Ultimate Marvel

Uh, I don't mean "he speaks for people" as if "Red Skull believes it" but as if "writer took arguments people make and put them in Skull's mouth to make them look bad".

But, Ok, let me take a look at these preview pages. ...getting rid of this political correctness bull" said character who's clearly in wrong. OK, let me get this straight.

This comic is trying to tell me that we do not have a problem with political correctness going wild? This seems to me to be is extremely dismissive and offensive to all these who were harmed by current events.

Am I misreading something here?

Yes. You just linked to a bunch of tumblrs, rather than, you know, actual articles. Oh and one of the articles you did link to is goddamn InfoWars. InfoWars. The place filled with conspiracy theories. Really. And the other article is from the Gatestone Institute, a clearly anti-Muslim organization. Everything you stated was a bunch of xenophobic bullshit. The only refugee crisis is the fact that refugees themselves are in danger of being hurt, killed, or raped.

The percentage of refugees who are terrorists is not only miniscule, it's nearly nonexistent. It's a problem invented by xenophobes in order to spread fear about "foreigners."

edited 16th Jun '16 3:46:20 PM by alliterator

In the last months I have started reading Ultimate Marvel titles again, Both the titles that I have read back when they were published, and those that I did not catch back then. The whole X-Men run, several Ultimates minis, Ultimate Origins, Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, Ultimate Human, Ultimatum, Ultimate Galactus trilogy, Cataclysm, Miles Morales' Spider-Man, etc, etc. It is definitely the ultimate comic book experience. I like it even more than I liked it back then. There's hardly anything about all of it that I do not like (perhaps the arts here and there, but that's it).

By the way, I was not a newcomer to comics when the Ultimates started. In fact, I must be one of those few who read the continuity-porn filled Avengers Forever and got almost 80% of the references. I knew all there was to know about the pre-Ultimates comic books. And, having read all the things came before (and thinking that the Busiek-Perez run on the Avengers was the best the genre was capable of), I stand before my idea that the Ultimate Universe really changed the genre forever and left a before and after point.

However, I do no think that the Ultimate Universe is "dark". It is certainly darker than most superhero runs, but that's just it. Dark comics are things like Sin City, Mort Cinder, Alack Sinner, Ernie Pike, El Eternauta, etc. The Ultimate comics, for all their tragedies and grounded tone, even among 9/11-like disasters, still have some humor and some upbeat moments, some superhero fantasy (really dark works must lack even that). It is not dark or violent just for the sake of being dark or violent, I'm familiar with The Dark Age Of Comic Books, and the Ultimate comics are not that.

I think the scene that best sums up The Ultimates is that one moment near the end of Ultimates 1 where Iron Man is inspired to get up and keep fighting when he sees the little kids who are counting on him.... aaaaaand then the soldiers who are on the scene kick the kids in the face for absolutely no reason. Seriously, you get to the end of the Ultimates, and you're like, "I don't like any of these characters! They're all awful people!" Tony Stark is the only remotely likeable one, and even he's trying to seduce Laura Bush!

Its been a minute since I read any of the Ultimate lines. I remember liking their Fantastic 4 and Spiderman. I remember being less than enthused by the X-Men line.

I mostly remember the whole thing for producing one of the best Spiderman games I've ever played.

I also remember feeling that Ultimate Doctor Strange was drastically under-utilized before they decided to pop him like a cherry.

edited 24th Oct '17 7:19:09 PM by Zeromaeus

Well, Dr. Strange's magic is quite the complete opposite of the grounded tone of the Ultimate universe. I was surprised to find that they even bothered to adapt him to begin with.

A lot of the people involved with Ultimate Marvel don't seem to have understood the difference between a work being dark or mature, and a work being tasteless or edgelordish, and a fair amount of the content trended towards the latter. Ultimate Spider-Man was the exception, and the only book in the series that, prior to the end, I can remember fondly. There was some genuinely good stuff in that book—sadly, even that was often tainted by association with worse books like Ultimate X-Men.

The Ultimate Universe was an interesting experiment, but one that I think fundamentally missed the point of a lot of the characters it was reinventing. There's changing up a status quo or a standardized portrayal, and then there's leaving the characters unrecognizable. As a longtime comic book fan I can say that, outside of Ultimate Spider-Man, I did not recognize most of these characters, and that's a damn shame because, after being introduced to the project by Ultimate Spider-Man, I had wanted to like the others.

Well, my personal definition of a "tasteless" and "edgelordish" is the Age of Apocalypse, and the Ultimate universe is nowhere near that.

Breaking news: Spider-Men II has ended with the 5º issue... and the Ultimate Marvel Universe is back!

Marvel Comics’ All-New Ultimate Universe, Explained

https://www.cbr.com/ultimate-universes-return-bendis-explains/

@ Grigor II

Nah, Ultimate Marvel was just edgy for edgy sakes.

I don't think it is fair to brush off ALL of the UU like that. Even though many writers really overdid it, there WERE some pretty great stories in there. Not just in Ultimate Spider-Man.

Edgy: daringly innovative; on the cutting edge.

So yes, Ultimate Marvel was edgy. Thanks for the compliments.

If Ultimatum was cutting edge then the definition of the word needs to be changed.

I only read the Ultimate stuff after Ultimatum & it wasn't that edgy most likely because Ultimatum was where it hit maximum edge & there literally was no where to do but down after that.

Boy did the Ultimate universe die a pitiful death.

edited 10th Jan '18 6:20:25 PM by slimcoder

What did you read, exactly, and what problem did you find? Because Miles Morales, Hickman's Ultimates and Spencer's X-Men are all awesome.

Being accused of trying to be edgy is not a compliment. Being called an edgelord, which is what I would describe at least have the Ultimate Universe writers (and characters) as is definitely not a compliment.

edited 10th Jan '18 9:31:11 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I have very rarely heard edgy used as a compliment.

Even when its used not as a derogatory term is mostly only in parody works.

I gotta admit, I was kind of intrigued by Ultimate Magneto. Sure, he was an irredeemable bastard and a far cry from his mainstream countperart's Anti-Villain status, not even having a Freudian Excuse, but you gotta remember: 616-Magneto wasn't always like that. Claremont made him that way.

The UU basically went with the original Lee/Ditko-characterization (that of a genocidal madman) and turned it Up To Eleven.

Well, I thought that an "edgelord" was some kind of internet troll who shows up to disrupt forum threads with pretentious statements.

The interesting part about Magneto is that Millar reimagined him as the brutal leader of a terrorist group that commits actual terrorist attacks (a type of character that Marvel, Ultimate or otherwise, was lacking). And then, a few months later, the 9/11 suddenly introduces terrorism into the hot political topics.

I think Magneto getting the Draco in Leather Pants treatment has it's own problems, but turning him back into an irredeemable one-dimensional villain really doesn't provide anything for his character. The Claremont take on Magneto really cemented him as a character, who you could feel for and not just some big baddy you have to defeat.

Well, that's one way to see it. It can also be said that mainstream Magneto has been in such a Heel–Face Revolving Door roller-coaster over the years (Generic Doomsday Villain, My God, What Have I Done?, complete hero, anti-hero, Well-Intentioned Extremist, good dictator, evil dictator, good parent, selfish parent, villain again, hero again, etc.), that al least with Ultimate Magneto we always knew what to expect.

In this case of Ultimate Magneto Tropes Are Not Good, because it's another reason why the Ultimate Universe relied too much on trying to be edgy and dark.

edited 12th Jan '18 8:51:09 AM by firewriter

Just because he was an irredeemable bastard doesn't mean he was a flat character.

Actually most readers did say that Magneto in that comic really was just one atrocity after another. I mean he even encouraged his followers to eat humans.