From 2000 to 2015, the Ultimate Marvel Universe ran parallel to the mainstream one. The setting was meant as a new, reader-friendly alternative for Marvel’s characters; the established versions had been bogged down by almost 40 years worth of continuity.
Throughout its fifteen year run, the Ultimate line saw many changes, both in updates to its own status quo and in divergences from events/characters in mainstream Marvel. A lot of the changes were great— and some even crossed over into the main Marvel continuity— while others missed the mark for one reason or another.
10 Best: Miles Morales Is One Of The Best New Marvel Characters Of The 21st Century
In 2011, Brian Michael Bendis did the unthinkable; after more than 10 years writing Ultimate Spider-Man, he and artist Mark Bagley killed off Ultimate Peter Parker. Then, in Ultimate Fallout, Bendis and artist Sara Pichelli introduced a new Spider-Man: Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino teen with similar powers as Peter.
Miles’ introduction was meant to revitalize the Ultimate brand and diversify Marvel’s stable of characters so as to better reflect the real world. While the Ultimate brand still died out, Miles himself was a huge success; he was the star of the hit film Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and has been imported to the main Marvel universe.
9 Worst: Norman Osborn Transforming Into An Actual Goblin Was Too On-The-Nose
Norman Osborn is quite similar on both Earths 616 and 1610, but there are a few differences. For one, Ultimate Osborn was directly linked to Spider-Man’s origin; his company made the “OZ” formula which gave Peter his powers, and Norman in turn empowers himself using the same formula.
This leads into a change that didn’t quite pan out. Rather than dressing like a Goblin with Halloween-themed weapons, Ultimate Osborn experienced a Hulk-like mutation into a Goblin monster with pyro-kinetic powers. While this fit Ultimate Marvel‘s theme of genetic mutation, it also robbed the Goblin of many of his motifs.
8 Best: Reed Richards Becoming The Maker Was A Bold & Interesting Direction For An Aging Character
As Ultimate Marvel went on, it evolved. Rather than a streamlined Marvel universe for the turn of the century, it became fertile ground for writers to experiment with ideas they could never do in the mainstream universe. One of the most successful experiments was the development of Reed Richards.
In the Ultimate Doomsday trilogy, Bendis wrote Reed’s journey off the deep end into super-villainy, which Jonathan Hickman developed further by having Reed start the superhuman colony “The Children Of Tomorrow” and adopting a new persona: “The Maker.” Like Miles, this development proved so successful that Reed remained a villain and has been brought over into the mainstream Marvel universe.
7 Worst: Magneto Going Pure Villain & Stripping Away All Of His Inner Conflicts Robbed Him Of Everything That Made Him Interesting
Thanks largely to Chris Claremont, Magneto is revered as the most complex villain in superhero comics. It was Claremont who introduced the idea that Magneto was a Holocaust survivor; this revelation infused Magneto with such pathos and tied together his character so brilliantly it’s shocking that it wasn’t the original intention.
However, Ultimate Magneto was something of a reversion to the pre-Claremont version; Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s original iteration taken to its horrifying limit. Here, Erik Lehnsherr was not a man traumatized into militancy, but a dictator and narcissist out to take what he believed to be his God-given right: The world.
6 Best: Tying Other Heroes’ Powers To The Super Soldier Serum Reduced The Need For Gimmicky Origin Stories
In the classic Marvel universe, the countless heroes and villains all have disparate sources for their powers and origins. To streamline things, the Ultimate universe tied them back to the first superhero: Captain America. In Ultimate Marvel, the Hulk and Spider-Man’s powers are established from the outset to be the result of attempted recreations of the Super-Soldier Serum which made Steve Rogers Captain America.
While some might lament that this made Ultimate Marvel feel small, it did work to make the different corners of the universe feel interconnected, and the setting itself more streamlined.
5 Worst: Making The Heroes Less Sympathetic For The Sake Of “Edginess” Hasn’t Aged Well
Part of the early-aughts era modernization in Ultimate Marvel was to make the heroes more cynical. The most famous example was The Ultimates as portrayed by Mark Millar & Bryan Hitch. Rather than the stand-up heroes of the classic Avengers, the Ultimates were jackboots and psychopaths on the payroll of the Bush administration.
The Ultimates, though, is at least a work of satire. The Ultimate X-Men were just downright unpleasant all around, from Wolverine sleeping with an underage Jean Grey to homophobic Nightcrawler. About the only pleasant one was Kitty Pryde, so it makes sense she eventually crept more into Spider-Man’s orbit.
4 Best: Death Actually Meant Something, So The Stakes Felt Higher
A good rule of thumb in Marvel comics is that, unless a character’s name is Ben Parker, then death will only be a temporary thing. Not so in the Ultimate Universe— if a character died, odds were good that they’d stay dead. This consequential absence of many major players opened up story possibilities (e.g. what do the X-Men do without Professor X?) while also making the stakes and threats in stories feel more real.
Now, there were exceptions to this rule: Ultimate Peter Parker and Doctor Doom both defied death. However, the countless death and resurrections in the mainstream Marvel easily dwarf the number of occurrences thereof in Ultimate Marvel.
3 Worst: The Universe Got A Bit Kill-Happy & Cut Too Many Potential Stories Short As A Result
While giving death a sense of permeance was a beneficial touch, the writers of Ultimate Marvel sometimes got so bloodthirsty that some readers might’ve wished them to be more generous with the reprieves.
The most infamous example is Jeph Loeb & David Finch’s “Ultimatum,” a five-part event which kills a boatload of characters in unsatisfying or gruesome ways. While this did create an interesting status-quo for later stories to explore, it also killed many other story threads dead cold.
2 Best: Actions & Events Had Lasting Consequences
Related to death being a more permanent thing, there was a greater sense of consequences in the Ultimate Marvel than there ever has been in the mainstream one. Stan Lee famously said that Marvel comics operate on “the illusion of change.” Well, Ultimate Marvel broke free of the illusion and used actual change in its stories.
While this meant sacrificing the evergreen appeal of classic Marvel, it also made for more exciting reading when one doesn’t know in the back of their head that any developments will be undone within five years.
1 Worst: Making Mutants A Lab Creation Completely Undermined What Mutants Are Supposed To Represent
One example of Ultimate Marvel‘s streamlining that went too far was the reveal about the origin of mutants in the Bendis-scripted mini-series Ultimate Origin. Rather than being the result of human evolution, the mutant gene was artificially created by Canadian scientists attempting to create their own super-soldier, and Wolverine was patient zero.
This entirely undercut the allegory behind X-Men: Mutants and their struggles as stand-ins for real-life marginalized groups. That Ultimatum wiped out 80+% of the X-Men cast also undermined the revelation’s impact.
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