Evacuation Procedures

The Gnome and I were awakened this morning by a policeman banging on the door and a raging inferno outside our bathroom. We spent the next couple of hours standing around outside in our pajamas clutching our cats and talking to our neighbors who were standing around in their pajamas clutching their pets. Everyone we talked to had two things with them: their pets and a computing device. The majority of the people had iPads, some had their laptops. The Gnome and I both have laptops and instead of grabbing those, or those and our iPads, we just grabbed the iPads. We talked about it later and between the two classes of electronics, the laptops are all backed up into the cloud so if we lose them it’s quick and easy to recreate our setups. The iPads were quicker to grab, easier to carry, and had all the information that we’d need to access those backups and any other relevant information we needed. When I first noticed it, I thought it was really weird but in retrospect, it makes sense and has an interesting commentary on technology in our lives that I’ll have to think about more.

Marvel is relaunching their line of comic books set in the Ultimate universe. The Ultimate books started in 2000 and were a re-imagining of classic Marvel characters without having to worry about decades of continuity. Over the last decade, they’ve had some really great stories that have had a big impact on what people know about Marvel. A lot of the continuity in the Marvel movies have pulled from the Ultimates universe, which makes sense as the Ultimates stories and origins feel like they’re designed to be easily adapted to movies. (The best example of this is how Ultimate Nick Fury was drawn specifically to look like Samuel L. Jackson. He even quips in one issue that if they ever make a movie about him, he wants Jackson to play him.) The Ultimate universe has always been important to Kris as they are what got him into comics originally.

Ultimate Spider-Man has been running a story for the past couple of months called “The Death of Spider-Man” that ends, unsurprisingly, with the death of Peter Parker. An unknown character is supposed to take up the mantle of the web slinger and when he/she does, all Ultimates books will start with a new #1 issue. From what we understand, the Ultimate continuity isn’t rebooting, but they’re restarting everything as a way to bring in new readers. The writing lineup on the books look awesome too, with Hickman (of Fantastic Four fame) taking on The Ultimates and Ultimate Hawkeye, Nick Spencer (doing a great job with T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents) on Ultimate X-Men, and Bendis (of Bendis-is-awesome fame) creating the new Ultimate Spider-Man. Kris is planning on checking these out and he’ll have a full report for you after the relaunch.