On the face of it, it looks like a zero sum game; Marvel strips one of their X-Men characters of his Canadian heritage, and then reveals that another long-lived mutant happens to hail from the well-behaved country to the North of the US. But when the replacement Canadian for popular hero Wolverine is official most evil mutant ever Magneto, you have to wonder: Does Marvel have something against Canada in general? The revelation of Magneto's heritage, plus the brand new official first date of Magneto and Professor Xavier, under the jump.

This week's third issue of Marvel's Ultimate Origins series focuses on the first time that the future Ian McKellan met the future Patrick Stewart, revealing that everyone's favorite bald telepath apparently had a thing for his students before he was crippled:Luckily, Charles Xavier seems to like the hard to get thing:As with all good first dates, the two quickly end up in a back alley. Sadly for slashficcers the world over, it's just to test each other's powers:From there, it's a whirlwind romance of wanting to change the world and romping through the lush greenness of "the Savage Land," because they really are making this way too easy to read things into the story. It's in the Savage Land that Magneto makes his fateful revelation: Relatively normal, Erik? In Canada? I think not.

To be fair, in Ultimate Origins, Wolverine is also firmly Canadian, so perhaps the whole point of the series is to show that Canada isn't necessarily evil as such; it's just full of genetic mutations who will cause massive amounts of destruction when they fight in America. It's probably an allegory or something.

Ultimate Origins #3 [Marvel.com]

It isn't just Serenity lunchboxes from Dark Horse Comics this week; they're also putting out a slab of goodness (in the form of Hellboy spinoff, Lobster Johnston Vol. 1: Iron Prometheus, bringing Mike Mignola's pulp crimefighter face to face with mystic Nazis on the eve of World War II.) And a slab of franchise-appeasing nostalgia (Star Wars Omnibus: Droids Volume 1, showing you yet more comedic misadventures of C3P0 and R2-D2 flying solo without parental guidance. It's just like Weird Science, trust me. Okay, maybe not).

Elsewhere in the world of four color periodicals, the fun is mostly coming from Berkeley's Image Comics: Rick Remender and Kieron Dwyer's "zombies, meet porn" comedy XXXombies gets a paperback collection, Earthworm Jim creator Doug Tennapel's new book Monster Zoo (soon to be a major motion picture!) comes out. And most importantly, the first collected volume of Proof (Imagine X-Files crossed with Hellboy, with Bigfoot replacing Mulder) hits stores as well.

Marvel Comics are, as is so often the case, chasing after the movie dollar with Hulk Vs. The Marvel Universe, a 224-page collection of Bruce Banner's mean green alter ego punching your favorite superheroes over and over. If you're looking for more than just violence, Brian Michael Bendis' Ultimate Origins begins, giving you a massive dose of conspiracy theory to accompany the secret origins of both Captain America and Wolverine; it's pretty, but potentially too dense for its own good. Also pretty is Astonishing X-Men Sketchbook, an art-heavy teaser to Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi's relaunch of the Joss Whedon mutant book.

DC Comics, meanwhile, are pretty much taking the week off with the exception of one book. I mean, sure, the Legion of Super-Heroes: 1050 Years In The Future is going to be an enjoyable anthology of stories from the 50 year history of the superteens from the next millennium, and Robin/Spoiler is more than just Batman's sidekick ruining the next episode of Battlestar Galactica for you (Spoiler is, in actuality, his thought-dead-but-not-really girlfriend). But still, the only DC book that counts this week is the first issue of Trinity, their new weekly book spotlighting the threesome that is Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman's unique relationship. It may not be as sexy as that sounds, but nonetheless, with Kurt Busiek and Ultimate Spider-Man's Mark Bagley at the creative wheel, it's very possibly going to be the most entertaining book to hit the stands in the next seven days.

You know the drill of this part by now: You can find the complete list of everything shipping here and find where to buy the lunchbox of your choice here. Because, seriously people. Lunchboxes.

The Ultimate line was created in the year 2000 as an attempt by Marvel to make their core characters more friendly to a mainstream audience who didn't feel like wading through 40 years of continuity in order to enjoy a Spider-Man comic (The alternative, making Spider-Man comics that didn't rely on 40 years of continuity in order to be enjoyable, didn't seem to occur to them for some reason). After the successful launch of first series Ultimate Spider-Man, the line has kept itself small, concentrating mostly on characters who happened to have movies coming out - titles in the line have included Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Iron Man, Ultimate Daredevil and Elektra and Ultimate Sucky Ghost Rider Oh God Why Did They Go With Nic Cage. Okay, maybe not that last one.

Sadly, as Marvel's main line started getting more big name creators, attention from fans and - most importantly - sales, the Ultimate line has fallen into disrepair; something that Ultimate Origins aims to rectify. And with reasons like this, who can fail to be excited?

Wow? How can anyone not want to see "the first appearance of the Ultimate ?"? Not to mention "The End of Wouldn't You Like To Know"? It's like they knew they had to try and get people's attentions, but forgot to do anything about it before slapping this together in their lunch break on deadline day. Here's hoping that the already-announced sequel Ultimatum, written by Heroes exec producer Jeph Loeb, will get more people excited.

Marvel Lists Top Ten Reasons To Read Ultimate Origins #1 [Newsarama]