Ultimate Marvel

The Ultimate Universe line had a weird amount of cannibalism. It came up more than once.

edited 14th Jan '18 6:21:18 PM by Zeromaeus

Yeah, let's all be happy it's now a distant memory, and we pretend it never existed. I am also glad Miles left that world, because he was one of the few bright spots in it.

Actually, it is returning, haven't you paid attention?

edited 15th Jan '18 10:34:52 AM by Forenperser

Please, for Miles sake let that crappy world go.

Don't like, don't read.

This has always been a nonsense argument. If something's not only bad but—as the Ultimate Universe did—promotes bigoted or creepy opinions it should be criticized.

I just think some people really overdo it. Sure, much stuff in the UU was cringeworthy, but do we really want to compare the numbers with the 616-verse? How much sexist, racist and outright offensive stuff has been published THERE, in the FAR longer time it has been alive?

The appeal of the UU was that it was a fresh universe, where new readers could get into without decades of continuity behind it. It also offered a new take on iconic characters. Divisive, sure, but not necessarily bad. Take the Hulk for example. Am I really supposed to believe that, despite how many untold time that monster transforms and wrecks tons of stuff, nobody actually dies? Wasn't there even a tie-in issue during World War Hulk, where they tried to explain away all the non-existent collateral damage by saying that 'Hulk subconsciously runs numbers in his head and calculates how to break stuff without ever injuring anybody'. Yeah....whatever. In contrast, we have the Ultimate Hulk who pulls absolutely no punches and has a confirmed bodycount in the three digits after his first apperance alone. Much more believable to me, especially the considering 'hated and feared' part.

Or Captain America. I for one always hated the very concept of the character. He was a remnant from WW 2, a propaganda figure that should have been long buried, especially for the horribly clicheed America Saves the Day shtick. Ultimate Cap however shows that a man clad in a flag and coming from a time period of over 70 years ago, with VASTLY different morals, is logically NOT your ideal hero.

Once again, I would never object to the UU going through some bad times. Jeph Loeb in particular was the worst thing to ever happen to the universe. I just object to the notion that many people have, that it is supposedly THE worst thing to ever happen to the comic books industry, just want to see it die, die, die, and don't even entertain the thought that many people like it for real. Especially now, that a gateway to the Mainstream Marvel verse is found, I see more potential than ever.

edited 16th Jan '18 10:23:17 AM by Forenperser

Ultimate Cap is far from logical.

Care to elaborate? He is a jerk, sure enough, but he was always a far more believable character than his over-polished 616 counterpart in my eyes, especially considering the time period he is from.

(Also, many people forget that he grew as a character over the years. Everybody only focuses on the France quote)

edited 16th Jan '18 12:14:25 PM by Forenperser

It's interesting to compare the cases of Magneto and Captain America. In the first case, a character with a complex morality is turned into one who takes things with a black&white one, and in the second case, it's the opposite. And yet, for some reason, some people complain in both cases that "They Changed It, Now It Sucks!".

By the way, yes, they do change the characters in Ultimate Marvel. That's the whole point of an Ultimate Universe.

Mostly because Cap is a guy who is represented as someone who is the ideal man. The thing with Ultra Cap they went overboard making him extremely bigoted.

I think that was the point. They deconstructed a character who is fighting for his country, firmly believing in his own ideals. And they gave him the morals of a person from that particular time period.

Also, yeah, echoing on what Grigori said, the entire shtick of the UU was to be different from the Mainstream universe. Not much sense in just copying everything.

edited 16th Jan '18 12:29:36 PM by Forenperser

It's one thing to deconstruct him, it's another thing to dial up all his flaws into unlikable levels. He could have still been a likable character, but his views would have been a bit backwards. The UU handled itself on the mindset that making everything edgy will make things mature.

Well like I said he evolved over the years. In the end, he wasn't all that bad, even became president and sacrificed himself.

By becoming exactly like canon Cap.

I only read the Ultimate line after Ultimatum & I couldn't find much difference between the 2 Caps.

Our Franchise Original S In page has a good write-up on Ultimate Cap.

" Ultimate Captain America was initially lauded as a more realistic version of the character, thanks to his Deliberate Values Dissonance. This coupled with his frequent feats of badassery and strong (to the point of extreme) Patriotic Fervor, were well received by post-9-11 America. However, even from the beginning there were some who were turned off by his regressive point of view. Initially though, while a lot less idealistic and friendly than Mainstream Cap, the writers ensured his views were subdued enough that they felt like a product of his upbringing and he could still be seen as a hero (as well as the sign here and there that he was growing out of his outdated views).

Unfortunately, later writers fell too much in love with the idea of him being a Politically Incorrect Hero, to the point that some stories would outright stop simply to remind us of that. He even started displaying several prejudices that were not realistic for the time (for instance, his well-known dislike for Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys, a concept unheard of in World War II and which didn’t even make sense as this version still shared a history of working with the French resistance), to the point of becoming more a caricature of what people with that mindset tended to idealize World War II soldiers as. This, coupled with the resurgence of the popularity towards 616 Cap during the Brubaker run and his brief death and it becoming more well-known among readers that 616 Cap's fairly enlightened beliefs weren't that far from many real-life individuals of his era, caused his popularity to plummet. He went from being seen as a brilliant modernized take on Cap to at best an unironic version of US Agent, and at worst the most famous example of how to write Captain America badly (to the point that he's even tainted appraisals of the mainstream Cap in some circles)."

To add to that, 616 Cap also mocks the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys trope.

edited 16th Jan '18 4:03:52 PM by RAlexa21th

Well, lets agree to disagree then. I prefer Ultimate Cap because he is flawed. 616 Cap is the epitome of a male Mary Sue for me.

And those were just 2 examples of the UU take on certain characters. There are many more that I liked (and off course disliked too).

edited 16th Jan '18 4:37:22 PM by Forenperser

There's being flawed......... and then there's being a total fucking asshat.

Which Ultimate Cap isn't. Again, I think many people focus way too much on his flaws and entirely ignore his good sides. Especially after Peter's death, he worked hard on himself to become a better man.

A total fucking asshat would be Ultimate Reed Richards.

edited 16th Jan '18 4:40:13 PM by Forenperser

That's not criticism, that's just plain insults. Please reformulate your post.

As for both caps, Ultimate Cap has been in a Divided States of America scenario, and his reaction was to kick the asses of the rebel leaders and force their states back into the union, like it or not. Prime Cap, to my knowledge, has only been in such a scenario in the Civil War tie-in of Secret Wars (yes, a non-canon story, but that's the closest thing he got). His reaction was to simply lead one of the seceded countries, and keep America divided with his intransigence over "The Iron". So, no, they are not similar guys. It may be up to discussion who earned better the name of "Captain America" when America was at its darkest hour; I have my own opinion, others may disagree.

edited 16th Jan '18 5:47:20 PM by GrigorII

When it comes down to it Ultimate Cap was originally supposed to be more realistic, until he turned into a complete caricature that presented what people thought someone from the 40's would hold. As someone said before, his disrespect towards the French is an example of someone who hasn't don their research about the 40's culture. On the other hand, the fact that Cap is Irish he would have faced some prejudice of his own and wouldn't have been as extreme as shown in his ultimate depiction.

Not all people think alike. Not now, and not in the 1940s. So it can't really be said that "he can't hold such beliefs, because nobody does". Cap (ultimate or otherwise) does not need his beliefs to be approved by others; remember the "you move" speech.

Ultimate Cap's perceived jingoism may be rejected, but it does not come from out of the blue. The character's main definition is that he is the ultimate patriot, and the line between patriotism, nationalism and jingoism is a thin one. It makes sense that a deconstruction of the Captain America archetype would take it beyond that line, at least on times (remember that, fight bravado aside, at the hour of truth he rejected jingoism, at the end of Ultimates 2)

He can't hold a belief that didn't exist in the era he's from. Him being racist towards blacks or Asians would be believable. Him holding to a post-9/11 American belief about the French is not.

Actually anti-french sentiments in the US predate WW 2 for quite a while https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-French_sentiment_in_the_United_States

Sure, the exact term 'Cheese-eating surrender monkeys' is something from the 90s, but Ultimate Cap also never used that term.