#marvel ultimate

I wanted to explore the magic and supernatural side of this universe using a Spanish legend "the caves of Salmanca" (a bit of info translated of the legend) also explore more of the Europe with the Iberian Peninsula.

This "strange academy" isn't ruled by Strange, but Mephisto (he is playing 6d chess here). He takes seven students to Salamanca and he would teach them in witchcraft and magic, but when they graduate he would take one with him in exchange, this one will be an important servant/pawn for his schemes (kinda of a ghost rider).

The students are:

Zoe Laveau

Doyle Dormammu (here is Dario Domingo, Spanish)

Alvi Brorson

Brielle Brooks

Emilia Pedrasangre (Elsa Bloodstone from this universe)

Manuel de la Rocha (yes Empath)

Xanty (a variant of Shaylee, based on a ventolin, a type of wind fairy from the north of the Iberian Península)

These students have in common that are descendants of important figures related with the supernatural. I chose these to explore different themes of legacy, generation trauma, classism, racism, discrimination, inmigration of war situation and the competitive education system.

Even though I only really started in the last 3 months of the year, I get peoples frustrations with these being monthly releases and the fact that a lot these you HAVE to buy individually and not part of a magazine or some other form of collective release. At least until a volume release. On top of that these are NOT easy to find, not where I live, and not online either. You need a subscription service for the digital releases and you need to find a comic book shop to even buy it physical. These aren't cheap either! If I wanted to buy, say, a manga volume's worth of issues to try and catch up, its almost 5x that of a cheap physical manga volume. And the only place you're going to be getting a volume of some of these is at a book store, not a comic shop, just because there's way more bookstores generally. By the time those volumes have released there's no gaurantee the series that you like is even still running, because they havn't made it easy to even find these to read and it might've been cancelled due to low sales. So that leaves me with a problem... I either cave in and get a subscribtion or I pirate it. I'm poor af, of course I'm going to pirate it. MOST people will. Except they won't because barely anybody knows these comics even exist. There's little to NO marketing around any of these comics. Seriously, why aren't these in a magazine?! Why aren't these easily veiwable digitally? I don't want a subscription service just to look at a few books. I'm DONE with subscription services. Even if it's just a website where you pay to read online per series, or even throwing these into webtoon behind a paywall, it'll be infinitly better. At least that way people actually get to see the amazing work they're putting out there. And... yeah, the monthly wait on these is agonising. If the wait cannot be shortened then a weekly magazine is needed DESPERATELY, because there is NOTHING in the way of audience interaction for newcomers except a very limited fandom which might be gone in a few months just cause the series could be up and cancelled at the snap of their fingers. Their websites suck... Like, straight up, they suck. Nothing unique or stylised about them, not even a bit of background music or some flare, it's trailers for games, movies, and TV. Theres not even viewer guides for comics, bits of info on the world, or even those silly "who is the strongest/fastest/richest,etc" graphics like in old magazines. there's no fun. It's painful because the stuff thats out there is genuinly good. A lotta bad, certainly, but the recent stuff is thoroughly engaging. Another thing, the issue 1 crisis. If you don't know what this is, it's publishers resetting issues back to number 1 to bump up the price. It's disgusting. Especially when it makes it a NIGHTMARE to try and find the series you're looking for... and its same name as 8 other series only seperated by a date. THESE NEED TITLES! I was reading Ultimate Black Panther and Black Panther recently... Or rather, NEW Ultimate Black Panther: T'Challa vs. The Moon Knight, and Black Panther[2023]: A King Without A Crown. The naming alone causes frustrations when trying to navigate and find a story you might actually like. King Without A Crown is a title I just made up for the 2023 release. Its a great story, the art is some of the best I've seen in any comic. And the premise is very enganging, about T'Challa having been exiled from Wakanada, returned to watch over it as a secret protector and trying to reconnect with the people in places he believed he'd overlooked. To try and deepen his understanding as a king, and as protector of his country. It's Cyberpunk Crime Thriller Sci-Fi with a mix of central African mysticism. It even comes with an official map.

First we got Ultimate Wanda abd Pietro! I really like Wanda design. I hope they will be better than their old Ultimate version. Also please let Magneto be their dad!

Speaking about Magneto: good news: we got info on him, Charles, and Jean. Bad news: it's not great.

First Jean and Charles:

The Eurasian republic got them. You may wonder where Charles is. Well it's his brain there. He's dead dead. But they're still using ut to controlJean. She's alive but doesn't fare well either. She's basically always sedated and all her muscles are atrophied. But I'm pretty sure she'll get better

As for Magneto, he's probably dead but we're not completely sure, here is the whole text

So basically it said that Magneto (who's also called Erik Eisenhardt, pretty interesting), Charles and Jean were the only Omega mutants, but now this class doesn't exist anymore, apart for Jean. It highly imply that he's dead, but also it's never explicitely mentioned while Charles dead is make clear, which is a little suspect.

It would make sense for the Maker to want him dead as his 1610 Mags did Ultimatum which prove he's a big threat but also made it personal for the Maker. Also if you want to stop mutants from raising killing Charles and Erik is the 1st thing you should do.

I also think it make sense for Marvel to kill him for what they're trying to do, but they also tend to keep the most popular alive (even if they were shown dead before, like for Wolverine) and Magneto is pretty popular.