I guess this story goes back to me getting a Sega CD. After I bought it, I wanted to find out about some games for it, so I went to a local comic book store that carried Sega CD games - they tend to be expensive, so I was just trying to find out about some games and then look them up online. I found a Double Pack containing the games Microcosm, a Psygnosis game, and Ultraverse Prime, which depicted some really ripped, angry looking superhero. Or at least it was supposed to, but one of the discs was missing. I went home and researched the two games, and a Wikipedia search on this ‘Ultraverse Prime’ later I was intrigued.

It was actually a license of some comic book character (and as a bit of useless trivia, the cover to the video game is a photoshop of the second book‘s cover). Here’s the story: Russell and Ruth Green are having trouble conceiving a baby, so they go to a fertility clinic. The clinic turns out to be a bioengineering lab in disguise, the doctors muck with the zygote or fetus or something, and thirteen years and nine months later we have their teenage son Kevin Green, who can blast some green goop from his chest which forms around him into a muscle-bound seven+ foot adult version of himself with almost limitless strength, super speed, flight, nigh invulnerability, and a few other tricks.

So, it sounded like He-Man, only with genetics instead of a magic sword, and the ability to fly. I like He-Man, although it’s hard to tell if He-Man likes me back, given the sometimes offensively stupid writing. And despite the chance to fix those mistakes, the 2002 series is basically the 1983 one with a really (really) nice coat of paint, but the same dumbass writing from which I deduced everyone on Eternia is missing a chromosome if they couldn‘t put all the pieces together and figure out for themselves that Adam is He-Man.

But I digress.

I eventually got the game and skimmed the manual. It then sat around collecting dust. I guess part of that was it looked like a Final Fight knockoff (or should I say a Comix Zone knockoff?), but mostly it took a seat to the comics, which entraped me for almost a month. Almost a month of intrigue, smiles, a few moments I wanted to smack Prime upside the head with his own rolled up comic book for, and an ending that was little short of depressing.

The first issue was majorly screwed up. But it wasn’t really so up in a bad way. It was like a teaser, just showing off Prime’s powers, and then leaving you to ponder why he liquefied and left a kid behind. Granted, I had already read the back story on Wikipedia, so I knew what some of this nonsense meant, but I still have to wonder why the "this is madness" guy from 300 was running a drug house.

The second issue was kind of shaky, and considering what the first issue was like I was wondering what I had gotten myself into. Kevin comes home naked which causes gossip among his peers, and the next day he runs out of class sick and spontaneously turns into Prime. After class lets out he uses the opportunity to woo Kelly Cantrell, a girl he has a crush on but thinks he's a dweeb. I can understand that. Call me narrow minded, but I was not about to accept Archie Andrews as the secret identity of a superhero who was essentially a cross between Superman and the Hulk.

By the fourth issue, Kevin was looking a lot less dopey, but… maybe it was just my first impression but I was still having trouble accepting him as the hero.

The third issue started picking up, and was oddly eerie after the last two issues. Suffocating inside a slime monster, Kevin has a flashback to his first transformation: an agonizing pain which led to brief, sudden growth spurt which left a big mess all over his room and a hole in his wall. He's awakens at the lab of Dr. Gross, the scientist responsible for his transformation, and Duey, Gross' assistant "son" who received the same treatment as Kevin, but turns into a grotesque ogre-thing with little arms all over his body, like those frogs with trematodes. He escapes and gets into a fight with Prototype, another Ultraverse character who's basically Iron Man with a different color scheme.

The fight is cut short by the two starting a fire, giving Prime a chance to leave as the body breaks down. On the way home the Prime body falls apart, leaving Kevin unconscious on a smashed car engulfed in goop. Here, Russell has his first encounter with his son as Prime, and desperate for some kind of help, makes a phone call that will come back to bite him in the ass. At school the next day Kevin approaches Kelly about their new mutual friend, trying to find out if he could use his secret to win her over. It hooked my curiosity, and when I finished the fifth issue which had Prime slugging it out with a He-Man parody, I knew I was in love.

My first impression of Prime was that it was like He-Man, but at this point I was seeing it was a little more like the Hulk. Kevin is confused and frightened by what's happening to him, hated turning into Prime, and had his sick origin and an example of the abomination he could have turned into thrown into his face. And Prime wasn't tearing just Kevin apart, but his family. His father knew about it and was being traumatized probably even more than Kevin was, and his mother was going batshit because of her son's disappearances and her husband's behavior.

Now we got General Samuels, some military nutjob trying to control him through deceit, blackmail, and torture. I wanted to see how Kevin would break away from this guy's bonds and how he would finally come to terms with being Prime. Each issue left me savoring his last episode and pondering the next. At the end of issue 9 he was madder than ever, having realized Samuels' lies and getting caught in a nuclear explosion. At issue 10, I knew it was coming. He was going to get away from the psychotic military general. But how? And then...?

...then I hit the Rogue Prime arc, and if I had balls I imagine that’s what a kick in them would feel like.

Even if his resemblance to Richie Cunningham was somewhat of a turn-off for me, Kevin seemed like a fairly sweet and well-adjusted kid. But when Kevin does finally accept being Prime, he became a total dickhead about it. Here’s my question: a few issues ago, Prime got in General Thunderbolt Ross’ Samuels’ face and threatened to kill him if he so much as touched his parents. Why now is he not giving two shits that Ruth is threatening to leave Russell? Now, I can understand why Kevin became bitter. He had just gotten out of the hands of some asshole who was trying to control him with lies and an electrified dog collar just to further his own glory and ambitions, he was rescued by some gun-toting badass he thought was "the shit", and then his father ran off. And perhaps the thing that got me most about Rogue Prime was that he was introduced as "The REAL Prime," but it was like Jones and Strazewski were taking me on a pleasant car ride, then suddenly they jerked the wheel, and as the tires screeched I thought my face was going to smash through the window.

Here‘s the Rogue Prime arc in a nutshell: Kevin/Prime acts like a twat for six issues. He goes into night clubs picking fights. Russell runs off in search of answers to Kevin’s “problem.” Prime gets into a fight with Mike Haggar and Johnny Cage. Prime gets accused of being a pedophile because somebody finds the extra set of clothes he has to carry around because Kevin trashes the ones he’s wearing when he transforms. He tries to bust some zombie voodoo drug lord (I'm not making that up). He meets Turbocharge, although the cover makes it look like Prime shat him out, but Prime tells him to get lost, which really would have sucked if Prime had spawned him. The military opens fire on Prime, and only succeeds in pissing him off. Kevin’s mom decides to move to New York to get away from Prime hohoho the irony.

Plus, the art style was changing every damn issue, with 16 being almost sickening. This was because Breyfogle, the guy who did the artwork, quit after the twelfth issue. Maybe he realized how much this new Prime sucked. Or maybe he hated drawing that puke. C'mon, look at him. If you saw that flying around calling itself a hero, would you want him to come to your rescue? No, you'd probably want to punch him in the face.

The only issue I can really suggest reading is 11, which contains a major plot point, and a taste of this crap. Maybe 15 as well, which has a part that really caught my attention where Prime goes into some haunted mansion and sees all the evils in his life. But the rest is just different ways of Kevin/Prime being a jerkass. I would suggest skipping them, but I wonder if it was these books that made me appreciate 17-24 that much more.

Oh yeah, and Kelly's wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt in one issue.

I slogged through it anyway, knowing the original Prime was coming back in issue 17. When I got there, I almost felt traumatized, like my new friend suddenly backslapped me and told me to get out of his life. Issue 17 was like he came back with flowers, trying to apologize and explain himself and admit what an asshole he was, and how he got some counseling and promised he'd never do it again. But I wasn’t about to forget this betrayal.

But he tried hard to win back my trust. He showed me how with Hardcase's help he cleaned himself up since his trip through the gutter, rising from the ashes into an admirable superhero. He added some blue to his red and gold to make his color scheme easier on the eyes. He was cracking jokes and smiling at me, trying to make me smile back. He stopped asking me to accept Jimmy Olsen as the protagonist, although I was kind of wishing he would decide on who he wanted me to accept instead.

The books were extremely enjoyable, and several of them left me with a big smile. Maybe seeing Prime save Kelly's butt again and accepting only enough reward money to buy Hanukkah presents for his otherwise broke family only to have his aunt walk in with an armful of gifts his father left on the fire escape just tasted all the sweeter after gagging on that Rogue Prime bile, but it was great to see Kevin back to himself, only taking on Prime as a hero instead of a frightened child. Heck, by the end of #18, just two books in, I realized Prime was back and better than ever.

One knock I have against this arc is the two Primevil books, which were bloody retarded. Maybe not so much the second one, but the first one uses a sickening art style which left me wondering if the book was a joke or something. At first I thought Primevil was the result of a Mantra enemy possessing a Prime body that didn't dissolve like it was supposed to, but it was actually Necromantra (Mantra when possessed by some evil demon thing) bringing a discarded Prime body the government was researching to life over on the Godwheel. Kevin primes up to fight it, and for no reason his head forms on backwards. Actually, there is a reason for this - to give Phade something to do. Prime puts his head on the right way, then beats the snot out of Primevil. They were dumb, but forgettable, they lead to Issue #24, and #23 has a nifty Prime sketch gallery in the back.

#24 was so damn sweet and happy I forgave the Rogue Prime incident, and almost forgot it altogether. After watching everyone’s struggles - Kevin’s, his father’s and his mother’s - that was just too incredible. And as if seeing the Green family back together with the confused haze lifted wasn't great enough, even Kevin says how he hated the Rogue Prime and never wanted to turn into him again. I think I smiled for two hours straight after that.

While I would have been happy if #24 was the last book, I knew there were more Prime books. Namely, the Power of Prime miniseries, and the fifteen issue Marvel run. I also wanted to check out some Ultraforce books, wanting to know what Hardcase said to Kevin/Prime that turned that Rogue Prime shitfest into this. So, I read issues 25 and 26. It was like he found out I liked He-Man and instead of being himself, whom I was liking just fine, decided to try being like He-Man with the "powers being magical" crap, and even bringing in a female counterpart except she looks like Evil-Lyn and her name even sounds like “Evil-Lyn.”

By the way, in the back of my head I know She-Ra exists, but consciously I often forget her existence, mostly because I try to. And for that matter, any character that’s basically a pre-existing character with breasts does not exist in my world, be it She-Ra, Elven, or Sakura. This is doubly true for ones that just attach “she” or “girl“ or “woman” to the name (She-Hulk, Spidergirl, etc.). You’d think I’d be more sympathetic towards the female character, but surprise, I’m not.

Except 25 and 26 brought me to a dead-end which was continued and finished in a miniseries called Power of Prime, which I didn't have. I had a few from the Marvel run, but didn't think I should go on until I read the Power of Prime. I purchased them, the rest of the Marvel run, and a couple others I was missing like a Mantra that was essentially Prime 8 1/2, then had to wait around a week for them to arrive. In that time I revisited the other Prime books, making sure to avoid the Rogue books because I’d rather have a colonoscopy than read another page of Rogue Prime unless it was the issue he went Final in.

Then I remembered I still had the Prime Gross and Disgusting. The cover had an impressive image of Kevin with the classic Prime behind him, yet when I opened it, it had Rogue Prime… well, doing what Rogue Prime does (that's being a twathole for those of you who haven't been paying attention). I skimmed the back pages and found out that THIS was the issue in which Hardcase inspired Kevin to abandon the Rogue Prime and become Final, but even knowing that the Rogue parts were still difficult for me to get through. I'm not sure what's supposed to be gross and disgusting about this book. Maybe it's a joke on Dr. Gross, and the disgusting part was Dr. Gross showing Prime images of scantily clad women dancing around in an attempt to get him to "prime up." But Kevin breaks out, Hardcase breaks in, and as he watches Hardcase get pounded by the force of two Primes, Kevin realizes what a shit he's been. Prime evolves once more and comes to Hardcase's rescue, taking home some respect from Hardcase and the determination to make a true hero of himself.

A week later I had the Power of Grayskull Prime, and after reading it I was pretty sickened that I waited a flippin' week for that. While it had a neat ending, everything leading up to it was halfassed fluff and the middle was a backslap to what everything after Rogue Prime was about. I really don't understand why this "genetic virus from an alternate dimension where hobbits and anthropomorphs run around in bodies like Prime's because they want to look human" crap was even brought up, because there wasn't anything wrong with Prime being the result Dr. Gross's genetic engineering experiments. If by some chance I were called upon to decide the Prime continuity, I would seriously consider retconning this arc, sans the other Gross babies. Something came of Rogue Prime, but this is just unnecessary and I wouldn't be surprised if it was an editorial decision.

And now we’re at the Marvel run. I wasn't sure what to expect from it, but I figured it couldn't be as bad as Rogue Prime.

Hooooooo boooooy, was I wrong. I should have taken it as a sign of how this was all going to end when I saw how messed up many of the covers were.

"The real Prime can take a kick between the legs!"

The Black September was like a regurgitation of Rogue Prime, in that Kevin suddenly becomes drunk with his Prime power and is being an asshole about it, and needs to witness a battle between another hero he admires and a villian with similarities him to snap out of it and changes into some new Prime to join in the battle. Except this time, I really couldn't blame Kevin or Prime for it. I didn't read the issue it actually happened in (some Avengers/Ultraforce crossover), but it sounded like he had a run-in with some entity who screwed with his head. I don't know who that entity was storywise, but I knew in the real world it was the Marvel editors who were trying to win fanboy points by whoring Prime out to X-Men, Captain America, Hulk, and Spiderman crossovers.

Well, those scenes of Prime being a jerk weren't flashbacks, they were real time. Prime and Kevin somehow got seperated, and while Prime, lacking Kevin as his mind and soul, runs amuck, Kevin has an epiphany with the help of some natives who worship Spider-Man and a staredown with the Lizard and a pendant of Spider-Man's emblem that lets him see visions of his life and turn into a Spider-Man Prime hybrid, and then with Phade's help has to go tame the out of control Prime. It still like a shoehorned cater to Spider-Man fans, but it justified its existence, and I guess it was okay, at least better than Power of Prime.

Issue 5 has absolutely no reason to exist. Issue 4 ends with Prime flying off knowing he has to face up to his parents about the havok the fake Prime caused, but 5 is Prime being teleported to feudal Japan to team up with a female samurai called Arena to stop the resurrection of Cthulhu Hiruko. It has nothing to do with anything, and you're not missing anything by not reading it, plot or otherwise.

6, 7, and 8 are crossover comics with Prime and Solitaire trying to take out a drug ring. At this point, Marvel was probably just faffing around with Prime, completely missing/ignoring what he was about. Continuity was being thrown out, and even the storyline of individual issues wasn't making much sense. There's something about a fake Prime busting drug houses, which isn't mentioned until well after it needed to be to make any sense. The most I can remember of it is something about some drug that turns people into monsters, and a dream Kevin had where he's grown up and as big as Prime is, but he's in gym clothes and he and his father are working on the car and laughing and stuff. The latter made me smile, but didn't redeem this trilogy of indifference.

9 and 10 rekindled my heart which was starting to get cold after that dumbass fifth issue and the ho-hum Solitaire crossover. Continuity was back, and Prime hits a rough spot in his friendship with Turbocharge, and in smoothing it out learns something about himself and secrets in general. These are easily the highlight of the second volume. Breyfogle was back, and Kevin and Prime were drawn like they were between issues 4 and 10, albeit with different colors. The funny thing was, despite my initial reaction to that design I actually liked seeing Kevin and Prime drawn like that again. I dunno, the recent designs may have been more respectable, but they were also more generic. The classic design may have been a little dopey, but it was unique and special to Kevin and Prime, and with a little tweaking even that design was respectable.

But Prime's plot schizophrenia has a relapse at issue 11 and comes back worse than before, completely abandoning what happened in issues 9 and 10 to bring in - and I really wish I was making this up - some evil polka-dotted Mexican military dictator whose motivation for world domination is "my father was an asshole, and I vow to get back at him by being an even bigger asshole" who gets beaten not by Prime, but by an evil pumpkin man who in turns gets beaten again not by Prime, but by an evil squash man. The staff got a complete overhaul with new writers, and it shows, because these issues suck ass.

From Prime's debut to Vol 2 Issue 10, the only issue Jones and Strazewski didn't write was that retarded Hiruko one (okay, and only Jones wrote a few issues in the Marvel run), although the signs of editorial influence were all over their work for Marvel. I imagine the editors were distracted by a loud noise, say, backlash from how bad they were botching the Ultraverse. When they went to check it out Jones and Strazewski took the opportunity to put out a last hurrah with 9 and 10. When the editors found out about this, they skwered Jones and Strazewski on a ceremonial spear (or if you want the boring explanation, Jones and Strazewski quit because they were sick of Marvel telling them how to write their book).

In their place was Keith Griffen, a clueless pillock who couldn't have missed the point worse if the point was on an aerial banner, and he was throwing the bullets at the ground in the opposite direction. What the hell happened to Turbocharge? The only time he's even mentioned in any of these books is a hideous pin-up of him and Prime playing a video game in the back of one of the books. Kevin learned how to fight by hanging around Hardcase, Prototype, and the rest of Ultraforce, so why would he suddenly be back to "fighting like a child"? But my neon-flashing red flag of just how clueless this guy was? That would be when Russ said he didn't want to push on Kevin too hard because Kevin could tear him apart if he pissed him off. Except a couple issues before, Russ had no problem getting on Kevin (in Prime form to boot) about the fake Prime's rampage, and saw the worst that came of it was Kevin yelling back at him then feeling guilty about it immediately after. And what about when Kevin (again, in Prime form) welcomed him back with a smile and open arms after he had, you know, run off for several months, or the job he knew Kevin got him, or what he said to Ruth when she thought Prime went psycho again during that Ultra race?

And for pete's sake man, if you wanted to do something with a villian who could absorb Prime's power, why not just bring back Manhattan Project instead of pulling Fidel Spotty out of nowhere? Oh, right, you didn't know about him because you never actually read a Prime book.

Maybe I shouldn't fault Shaheen too much because Griffen left a pretty big mess behind at 13, and 15 wasn't ass sucking bad, but it was still poor and that was a pissass way to go out, and whenever I think about it I don't know if the feeling I get is sadness or nausea. Kind of ironic that in Vol 1 this was the time Rogue Prime showed up and also left me sick to my stomach, no? But at least Rogue culminated into something, like a butterfly emerging from its black cocoon. These just left me wanting to kill everyone involved with the Marvel takeover of Malibu. Ending a story or series is fine and all, but leave me feeling like my friend told me everything he wanted to, then took me on one last get-together and exchanged hugs and proper farewells with me afterwards, not like I saw him get shot in the head just as he was opening his mouth to say something!

As if the issues themselves weren't bad enough, they left me with no real conclusion. 10 wasn't an ending like Vol. 1's 24 could have been. 13 opened a huge can of worms that was addressed by saying 15's the last issue and everyone lives happily ever after, and I want to forget these five issues ever happened anyway. I suppose I could ignore everything after Vol. 1 Issue 24, but even though somebody completely forgot Vol. 2's 9 and 10 I don't want to (especially since 2.10 is probably my second favorite issue, behind 1.24). I guess the best thing to do would be to accept any issue written by Jones and/or Strazewski (except Origin/Power of Prime), then pretend Prime, Turbocharge, and Phade continued fighting evil as a more tightly knit team, now that they all know each other better.

But I couldn't blame Prime for this like I blamed him for Rogue. It was like we were walking together and he had just finished telling me a sweet little story about him and Turbocharge, and was getting ready to continue his story. Suddenly an imposter Prime ran up to us from nowhere, slapped me, then turned, stabbed the real Prime in the heart and kicked him in the balls, then ran off cackling. Before I knew what happened I was about to tell Prime off, when I looked down and saw him curled up on the ground, clutching his groin and wimpering, then looked up and caught a fleeting glimpse of the imposter. I turned back, and he had picked himself up, one hand between his legs and the other trying to stop the bleeding. He limped off to get medical help, but that was the last I ever saw of him.

Leaving me with the memories we had together, the memories I at least have photo albums of so I could go back and relive them. The happy times, the tense times, the questionable, but forgettable times. But there was still so much I wanted to do with him. I wanted to see how he continued his friendship with Turbocharge, now that they each knew each other's big secrets. I wanted to see a little more of Kelly. And I know it's just a worthless fan wish, but I really wanted to see Kevin prime up and lay out somebody to rescue his parents, even fighting off a burglar would have sufficed for me. But thanks to Marvel, the last image I had of him was his desecrated corpse after getting untimely killed off. If Wikipedia is to be believed, Joe Quesada said he wanted to revive the Ultraverse and Prime would be one of the first if he could do it, but complications with profit sharing make it next to impossible. That's great, because I think I'd rather see Prime, and all the Ultraverse for that matter, rest in peace instead of seeing his grave dug up and his body defiled, because Marvel just screwed it all up then and nowadays they're fucking insane. I'll settle for reflecting on all the great moments I had with him, ignore the not-so great moments, and at least forgive the bad ones, because even though the bad times were really bad, the good times were really awesome.