Ultimate Marvel

616 Cap hasn't always been the physical embodiment of what the United States believed/politically represented, either. The first issue, where Cap was punching Hitler on the cover, was made before we as a country decided to side against the Nazis. There were quite a few political figures in power that still favored ties with Germany. So it was more a statement on what we should represent rather than what we did represent at the time. I think heroes like that have a deserved place in the medium.

edited 27th Jan '18 3:50:14 AM by Zeromaeus

Cap has always been used to make statements about the government. There's a reason he's been a werewolf, dead, and a fascist.

I actually want to read an AU where instead of fighting Nazis, Cap fought the 'Japs'. That would be a very interesting concept, IMO.

That might get ugly. While Cap would have no problem fighting Imperial Japan, he would have probably draw the line at hauling Japanese American citizens into internment camps.

There was an Invaders issue that dealt with it.

Tried to get into reading the Ultimate line, took one look at Ultimate Green Goblin's design and decided that it wasn't for me.

Brian Michael Bendis Leaves Marvel With the Perfect Easter Egg in 'Defenders'

"However, Bendis’ own police station appearance isn’t his last. In the same scene, another woman who has taken too much of Diamondback’s drug begins shouting something about the Elders of the Cosmos and dead universes.

Could this be one last act of foreshadowing on Bendis’ part? The idea of dead universes not staying dead was a major part of Al Ewing’s run on The Ultimates, which featured the return of the original Ultimates from the Ultimate Marvel Universe. The Ultimate Marvel Universe was a casualty of the Secret Wars event, which rebirthed the Marvel multiverse. However, Bendis himself seemed to reveal that a new Ultimate Marvel Universe was born when the Marvel multiverse reformed and even visited it in the pages of Spider-Men II.

Could this be Bendis foreshadowing the full return of the Ultimate Marvel Universe? Or another Marvel event in the works? Or is he hinting at things he’s already working at for DC Comics? It would be the first time these references worked across companies."

Is Venom Taking Inspiration from Ultimate Spider-Man?

And yet another thing from Ultimate Marvel gets incorporated into the wider mainstream Marvel universe: A History of Marvel’s Incredible, Cannibalistic Hulk

Finally, the news that every comic book fan was expecting: Marvel Has Plans for the Reintroduced Ultimate Universe

I recently made some additions on the Ultimate Marvel page which corrected Grigor II's media blitz on the tropes pages. It seems to me based on his edits there and his posts here, that aside from him, nobody seems invested in ultimate marvel.

Seeing his comments here and coming later, I think I'll add my say. PROS: - I liked Ultimate Marvel in concept and theory. Ultimate Spider-Man for most of its issues are among the Best Spider-Man stories. I won't say it's a replacement or surpassed the original or any such thing but for what it is its great. I love Peter, MJ, Aunt May, Gwen. I even like the idea of Shadowcat being part of Peter's gang. Not so much them dating but her as a friend. I liked the later issues where Peter is basically the leader of his own supergroup with Ultimate Johnny Storm, Ultimate Iceman, Shadowcat looking to him, and it becomes like a classic Fantastic Four setup, except Peter is now 616!Reed Richards sans sexism. To be honest, if they reboot Ultimate Universe as they are trying to do, I'd like to see them build off that and make Peter the Captain America or Iron Man or major superhero of his world. That's something that hasn't been done in 616, where Peter isn't the major iconic hero of his community, despite being the most famous. Among the villains, I like Shocker, Dr. Octopus. No question Ultimate Clone Saga was better than the original, good character work and everything and interesting stuff with Jessica Drew. Ultimate Mysterio was also cool and I wish more was done with him. Also like Miles Morales a lot.

- I even liked Ultimate Fury a lot. A lot of people said he's Gary Stu and so on but still he's a fun character to see. And his dynamic holding different parts of the UU in line is interesting. I especially like his dynamic with Peter. Surprising as this is for some, Ultimate Thor served as a decent-ish gateway for me into a character who always seemed outlandish. The story where Loki ends up Gaslighting the world into thinking Thor is a madman, was a good touch and while I don't like everything about that story arc, that part was good and Ultimate Loki prepared me for MCU Loki.

- As for Ultimate X-Men, Shadowcat is nice. I even like Jimmy Hudson. To

So moving on,

CONS - I dislike the Fantastic Four stuff completely. The short answer is that I realize that parts of FF are hard to adapt and reinterpret but the choices made are still dubious, questionable, and not good stories or good characters in my view.

- Not a fan of the Ultimates. Don't care for Cannibal Hulk, Wingnut!Cap, Incest-normalizer Janet van Pym, and the Lannister-ization of Wanda and Pietro. Ultimate Tony as this drunk tool escapes this mostly on account of being bland. Yes, somehow a playboy alcholic tech-bro is bland in Ultimate Comics. Nothing to say about Hank Pym. Don't care for the stories in the Ultimates since they don't seem to be actually heroic.

- I generally don't care for the Ultimate X-Men. To be honest, I like the immediate Post-Ultimatum phase where the X-Men are now beggars and so on but only because I never felt the Ultimate X-Men in the X-Mansion stuff was worth mourning. Don't care for the mutants are government project and not actually products of evolution. Ultimate Magneto sucks. The Weapon X arc is bad.

- Ultimatum is terrible.

My opinion is conventional and chimes in with what everyone says. I will also add to what one poster mentioned earlier about the creepy sexualization in the books about Wolverine and Stark being creeps of the first order. I didn't like it then, and I don't think it's cool, or defensible in any sense.

So if Ultimate Marvel is being rebooted I hope they actually avoid repeating this stuff. They salvage and build on what's inherent and go forward from there.

The things is I have a feeling they are going to repeat their same mistakes and not have learned anything.

I actually think that a good chunk of what defined Ultimate Marvel back then is no longer needed.

Ultimate Marvel was conceived in the hope of being movie-friendly. It streamlined the origins and plots, dials down the magical and fantastic elements, makes all the outfits black or darker than usual, and has meta-humor about how lame the usual comic-book stuff is. By movie-friendly I mean superhero stuff in the early 2000 where the attitude was that you can't be too outlandish and comic-book like, you know the early X-Men Bryan Singer era, jokes about "yellow spandex" and so on.

But now the MCU has basically made the classic comic stuff, you know wizards, talking animals, and Norse God Aliens, the new normal. So that's not really needed. In many ways, Christopher Nolan's Batman movies is the real Ultimate Marvel movie, you know Joker doesn't have his chemical weapons, Robin is the name of some guy, Ra's Al Ghul isn't an immortal who takes a dip in pits and so on, while the DCEU with its jerky heroes are closer to The Ultimates and Ultimate X-Men, and Diana's origin in the Wonder Woman movie is identical to Ultimate Thor (i.e. his entire pantheon is already dead and wiped out save for Loki/Ares) and he's initially seen as a loon for his mythological claims until it turns out real.

If Ultimate Marvel comes back it's not going to be in the same situation when it first came, i.e. when Marvel was bankrupt, and trying to turn their less well known stuff into movies. So it will be pretty different from what happened before.

I'm going to get a lot of heat for this, but hot take: the design of the Ultimate Goblin makes sense in the context of the Marvel Ultimate verse. Think about it, the theme of genetic engineering is prevalent throughout the Ultimate stories, the Hulk is not even gamma powered here, so in the context of the Marvel verse, Norman Osborn turning himself into a Goblin monster through an overdose of OZ is consistent. But wait you say, regular Green Goblin is already genetically tampered with and all he needs to do to be a villain is just give himself gadgets and a costume, i say the Goblin monster is Norman symbolically trading away his humanity for more power (or alternatively exposing his own vileness).

Plus say what you will about the Goblin monster, but the Ultimate incarnation of the Goblin is one of the most powerful ones, while you do lose the aerodynamic aspects of Spider-Man Goblin fights, there is an interesting David vs Goliath aspect to the fights. Plus Ultimate Goblin is one of the few Goblins to actually defeat Spider-Man in a one on one fight, so say what you will about the design, he's still a very effective villain.

Within Ultimate Universe, I guess Ultimate Goblin isn't a bad idea.

This has already been discussed in the Marvel Comics General thread, but in case someone did not notice it, Donny Cates Wants to Reboot Marvel's Ultimate Universe.

So given Ultimate Marvel started out as a from the start new continuity...

...Ultimate-er Marvel?

Maximum Over-Marvel.

They might have to find a new adjective. Ultimate as an adjective is supposed to mean final, definitive, total, and last...but the way that Marvel used it, it was basically there because they thought Ultimate sounded hip, young, edgy in the 90s sense. Ultimatum is a good example of branding overpowering reason since Ultimatum is a demand or condition and yet Magneto is a "no quarter given, no prisoners taken" kind of guy and that's what the story does. There's no Ultimatum. It's there because people thought it sounded edgy.

In general, Ultimate Marvel has outlived its usefulness. It was commissioned as an experiment. USM the Flagship Franchise of the Ultimate brand was a short miniseries whose success expanded into its own thing and that led to other ultimate takes on the X-Men, the FF, the Avengers (or Ultimates). The reason for that experiment was zeitgeist or lightning-in-a-bottle. It came out in 2000, the dawn of the new millennium, in the last year before 9/11 (and as a result Ultimate Marvel, and especially Ultimate Spider-Man is stuck in, largely reflects a Bush First Term sensibility and the fact that they used Comic-Book Time from the start meant that they were stuck with what they did). It was also intended to be adaptation friendly, and at the time the movies were stuff like X-Men Film Series or Blade, i.e. Movie Superheroes Wear Black, Doing Inthe Wizard, jokes about "yellow spandex".

Now that you have the MCU where you have Doctor Strange as a movie (who was downgraded into a hack celebrity shill for the entirety of the Ultimate U), talking racoons and Thanos snapping half the universe with a gauntlet played straight and succeeding...the whole aesthetic of the Ultimate Universe has gone for good. It's faded, it's passe.

"Ultimate" is just a hammy adjetive, as those Marvel is well used to use, from the start and to this day, such as "Amazing", "Spectacular", "Incredible", "Mighty", "Uncanny", "Unlimited, "All-New", "Atonishing", "Invincible", etc. I don't see any problem with it, as it is just stuff of the covers. Other than the Ultimates themselves, the word "Ultimate" has seldomly been used in-story. The threat of Magneto ("they will pay the ultimate price") is the only one I remember right now.

As for the MCU, there is an error in your premise: you talk as if the comics of Marvel had a single and unified tone, in line with the films. Not quite. We have horror comics (Hulk, Venom), upbeat comics (Ms. Marvel, Runaways), superhero comedy (West Coast Avengers, Spider-Man/Deadpool), 1990s-style (X-Force, Black Order), police procedurals involving superheroes (Daredevil, Cloak & Dagger), sci-fi (Black Panther), political controversy (Captain America), introspective comics (Daredevil, Old Man Logan), homages to old glories (Marvel Knights 20th, X-Men Disassembled and Age of X-Man, Old Man Quill), etc. And note that in all cases I'm talking about things that Marvel is publishing right now, all in the stands at the time and next to each other. So who's really to say that there is no space for the Ultimate comics among them?

Edited by GrigorII on Mar 1st 2019 at 11:08:33 AM

I've been reading the Ultimate line because I never got the chance before. I'm still in the Pre-Ultimatum days, and enjoying it. Honestly, not bad stuff. I feel like a lot of the negatives, and there are a few, have been accentuated by time. The Gah Lak Tus trilogy was pretty neat, no one ever really talks about it though.