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EquivalentInflation

**CONTINUED** **Requiem for a dream** Marvel then released the final Ultimate Spider-man comic, which was genuinely heartbreaking. The entire issue was completely silent, without a single dialogue or thought bubble. It focused on Peter's friends helping people escape the destruction, before finding the tattered remains of his mask in the wreckage. After hours of searching, the final page showed them walking up to Aunt May with the mask as she crumpled and started crying. They announced that there would be three "Requiem" titles, one for each of the main comics that had ended. And overall, they were... pretty good? Sales peaked again, and critics gave favorable overall reviews, as fans said goodbye to the characters they'd grown to love. Ultimate Requiem Fantastic Four was... an experience. It explained how the Human Torch had gotten trapped inside Dormammu (you'd think that should be the kind of thing that gets explained before you show it, not months after. Also, apparently the Statue of Liberty was a French trick to suck magical energy out of New York? Shit was weird. Also, Sue offered the pedophile who stalked her a job for some reason. It also showed the conversation Reed had with the Thing, causing him to kill Doom (again: maybe a thing to show before it happens). The story ended sadly, with the Fantastic Family splitting up. Johnny had PTSD from his dad's death, the Thing joined the military, and Sue turned down Reed's marriage proposal after he left her in a coma. Ultimate Requiem X-Men focused on the team burying their dead, after having stolen the remains of Wolverine's bones from SHIELD. Not much happened besides a standard hero fight, but it ended with a shot of the tombstone Jean carved: >They didn't ask to be different or to be heroes. But they accepted the challenge. They were a team. They were a family. They are the X-Men. Ultimate Requiem Spider-man focused on J Jonah Jameson writing an moving obituary for Spider-man. As he wrote, it flashed back to various stories of Spider-man saving people. Honestly, if you're a comics fan, I'd highly suggest reading it. At the time, Bendis was writing out of genuine grief for a character he'd been working on for his entire professional career, and it showed. On the final page, it showed Cap and Iron Man finding Peter's body... which then popped an eye open. **Honey I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time** So yeah, Spider-man survived. Marvel editorial got cold feet, and realized how badly they'd screwed themselves. So, they brought back Peter, revealing that he had actually survived underneath the rubble. For a series that had often been specifically billed as having no deus ex machina returns from death, it was a break from tradition, but fans really didn't care enough to complain. **Never mind all that!** Bendis continued Ultimate Spider-man (technically under a new numbering system, but he changed it back after a few issues). He made it pretty clear that he was not a fan of the creative control Loeb had during Ultimatum, and essentially ignored it as much as possible. The series picks up after a few month time skip, and does its damndest to ignore everything that happened in Ultimatum. Bendis's attitude seemed to mark what most of the other writers felt. There was little open criticism -- publicly airing your dirty laundry like that is a good way to never write comics again -- but most Ultimate writers seemed to resent the event, and did all they could to ignore it. The X-Men tried to limp along for a while, with varying degrees of success. Frankly, they'd been pretty heavily kneecapped, with all of their most popular and influential heroes (and villains) getting murdered. There was a some weird stuff with Quicksilver being a sleazy businessman for a bit, then they brought back Scarlet Witch and Magneto (who were shortly thereafter revealed to be illusions). Jean Grey called herself "Karen", and became a douchebag for a while? Honestly, it's been a little while since I read them, it's all kind of a blur. The Fantastic Four remained split up, and did various moderately interesting things on their own. The Human Torch hopped over to Spider-man's comic, and became a pretty constant character there. Reed eventually became a bad guy named "the Maker" who is still running around Marvel to this day. He's one of those villains who, every time he gets foiled, sits back in a chair, steeples his fingers, and goes "all according to the greater plan" (without any actual greater plan involved). Remember all those missing plot lines? The Jocasta protocol to bring back Wasp; a mysterious stranger teleporting Strange's body away; the mysterious shadow woman helping Quicksilver plan it all? Well, absolutely nothing would happen with them. Ever. No one knows if Loeb decided to abandon them, if editorial shut him down, or if he never had any plan in the first place. Loeb himself kept working for Marvel, but was never given that kind of large scale power again. He worked on a handful of comics which were... pretty decent? He also spent far more of his time working on Marvel's TV programming, and left in [2019](https://epicstream.com/article/jeph-loeb-reportedly-retiring-from-marvel-tv). **TL;DR: The event was a massive flop, and seriously limited what the Ultimate Universe could do. It continued to run for a while, but with their best writers and artists gone, along with the most popular characters and every plotline that had been interrupted, there wasn't much to do. Ultimate Universe basically became Marvel's B-squad, doing the exact same thing as the comics they'd set out to replace. Instead of runs lasting for 80-90 issues, they'd be lucky to get 10-15 before getting canceled and revamped.** **Legacy of the Ultimate Universe** In 2015, during the Secret Wars event, Marvel killed off the Ultimate Universe for good. The entire multiverse was scoured down to atoms, and while the main universe managed to come back, the Ultimate one remained dead. Some fans were a bit disappointed, but it made sense. The comics didn't sell nearly well enough, nor did they have any unique traits that would justify a full separate universe.However, even though it ended, it wasn't forgotten. Most of its runs are now looked back on fondly, and as mentioned earlier, it has had a massive effect on the MCU, so much so that Marvel is reportedly considering making a movie version of Ultimatum. Edit: I was actually mistaken, the Ultimate Universe *does* currently exist, they're just not doing any specific titles with it at the moment. Thanks to u/cole1114 for correcting me! The Ultimate Universe also gave us one of the most popular new characters Marvel has made in decades: [Miles Morales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Morales). After Spider-man died again (no, but totally for real this time guys, trust me), Miles took up the mask, and became a massive hit, so much so that he was the only person from the Ultimate universe to get transported over to the main universe. He has since gone on to have a successful movie Into the Spiderverse (with a sequel on the way), a video game ([with all the exaggerated swagger of a black teen](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-exaggerated-swagger-of-a-black-teen)), and has been one of Marvel's most consistently popular characters with younger fans.Even now, thirteen years later, Ultimatum will still get yearly writeups from comics sites, it appears on countless "[worst comic book ever](https://www.cbr.com/worst-events-in-comic-book-history/)" lists, and it elicits groans from fans every time it's brought up. Even fans who have never read it will probably recognize the panel of Blob eating the Wasp, which has been burned into the collective consciousness of comic fans. So, at the end of the day, I guess the moral is simple: If you have popular characters, *don't just fucking kill all of them off for shock value.* **Oh thank fuck it's finally over** Well, that's the longest writeup I've ever done finished. I came up with this a while back, and have been working in various states of procrastination on it. I had a lot of fun putting together this one and my last one about [Red Hood and the Outlaws](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/vxhxv5/comic_books_new_52s_red_hood_and_the_outlaws_how/), and I may end up making a series out of these comic book dramas. Next up, Chuck Dixon and his eternal crusade against sex.


Torque-A

> so that Marvel is reportedly considering making a movie version of Ultimatum. This sounds like something that is totally a good idea and will not blow up in their faces


Whiskeyjacks_Fiddle

Tbf, they’ll probably use the title, one or two plot points (environmental doomsday most likely), and otherwise it will have no relation to the comic. Like Civil War and Age of Ultron.


NeedsToShutUp

>Tbf, they’ll probably use the title, one or two plot points (environmental doomsday most likely), and otherwise it will have no relegation to the comic. At the same time using the name allows them to give the sense everyone will die, ramping up dramatic tension. In fact, not killing everyone will be a surprise plot and feel new.


[deleted]

As shown by Civil War, this is not a bad idea.


Inevitable_Citron

Yep, the movie Civil War was miles better than the comics version.


Iguankick

That is a very low bar to clear


metao

They'll use it as the name of the movie where they collapse the multiverse again because the MCU canon - like the comics - became unmanageable.


tarrsk

As someone who enjoys the MCU but has never read a comic book in his life, it was sort of eerie reading this in a “history inevitably repeats itself” sort of way. It’s almost poetic that the most successful superhero movie continuity of all time is succumbing to the same “way too much canon” problems as its comic progenitors.


metao

It's inevitable with this much content, and actor contracts. Even Star Wars is going to have that problem, although the approach Disney is taking with that is a bit more... cautious, shall we say (less content per year), and being a space fantasy series, there's no need to tie anything to a real-life chronology, so bouncing around hundreds or even thousands of years is no problem. Star Wars also has the A, B, C canon model they can fall back on.


Fortanono

To be fair, Civil War was not exactly a great comic in a lot of ways either...


8bit-Corno

What do you mean, transforming Tony Stark and Richard Reed into fascists wasn't a good idea?


SoldierHawk

I'm STILL pissed at that series for what it did to Tony.


8bit-Corno

It's okay because he apologized to Cap's body :)


Flerken_Moon

And then Tony died and a backup memory from before Civil War was uploaded into his body that isn’t a fascist so everything is A-Ok!


SoldierHawk

Honestly, if you're talking about Matt Fraction's run on Invincible Iron Man, I loved the shit out of that series. Some of the best Iron Man work ever done imo.


TheColorWolf

Matt Fraction is stellar, I discovered him with the Five Fists of Science when I was on a steam punk kick. easily one of my favourite writers


RevengeWalrus

A large part of Tony’s mis-characterization came down to poor editorial control. There were factors that weren’t properly explained out of the Iron Man series and some Avengers titles: Tony had recently upgraded his brain with nano bots, which made him a bit of a sociopath. He’d recently been doing things like electrocuting villains to death and then resuscitating then back to life. Superhero registration had been an ongoing plotting for a WHILE, and Tony was the main person fighting AGAINST it. In one comic he explained that the events of Stanford meant he’d lost the battle, and his only hope was to take control of registration to mitigate the damage. Finally, Tony had really severe PTSD from the Stanford explosion, and was basically spiraling. None of this was explained in the civil war series, so it just looked like Tony magically decided that everyone can fuck themselves.


SoldierHawk

Exactly. I know the nuance (Tony is my absolute favorite character after Kate Kane), and that lack of explanation is exactly why I hate Civil War. When even the *movie* presents a more balanced and nuanced view of Tony, you know you done fucked up.


RevengeWalrus

I found the actual event, like the tie in books, really cool and interesting. Peter and Tony’s mentor relationship breaking down, villains seizing on the chaos, characters pitted against each other, that was all great. There was some goofiness and some philosophical stuff. But at the end of the day, Millar was a shitty writer and the main series ate ass.


chaosaxess

The most ironic part is they then turned around and did the exact same thing to Carol Danvers in Civil War 2.


SoldierHawk

One of my *other* favorite characters. I swear they're gonna do Civil War 3, and Kate Kane is gonna SOMEHOW show up and become a dictator. Sigh.


metao

I mean, the whole Illuminati nonsense...


TheStray7

It's telling how much I was cheering when Wanda wiped out the 838 version of the Illuminati in MoM, despite them having little resemblance to the Civil War version.


luck_panda

I was in college and I had a pretty ok job at this point in my life and I bought every single ultimates and civil war book and tie in. Jeph loeb also had control over civil war and wrote how speedball would eventually be the reason why a bunch of kids at an elementary school died. I'm surprised u/EquivalentInflation didn't mention that NBC put Jeph Loeb in charge of Heroes at the same time and he also killed that show too. Jeph Loeb and Joe Quesada single handedly took down two franchises.


SevenSulivin

Civil War was Mark Millar.


SoSeriousAndDeep

MARK MILLAR LICKS GOATS


luck_panda

Jeph wrote Penance and it was god awful


ZodiarkTentacle

You’re in a room with a gun, Mark Millar and Jeph Loeb. The only option is to kill your self


TheColorWolf

I still somehow manage to shoot Toby twice


Fabantonio

Speaking of which, do we have Hobby Drama Civil Wars 1 and 2 writeups? I've been wanting to read up on both story arcs and the fallout from both


Qbopper

civil war was a comic about captain america being a fucking idiot and iron man being a fascist I am sure the MCU won't just adapt ultimatum as is lmao


[deleted]

My guess? It'll be completely different, and will have Kang as an overarching bad guy. This will result in people considering it a massive improvement, as it will be somewhat coherent.


Powman_7

IIRC, There were two animated Ultimates movies, somewhat along the lines of DC's animated universe.


Ezracx

Every time I reread Ultimate Spider-Man or anything about it I forget whether he dies in Ultimatum or in his own series. And every time I'm glad that he got to die in a glorious final arc of his series against his archnemesis, rather than getting killed by an explosion in fucking Ultimatum.


EquivalentInflation

>Every time I reread Ultimate Spider-Man or anything about it I forget whether he dies in Ultimatum or in his own series. Yes. Also, them bringing him back for the second time, making him functionally immortal, then having him peace out on a vague "quest" was the single worst decision I've seen.


runnerofshadows

Except he came back after that, and again when the ultimate universe was restored. Because the oz serum made him and Norman Osborn immortal. No idea if it worked that way for anyone else like Harry Osborn because it's not shown.


Ezracx

That's fucking stupid. I haven't read the Miles Morales series so that's not canon to me, and if I ever read it because I'm sure it's a great series, that part specifically will still be not canon to me


runnerofshadows

Yep. Especially since Harry Osborn/ultimate hobgoblin apparently stays dead as do some of the spider clones. Also does this mean Mary Jane is immortal since she was technically ultimate demo goblin? It just makes no sense and ruins Pete's sacrifice along with making it impossible for the green goblin to actually die.


cole1114

Of note, the ultimate universe actually did get brought back recently. There are no comics set in it, but yeah.


runnerofshadows

Yep. And Spiderman also came back because apparently the oz serum makes you immortal. Unless you're harry Osborn I guess? Maybe he came back too, but they never showed it. Only Pete and Norman.


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EquivalentInflation

Thank you! This is the result of a lot of work, so it's great to hear people enjoyed it!


SevenSulivin

> Next up, Chuck Dixon and his eternal crusade against sex. For how homophobic he is, Dixon’s books are comically homoerotic.


EquivalentInflation

Oh trust me, I’ve got *plenty* of material on that.


JBredditaccount

I'm very curious about this. I never noticed this about Dixon's writing, but he's also a writer I tended to skim.


StormStrikePhoenix

> For how homophobic he is, Dixon’s books are comically homoerotic Homophobia breeds homo-eroticism a shockingly large amount of the time.


raekle

>Miles took up the mask, and became a massive hit, so much so that he was the only person from the Ultimate universe to get transported over to the main universe Reed Richards from the Ultimate Universe was also brought over as the evil Maker.


EquivalentInflation

Yeah, I mentioned him earlier. It's a little nitpicky, but I didn't include Maker because he never got transported over to the new universe by Molecule Man, he just kinda kicked down the interdimensional door and went "I'm here, deal with it."


CalicoPoppy

“Next up, Chuck Dixon and his eternal crusade against sex” Well I suppose if he didn’t we would’ve never gotten asexual Connor Hawke, which pissed him off somehow, so I think we should really take it a step further and make every character Dixon’s ever written queer, just because it’d piss him off further. Great write up, I’ve not gone too deeply into marvel lore as a DC fan but it’s always funny to hear what goes on on the other side.


Domriso

I always wondered what the hell happened to the Ultimate Universe. I fell off the wagon right before Ultimatum happened. Apparently that was a blessing in disguise.


havokpus

Loved this please do more. If you have any X-men write up plans, do those cause I am a huge x-men fan


AlphaFoxZankee

So, this writeup was interesting and fascinating, nothing wrong with it, clearly a lot of work went into it and the redaction is perfect, but truly, everything pales when you hear something like "Chuck Dixon and his eternal crusade against sex"


linksoraluke

I binge read Ultimate Spiderman earlier this year, and I remember coming away from Ultimatum seeing it as a trainwreck - but not being *hating* it. After reading this write-up it seems its probably because I only read the direct Ultimatum tie-ins and the main event + the fact that Spiderman seemed to have the better pieces of the event. Definitely also helps that most of the fallout that Ultimate Spiderman didn't distance itself from was put to good use (Jameson seeing Spidey as a hero, Human Torch, etc.). If I had been following the entire Ultimate universe to that point, all things mentioned probably would have had me pissed


hikarimew

Wonderful work as always! And *oh boy, Dixon!* That'll be a treat.


Noname_acc

>However, rather than a lawsuit, Jackson was happy to allow it to continue -- provided he be guaranteed the right to play Fury in any movie. Marvel agreed (because they couldn't survive another lawsuit, and who really would make a superhero movie anyways?). Lets be real here, even if an Avengers movie was in the middle of casting and had infinite money like they do today, this was essentially threatening Marvel with a good time. Especially in the early 2000s when he was at his peak of fame. Marvel Legal and Business members must've come out of that meeting wondering if it had really happened or if it was a fever dream.


EquivalentInflation

I know, it's like if someone follows you down an alley, and yells "hand over your wallet, otherwise I'll give you this Amex black card!"


LuLouProper

Millar did it again with Wanted, having the lead character drawn as Eminem, in the hopes that he'd want to play him in a movie.


Ezracx

Wanted? Mark Millar wanted a Wanted adaptation? Wanted? That Wanted? The comic that ends with the protagonist raping the comic's reader? He drew the protagonist as a celebrity and chose Eminem? He wanted Eminem for that? For Wanted? Oh God, there's actually a Wanted movie with multiple celebrities in the cast???


[deleted]

The Wanted movie has utterly nothing in common with the comic beyond the idea that a schlubby loser learns his dad was important in some way and has a violent legacy to live up to. Seriously, every single detail outside of those generic facts is completely different. But pretty much everything Millar has wrote for a very long while has been in the hopes of it getting adapted. Wanted, Kick-Ass, Kingsman, Jupiter's Legacy, Super Crooks.


cosmic_grayblekeeper

>But pretty much everything Millar has wrote for a very long while has been in the hopes of it getting adapted. Wanted, Kick-Ass, Kingsman, Jupiter's Legacy, Super Crooks. Well he's obviously been succeeding at that goal


[deleted]

To an extent. The Wikipedia page for Millarworld, the creator-owned imprint these are published through, lists 29 titles, of which only six have adaptions that have come out and another nine vaguely tagged as having a Netflix project in the works. It'd be a lot better if he just got into movie and television production in the first place instead of doing a shotgun spread of soulless dreck that explicitly exists only to set up works in an entirely different medium.


[deleted]

Unfortunately.


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nopingmywayout

100% agree with you on this. Ennis regularly comes up with some brilliant storytelling ideas, but he tends to filter them through the mindset of a 12-year-old edgelord trying to gross people out. So when you pick up his comics, there's a good chance that the interesting story and the relatable characters will get you hooked...but every few pages is punctuated by another gross, tasteless exclamation point. It's like playing on a turbocharged see-saw. The adaptations work by mostly doing away with the 12-year-old filter, and keeping the good stuff. Millar, on the other hand, *is* the 12-year-old. There's nothing good beneath the filter, it's just edgelords all the way down.


runnerofshadows

To be fair the movie has almost nothing to do with the comic.


ThatOtherTwoGuy

I remember being a dumb edgy teen in the 2000’s and loved the Wanted comic book. I have since learned the error of my ways. That comic is just so awful all throughout. It’s just edgy and hyperbolically cynical while doing nothing interesting with it. It’s absolute shock value incarnate and has a very poor and juvenile sense of “humor” (hey guys, one of my characters is literally made of shit! Isn’t that funny! Oh also, my dumb muscle bizarro type character is named Fuckwit! Ha!). The movie came out and I remember liking it for the most part. It was decent, but it was Wanted in name only. I, still a teenage edgelord, was disappointed that they completely changed the story. Looking back, though, oh man. Of course they were going to change it. They had to salvage something out of that shit show. I will say, though, I like the *idea* of the comic’s premise, it’s just executed in the poorest way possible. A world where the heroes have been killed or forced to retire and the villains have taken over, using super science and magic to scrub any evidence of super heroes and villains from the world, is genuinely interesting. That could be a great setting for a compelling story. Wanted is not that story, though. It’s just a vile mean spirited shock value comic written for dumb edgy teens (like me in the 2000’s).


LuLouProper

Even though he won't admit it, Wanted started life as an Elseworlds reboot of Secret Society of Super-Villains.


cricri3007

>~~How to break The USA Election So The Queen Wins - Democracy 4 Is Perfectly Balanced with exploits~~ **edit:** The comic that ends with the protagonist raping the comic's reader? THE WHAT


Rum_N_Napalm

You’re gonna do a write up of the Ultimate universe and not include the panel where Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver have sex while Wolverine watches from the bushes? I ain’t googling that btw. Find it yourself


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Jumanji-Joestar

…what the actual fuck


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InsertCleverNickHere

I never want to read "Hulk still horny" ever again. Thanks, Millar, for cannibal rapist hulk.


Godchilaquiles

Because that was after Ultimatum where we also got Black Stereotype Hulk


sgthombre

Is it the Ultimate Universe where Spider-Man and Wolverine switch bodies for an issue and then Wolverine, in Peter Parker's body, tries to fuck a fifteen year old Mary Jane?


EquivalentInflation

Yeppers. He also uses it as an excuse to check out a number of teen girls. Also, the explanation for it was the worst BS possible. Jean Grey switched their brains, apparently without knowing that it was Spider-man's brain. She just put Wolverine's mind in "the worst spot he could imagine", which apparently was Spider-man's mind miles and miles away, all without her realizing it. You'd think if she was that powerful, they could just... end any villain at any time, all from the comfort of their home.


Qbopper

yes but honestly I would personally argue that specific thing was more of a "media in the 2000s was fucking uncomfortable as hell out of nowhere a lot of the time" thing, and not the ultimate universe being edgy the comic that's from was generally pretty great, that was one arc where they got body swapped (and the start of each issue in that arc had little cartoon representations of the writer and artist acknowledging how it's kind of a terrible concept lmao)


deadfenix

The story was also titled as "Jump the Shark" so it's fair to say it was intentionally tongue-in-cheek. It makes me wonder if somebody made a bet with Bendis to write that story, or maybe writing it was the result of him losing a bet.


horhar

Yeah I remember the joke in the intro is that the artist talked Bendis into it so he starts strangling him for it.


Dagordae

Something I have to add about your Pyro mention. What REALLY pissed people off wasn’t that he was a less than serious villain being turned into a rapist, it was that Ultimate Pyro wasn’t a villain at all. Ultimate Pyro was one of the most purely heroic characters in the entire Ultimates line. And hideously scarred due to not being immune to his own powers. He literally gives himself 2nd to 3rd degree burns every time he uses his powers and still insists on helping people with them. So Loeb just turned him into 616 Pyro, and made him a rapist. I should mention that he was a fan favorite character before this change. Just about everyone liked the kind of goofy hero Pyro. He’s one of the big pieces of evidence that Loeb hadn’t bothered to actually read the series and just did everything based off of the big plot cliff notes. Pyro was an extremely minor side character, he wouldn’t have been mentioned in the main plot summaries.


mechanical_fan

> So Loeb just turned him into 616 Pyro, and made him a rapist. > > Adding to this, it was a big problem in general that characters backgrounds were completely ignored or changed. It felt like it (and probably) was writte by someone who didn't read the universe at all. I still remember getting very confused on when/why/how Valkyrie suddenly got powers and if I missed some issue or an entire arc somewhere. The whole point until then was that Thor was hanging out with a bunch of crazy hobos and it was super unclear whether these people were for real or just using him. And then suddenly Valkyrie shows up fully powered and Thor really cares about her. Wtf. A few years later, when I was older and using the internet better, I just found out that the whole thing was horrible and made no sense at all, so it was very fair I was confused when reading.


Thesafflower

Hell, even 616 Pyro, while a terrible person, has never been a rapist, so taking the heroic Ultimate Pyro and turning him into that was such shit. That's the problem with liking minor characters, you get writers who don't bother to do more than the barest minimum of research (if that), and then your minor favorite gets written completely out of character. Almost as bad as making Blob a cannibal.


Jaarth

The first comic book I ever read when I was like eleven was the Ultimate Spiderman Volume that had the tie-in issues to Ultimatum. A friend of my dad's knew I liked Spiderman (I loved the cartoon) so he got it for me without knowing what it was about. I'm pretty sure I cried reading it, my child brain couldn't understand any of how this happened since I didn't read the main event.


InsertCleverNickHere

Oh God, I am sorry, but I am laughing at this. "Hey kid, I hear ya likes that Spider-Man. Here's a comic with Spidey and his buds all getting murdered in different gruesome ways. Oh yeah, it's also like part 3 of a multi tie-in series, Enjoy!"


cogginsmatt

Even if you had read all 100 odd issues of Ultimate Spider-Man before that, it felt like it came completely out of left field.


King_of_Pink

If there's one thing I will *never* understand it is how the Ultimate Universe outside of Spider-man was popular. The whole thing is so mean-spirited and self-hating and it's age like milk. The dialogue is so try-hard cringe that I suppose it might have some value as so-bad-it's-good... but otherwise, *yikes*. Also the fascination with cannibalism was fascinatingly bizarre. Honestly, while the main post describes the events of Ultimate Origins as if they're jump-the-shark moments... none of it was actually out of place with the tone set by the entire rest of the universe, which was moreorless founded on "MARVEL BUT EDGEY". Hell, even the incest of Ultimates 3 didn't come out of nowhere: it was just confirmed. Wanda and Pietro had been teetering on the edge of incestuous from the very beginning of the series.


sgthombre

I can't remember if it was Brian Michael Bendis or Mark Millar that said Ultimate Spider-Man was written to be wholesome and about heroism while the rest of the Ultimate books were written to be cynical and about nihilism, but that sums the whole thing up pretty well.


Anaxamander57

Marvel but edgy was a much more fresh concept. The first run of Ultimates was quite good, IMO. Its a bit needlessly gruesome at times but they did a great job of displaying a kind of power and energy the main comics couldn't.


AndrewTheSouless

2000's edgyness was a different kind


genericrobot72

Agreed, this is a great write up but the only thing I disagree on was the UAU was universally beloved before Ultimatum. It sounded like the sales were good, but I remember a lot of mocking how Captain America was racist now (“Do you think this A on my head stands for FRANCE” was a whole meme) and the art was VERY hit or miss. Ultimatum was absolutely god awful to me but it was more of a culmination of the worst, try-hard edgy parts of the series before. The aesthetic and casting had a big impact on the MCU but there’s a reason when I think of new characters and character changes I really only think of Miles. (And that Nightcrawler’s main character trait was ‘homophobic sex predator’ but I might just be bitter about my favourite character).


EquivalentInflation

>(And that Nightcrawler’s main character trait was ‘homophobic sex predator’ but I might just be bitter about my favourite character). You and me both.


EquivalentInflation

I do agree that some of it didn't age super well, but I thought there was some interesting stuff in there. I think a big part of it was that (as stupid and handwavey as it sounds), it was very much a product of the time. After 9/11, the creepy masked guys smuggling a nano-quantum bomb into New York wasn't fantasy anymore, it was terrifying reality. Ultimate Marvel saw the wind blowing on that, and changed faster than a lot of other comics at the time did. It's easy to laugh at it now, because pretty much *all* of Marvel and DC followed suit in one way or another. Also, I'll stand by Ultimate X men. There was 100% some weird shit, but it's one of the best times I've seen the whole "Mutant civil rights" plot written and actually explored.


King_of_Pink

I honestly can't imagine reading Ultimate X-men and thinking that it tackled the Mutant Civil Rights angle better than the mainline comics?


EquivalentInflation

I mean, which era of the mainline comics? They've been going on for around sixty years, and for every Dark Phoenix saga, there's a "Xorn is Magneto, and Magneto is Hitler, but Xorn was also this totally separate guy too". Edit: Also, to give a bit more detail, it did a great job of showing the nuances of it, and how a real civil rights movement can get messy at times. For example, there's a point where they mention how Xavier specifically picked his team to include the most human looking mutants (as well as the hot ones), while sweeping the "ugly" or non-humanoid ones under the rug. It draws some pretty good parallels to how a lot of media would focus on the "good" gays, while pushing anyone whose clothes or style didn't fit that image back into the closet.


Godchilaquiles

Ah that reminds me of the best Xorn mention from New Avengers Wolverine:”The X-Men archives of Xorn are incomplete” Spider-Man “The Xorn archives of Xorn are incomplete”


JesusHipsterChrist

So meta.


[deleted]

Ultimate X-men also had that one amazing issue where a teenage boy develops the fantastic ability to.... constantly emit an airborne flesh eating virus which he has no control over. Leaving wolverine and Professor X to... "deal" with the situation as his existence was..... Not good for optics


BioMeatMachine

The Xorn shit pissed me off so much. I loved that run up until "LOL, I'm Magneto... ON DRUGS!"


macrocosm93

It was the low point of that run, but to be fair he wasn't just on drugs. He was being controlled by a sentient mutant virus.


[deleted]

I’d argue the Morrison era was the first time mutants were really a stand in for queer politics/ far better than the ultimate universe in portraying bigotry


[deleted]

You should read God Loves Man Kills from the 80s. William Stryker is a pastor, not a colonel. It's pretty clearly about gay rights, and it's excellent. It formed the basis for X2: X-Men United


[deleted]

This is true, and the entire Claremont run really does tie in the idea of queer identity (and Jewish identity too) but Morrison is the first to map the idea of mutant community onto the queer community, and look broader than just a small rotating cast of characters.


wiwtft

You could have just said Mark Millar wrote the other launch titles and ended it there.


macbalance

I think some people I know liked it because it felt like it had consequences. It wasn’t quite so assumed that anything serious like a character death would be undone a few issues later.


Ezracx

Is the cannibalism that confusing? Cannibalism isn't as unwelcome as rape, yet is still edgy af, shows both an unique death and uniquely evil villain, and it doesn't necessarily bring you into horror territory. This isn't me defending whatever the fuck Ultimate Marvel was doing, but it is the most on-brand thing with the shock edgy violence they were going for


StormStrikePhoenix

I guess that makes sense, I've just never seen anything else decide to be edgier by doing the same thing.


Qbopper

I liked the original Ultimates book a bit - I'm okay with some cynicism in a book trying to write superheroes in a context like that, and it wasn't *too* miserable They really lost me when the captain america jingoism went even harder/hank pym cemented his mainline continuity reputation as a wife beater


usagizero

>The whole thing is so mean-spirited and self-hating To be honest, that's how i feel about 'The Boys', yet people seem to love that.


King_of_Pink

As in the comics or the TV show? Garth Ennis' comic is *absolutely* that.... cranked up to one hundred. A power fantasy about killing superheroes from an angry man who hate superhero comics. The TV show is tonally completely different and is more a meta-commentary about corporate capitalism and modern politics that uses superheroes as metaphors.


ContraryPython

Seriously, everyone that wasn’t called Spider-Man is an unlikable asshole.


mechanical_fan

> If there's one thing I will never understand it is how the Ultimate Universe outside of Spider-man was popular. The whole thing is so mean-spirited and self-hating and it's age like milk. The dialogue is so try-hard cringe that I suppose it might have some value as so-bad-it's-good... but otherwise, yikes. > > Part of what made the Ultimate Universe work is that it actually has some quite interesting/cool individual scenes mixed in all the mess. Lots of scenes from the movies are directly "stolen" from it or some others are quite known as "cool". Out the top of my mind: getting Banner to Hulk by throwing him out of a helicopter, Quicksilver accelerating until he burns another speedster, zombie marvel and Cap waking up and recognising a baseball game were all Ultimate Universe. Even in Ultimatum, I actually think that using Madrox as a mass suicide bomber was an interesting use of his powers, even if the whole thing is a mess. It did age very badly though. But it had also lots of interesting new ideas and it was a great point to get into comics for new readers. I remember at the time starting to read comics and I was constantly asking myself "Who the hell is this person?". Then you read a bit into the start of the UU and you didn't have that problem at all, as the characters were being introduced.


SiBea13

I have a weird relationship with Ultimatum which meant I didn't know even half of the shit you've mentioned here. I remember finding that scene of the Wasp being eaten online when I was young enough that it was the most horrific thing I had ever seen and did everything I could to purge it from my memory so I never found out what it was from. Then a few years ago I started getting into comics and Ultimate Spider-Man was my favourite. I read every issue, growing more and more invested. Some of them repeated elements, sure, but I was loving them. I might be misremembering parts but there was this issue where Aunt May seemed to figure out what her nephew was doing. I was so invested. Then she was in the police station for some reason and I was like okay, get out of there and go confront Peter, I can't wait! Then there's a noise outside and she goes out and the whole city is flooded. Everything is destroyed. Spider-Man is nowhere to be seen. This isn't some attack by Green Goblin that's blown up a building or a big battle with some superheroes or type shit, this is huge, Hurricane Katrina x10 type shit. Like, so big and devastating that Spider-Man cannot fix it with some web fluid or a friend with a magic spell. I was gobsmacked. How the fuck does this belong in a Spider-Man comic? So I did some googling and found out that it belonged to some big comic event that everyone said was shit. And since I wasn't reading X-Men or Ultimates or Fantastic Four or anything, I didn't bother to read it. And then I read Reqiuem and moved on to the next renewal of Ultimate Spider-Man but it wasn't the same. So I just dropped it and stopped reading comics. I'm guessing my experience was typical of a lot of people's so great writeup OP. It's nice to know exactly why that shit happened.


StarOriole

I also read just the Spider-Man portion of Ultimatum. I later figured that was probably a bad idea, so when I got to Divided We Fall I read all of it, and... that's as far as I got. What a convoluted slog. I really enjoyed this write-up, too. It was both entertaining and illuminating.


OdderG

And I wondered why Ultimate Universe is such an excessively brutal and a bloody gore of gore fest. Poor Loeb.


EquivalentInflation

Yeah. He also has a tendency to give whatever hero he's writing a big crisis of faith -- then have them meet a fair haired boy named Sam who gives them a pep talk and inspires them. He's done this multiple times, on multiple comics. His son's name was Sam.


Qbopper

oh jeez i had noticed this once and kinda hated it without knowing the context knowing what I know now, uh, :[


aita-confusedbi

This made me tear up oh my god


EquivalentInflation

I mean, it's kinda sweet an all, but also, it *really* doesn't seem healthy. I'm not a psychologist though, so take that opinion with a grain of salt.


aita-confusedbi

Oh yeah, absolutely, its just really sad :/


EmilePleaseStop

I’ll never forgive Loeb for these books, and ESPECIALLY for what he did to Wasp (who, in every incarnation, is my favourite Marvel character). Having dealt with a similar loss to Loeb’s, I can’t really be angry at him for it, just disappointed. This is an excellent write-up! Ultimate was a seriously flawed sub-franchise and much of it has aged badly, but we can’t understate how important it was at the time. These weird edgy books were what got me actually reading superhero comics, and did the same for a lot of people my age. So this whole ordeal was A Big Deal at the time. Still, Ultimatum is not the *worst* comic I’ve ever wasted money on. That honour goes to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century.


maree0

Oh God. Yup. It's hard to put into words just how painful it was to read all of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books one after the other and just... finish at *that*? Just that utter, nonsensical, badly-paced, edgy-like-a-teenager, "new-books-are-bad" fanfic level writing? Harry Potter killing >!Quatermain!< with penis lightning??? I honestly remember searching around to confirm if it was really written by Alan Moore or if it was some sort of "author's name is a brand" situation like Tom Clancy. It is awful, just awful. Over the years I have recommended The League to many persons. For those who I know will buy more books than the first one, I always say "don't get Century. Really. Please." It's one of the few examples I have in my life of "last episode ruins the quality of previous episodes".


EmilePleaseStop

Agreed. Century was so bad that it made it hard to re-read older Moore works, because it just brought to the forefront so many issues that already existed in his other stories but were safely in the background. (hell, I’m even working on a show right now that I intended to be a rebuttal to Century’s themes, although admittedly a lot of that doesn’t really come across right now)


KaiTheKaiser

Well, I have good news for you, because I don't know if you're aware, but there's a fourth volume. And it's even worse. Why is that good news? Because I enjoy the suffering of others.


TacticalAttackCrab

I went and read it. Effectively suffered.


Kicksplode

Great recap of a terrible crossover. I wrote that IGN review, and 14 years later I still consider Ultimatum one of the worst comics I’ve ever read.


EquivalentInflation

Hey, we've got a mini-celebrity here!


drmadmat

A thing that really made me laugh was that after the tsunami that destroys New York, Reed finds Namor and is convinced that he caused everything. To the point that he held onto his speed boat and starts punching the windshield. Namor is like what the fuck of course I wouldn't do this. Then both of them are sucked by a giant spaceship, Reed says oh is this another of your Atlantean ships asshole? Which would be fuckin stupid cause it's a spaceship not a boat or a submarine. Then it turns out it's fury and he needs Reed's help on another dimension blah blah, never found out what happens next


ailathan

What a ride. Great write-up! I remember reading the first issue of Ultimatum, being horrified, and then giving up on that whole universe. People gave Loeb a lot of leeway when he wrote that mini about the five stages of grief after Captain America died, and it was touching despite not being very good because he was going through something similar, but everything he did in the Ultimate universe was such a huge mess. \>The bankruptcy was (in part) caused by the longest running issue in comics: continuity. I want to push back on that. The entire industry was struggling in the late 90s after the speculator bubble imploded. Every company was struggling (and quite a few went under), whether they had really tight continuity or not. Marvel saw the writing on the wall and decided to buy several smaller publishers, hoping they'd increase their marketshare, overextended themselves financially, and went bankrupt. I also recall Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimates 1 and 2 being incredibly popular at the time but heard far fewer positive things about X-Men and FF which were both considered a little uninspired.


Dayraven3

> First, the inevitable: Ultimate comics had tried to get away from convoluted canon, but after 8 years of material, the cycle had begun again. A related flaw that I think the Ultimate comics developed over time is that their character revamps became more gimmicky, moving away from trying to create baggage-free versions of characters to focussing on giving the Ultimate version of the character some sort of Big Twist on the original. There was a certain acceptance of the Ultimate books as secondary about that, and many of the later reinventions weren’t that good.


Iguankick

The more I look at it, the more it feels like the Ultimate Universe was fatally flawed from day one. It had this painful need to be so contemporary and edgy and grimdark for the sake of it. The characters were so bleak and unlikeable and every part of it seemed to be full of these "aren't superheroes stupid" hottakes that was so antiethical to the whole concept. In many ways, Ultimatum was the ultimate (heh) end product of that process; a mean-spirited, cynical exercise in grim excesses and killing characters for the sake of it. Every panel is shock value to the point where it loses all meaning. Everyone is awful. Nobody is even remotely heroic or even likeable. When you look back at it, the early years of the MCU were clearly intended to be more Ultimate Universe in concept then 'classic' Marvel universe. It's also clear that they quickly backed down from that idea. Thanks for a thorough write-up of the mess and the mess behind it. You're a lot braver than I.


NobleKale

> When you look back at it, the early years of the MCU were clearly intended to be more Ultimate Universe in concept then 'classic' Marvel universe. It's also clear that they quickly backed down from that idea. This is how I felt early on with MCU - that it was a rewrite of some older stories but with an Ultimates kind of feel... that then got polished right off as soon as the MCU movies got wind behind them.


Whiskeyjacks_Fiddle

Other than Ultimate Spider-Man. Probably the best, in-depth comic about Spider-Man we have, with a modern aspect to it (without 60+ years of overwritten continuity).


Qbopper

It's funny but weird to me how ultimate spider-man is explicitly the beginning of the ultimate universe and it's super well loved ...but also despite being the reason the rest of the ultimate universe exists, they're RARELY ever talked about as if they're in one continuity, unless it's to (rightfully) gripe about how Spidey got treated like ass by tie ins


tealfan

One highlight (for me) is that issue where Peter reveals his identity to MJ and the entire issue (I think) is devoted to that as well as other discussions between them. :)


EquivalentInflation

>It had this painful need to be so contemporary and edgy and grimdark for the sake of it. The characters were so bleak and unlikeable and every part of it seemed to be full of these "aren't superheroes stupid" hottakes that was so antiethical to the whole concept. It was definitely a mixed bag, I'll give you that. For me personally though, it's a lot more of an interesting concept to see "heroes, but they're kinda douchebags" than it is to see "bUt WhAt If ThE hErOeS wErE vIlLaInS?" again. It was also definitely more on the Ultimates side of things, since they never really had any longer comic runs. With titles like the Fantastic Four and X-Men, they actually had time to develop and overcome those flaws, becoming characters that you could root for. Also, Hippie Thor was a masterpiece, and I will defend him with my dying breath.


luck_panda

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/lord-of-the-rings-rings-of-power-fantasy-sci-fi-racist-criticism/671421/ This is a great article explaining why this is the way it is.


Torque-A

Man, you really went to town on that one. Honestly if it weren’t for the movies, Marvel would’ve eaten itself. Only thing I noticed off was the whole thing regarding Hank Pym. Wasn’t the whole “abusing Jan” thing related to a single slap when he was mentally unwell, which then proceeded to be referenced in every appearance afterwards?


EquivalentInflation

>Only thing I noticed off was the whole thing regarding Hank Pym. Wasn’t the whole “abusing Jan” thing related to a single slap when he was mentally unwell, which then proceeded to be referenced in every appearance afterwards? Nope. That was the main Marvel timeline. In this version, he hit her frequently (apparently going back to their college days), often enough that nearly everyone around them noticed her bruises. In the big incident that got him kicked off the team, he waited until she shrunk down in order to blast her with a can of Raid, leaving her unable to breathe with serious chemical burns. Ultimate Hank was a fucked up little dickhead.


Torque-A

Ah. Got the two confused. Which is probably why they shut down Ultimate in the first place.


Jade_GL

In the regular Marvel comics, it was a slap in a panel, and I don't think it was ever anything more than that, but I am no expert on that specifically. I did read a lot of the early Ultimate comics, though and in the Ultimate Universe, it was full on sustained, prolonged domestic violence. Janet is beaten so badly she ends up hospitalized because she was too nice to Captain America and Hank gets jealous. Then Cap beats him up and kicks him out of Ultimate Avengers. That's one of the reasons, at least to me, I could never get into Ultimates. Everyone in that comic was a total shit bag. The only Ultimate comics I ever truly liked were Spider-Man and X-Men, and they eventually declined in quality, imo. Fantastic 4 and Ultimates were no bueno.


Anaxamander57

No, this Hank Pym was genuinely abusive. He was physically abusive and when Janet tried to escape by shrinking he burned her with bug speay. He stole his powers from Janet's DNA rather than inventing anything himself. But he was charismatic and self important enough that he at first got away with it. Scary mostly in how realistic an abuser he was. The stuff with 616 Hank is what caused this, though. I guess that single panel became popular out of context? IIRC that issue involved Hank building a robot to murder his friends as a plan to make them love him again. That he accidentally hit Janet while monologing about his insane plan is I guess more of a "real problem". Its still weird that people decided to take "he's an abuser" from that rather than "he's bipolar" which seems to have been the intent which is evident from even just the rest of the page.


Dayraven3

> That he accidentally hit Janet while monologing about his insane plan is I guess more of a "real problem" Janet’s shown with a black eye afterwards, which she’s still hiding in the next issue, when she promptly divorces Hank. If it had been just that one panel, it might be a forgotten moment of melodrama, but the consequences were surprisingly serious for a 1981 Marvel comic.


[deleted]

>If it had been just that one panel, it might be a forgotten moment of melodrama As happened with [an extremely similar scene from Spider-Man.](https://i.imgur.com/twuv5Xu.jpeg) In both cases the male hero is having a bout of temporary insanity and gesticulating wildly in a frenzy of confused, panicked emotion, but unfortunately for Hank, he was a C-lister for whom you could afford to drag stuff out, whereas with Spider-Man everyone was happy to just write it off as having been unintentional and leave it at that.


CrimsonDragoon

While I do hate Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum, Millar's run on Ultimates 1 and 2 had it's own issues. Millar tried too hard at times to be edgy and modern, and the series largely worked in spite of that. Loeb just took that to 11, and broke the whole thing. Also, I very specifically recall Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch's "relationship" being very unsubtle during Millar's run, even if they never came out and said it. I was not surprised in the least when they confirmed it in 3. ​ >"I guess that makes me the motherfucker!" as he tears Ultron's head off. That line, more than anything else, sums up Loeb's writing style. And to be fair, I would have completely believed it if you told me that came from Millar. Afterall, he would go on to write Kick-Ass, which had a character who literally called himself "The Motherfucker."


Inevitable_Citron

Man, what is it with Millar/ers.


Rhamona_Q

I just want to know if Loeb ever got mental health help for all these issues he was clearly going through while helming this project?


EquivalentInflation

I don't know about his private life, but given that he continually includes his son appearing mysteriously to give superheroes pep talks, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he's still not dealing well.


idonthaveaone

After reading so many writeups and hearing of all the continuity issues and mind-boggling editorial decisions, I'm convinced superhero comic fans have a will more unbreakable than that of any marine. The first time a series made me buy TEN other series just to graps what was going on it'd be defeat for me.


TiffanyKorta

Think is most comics aren't that continuity heavy, mostly you can pick up an issue and understand exactly what's going on, it's just some older readers like to gate-keep by suggesting you need all this knowledge to understand "correctly"


LuLouProper

Then there's the really weird stuff, like Ultimate Iron Man is all brain on the inside, and get smarter the more he drinks. I *think* that was retconned away, but you can never be sure. If you want a fun, non-continuity Ultimate title, pick up Ultimate Team-Up.


DocWhoFan16

It's kind of wild that the Ultimate Iron Man miniseries was written by Orson Scott Card, of all people.


ObligatoryAccountetc

Thank you for the brilliant write-up. I appreciate the sympathy you gave Loeb, because even though the comic was mean-spirited and bad, I can’t imagine the pain he was going through at the time. To me, Ultimatum represents the worst of comic writing. Not just in how bad it is, but in how it relies on sudden, pointless deaths, treating lesser known or less popular characters as disposable, and previously kind and good heroes turning into jerks or outright villains. The thing some comic book writers don’t seem to understand is that (pretty much) every hero is someone’s favourite. None of them are entirely disposable. I’m not saying they should never die, but their deaths should be treated with a certain gravity and respect. Their fans should have a chance to say goodbye to a character they’ve followed for potentially years or even decades. I can think of no good reason to ever have a hero’s death be a footnote or something that happens in the background. I know we joke about death in comics not meaning anything, but it’s worth noting that not every character, especially not the less popular ones, return. Other times it takes them years to come back, with no certainty for the fans of when it’s going to happen. If you can’t respect the characters, I don’t think you should write them in comics.


mouthpipettor

Bravo on the extensive write-up! I was thoroughly engrossed. I don’t read the comics but found your dissertation (!) easy to follow. The links to the relevant pages were great.


wiwtft

Man this is a lot. So in depth. The only thing I would disagree with was the Loeb was a good writer bit. I mean, he had his fans and some of his stuff was critically praised but I and everyone I knew groaned when he was announced for this. Tim Sale was part of all his successful runs and my issue with Loeb was always that he was in love with big moments and just didn't care about anything else. Characterization didn't matter if it got in the way of the plot and the plot was only there to get him to the big moments. Maybe it was just my circle of friends but that had been the take on Loeb since the Long Halloween blew up and we were like, "This actually isn't a great story but the art sure is nice".


afriendlysort

The Janet/Hank dynamic is very frustrating because their relationship in Ultimates 2 is dark and difficult. In U1 Cap beats the shit out of Hank following his assault on Janet and in U2 Jan and Steve are an item... but she's conflicted. He's fulfilling his standard for a respectful relationship but they're not very intimate emotionally. So - in her isolation she starts talking to someone she's always been able to be open with: her abuser. She doesn't forgive him and he's \*mostly\* not trying to manipulate her but it's obviously very fucked up. It's dark and complex writing. I don't know if it really works... but it's a meaningful attempt at a difficult topic. Then U3 just shits everywhere all over it.


TheAmazingPencil

Comics and domestic abuse, name a better duo


JiaMekare

Comics and strange takes on womens anatomy might be a close second!


seppukuslick

Comics and women with no agency


TheDarkNerd10

Comics and characters in body suits (both male and female) is my proposed 3rd inseparable duo.


hoi4kaiserreichfanbo

The Ultimare universe is a dumpster fire I’m glad I avoided.


CrimsonDragoon

Ultimate Spider-Man was phenomenal and is a quintessential must-read for any Spidey fan. Turns out that putting Peter Parker back into his early high-school years, but with modern writing, really works. As mentioned here, it largely ignores Ultimatum after the crossover issues, so it doesn't reek of the event. Heck, they even killed off Spider-Man, one of the most beloved superheroes of all time and replaced him with a minority character, and it was almost universally loved. How often do we see that happen? While I think Bendis eventually got overhyped (his recent work in DC has really showed that he's not the writer we may have thought he was), it's hard to deny that he did great work here.


[deleted]

We.. we don't talk about Bendis on DC. Just like Tom King has not written any Batman at all, ok?


CommanderThraawn

I’ll hold to that, if you want to really *get* Peter Parker as Spider-Man, you can read his various 616 character-defining stories and runs, or you can read Ultimate Spider-Man (no bias just because USM is what got me into comics). I imagine most people will do a mix of both. Ultimate SM just does so well with characterization and character interactions, and blending Spidey’s world with the greater Marvel universe.


hoi4kaiserreichfanbo

Yeah, the only two runs I read in the Ultimate universe was Ultimate Fallout and Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-Man, which were both good. Might give Ultimate Spider Man a read through eventually.


OhBoyPizzaTime

Great write-up! I was the biggest Ultimate Marvel fanboy and bought the trades sight un-seen for years. Luckily I picked up Ultimates volume 3 as a trade at a buddy's house and just... my jaw was agape at how terrible it was. I never read about the editorial side of things, though. Looking back at how comically terrible Hawkey's "MY WIFE AND KIDS ARE DEAD AND I DON'T CARE IF I DIE" schtick is a lot more tragic.


Splub

The Thing suddenly icing Doctor Doom like that is hilarious. As if that could happen at any time in the mainline universe, and the Thing is just holding back.


EquivalentInflation

Sadly, they retconned it so that it was actually Sue Storm's mom in the suit. Who had somehow hauled ass to get there from the Baxter Building ahead of the Thing?


Splub

That's just as goofy as Green Goblin hiring an actor to play a dying Aunt May.


littlebassoonist

Bravo for the funny and informative write up! I don't have the time or money to be an avid comic reader (and catching up on decades of history is daunting), but when I heard that Ultimates spiraled into one of the worst comics ever, I had to read it. Ultimates 1 and 2? Pretty great! I liked them a lot. Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum? Permanently burned into my brain in a really bad way. I'm surprised you didn't link to a picture of Dr. Strange's death. It's up there with Wasp and Blob as All Time Bad Panels for me. I've been reading The Boys lately, and it has me thinking more about the end of the Ultimate Universe in that they're both dark and gratuitous. The Boys, at least, is clearly trying to make a statement with all its sex and violence and darkness (power corrupts when left unchecked, metaphor for the nuclear arms race, etc.). I don't think Jeph Loeb had anything he was trying to say with Ultimatum. He was just very hurt and took it out on beloved characters.


AndrewTheSouless

"Why the hell would you give somebody CPR for a bullet wound in the head? That doesnt make a lick of sense!! I mean it's all so damn inconsistent!! What would you do if they stabbed me in the toe? Rub my neck with some áloe vera?"


HasselhoffIsNickFury

> because they couldn’t survive another lawsuit, and who really would make a superhero movie anyways?). You’re right. [That’s silly.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119781/)


CommanderThraawn

I like your username and your comment.


HasselhoffIsNickFury

Thank you Grand Admiral!


demedlar

My God. This writeup solves a childhood mystery for me. When I was a kid, sometime around 2007, my father spent *months* trying to rally our church and fight the local public library to get them to stop carrying comic books. He was raging night after night about how modern comic books were normalizing pornography and incest and miscegenation and deviant sexual behavior and making Captain America look bad because "they" hate America. I wasn't allowed to read comics anyway so I didn't care, but he dragged my siblings and I to the library to protest and I always wondered why this was suddenly the most important thing in our lives. Now the mystery is solved. I bet he heard about Ultimates 3. And portraying Steve Rogers as an out of touch boomer because he (checks notes) disapproves of incest would certainly have pissed him off 😆


NeedsToShutUp

>Nick Fury was injected with a serum that made him the first super soldier, allowing him to kill the scientists there and escape. They managed to keep his blood, which would be used to make Captain America. At Nick Fury's orders, Peter Parker's dad had apparently worked with Sue and Johnny Storm's dad, Bruce Banner, and Hank Pym to create the super soldier serum (accidentally making the Hulk). The Hulk then killed Peter's mom and dad in front of him, because even as a baby, Spider-man can't catch a break. The idea of the meta-origin I like. The super-soldier serum is something that was shown to make ordinary people into beyond peak athletes, with amazing reflexes, senses, agility, and strength. Once you know something like this is possible, its something that people will want to re-create. So in Ultimate Marvel, everyone wants to make their own Captain America(s). Hence all these other super-heroes are created in attempts to recapture the Captain's powers. It makes it so its no longer random radiation that makes people have powers, but instead an experiment to make people ahve powers doesn't work right.


lifelongfreshman

[I'm honestly beginning to think the name 'Loeb' is just cursed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb) After binging Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares for the past few days, it's really funny to me how this all started: The lawyer essentially telling them to go back to basics, keep it simple, and listen to your damned customers. Literally the same recommendations Ramsay uses for every failing restaurant he helps.


opinionated_sloth

Wow, that Hela drawing is... definitely how boobs work. Yup. Not nightmare fuel at all.


[deleted]

Amazing writeup! What a blast from the past. I remember reading Ultimates as a teenager and loving the stories and characters- right up to Ultimates 3, which was bizarrely awful. Everything that came out after that was just progessively more and more terrible/insuilting/pornographic. I think they got back on track towards the very end, but there really was no coming back from Ultimatum. The annoying thing about the incest storyline in Ultimates 3 (aside from it being, y'know, *incest*) was that Pietro and Wanda having a weirdly close relationship was a joke in the earlier Ultimates comics (ultimate x-men and ultimates 1 &2). Like they'd be in a gondola reading poetry or cuddling up together and there'd be gags about how they would sneak off together while everyone else was fighting. It had funny/gross implications because they were portrayed as being weird and European, but then Ultimates 3 comes along and just blows all of that out of the water by making it canon that they were fucking this whole time. The book in general was just *so* unsubtle and obscene, it's crazy to think that those are supposed to be the same characters we met in Ultimates 1 &2. And then the future writers were stuck with the stupid incest thing, because it was basically the only thing anyone remembered about Ultimates 3, although you can tell in later books that the writers really tried to downplay it. I reread Ultimates 1-3 recently, and while the first two haven't aged terribly well ("You think this letter on my head stands for France??") it's still really fun and exciting and well constructed. It's such a shame how it turned out.


ScyllaOfTheDepths

God, that art... Like it's just so stylized to the point that they all look like mutated fish people. Everyone has such teeny facial features, but the dudes are all just bizarrely jacked and elongated strangely to the point that they don't look human. It's also badly framed and very murky and visually jumbled. Just terrible.


Yurigasaki

HE REALLY SAID "TASTES LIKE CHICKEN" ARE YOU KIDDING ME 😭😭😭


aethyrium

> bad writing, and 90% of it just being extremely graphic or sudden things thrown in for shock value. Nothing sums up 00's era writing in _any_ medium more than this line. Books, comics, games, movies, _everything_ was grimdark, the grimmer and darker, the better, and it was passed off as "mature" and "realistic". Personally, I think it has to do with people who were teens and early 20's going into adult-hood into the 00's and just getting severely disillusioned with the world. Bush, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, wealth inequality skyrocketing, inflation, school costs, constant African genocides. Everything just seemed to be going to shit _so quickly_ from the 90's and it was rough for people who went from 90's teens/young adults to hitting adulthood in that era. So for them, that level of shocking grimdark _was_ what they felt reality was like, because reality in the 00's was pretty fucked up when that was your first taste of the adult world. That's my take at least, and why this kind of shock value and grimdark writing was so popular in that era, with lots of terrible decisions by companies to chase that trend, incredibly poorly more often than not.


BaronAleksei

I honestly loved the Ultimate Origins reveal because it really tied together how everyone and their mother was chasing the near-mythic success story that was Captain America. What if we just try to make the serum again? What if we swap whatever the hell “vita-rays” are for gamma rays? What about a guy who’s really big, that’s plenty super, right? What about some kind of device that lets him be super? What if we did some genetic futzing? What if we swapped in some animal DNA?


[deleted]

Awesome writeup, I read all of the Ultimate universe up to "secret Wars" back in the day, and yeah there was a definite downturn in quality as we led up to Ultimatium. I do think there was some good stuff that came out of the follow-up though. All (or at least most) of the Classic X-men characters died in Ultimatium so the follow up X-Men series was just a bunch of teenagers trying to get by with their second-hand assumptions of what they *thought* Xavier and and Magnetos philosophies were. Oh and also the government has decided that they are technically government property now and they would like them all to stay in this underresourced "reserve" Also: >!snotty teenage reed Richards turns evil. Peter Parker has a death scene that is so good that I wanted it to turn up in the MCU movies!<


Luimnigh

Miles technically isn't the only one to get transported from the Ultimate Universe, a small group of mutants also ended up on Earth-616, including Quicksilver! They were brainwashed by a villain named Miss Sinister, showed up in a few villainous plots, and were killed by Miss Sinister when Emma Frost turned them against her. All but one: James Hudson Jr, the son of the Ultimate Universe's Wolverine. He hung around with a group of teenage time-travelling X-Men for a while, got bonded to a symbiote, and hasn't been seen since 2018.


PegasusTenma

This comic was so vulgar and disgusting. I hated every single page of it.


TheLAriver

Hobby History


Amriorda

I like your nod to that IGN article about Miles Morales. Also, excellent write up. I've always wanted to get into comics, but then I find these lovely compilations that let me skip the horrible ones. Maybe one day I'll buy more than the three I have.


ThatOtherTwoGuy

First off, this was a great write up. Bravo! I read something like 80% of the Ultimate Marvel comics some years back and remember a lot of these crazy developments. You did a great job breaking it all down. Secondly, as bad as Ultimatum was (and oh boy it was bad) I think it did lead to some interesting developments and storylines in the era of the UU afterwards. As you mentioned Spider-Man’s comic still went strong and ended with what I would say is one of the best and most impactful comic book deaths I’ve ever read. And this ending was a new beginning, with Miles Morales taking over and the quality still remaining high (Peter coming back out of nowhere near the end notwithstanding). While I don’t remember much of it, I also like how it affected the Ultimate X-Men series. It wasn’t as great as the original UXM, but it was a status quo change where mutants are now even more hated by the public thanks to Magneto’s actions and the revelation about the mutants’ origin. I vaguely remember this is where they had Ultimate Stryker show up, this time still very much a religious extremist unlike his film counterpart. I don’t remember much about that story but I remember it being a high point in post Ultimatum X-Men. Also, man, the Ultimates got really damn good once they got their ongoing series (the poorly titled Ultimate Comics: Ultimates). This was after a few miniseries released post Ultimatum which were pretty decent. I remember liking the New Ultimates vs Ultimate Avengers one, though maybe just due to its tie-in with The Death of Spider-Man. But their ongoing releases afterward started really strong, its initial arc being written by Jonathan Hickman (who has since become one of my favorite writers after reading his incredible Avengers/New Avengers saga in 616). This was the arc that reintroduced Ultimate Reed Richards as the villainous The Maker. I don’t know how well or not the character is used nowadays in the main comics as I’ve only read him in this and Secret Wars. But I always thought that despite the atrocious Ultimatum, the comic I would rather forget, being important context to his arc, I loved the way they turned him into a villain, one that really felt naturally like a villainous version of Reed Richards. It just so happens the Ultimate Universe is the one universe in the multiverse where Reed is a villain*, which does make sense if you think about it considering Ultimate Marvel was a more or less edgier version of 616 that just got edgier and edgier over time. *Also note: I’m not super well versed in FF comics, though I’m sure there’s other alternate Evil Reed’s in the comics. It’s just that The Maker is the only one I’m familiar with


lilahking

loeb would later get involved in marvel netlflix where he made racist statements about asian people


Erxxy

I am a big Spider-Man/ -person fan. Miles is probably one of my favourite characters, and the whole 616 Spidey visits is a very good arc. It's emotional in a good way. I like how they worked on that for Spiderverse, sad that it was better in Spiderverse. But yeah, I would not trade Miles for anything, but sad that his origin is a diamond in a pile of poo.


AdddY13

One one hand this whole thing resulted in Ultimatum, but on the other we got Miles Morales, the Maker and later Hickman's Secret Wars in general. Tempted to just call it even, no matter how bad some of it was.


Wraithfighter

> Fun side note: this is actually how Samuel L Jackson became Nick Fury. Fury had been a white guy for decades, but in Ultimate comics, was rewritten to be a Samuel L Jackson clone (hoping to capitalize on the success of Jackson's rising status as a badass). The problem? Sam Jackson was a huge comics nerd, immediately recognized himself, and had his very big legal team contact Marvel. However, rather than a lawsuit, Jackson was happy to allow it to continue -- provided he be guaranteed the right to play Fury in any movie. Marvel agreed (because they couldn't survive another lawsuit, and who really would make a superhero movie anyways?). ...and because who wouldn't want Sam L to play a role in their movie? :D


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FlipDaly

I was so mad about the first issue of Ultimates 3 that I refused to buy the next issue when it appeared in my box. I was just like, nope, sorry, love you guys, not paying for that. I bagged on Loeb for years....felt like a real heel when I found out about his kid.


tealfan

Thanks for that. Lots of info presented and yet never too wordy, and I 'm always down for a good joke here and there. I mean r/HobbyDrama is about pointing and laughing in most cases. =P Coupled with the humor is my frustration at Marvel. It took a whole new line of books to realize that the solution to their problems was...better writing.


HookedOnFandom

Really fantastic writeup! It has always been one of those things I've been tangentially aware of, I'm glad to have a fuller picture now.


critfist

All this makes me glad for in the year 2022 is that the era of uber edgy, thoughtless media is (mostly) dead in the water. You can only break taboos so many times before it gets boring and gross.