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Ultimate Norman's been throwing fireballs around since his first appearance, if I'm remembering correctly.

Ultimate Nick Fury is currently starring in the unfortunate SQUADRON SUPREME relaunch, so, yeah, that's why everybody keeps mentioning that he's gone.

And The Dark Knight is overrated. It's good, but the second act sags and the Hong Kong bit is completely extraneous.

Yeah, I'll second the Osborn thing. He's been tossing around fireballs and doing the whole flame thing for quite a while.

Fury being in the Supreme universe is the fallout from the Supreme Power crossover a while back. My god was that a bad comic. Also, Ultimate Fury was interesting enough that the books are poorer for his absence.

So far the Miles Warren stuff is just building. Probably come to a head in another arc or two.

And in the end, the ultimate Clone Saga had almost nothing at all in common with the original Spider-Man story. That said, I thought it worked really well in the context of the Ultimate universe.

E.D., if by 'extraneous' you mean 'awesome', I completely agree.

I don't mind that Nolan and co. kept an extraneous ass-kicking in a Batman movie. Cmon ED, Batman FLIES!

Earth Screw You Mark Grunewald? Good one

Ultimate Spider-Man is not just about Peter Parker being unmarried and single, but starting the mythos over without the baggage of continuity and in modern times. It allows them to tell a different set of stories, because Peter Parker is still young, inexperienced, and a teenager in high school in the series.

Isn't writers pulling things out of their asses the definition of the Ultimate Universe?

Ultimate Spider-Man has been around long enough now that it is beginning to become burdened with its own continuity problems. Like crossing over with the 616 Universe. Have they crossed over with the Marvel Zombie Universe? How about the Hostess Cupcake Universe?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the Hong Kong episode of The Dark Knight was not actually extraneous but was in place to establish exactly what the Joker had earlier supposed—that is, just how bad-ass the Batman is and just how long his reach extends.

As to the business of the actual post, Ultimate Spider-Man is the only Spider-Man I've read/purchased since I dropped the mainline evangelical version just before they started that whole The Other business (and since they stopped making Mary Jane Vs./Loves Spider-Man). Ultimate just seemed to work better for the character than 616—and not because of the marriage, but because Ultimate just more consistently told interesting stories and allowed the core appeal of Peter Parker to shine through.

I never really got anywhere with the rest of the Ultimate line however—though I tried with X-Men for about fifty issues. And while the first two Ultimates series were engaging, they felt like they took place in an entirely different kind of universe from Ultimate Spider-Man.

I think the Ultmate Universe has lost it´s initial appeal and has become redundant.

Alan, i"m pretty sure that the Marvel Zombie universe was actually created as an offshoot of the Ultimate Marvel Universe, initially in the pages of Ultimate Fantastic Four.

Anyway, I like Ultimate Spider-Man. And found the Ultimates interesting. But I have no philosophical or moral justification in their defense. I just like them. If they were cancelled, that would be the only argument I would have in their defense.

I don't know....I always felt that the whole Ultimate universe was Marvel's version of DC's Earth 1 and 2. They have the same names, similiar costumes, but more modern.

If the Ultimate universe is there so writer's can tell a different set of stories, why do they just keep telling updated versions of old stories? Ultimate clone saga? That's ridiculous.

I enjoyed The Dark Knight a great deal and felt no scene was unnecessary. Like The Dane said, the Hong Kong scene showed how Batman's reach extends beyond Gotham, that he operates very much outside the law.

I lost interest in the Ultimate universe a long time ago. I find Bendis' dialogue to be a bit tiring, and Millar's work is crap. His Ultimates was pretty much about a bunch of unrepenant thugs and mental screw ups and I got bored with his U-X-Men. I will concede that Millar's Ultimates were attempting to tell different stories, but his and Hitch's inability to maintain anything approaching a schedule shot the series in the foot.

His Ultimates was pretty much about a bunch of unrepenant thugs and mental screw ups

You forgot to add 'who kick @ss on a global scale!'. Yeah, I liked it. I can easily see how the impact of the ending was lessened to molecular levels by the delays but i read it in trade so that didn't bother me so much.

The purpose of One More Day was to send off the marriage in as dramatic a fashion as possible - which is probably more than it really deserved. In that manner it definitely succeeded, because some people are still moaning about it seven months on.

As for why bother when USM exists, did you know that they only publish one issue of that every month, and Bendis won't let anyone else write it? Why should 75% of the Spider-Man comics be lumbered with an ill-thought-out-in-1987-but-nobody-dare-get-rid-of-it-because-it's-been-there-too-long storytelling restriction? (Okay, the marriage is "nice". But it's not Spider-Man, it turns him into a generic superhero.)

Tho I feel Bendis has a bit too much influence over the "regular" Marvel Universe, I do enjoy his Ultimate Spider-man stories. I also liked Ultimates 1, 2, and 1.5 (Galactus). X-Men hasn't gotten me much, other than the Ultimates crossover in the second (I think) year, and I completely lost interest in the Ult FF with the Jae Lee story, whatever that was.

it's nice that they've kept the Ultimate universe relatively small in the number of books they publish. I think the Supreme universe crossover was a mistake.

I actually began to see very little point to the Ultimate Universe a while ago...I actually wound up writing something about that in my own column on comicsnexus.com - http://comicsnexus.com/2008/06/25/im-just-sayin15/

Tom Daylight: I beg to differ on your points with regards to the Spider-marriage. marrying Peter Parker was an organic development to his overall character arc. Keeping him single and refusing to let him develop past a certain point? Now THAT is the definition of "generic superhero."

Tom Daylight - So it's taken them 21 years to get rid of the "ill-thought-out-in-1987-but-nobody-dare-get-rid-of-it-because-it’s-been-there-too-long storytelling restriction"?
And yet we're now being told that the last 21 years did still happen, but just that PP and MJ weren't actually married and that no-one has known that PP was Spidey??? Sorry, but I think that One More Day is actually the "ill-thought-out-in-2007-but-nobody-dare-get-rid-of-it-because-it’s-been-thought-of-by-the-boss" story-telling restriction...
I think erasing his marriage so he can be single again is a bit pathetic really... If they wanted out of the marriage, why didn't MJ just divorce him after Civil War? Or offer her life for Aunt May's?? If they wanted out of the "PP is Spidey" Slott had already set it up in Avengers the Initiative...
Sorry, but I agree, we already had/have this OMD Spidey in the form of USM... and both were fine... We had USM for the new generation Spidey, and ASM for the older, (more matured?) Spidey (and ASG for Spidey as a father...)

"(Okay, the marriage is “nice”. But it’s not Spider-Man, it turns him into a generic superhero.)"

How many other superheroes *are* married? Especially those with name recognition? Taking away Green Arrow and Black Canary (too recent), the JLA is a blank slate aside from Superman and Flash. And the Avengers (classic version) just have Wasp / Hank Pym and Vision / Scarlet Witch (and both those have been far less stable than Peter and MJ were). I guess Daredevil's married now, but that's one of those Bendis decisions that it's best to pretend never happened.

If anything, having Spidey be happily married makes him almost *unique* in both universes. By reverting him to a skirt-chasing, two-girlfriends-a-month type of guy, they not only make him less relatable to the average reader (because, let's face it, Peter's never-ending flow of gorgeous women in his life got a bit ridiculous - no one has THAT much good luck), but turns him into the type of character that every other single comic hero has been turned into.

Now, I agree that the marriage came out of nowhere back in the day. But it was *twenty years* - there were college seniors who'd never seen a comic where Spidey wasn't married. Heck, if this had been pushed back to 2010, there'd be more years of a married Spider-Man than an unmarried one (I think my math is right there). Spider-Man lost relevance because the books were horrible in the 1990s, not because Peter was married during that time.

Peter Parker has 2-3 new girlfriends every month because the way to attract new, younger readers is to have Parker whore around as much as possible.

I hope he gets the clap.

"I hope he gets the clap."

I would buy that issue.

A superhero with VD - gotta admit, that wouldn't be terribly generic.

Seems more appropos for that new Ant-Man, though...

Come to think of it, for a loser/geek type, Peter does seem to attract a lot of hot, cool women, doesn't he?