Reboot the Ultimate Marvel Universe!

It'll be 20 years since the Ultimate Marvel line launched later this year, and Marvel has expressed interesting potentially rebooting it in the past, in particular Donny Cates said he would love to be the architect of an Ultimate Marvel relaunch (him being a noted fan). Say that Cates is given the go-ahead, and they reboot the Ultimate Marvel line. How should they do it?

This is what we're going to discuss.

Here's what I would do:

For me, I think they should do a hard reboot of this line. Mainly because the Ultimate Marvel from before is a finished story, without much to even go back to at this point. I'd take the name "Ultimate Marvel" and apply that to a fresh take on the continuity, just like what the original did. Likewise, it's heavily ingrained in 2020s culture, modernizing many of the tropes for this continuity. This new verse takes inspiration from 616, the other Ultimate Marvel, the MCU, various animated series and video games, and of course, does its own thing.

Ultimate Marvel 2 is less edgy than the first, instead favoring the original intention of distilling the best parts of the mythos rather than trying to top itself with shock value (a major fault that consumed the original). There would be some tweaks to the known canon, making it feel distinct on its own.

Notes:

- The setting is updated, with everything beginning in our year, and with an alternate history that's important. The characters are written as part of the modern world from the start, similar to how Spider-Man PS4 did it.
- Comic Book Time is averted. Instead, everyone not only has a defined birth date, but they age as the universe progresses (like how it originally was).
- No retcons. Once something is established, it's set in stone. This means both death and change stick.
- Influences from other media, such as the MCU as the most obvious.
- Many characters appear as composites of the comics and various other portrayals.
- Major deviations from the lore, as to be expected.

Here are the comics I would release as part of the line:

Ultimate Spider-Man -- Flagship title that launches the universe. Written by Donny Cates.
Ultimate Marvel Team-Up -- Team-up series starring Spider-Man and a new person each issue. Also written by Donny Cates.
Ultimate X-Men -- Starring the heroic outcasts of society, the X-Men, featuring a fluctuating lineup and a school base. Written by Chip Zdarsky.
Ultimate Avengers -- Earth's Mightiest Heroes, refit for a new continuity and telling their origins. Written by Benjamin Percy.
Ultimate Fantastic Four -- The greatest superhero team, and the ones who started the superhero trend to begin with, reborn. Written by Saladin Ahmed.
Ultimate Miles and Gwen -- A dynamic duo series starring Kid Arachnid and the Ghost-Spider. Written by Kelly Thompson.
Ultimate New Mutants -- A team series focusing on the younger mutants as they seek to become new X-Men in their own right. Written by Gerry Duggan.
Ultimate Champions -- Young, independent superheroes banding together without parental permission. What could go wrong? Written by Eve Ewing.
Ultimate Daredevil -- A retelling of DD's origins taking influence from the Netflix series. Written by Nick Spencer.
Ultimate Thunderbolts -- Secret government black ops team of incarcerated villains made to do good. Written by Cullen Bunn.
Ultimate X-Force -- Mutant black ops arm of the X-Men, who do the type of work that the paragons on the X-Men couldn't do themselves. Written by Jeff Lemire.
Ultimate Secret Wars -- The first big crossover event of the line, starring many different heroes and villains gathered by the Beyonder on Battleworld. Written by Donny Cates.

Anyways, that's all I have for now. What ideas do you have for a hypothetical Ultimate Marvel reboot? Discuss.

[QUOTE=Hybrid;4815807]
- Comic Book Time is averted. Instead, everyone not only has a defined birth date, but they age as the universe progresses (like how it originally was).
- No retcons. Once something is established, it's set in stone. This means both death and change stick.
- Influences from other media, such as the MCU as the most obvious.
- Many characters appear as composites of the comics and various other portrayals.
- Major deviations from the lore, as to be expected.
[/QUOTE]

I can get behind those, especially the first one. The Ultimate Universe didn't go far enough in the deviations, IMO. Except maybe toward the end.

My reboot would be like Spider-Man life story.

For every year IRL, there would be a bunch maxi-series set in a decade.
Let's say they begin in 2021: all the stories would be about the Ultimate Universe in the 60s (I guess that's where they should start). The 2022 would be about the 70s and so on...
There would be several time skips and the characters would be allowed to age, like in SMLS. That should allow new generations of heroes to appear and be relevant while the others die or retire.

Series would be
Ultimate X-Men
Ultimate Avengers
Ultimate Defenders (mystic side)
Ultimate Marvel Knights (street heroes)
maybe throw in Ultimates FF or Ultimates Guardians of Galaxy or Ultimate SHIELD

The tone would be more "realistic" than the main MU.
Writers like Priest, Ellis or Coates would be suited for this line of comics. Not sure who else I'd add. Maybe Zdarsky, since he did so well with Spider-Man Life Story.

I'd probably do what Justice League Gods and Monsters did and keep the mantle but toss everything else out.

Which could be harder to do in Marvel than DC but its an interesting challenge.

One of the good things of Ultimate Marvel that is frequently overlooked is that they never got overboard with titles. It was always 3 or 4 ongoings at most, and miniseries. And only 2 crossover events. That made it easy to follow.

As for what to include, the most important thing would be the spirit: made it a place where anything, ANYTHING, may happen, and the usual comic book rules can be broken.

I really enjoyed the Ultimate line in the beginning but Marvel really short themselves in the foot with it in the end. I think a reboot of a reboot would just be a little derivative at this point?

If anything, I would have the team Ewing brought into his Ultimates run trying to get home. They’d arrive back in the Ultimate Universe pre Ultimatum/Ultimates 3 but time is screwy and some of the cooler post Ultimatum stuff like Miles and the Maker would be in place. I guess you could call it a soft reboot?

Let the 1610. Have Ultimate books be about creating cohesive, refined, and stand-alone origin epics for characters that lack them.

In a way, it’s what the MCU has done for things like GotG. Reimagining a mashup of different elements as a singular property.

[QUOTE=Shinglepants;4824251]I really enjoyed the Ultimate line in the beginning but Marvel really short themselves in the foot with it in the end. I think a reboot of a reboot would just be a little derivative at this point?

If anything, I would have the team Ewing brought into his Ultimates run trying to get home. They’d arrive back in the Ultimate Universe pre Ultimatum/Ultimates 3 but time is screwy and some of the cooler post Ultimatum stuff like Miles and the Maker would be in place. I guess you could call it a soft reboot?[/QUOTE]

There's more: we had also seen those Ultimates in their world at the end of Spider-Men 2. But instead of retconing it, they should embrace it and deal with the consequences of having "clones" of sorts around.

I would completely scrap everyone and everything, save for Steve Rogers. I would make the new Ultimate universe completely unique with Steve being the only alternate reality counterpart from ANY divergent cosmos.

In this new expanse the writers would be free to create their own cosmic hierarchy, their own alien races, their own gods and monsters without being bound to mirroring realities. In fact, I'd make it a feature of the Ulti-verse that it's not only quarantined but inoculated. No being from any other cosmos can cross into or exist in the Ultimate universe, except Steve. That extends to technology and magic. So don't bother with Mjolnir or Infinity Stones or Books of the Vishanti in the new Ulti-verse. Not only will they not work, but they'd likely disintegrate in the passage to the new Ulti-verse. Same goes for conceptual abstract entities and people. Steve is the lone exception.

My first story arc would probably explain why Steve has to be the exception, the foundation and the Passage. And I would devise a way to make Steve the primary originator for all of the generations of superpowered beings to come. Steve would be the first, but not the greatest, or the most powerful. Those distinctions would be shared by two other individuals. All three would represent the founding core of the new Ultimates organization.

All that said, I doubt a series like this would sell. Moreover, I doubt it would be easy to recruit top creative teams. These days everyone keeps their own creative content and original creations to themselves. And let's not forget the readers, who really only care to read stories about characters that they like, even if it means reading the same damn plots permuted over and over again. Then again, I also imagine fans of several characters wanting their favorites moved to the new Ultimate Earth. They'd definitely have a better chance of seeing print than they do in a universe where the same small cast of characters get all of the shine.

Still, if you ask me I would give new Ultimate universe a fresh start, unencumbered by what came before in every other title, in any other multiverse.

The only thing I would do when it comes to rebooting the Ultimate Universe would be to get people on it who can actually think of superheroes as something worth aspiring to and rooting for, as opposed to deconstructing them into either "naïve idiots in colorful tights" or "utter bastards in shiny costumes." That's it. Everything else flows from that, such as the one outlier in Ultimate Marvel, Spider-Man, where while the setting and a lot of the people in it were deeply morally flawed if not flat-out corrupt, especially the more powerful some of those people were, a person of truly noble character who refused to surrender to that corruption no matter how hard it was could ultimately succeed in making it a better place, or at least inspire others by his example. That's frankly what I think a reboot of the Ultimate Universe would need --- people and characters that aren't so riddled with cynicism (perhaps verging into outright nihilism) that passes for "realism," and are willing to give people something that actually inspires hope and courage rather than despair, apathy, and even disgust.

The problem is that, in the real world, superheroes would not be role models or anything like that. They would either super soldiers (with more emphasis in "soldier" than "super") or unprepared naive teenage pretenders in kick-ass style.

I'd rather not see a reboot.

[QUOTE=Ultimate Captain America;4829055]The problem is that, in the real world, superheroes would not be role models or anything like that. They would either super soldiers (with more emphasis in "soldier" than "super") or unprepared naive teenage pretenders in kick-ass style.[/QUOTE]

They don't necessarily need to be role models, but at some point there has to be some reason to root for them beyond the actual bad guys being completely, irredeemably heinous pieces of s***. Realism does not necessarily (and more importantly, should not) equal "everyone in the world is a walking sack of s***" and "power turns everyone into jerks at best and sociopaths at worst." That was the big pitfall of the original Ultimate line, at least for me.

Turn the Ultimate Universe into the Ultra Universe where every hero book is super angsty lol:

Captain America: Steve Rogers is the son of an Irish immigrant father and Mexican immigrant mother but is raised by his strict Irish grandmother. While in college he is protesting World War III but is drafted and force into the war. There he is giving drugs that turn him into a super soldier and now fights terrorist as America's mascot.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales tries to balance his life as Spider-Man, living with divorced parents, dealing with racist jocks, and police harassment as both Spider-Man and Miles.

Old Fantastic Four: Decades ago four people, scientist Nathaniel Richards, nurse Sharon Ventura, soldiers Ben Grimm and Jim Hammond gained superpowers after exposure to cosmic rays during a scientific mission to outer space. They deal with scientific discoveries and aliens.

Modern Fantastic Four: Four people, young scientist Reed Richards, recently cured Ben Grimm, and rich kids Susan and Johnny Storm, gain superpowers after being exposed to the Negative Zone. While dealing with threats they try to solve the mystery of what happened to the other original members of the FF.

Captain Marvel: Captain Carol Danvers gains powers after being experimented on by alien terrorists during World War III and deals with sexism in the army.