Sponsored Post: Value Comics presents The Hitler Ultimatum, Uncut & Uncensored and in TPB for the first time!
Actual Sincere Non-Satire Note from 2022: hey, i guess you found this one. this was inspired by marvel's thing where captain america killed a guy and said "hail hydra." it was maybe ill-advised at the time and has gotten progressively more uncomfortable to reread since. i'm not taking it down because barely anyone reads this site, but I do want to clearly disclaim that nazis suck, fascism sucks, human rights are cool and good, etc. if you read this anyway and some of it hits you in an unpleasant way i'm genuinely sorry. --amy
Guten tag, nerd nation! Rejoice, because Value Comics’ controversial crossover event The Hitler Ultimatum is finally coming out in trades! We here at the SLN Comics Silo have the exclusive skinny on the new uncensored and expanded releases of the event that The Mary Sue refused to cover, and Diamond continues to refuse to solicit! Let’s take a look at what’s in each volume…
March to The Hitler Ultimatum
Gathering together the exciting leadup to the event, Volume 0 opens with Wonder Warriors Confidential #45-49, in which the golden age Old Glory deals with the isolation and mounting guilt of having 1940s-era racial sensibilities in today’s America after the CyberCataclysm merged the Classic universe, the recently restored New World universe, and the mainstream VCU, creating the ungodly tide of continuity problems we’ve been sorting with the past few years but ultimately making things way simpler. Rejected by his former teammates in favor of the younger, hipper Faded Glory, the New World version of Sgt. Sam Johnson, he simmers with resentment and begins an unfortunately web-based hunt for the American Dream that leads him to some of the larger white nationalist forums.
This leads into Wonder Warriors seXtreme GunForce Annual #19, in which Young Lust and Gunbattler are separated from their teammates Bloodnado and Assaultforce and stranded in the Wonder Warriors’ War Marina by the rising floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina II. They initially write off Old Glory as a twisted old bigot, but his cutting “alternative” analysis of The Force Awakens and other “politically correct” cinema opens their eyes to a new world of insidious fascism. Finally, in Glory #99, Old Glory brutally murders Glory, his popular, normal, not-a-fascist modern equivalent in a series of brutally gritty, unflinchingly visceral two-page spreads, a sequence that famously took up nearly two thirds of the original issue’s page count before some of the images were removed by editorial and replaced with ads for Paxil. In the trade-exclusive expanded version, the full set of thirty-seven gory two-page spreads has room to breathe, something that beloved comic book hero Glory no longer does, because he has been murdered by a fascist.
Special Features: Cover gallery, design sketches, the full text of the unhinged forum rant visible on Old Glory’s computer screen in Wonder Warriors seXtreme GunForce Annual #19.
The Hitler Ultimatum: Ultimate Collected Edition
The event proper begins with the revelatory Glory #100, in which a time-traveling Sven Hitlår, the secret grandson of Adolf Hitler, appears to Old Glory and reveals that originally, before the Junior Wonders illegally tampered with the timeline using Time Teen’s Crisis Torus, the Nazis were actually the good guys and did not do a The Holocaust. The original Old Glory knew this in his wise, racially realist heart all along, and in accepting this truth remembers the original timeline and becomes the one true real Old Glory, no takebacks, for real, officially. The Hitler Ultimatum #1-6 chronicles Old Glory’s quest to resurrect the original true Adolf Hitler, whose nonviolent utopian vision is the only thing that can save the modern world from degeneracy and war and such. He is of course opposed by the Wonder Warriors, who are wrong and bad for not liking Hitler and wanting him as ruler of the world, but they are ultimately defeated, because Old Glory’s bold, iconoclastic conviction in strong authority and the futile decadence of modern identity politics is simply right, no debate, no takebacks, infinity. This special expanded, uncensored version contains so many more swastikas, like, half a dozen per page on average once the plot really gets going, in a true triumph of free speech. For our international readers, we do not recommend importing the US or French edition into Germany.
Special Features: Cover gallery, photos of author Chad Nudnik’s bulletin board where he plotted everything out with index cards and conspiracy yarn, a collection of screenshots of Chad Nudnik totally owning dumb SJWs on Twitter, and Tony Harris’ original concept art for Judah the Eternal Rat before the mandated redesign to make him less “ethnic.”
The Hitler Ultimatum: Ripples Of Fate
Definitely the least interesting of the three trades on display here, this volume includes tie-in issues to the event from various ongoing titles by writers more, let’s say, in touch with the mainstream political zeitgeist, like Terry Moore, writer and creator of the revered limited series Zeitgeist (but not the included Zeitgeist: The Final Solution, from which he asked his creator credit be removed). Contributors include a handful of New York Times bestselling writers from other, more “respectable” mediums (how exciting, yaaawn) who were politely asked by strict editorial mandate to integrate their titles into this event in the middle of their “critically acclaimed” runs, and the skilled replacements who filled in during the class-action suit those writers filed over the alleged failure of Value to promote their titles in any way.
Overall, this collection is…non-essential at best. The fill-in issues have a few bright spots; the two-part “Night of Broken Hearts” feature from Snowblind is some of Jake Boussard’s best work so far, making the reader genuinely feel for Pete as he struggles with his cheating on Jane in the midst of the Red Iron Revolution. More common, though, are grave missteps. Paul Jenkins, author of the relaunched Mid-Nite Magic Comics title from the early 50s, seems to have missed the memo about who the heroes and villains were in Ultimatum and as a result delivered some very off-model characterization.
Special Features: Cover gallery, six scanned resignation letters, the full Quality Comics Journal article about late editor Neil Kane’s suicide, and expanded excerpts from the diaries of fallen hero Ernst Turner, aka Overpower, which figure into the uneven but thrilling climax of Dark Arrowhead #6.1.
So, What’s the Verdict?
Obviously, we’ve been waiting for this, but do bear in mind that well-informed speculation indicates we’ll be receiving a further-expanded omnibus hardcover of all three volumes later this year, and that the Igor Kordy lawsuit having been settled, it will probably include both his issues of 1st Wonder Legion, which were not included here for obvious reasons. Plan accordingly, unless you intend to buy both, which is a sound investment given the limited run of previous Value trades. It’ll be interesting to compare and contrast Marvel’s Secret Empire event this year with The Hitler Ultimatum, which was a clear precursor, no matter what Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter claims. Until then, this is your beast-with-the-least Bradpool, true-blue “Value Voter”, signing off. See you at your local comic shop, folks!