With the arrival of Jane Austen on the scene, there was a sudden yet unanimous consensus reached within the critical fraternity that socially realistic parlor-dramas or comedies of manners are not only the most lofty standard to which all literature need be measured, but indeed the only form of writing which can be considered genuine, serious literature. Thus, with a sweep, all fantasy and genre fiction were ruled unclean, consigned to the outlying slums and ghettos past the ivory battlements of literary respectability.

Ok, enough time has passed that everybody who is going to read Ultimatum already has or knows what happens. Also, the first round of Ultimate take 2 books ahs already dropped and promo art is flooding the internet. Everyone knows who is alive and dead, but *SPOILERS!* anyway for you farkin tards. What I'm doing here is counting down the top 10 deaths in Ultimatum. A lot of critics panned the hell out of the series for selling based on shock value. Honestly there were a few points when I wondered if they were purposely playing it as a comedy. Nonetheless, this epic storyline had some appropriately epic deaths. Here are what I consider the best.

Honorable mention: Angel - killed and partially eaten by Sabretooth.
Sabretooth is a bad-ass. No question about it. He dives on angel from behind and tears his wings off, then begins chowing down on the poor boy. How is this not top 10 material? PARTIALLY eaten! Don't waste your food, Victor!

10) Juggernaut - His in the eye with poisonous dart.
How do you bring down an unstoppable force. Hit him in the one place the poison will sink in. Not only does it suck to get hit in the eye (trust me, as a professional sexual harasser, I know.) but the panel where the eye goes through ultimate Juggy's ridiculous helmet is beyond funny. I'm the dude with way too good of aim, bitch! Check out my pimp dart.

9) Magneto: Head blown off by Cyclops.
The last issue was kind of a letdown, I know. However, the death of the series' main antagonist was at least satisfying. Getting your head asploded by Cyclops's force beam isn't the most entertaining thing, but the chucks of brain and skull fragments that appear hovering in the air like a vomit-inducing, M rated Wylie Coyote cartoon really is.

8) Wasp: Eaten by Blob
Now we're talking! Wasp gets eaten by Blob, but not in the way you'd expect. And not in the dirty way either. He has her cut open at the torse like a high school dissection, chowing down on the insides. You almost expect him to have a napkin tied around his neck or to be using chopsticks (oh, wait! She isn't Asian anymore. And why not?)

7) Blob: Head bitten off by Hank Pym
After finding his wife eaten by Mr. Dukes (and presumably furious for not getting invited to Chinese buffet night) Pym grows to gargantuan proportions, picks up the Blob (immovable my ass) and bites off his head, spitting it at a nearby building. Luckily we didn't have two instances of cannibalism in a row. IF you want some more though, check out Pete Milligan's The Eaters one-shot. Good book.

6) Cyclops: Shot in the head by Quicksilver.
Ok, not so much shot. Quicksilver runs the bullet through Cyclops's head. It was in front of the Capitol, like Captain America's death (other universe) his head snapped back like Kennedy's (John, of course, because brain cancer doesn't make for interesting poses) and, most intriguingly, it shows a frightening level of power for Quicksilver. Ultimate Pietro could rival DC's Flashes with that kind of ability.

5) Hank Pym: Blown up by Madrox.
Several people were blown away by Multiple Man's suicide bombings, sure. However, few images can match the epic moment where hundreds of multiple men hang off of a sixty foot tall Pym, as he leads them away from S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. I wonder which parts got blown up last?

4) Professor X: Neck snapped by Magneto.
In all honesty, Xavier is a douche. He compares Magneto to Bin Laden. Ouch, but Eric lets it slide. Compares him to Pol Pot: furious, naturally, but chill as the grave. Then he compares Magneto to Hitler. That was it. Lensherr, being a concentration camp survivor, killed his friend in cold blood. Where was Reagan on that list, though? He and Satan would have been the logical progression from there.

3) Doctor Doom: Head crushed by the Thing.
Not really part of the story, and none too complex either. Ben Grimm puts his hand around Doom's face and squeezes. Imagine the metal from that mask bending, crumpling into wavy little points and entering the guy's eyes and brain. Anybody hungry?

2) Wolverine: Ummm . . . wow.
Wolverine gets blasted by an optic blast, has the flesh flayed from his bones by Iron Man's repulsor rays, has his adamantium skeleton removed through his pores and then has what's left of him snuffed out by Magneto. Remember when getting ripped in half by the Hulk was the most horrible thing he endured?

1) Thor: Surrendered his soul to Valhalla.
Thor dies of his own volition, goes quietly into the night with a whimper not a bang. Simply surrenders his existence to Hela. However, it was the games Hela played with him that made this the high point of the Ultimatum series. After main squeeze valkyrie and best buddy Captain America are killed, Thor goes to the underworld to bargain for their souls. He his allowed to trade his life for both of theirs (he is the Thunder God, after all) but only after he fights his way through Undead viking zombies! Thousands of them! Where is this video game? Who wouldn't buy that? Anyway, Cap shows up for the assist and they both get the zombie genocidest achievement several times over. Then Thor surrenders his soul to save those closest to him. A truer hero there has never been.

I can't hate cyclops anymore.

Captain America and Superman are fantastic heroes. They've existed since forever and are endearing because of how iconic they are, how inspirational they are, and how interesting stories about them can be. And, if they were real, I could certainly be friends with either of them. I would love to sit down and have lunch and a long ideological conversation with either of them. I have a good friend who, given an enhanced meta-gene and some sort of gaudy costume, could easily step into the shoes of either. That being said, being on a team with them, and taking orders from them would be infuriating. I would end up either running off on my own, stepping up and taking over logistics duties myself, or start a Civil War. A third character who I would have, mere weeks ago, put in the same category as those two is the embodiment of Professor Xavier's dream for mutant-human co-existence, his first pupil (haha! lol) Cyclops. Scott really "lives" Xaviers dream moreso than even Charles himself. Taking his teacher's lessons to their fullest potential and then even building on top of that, Mr. Summers really does stand on the shoulders of proverbial giants and reaches heights that truly make him the "star" of any X-Book he's in. However, when your primary character traits are being a by-the-book boy scout, and being the "anchor" character whose job it is to get angry when the more interesting characters get out of line, it makes it easy to just end up hating him. I admit, I fell into this rut from my first foray into the X-Books and my recent history lesson of trying to re-read the title from its roots to the present day had been doing pretty much nothing to open my eyes (God, I slay me!) to the character's potential. Truthfully, in order to make him anything but Ben Stein dull, you really have to spin him somehow. Lazy writers have done so by giving hime 'tude (Whedon, I'm talking to you.) However, Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis have both really made me love this character, each in their own special way. Morrison, when he took the reigns of "New X-Men" (still my favorite run on the book in it's entire history) gave Scott an almost scary Zen-like control over any situation. I'd still go to Xavier for any kind of spiritual guidance, of course, but with a field leader like this, it's suddenly easy to see why the other X-Men would lay their lives on the line for the dream. His core traits are seen as virtues instead of neuroses. Ellis on the other hand, shoved Cyclops closer to a different archetype that surprisingly really fits him. He turned him into mutankind's Batman. After the deaths of his parents, Cyclops threw himself into the X-phhilosophy, acting as an unwavering pillar behind which his teammated can rally. He also trained his body to physical perfection. There are much more powerful mutants to have to go up against, but Cyclops is still pretty damn scary to face on the battlefield. Even if you don't consider his mutant abilities, he's an unstoppable force in hand-to-hand combat, and he gets even more frightening when you take into account that his super-trigonometry (Wikipedia, bitches, it's listed there) allows his optic blasts to hit you from damn near anywhere. Suddenly, "Slim" Summers seems deserving of his place as a top tier X-Star.

Now, I really am not a fan of Wolverine either. Scott's antithesis on the team is more in line with my way of life (do what needs to get done, and if authority hinders your ability to do so, then circumvent said authority.) The over-exposure of being in every book, on 3 X-teams and the Avengers, a solo series, and Claremont's fan-fiction-gone-wrong romp through imaginationland do nothing to help matters and pretty much take a potentially good man and make you forget why you ever liked him in the first place. And at this point I'm not sure if I'm talking about Wolverine or Claremont. However, in what I like to call the Mighty Putty Effect (moment of silence for one of my all-time heroes) Cyke and Wolvie are magically an intriguing duo when placed together. Given the opportunity to play off each other, they can pull readers in the way that neither could on his own. It's hard not to take sides (I think I already told you which one I would be) in their war of methodologies, but at the same time, you really can't disrespect either. A Cyclops solo book would still, undoubtedly, be boring as balls, but as a team player, and a team leader, Scott isn't the pusoit (pronounced: poo-swah) I once thought he was. I'm off to go apologize to anyone I ever made fun of for liking the character.