I definitely think there are some interesting ideas based on what of it I’ve perused, but I don’t see why you can’t just bring the ideas into “continuity” if they’re good. If it sucks, lord knows you can always retcon it or kill it off. Plus, it gets cumbersome to say “ultimate” before everything (as in “…Ultimate Masters of Evil lay siege to the Ultimate Mansion…”).

Here’s the really funny thing. Because this is how I approached it, I really only read Ultimates and Ultimate X-Men. A friend had told me that Ultimate Spider Man was using the Byrne origin, so I skipped it. And, I casually looked at Ultimate FF and gave it a miss as well. So, I was perfectly willing to believe that the Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Iron Man movies were based on the Ultimate versions.

I believed this to the point that after seeing Iron Man, I went and bought the first few issues. I couldn’t find the TP, so I shelled out about $7 each for the first four. And, yah, they are nothing like what I expected. I should have looked online for some spoilers. Even just a Wiki search would have saved me $30. I expected “What If Iron Man had a public identity?” and instead I got “What If Tony Stark was Circuit Breaker?”

There’s being different, and there’s making a new character and pasting an established character’s name on it. Both can be good. See DC’s Tangent series. But, UIM was just so what I was not looking for that even if it was good, I couldn’t see it .

Theno

The thing is, do as many people care about it as they did 5 years ago?

Since the regular Marvel titles are now as ‘edgy’ as the Ultimate Universe is or was, and as the Ultimate Universe is no longer new and fresh anymore, it seems the only people who will care about it any more are long time fans.

There is little point in a young Ultimate Spidey now that Quesada made standard Spidey into a young guy again, and little point in the Ultimates when they made the regular Avengers into a fractured, contentious bunch too. There is little point in a harder-edged Ultimate Universe when the regular Marvel Universe became harder-edged too.

xo
Kevin (secret identity: Bill Jemas’ mom)

Ultimates was, arguably, the most successful Ultimate line comic because it provided a drastic departure combined with the absence of “old-school” Avengers stories in the 616. You didn’t see Millar (and now Loeb) writing the Ultimate Korvac Saga, or having the Ultimate Masters of Evil laying siege to Ultimates Mansion. Meanwhile, Bendis was launching his Disassembling, and giving us New Avengers. There is still a significant fanbase that would like to see Cap, Thor, and the rest yelling “Avengers Assemble!” and leading the way into the good fight instead of Bendis’ Secret Defenders.

Ultimate Spider-Man, likewise, was about single high school nerd Peter Parker while Amazing Spider-Man was about married high school teacher Peter Parker (and the weirdness that JMS brought, for good or ill).

This is something that, to my knowledge, Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate FF never provided. They have small points of differentiation (Ultimate Colossus is gay, Ultimate Reed and Sue are horndogs), but not enough to provide a legitimate alternative to the mainstream Marvel U.

Though Ultimate Dr Doom went to the Marvel Zombie (MZU??) Universe to end the plague…

Did he ever come back??

Did he ever appear in any MZU titles??

I know He was in Army of Darkness vs. Marvel Zombies, but I assumed that was MZU Dr Doom , not Ultimate Dr Doom…

I’ll stop there, my head hurts…

I’m not going to Quesada-bash or anything but logically speaking, when they launched the Ultimate Universe, it was this little experiment, lets reinvent these classic superheroes for the 21st century.
They had to be bold so that people wouldn’t feel the Ultimate Universe is simply more of the same. They had to break rules so that people would care. They took relatively fresh creators and let them run wild in this little corner of the Marvel Universe that couldn’t fuck up decades of continuity.

However, the Ultimate Universe is now a fairly established corner of the Marvel Universe. I fear it has become a cash cow. I feel that now that it was a huge success, Marvel Editor are pushing creators to do more of the same, keep the formula. I mean just look at Robert Kirkman’s run on Ultimate X-Men. I feel that he did it half-heartedly. You could see that he wasn’t doing the story he really wanted to tell so he wrapped it up as quickly as possible and left.

Then again, it’s a natural response from a business like Marvel.
Why change the formula when it “works”.

Back in the days, when the Ultimate line started, Marvel was struggling to keep going, they had to up the ante and make bold moves.

It’s one of the few Ultimate versions that is a NEW idea…

That was it for me, too. Bendis actually turned her into an appealing character, then killed her off to make CARNAGE of all stupid bad guys look more threatening. I was wavering on the book before that (it was decompressed to all hell for a couple of arcs before the Carnage storyline), and that’s what ended it.

And, yeah, Kirkman’s run on UXM drove me away from it. Vaughan had *got* what you do with the Ultimate characters – just tell good stories without continuity. Kirkman wrote the book as an Elseworlds, which didn’t come off well at all.

I think Ultimate Spidey needs to stay, and Ultimate X-Men wouldn’t be bad to keep around since I think you can still salvage it (unlike the main line X-Men, who are pretty much a lost cause at this point). Kill off Ultimates, which lost its way when Loeb came on board, and Ultimate FF should have been offed when Ellis left the book and its only purpose was for Greg Land to practise his tracing skills.

So no, I don’t care about any Ultimate title anymore. No, not even Ultimate Spider-Man. Or more like ESPECIALLY not USM. Because it is one of the most overrated pieces of shit I have ever had the misfortune to read.

Sure, a long standing reader will keep coming back, but I read the Ultimates and a tiny bit of the rest of the Ultimate universe a few years ago, and when I walk in to the shop, there’s nothing there to draw me to those books anymore than to the 616 titles. Why would I chose Ultimate FF over regular FF today, if I read neither yesterday? It’s lost it’s shine, and it should spool itself back.

I think that would be awesome, actually. Cancel Ultimate FF, cancel the Ultimates, and cancel any other stuff out there that’s not Ultimate Spidey or Ultimate X-Men. In their place, launch a third title (something like Ultimate Two-in-One, or Ultimate Tales of Suspense) that features the Ultimates, or the FF, or whatever else you’d like to have in the MUU.

Did they not think it through? “Let’s relaunch our biggest characters in a new universe without the baggage of continuity so that they’re more accesible to new readers.” Seems like a great idea. Of course, once you’ve been publishing the titles for a few years, they’ve accumulated their own confusing continuity. Why the hell would I pick up Ultimate Origins or any of that other crap if I haven’t been reading the Ultimate comics up to now.

Oh, and Magneto rules! Ultimate or otherwise. You just don’t get him Curran. You better sleep with one eye open.

Oh, and the Wildstorm universe will rise again!