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Moon Knight is Marvel’s answer to Batman.  He’s rich, dark, brooding, and has lots of really cool gadgets.  Unlike Batman, he’s nutty as a fruitcake. 

The MMU Moon Knight was a regular guy, then he got super powers, then he (I think) lost them through unexplained means.  For a while he had magic weapons, then he had non-magical copies of the magic weapons, now he’s got new & different weapons.  For a while, he wore a costume made of adamantium.  Lately, he’s gone completely nuts.

The Ultimate Moon Knight, like 94.2% of the heroes in the Ultimate Universe, gained his powers through the Super Soldier program.  He suffers from multiple personality disorder.  He pretty much makes the MMU Moon Knight look rational. 

Winner – MMU Moon Knight.  A little more skilled, a little less crazy.

Tomorrow - Beast

Until recently, the Main Marvel Universe Nick Fury held little appeal for me.  His recent handling by Brian Michael Bendis in the Secret Invasion cross-over has really upped his standing in my estimation. A WWII veteran and super-spy, Fury has the vigor of a much younger man thanks to the ‘Infinity formula’. 

Ultimate Nick Fury was an early test subject for the Super Soldier program.  Whether or not this gave him any lasting degree of super strength is not clear, but it has certainly retarded his aging process.  He’s a bit of a snake, teaming with Doctor Doom at one point in order to further his own agenda.  Ultimate Nick’s character design is based on Samuel L. Jackson, one very scary & cool cat.

Winner – MMU Nick wins, mostly because Ultimate Nick got booted out of the Ultimate Universe and into the Squadron Supreme-verse.

Tomorrow – Moon Knight!

The Avengers are the ultimate (pardon the use of the word, but it really does apply here) team of heroes in the Marvel Universe.  Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Ms. Mavel, - just about everyone who is anyone (with the exception of the core members of X-Men and the Fantastic Four) has been an Avenger at one time or another. 

The Ultimates are a bunch of screwed-up neurotics with super powers who somehow manage to save the day despite themselves.  The Ultimates make for good reading, but in terms of overall character they can’t hold a candle next to their Main Marvel Universe counterparts.

Winner – The Avengers in a landslide.

Tomorrow – Nick Fury

Doctor Doom rocks!  Part of the reason that I never liked the Fantastic Four all that much was that I found myself rooting for Doom to win.  The Main Marvel Universe Doom has had his share of corny plots and silly schemes over the years, but for the most part he’s a stone-cold diabolical mastermind who simply sees himself as better than everyone else and therefore the rightful ruler of the world.  He’s stolen the powers of the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, and the Beyonder, yet he always loses. 

The Ultimate Doom has the same genius level intellect as his MMU counterpart.  On the plus side, he’s also got super powers.  On the minus side, he’s got goat legs.    

Winner – It’s a draw.  I had Ultimate Doom slightly ahead, but the goat legs brought him down. 

Tomorrow – The Avengers vs. the Ultimates!

Today’s matchup is interesting because to me it represents the greatest disparity between universes.   I don’t like the Main Marvel Universe Fantastic Four.  I never have.  Since I was first learning to read, the Fantastic Four comic blatantly promoted itself as “The World’s Greatest Comic” and it just never lived up to its own hype.

The Ultimate FF is a promising fresh start without the self-aggrandizement of its MMU counterpart.  Ultimate Sue is smoking hot, a genius, and a capable hero with incredible power.   The big difference is that the Ultimate line manages to show Sue’s capabilities naturally as part of the story, where in the MMU the reader is continually hit over the head with just how powerful and smart she is.

The Thing is the Thing in whatever reality.  The Human Torch is pretty standard as well.  But I love the teenaged, geeky, Mr. Fantastic so much more than the regular old Reed Richards in the MMU.

Winner – Ultimate Fantastic Four by a landslide. 

Tomorrow – Doctor Doom!

We’ll be getting back to the Ultimate vs Marvel throw downs on Monday.  I’m thinking it is time to pit Fantastic Four against Fantastic Four.  Feel free to suggest your own future ideas for Ultimate vs Marvel slobber knockers in the comment box below.  Who have we missed?  Dr. Doom?  Yeah, he’s coming up right after the FFs square off.

For now, check out this hilarious video that looks at how Superman would really fit into Batman’s world. 

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1884973

None of this ‘equally matched’ crap that DC has been foisting on us for decades.  Superman is super.  Batman is a guy in a mask.  These guys get it right with a great sense of humor.  (No, I’m not affiliated with whoever made this.  I just stumbled across it online & thought it was worth sharing.) 

Thor is, IMHO, the single best ongoing series on the stands today.  The art is solid and Strazynski is a masterful story teller.  Secret Invasion: Thor was a weak concept but was executed so well that it worked.  The two recent Thor one shots detailed periods in his long history with a brutal reality that has been absent from previous stories of the thunder god’s past. 

All of that said, who at Marvel thought Thor: Truth of History was a good idea?  It felt like I was reading a Thor Annual from 1983.  ToH is a silted, dated, obvious story with throwback character design and nothing more.  As far as I can tell, there was no relevance to anything else in Thor’s history or the greater Marvel Universe. 

I want my 4 bucks back.

The Main Marvel Universe Cable is Nathan Dayspring Summers, the son of Cyclops and some chick he hooked up with when Jean Grey died.  That chick, it turns out, was Madelyn Pryor, who was a clone of Jean Grey created by Sinister in order to breed Summers-Grey progeny.  Soon after he was born, Nate was infected by a techno-organic virus and shipped off to the future.  When he came back, full grown, he began a career as a hero/mercenary/revolutionary/messiah – type.  Then he lost his powers.  Then they came back.  Now he’s traipsing through time with the first and only mutant born since M-Day.

Unlike most Ultimate characters, Ultimate Cable differs significantly from his MMU counterpart.  Ultimate Cable is a future version of Wolverine who travelled back in time to help the X-Men prepare to fight Apocalypse by fighting them and making them think he killed Xavier.  Perhaps the most convoluted plan since… I don’t know, maybe when Xavier faked his own death back in the MMU.

Despite the extreme awfulness of Ultimate Cable’s plan, I like the future Wolverine angle.  And although I like the current direction they’re taking with MMU Cable in his latest series, I’m dinging him points for his last go around.

Winner – Ultimate Cable in an upset.

Tomorrow – A brief interlude to talk about Thor, god of Thunder.  

The Main Marvel Universe Colossus can transform his body into living organic metal, is insanely strong, and likes women.  He was dead once, but that hardly even slowed him down.

The Ultimate Colossus can likewise transform into living organic metal.  Ultimate Colossus may just be the stronger of the two.  He put a pretty good whooping on Thor in Ultimate X-Men.  But his strength is not part of his mutation, rather it comes from his use of a highly addictive drug called “Banshee”.  He’s also as gay as he could be.   

Really, though, if you had to judge by looking at their costumes, who would you think is the gay Colossus?  I’m just saying.

Winner – MMU Colossus

Tomorrow – Cable!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Ultimate vs Marvel comparison to bring you this review of Final Crisis #4.  In a word: “huh?”  After reading this book, all I can do is shake my head and ask “what is happening here?”  A month has passed (I think) since last issue, and the world has fallen to Darkseid.  Except that Darkseid hasn’t done anything, can’t do anything, because he is busy fighting to get himself reborn in Dan Turpin’s body.

The world’s greatest superheroes appear to be trapped in a giant glass bottle in the Hall of Justice, while the world’s OKest heroes (Green Arrow, Black Canary, the Ray, Tattooed Man, the Flash Kids, and Oracle) ignore them and develop battle plans with the other surviving heroes from their six secret bases around the world.

Barry Allen, the original Flash, was reconstituted from some random molecules, or something such, and uses his super kissing power (ala Superman II) to rescue his wife Iris from the anti-life equation.  Superman is off in another dimension still (in Superman Beyond) while also simultaneously visiting  the 30^th Century (in Legion of Three Worlds) and being trapped in the aforementioned giant bottle. 

I just don’t get it.      

Tomorrow: Ultimate Colossus vs the Main Marvel Universe Colossus