MADUREIRA: Hitchy? Hitchy?
LOEB: I did say Hitchy. What did you want me to say?
MADUREIRA: It's a cute name.
LOEB: Oh, that's what we call him. You know, we call you “Maddy” when we can.
MADUREIRA: Why doesn't the Black Panther have any dialogue? Do you want to talk about that?
LOEB: No, I don't.
MADUREIRA:: He's very serious.
LOEB: He is very serious. He's ... I sort of felt that he was the Batman of the group, that Batman is better when he doesn't talk.
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Ultimates 3, Issue 1, Page 16
Well, here we have the scene showing what happens between Hank and Janet, but that panel kind of creeps me out, Joe. I mean, the slobber on the chin ... there's a way to make somebody overdosing on drugs in front of you and their ex-wife and then passing out more dramatic. I think the kind of schmutz helps out a little bit.
MADUREIRA: Yeah, so that's supposed to be slobber and puke although that's another panel that some people with strange minds have asked me about. Like, “What's that stuff on his mouth? It looks like something that's not puke.” And it is supposed to be puke and he did OD on all those drugs that are spilling out onto the ground there. Nothing else.
LOEB: Uh, well, there was ... in the script, I asked you to draw a tuna fish sandwich there and I thought that that was mayonnaise that was up there but I guess that isn't what it was.
MADUREIRA: Yes. Yeah, I didn't put it in. I got lazy.
Jeph, you're picking up all of these characters and did you kind of sit down when you were starting to write the book and say, “I wanna do this with Cap, I wanna do this with Hank, I wanna do this with ....” and try to think about emotional points to hit with all of the characters of the team?
LOEB: Sure. I mean, I wouldn't know any other way to do it. Um, but I think the most important thing is that I just didn't do it in a vacuum, I did it with Mark and I made a list of where everyone's going, and where I thought it was and then Mark wrote me back and said, you know, “A lot of this is exactly where we're going and some of it has to be your own so take it away.” You know, we just had to ... like, a lot of people said they didn't understand how come Hank wasn't in the Triskelion or whatever the hell it's called. I call it the Triathlon. But, you know, we do explain it. He has a wrist, an ankle bracelet and he's allowed to work in certain parts of the mansion and he is one of the smartest men around, and Wasp is running the team so she's allowed to say, “I want him over here.”
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Ultimates 3, Issue 1, Page 22
So the big mystery to kick start everything is the QuickSilver and Scarlet Witch ...
LOEB: Did you not see who that doctor is 'cause he's got an interesting little plaque on his thing. But anyway. It's true. Did you guys not see that? His little name tag? Huh? He is walking.
MADUREIRA: Magnify!
LOEB: Anyway.
MADUREIRA: That's beyond my technological brains.
LOEB: Okay.
I know that in the past few years Scarlet Witch and her appearance or non-appearance in the mainstream Marvel universe has been such a major plot point for a lot of things that have happened with the X-Men so coming in, obviously, QuickSilver and Wanda have a completely different relationship, a more heightened relationship, I'd say, out of the mainstream Marvel universe.
LOEB: Blame that on Mark, that was not me. Even though people would like to say that I have some sort of excess vanity. It actually is in the first 2 books so I took it to the next place. They were in a gondola in Venice, arm in arm. I don't know what else they're doing.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You know, I said the exact same thing when I read that issue.
LOEB: If you ask Mark, they said to Mark, “What's the difference between Volume 1 and Volume 2?” and he said, “Not much. QuickSilver and the Scarlet Witch are still shagging.” And I think people were, like, “Does 'shagging' mean, like, they own rugs together?” No. That's what they're doing.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I never thought anyone would actually say “shagging.”
LOEB: Well, we did.
I hate to ask the question, “Where do you get your ideas from?” but when did it strike you that the mystery that this was book was going to be centered around was the death of Scarlet Witch?
LOEB: It was my original pitch, actually. Funny enough, there were things that Bendis was doing in the Marvel U with her and what was gonna happen to her that were bleeding really close to the story, and we had a long talk about it, but what's important isn't just that she dies, it's what happens because she dies. It's what happens because she dies that's really important, and I think that's one of the things you tend to miss out a lot of times in comics is the death of a character doesn't have a ripple effect throughout the rest of what's going on and that's sort of my hinty kind of way of what is to come in Ultimatum and why all these stories are, as we put it, marching towards Ultimatum. | | 
Ultimates 3, Issue 2, Pages 2 & 3
Here we get one of those big double splashes where we get Ultimate Spider-Man in the book and I want to ask Joe, one of the nice things from Mark Bagley in the Ultimate Spider-Man book is they really draw Spider-man proportionally to look young, to look like a teenager and he kind of gets around a little bit differently than in the regular Marvel U. Did you look at some of their stuff when drawing this Ultimate Spider-Man to keep some of those touchstones in place?
MADUREIRA: Uh, I'm a big fan of Spidey and I definitely ... I guess “no.” That's the answer I'm looking for. I mean, I did – not on the spread as much but on some of the other panels - slim him down a little bit to make him look more tubular and younger, sort of like what Bagley's doing but I definitely have, I always look forward to drawing Spidey and I have my own version of Spidey that I like to do, so ....
I know it had been a long time since you've been doing comics because you've been doing other stuff, but how long had it been since you'd been drawing any of these characters? Did you ever pull out a sketch book and say, “I'm gonna sketch up Spider-Man or Wolverine”?
MADUREIRA: It's been a long, long time since I've drawn Spidey and a lot of these characters I've seen for the first time which was one of the things that was really exciting about Ultimates but there were a lot of characters I didn't get to tackle when I was at Marvel before so, uh, that was pretty cool. Guys like Thor. I mean, there's some of the main little cameos while I was working on X-Men - even Cap was in there. Actually, all the Avengers were in there at one point but for a lot of these guys, it was the first time. That was pretty cool.
LOEB: The thing I remember was when we first started, when he read the first script, he called me and he goes, “Dude, this is great but when do I get to draw Spidey?” It's, like, “Okay, we'll get to Spidey in the next issue.”
MADUREIRA: And Hulk!
LOEB: And Hulk. Everybody's coming.
MADUREIRA:: And the ninjas!
LOEB: I don't think we're gonna get to the ninjas this time...
Continue to the next page for more Ultiamtes 3 commentary! | | | |
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