Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Where's Geldoff?

You may not remember Geldoff; he was in Ultimate Spider-Man about 70 issues ago. He was a Latverian high school kid, with the power to make stuff blow up by looking at it (and concentrating). Spidey tried to rein him in, which led to his first meeting with the X-Men, and us learning Kitty had a crush on Spidey and so on. So it seems to be a pretty important arc in Ultimate Spidey continuity, but one very important piece seems to have been lost.

At the end of the arc we learned that Geldoff has been subjected to gene manipulation while still in his mother's womb, and that's how he got his powers. Xavier seemed troubled by it, which probably meant he was going to alert Fury.

And that was the last we heard of it. No follow up. Fury hasn't ever mentioned looking into it, Kitty's never mentioned to Peter (that we've seen) anything about the X-Men investigating on their own. My best guess is that Bendis was thinking about Ultimate Doom being behind it, but the way Millar set up Doom and the Fantastic Four's Ultimate origins precluded it. So he's just dropped it. That's too bad. It seemed like it might have been an interesting avenue to be explored. It's not really viable for Spidey, he's still just a teenager, and international intrigue is still a bit out of his depth. But for the Ultimates? Yeah, I can see them deciding nobody else should have genetically manipulated people but them and their allies, and trying to kick down some doors in an Eastern European nation.

7 comments:

JonHendry said...

Hm. They could change it to be the work of Ultimate High Evolutionary. He's from some Latveria-type country in Europe, isn't he??

SallyP said...

Tony Stark has him hidden deep within the bowels of SHIELD, and they are planning to create another Super Soldier!

Oh wait...wrong universe. But...but wasn't the Ultimate Universe supposed to be the EXTREME version?

Jason said...

I think what happened was that Bendis got so much crap for how lame Geldoff was (his first truly original character for Ult Spidey) that he spiked the entire thing. If you look back at interviews and stuff from those days, Joe Q. seems to alway throw in a dig about how lame Geldoff was. Personally, I didn't think he was that bad, if that story WAS just a set-up.

This may be the genesis of the formula that Bendis has been rocking for the last 50 issues of this title (ie. introduce a 616 character, talk for 4 issues, fight, relase trade, repeat), since Bendis may not have had the confidence (or the time) to add anything new to the mix.

CalvinPitt said...

jonhenry: Yeah, I think Wundagore is southeastern Europe, near Yugoslavia(?) And it would give them a chance to update his look a little. Pink robot with prominent rivets and a skirt? Yikes.

sallyp: Yeah Ultimate Tony's open boozing and womanizing seems pretty tame compared to 616-Stark.

jason: I had never heard about all the criticisms of Geldoff. Doesn't make too much sense to me. he was a teenager that didn't fit in, but could do something teenagers thought was cool, so he used that power to fit in.

Honestly, if Quesada was dumping on Geldoff, then he must have some potential.

thekelvingreen said...

Yeah, I remember that the USM fans hated Geldoff, but I could never work out why. Perhaps that's why there's been no new characters since; the fans embrace the new continuity, but only want old characters. Great.

And of course that leads to Bendis not bothering to write proper stories, instead preferring to merely string together a couple of fight scenes between Spidey and Ultimate D-List Guy From An Issue Of Marvel Premiere From 1984.

As for dropping the Geldoff plot, Bendis seems to be dropping more plots than he finishes these days. So much so that I'm surprised that Marvel haven't rechristened him as New Claremont.

CalvinPitt said...

kelvingreen; Why, I'mc ertain bendis only wants us to think he's dropping those plots. In reality they will all tie-in back in together in some manner that will make us all fall to our knees in awe.

Or he'll wait so long that when it happens we all go scrambling to our back issues screaming "Where the hell did this come from?!"

thekelvingreen said...

I suspect it'll be a case of Bendis teasing out the plots, getting paid vast amounts of money to go to DC to do Batman, leaving USM with all the plots unfinished, and Daniel Way or some similar hack following on and ignoring it all.