Return of the Ultimate Universe?

[boots]

This right here. Yeah. That's what I was getting at. Ultimate Marvel began as an experiment yes and nobody knew what it could become but there was definitely some thought and long-term planning involved. The whole streamlining and simplifying years of continuity and introduce characters in 21st Century setting was definitely planned with an eye for movie adaptations, at least on Bill Jemas' part. Yeah, Marvel was facing bankruptcy and so on but they also knew that selling comics wasn't going to get them out of it. Part of the reason Ultimate Marvel was commissioned was that people lost a little faith in 616 in being automatically able to reach new audiences.

And not everything in Ultimate Marvel was decided by the writers. When Bendis wrote Ultimate Spider-Man, he was forbidden to age Ultimate Peter for the understandable reason that 616 had the older Peter and having a perpetually teenage Peter made it easily distinguishable. Bill Jemas partly came up with the plot of USM, and that's probably why it resembles a fair degree Spider-Man 1, since Jemas as President knew about the script and ideas behind that. Bendis has said multiple times that USM#13 was the first issue he had real control over the title, and that his work before that was mainly a way to get the trust of Jemas and Quesada to be left alone. Mark Millar's original concept for the Ultimates was a simple update and streamline of the classic Marvel but it was artist Bryan Hitch who decided on the costumes and look and pushed for a post-9/11 aesthetic since the attacks had happened mid-production. USM was written and published pre-9/11 but not Ultimates. The crap that Millar says that Ultimates was his commentary on American neo-conservatism is mostly just that, crap. Ultimates was a typical redstate baiting project put out by a British cynic, similar to Garth Ennis' stuff. In Ultimates, if you read Issue #1, Dubya Bush is shown fairly and so on. The stuff that happened after that, was more or less pro-American and tapping into the Post-9/11 rally round the flag, which at the time was fairly popular even across the world. Later Millar was trying to say he was being deconstructionist and so on, because he likes to have things both ways. That's why he's a major unreliable narrator.



Remember that his co-creator Bryan Hitch actually worked on The Authority and more or less was the main voice responsible for the cinematic look and designs of the costumes and so on. People give Millar too much credit on the Ultimates as it is.

i do find pommy cynicism tends to brighten my day ...but what is “red state baiting”? is that baiting conservatives or is that conservatives baiting others?

you’re right, it was too generous of me to give millar credit for intentionally writing a neo conservative critique but it functions as one just the same. even if his intent was just to cause outrage, the uncomfortable truths magnified in that book make it worth discussion.

and this may be more due to hitch, but my memory of dubya in that book was that he was portrayed like a clown but a clown that captain america served

and i’m definitely not giving millar the credit for the wide-screen approach of the time.

[Mister Mets]

That's why I said "regardless of its quality". They were not good comics, no. But they sold well, enough to allow Marvel to step out of bankruptcy, at least for the moment. RJ was saying that it was a failure and continued from that premise, but it was a wrong premise. Heroes Reborn did not continue beyond the year because Jim Lee did not want to continue with it in the proposed conditions. There are many examples like that. For example, Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. Tobey did not want to take part in Spider-Man 4, so the character had to be recast and the franchise reboot; we can't say that it was a failure because it did not continue.

As for the cinematic plans, there's another thing. RJ made a big point that Marvel was sticking strongly to its continuity. But let's think for a moment that, as he says, the MCU had always been the endgame of the whole Ultimate Marvel experience. That it would be the starting point of a franchise that would take them from near bankruptcy to one of the highest grossing brands in popular culture. But if that was so, why not fully commit to the plan, and turn Ultimate marvel into standard Marvel? Why risk such a plan by keeping around the "outdated" comics? just because of nostagia? That sounds like a suicidal plan. And why change the name to "Ultimates", if the team in film would go back to the name "Avengers"? Name is a very important thing in brands.

No. This is the way things took place. Bendis started Ultimate Spider-Man, and Millar Ultimate X-Men and the Ultimates, as comics. Not as the testing grounds of anything for later: they were just comics. Those comics felt cinematic? They were simply trying new narrative styles: we can't stay milking the Jack Kirby style forever. Some years later, the guys who drafted the MCU took note of the properties they still had under control, and noticed that they had the Avengers, so they modeled Phase 1 around them. But which era or story of the Avengers? The Ultimates stand out from other Avengers stories because they are newcomer-friendly (unlike, say, "Avengers forever"), a relatively simple story (unlike, say, the Celestial Madonna) and a background that casual moviegoers can relate to (unlike, say, the Kree-Skrull War).

I think you're both wrong.

RJ underestimates the sales. And you probably overestimate the impact if you think it saved Marvel from bankruptcy.

It was four hit books, but they weren't more valuable than the X-Men line.

https://www.comichron.com/monthlycom...7/1997-04.html
https://www.comichron.com/monthlycom...7/1997-06.html

[Ultimate Captain America]

This right here. Yeah. That's what I was getting at. Ultimate Marvel began as an experiment yes and nobody knew what it could become but there was definitely some thought and long-term planning involved. The whole streamlining and simplifying years of continuity and introduce characters in 21st Century setting was definitely planned with an eye for movie adaptations, at least on Bill Jemas' part. Yeah, Marvel was facing bankruptcy and so on but they also knew that selling comics wasn't going to get them out of it. Part of the reason Ultimate Marvel was commissioned was that people lost a little faith in 616 in being automatically able to reach new audiences.

And not everything in Ultimate Marvel was decided by the writers. When Bendis wrote Ultimate Spider-Man, he was forbidden to age Ultimate Peter for the understandable reason that 616 had the older Peter and having a perpetually teenage Peter made it easily distinguishable. Bill Jemas partly came up with the plot of USM, and that's probably why it resembles a fair degree Spider-Man 1, since Jemas as President knew about the script and ideas behind that. Bendis has said multiple times that USM#13 was the first issue he had real control over the title, and that his work before that was mainly a way to get the trust of Jemas and Quesada to be left alone. Mark Millar's original concept for the Ultimates was a simple update and streamline of the classic Marvel but it was artist Bryan Hitch who decided on the costumes and look and pushed for a post-9/11 aesthetic since the attacks had happened mid-production. USM was written and published pre-9/11 but not Ultimates. The crap that Millar says that Ultimates was his commentary on American neo-conservatism is mostly just that, crap. Ultimates was a typical redstate baiting project put out by a British cynic, similar to Garth Ennis' stuff. In Ultimates, if you read Issue #1, Dubya Bush is shown fairly and so on. The stuff that happened after that, was more or less pro-American and tapping into the Post-9/11 rally round the flag, which at the time was fairly popular even across the world. Later Millar was trying to say he was being deconstructionist and so on, because he likes to have things both ways. That's why he's a major unreliable narrator.



Remember that his co-creator Bryan Hitch actually worked on The Authority and more or less was the main voice responsible for the cinematic look and designs of the costumes and so on. People give Millar too much credit on the Ultimates as it is.

* Doing away with decades of overwhelming continuity has to be a sign that someone was thinking in cinematic adaptations? And didn't you consider that a simpler background may be a desirable thing in its own, even if just for the sake of comic book readers? Crisis, Zero Hour, Heroes Reborn, Chapter One, etc; all were made with the same idea in mind, and none were followed by a related film series.
* Bendis was FORBIDDEN to age Spider-Man and had to keep him a teenager? Citation needed on that one, please. By the way, he had a birthday in USM 155.
* Bill Jemas wrote the first arc to make it resemble the script of the film that was still under production and that he had access to? Again, citation needed on that one. But it sounds a bit strange... that arc is different from the film in many ways: Peter creates his own web shooters, Green Goblin is a Hulk-type monster, Dr. Octopus is a scientist working for Norman during all this, Norman has full knowledge of what happened, Uncle Ben dies at home, the Green Goblin attacks the school that Parker and Harry attend to, etc. None of that was included in the film. In the film, Norman has a Gollum thing, there is a Peter Parker-Mary Jane-Harry Osbourne love triangle, there's the iconic image of Spider-Man kissing Mary Jane upside down, Norman discovers Spider-Man's identity thanks to that blood drop, he forces Spider-Man to choose between saving Mary Jane or a lot of strangers, he dies in their final fight, Harry thinks that Spider-Man killed him and tries to get revenge, etc. None of this was included in the comic based on alleged priviledged information...
* You got the Ultimates wrong. The original, pre-9/11 draft, was just a basic update of some details here and there, similar to what was done in USM. After 9/11, Millar redesigned the whole project into what was finally published. And no, Bush does not appear in issue #1.

[Alan2099]

I remember some old articles, I think they were back in Wizard magazine, that talked about Ultimate Spider-man and Ultimate X-men being heavily based on the movies. Early information even suggested that the Ultimate X-men comic was going to originally serve as basically a sequel for the movie.

It's possible this was just incorrect information being passed around back that was the widely spread word back then.

[Ultimate Captain America]

I remember some old articles, I think they were back in Wizard magazine, that talked about Ultimate Spider-man and Ultimate X-men being heavily based on the movies. Early information even suggested that the Ultimate X-men comic was going to originally serve as basically a sequel for the movie.

It's possible this was just incorrect information being passed around back that was the widely spread word back then.

In the case of Ultimate X-Men, it's simple. Millar had never read their comics before, so he used the first film as inspiration.

[WebLurker]

Bill Jemas wrote the first arc to make it resemble the script of the film that was still under production and that he had access to? Again, citation needed on that one. But it sounds a bit strange... that arc is different from the film in many ways...

Agreed. While I do feel that USM and the Raimi movies have a lot of parallels (something I appreciate, since it gave the comics a familiar feel when I was first reading them), it's more in having similar status quos I mean, the only things that seem to line up are having Green Goblin be Spidey's starter villain and love triangle with Peter, MJ, and Harry Osborn (and even that has it's share of differences, with MJ and Peter already being close and having a much smother friends to lovers arc then their film counterparts did).

[Revolutionary_Jack]

* Doing away with decades of overwhelming continuity has to be a sign that someone was thinking in cinematic adaptations?

A barrier of entry for many people to get into comics or to understand stuff was the continuity and issues and so on. That applied to both the general reader and others. Like for instance Ultimate Marvel comics was used and given to executives and others to read to understand the concept and so on.

And didn't you consider that a simpler background may be a desirable thing in its own, even if just for the sake of comic book readers?

Again as 'boots' said, people can have multiple reasons to create and do stuff. Obviously there's merchandising too. Creating a new line of AU or event titles, means a new line of toy variations. That's what SECRET WARS'84 was inspired by and that led to a lot of good comics.

Heroes Reborn, Chapter One, etc; all were made with the same idea in mind, and none were followed by a related film series.

Obviously there's execution, there's marketing, there's sales and so on. That just suggests that Marvel was interested/invested in the idea to try it multiple times. I mean Ultimate Spider-Man came out just a year or so after Chapter One, and Quesada said that he was initially reluctant about USM because of Chapter One. But Jemas believed in it.

* Bendis was FORBIDDEN to age Spider-Man and had to keep him a teenager? Citation needed on that one, please. By the way, he had a birthday in USM 155.

Read some of Quesada's "Cup o'Joe" columns on CBR and others. When Ultimate Marvel got up and running people noted that the timeline passed even slower than 616, and Quesada said there was a mandate to keep the characters from aging. This was done for a lot of reasons. One to distinguish it from 616, but also for the sake of an experiment, since many people in-house at Marvel believed it was a mistake to age Peter out of high school. They were wrong about the latter part but right about the former part.

Bill Jemas wrote the first arc to make it resemble the script of the film that was still under production and that he had access to? Again, citation needed on that one.

How about the actual comics, hmm? Stuff in USM like Peter and Ben having an argument and that being their last conversation (which literally has no precedent in comics), Harry Osborn going to the same high school that Peter did (as is MJ) is very much from the film.

* You got the Ultimates wrong. The original, pre-9/11 draft, was just a basic update of some details here and there, similar to what was done in USM. After 9/11, Millar redesigned the whole project into what was finally published. And no, Bush does not appear in issue #1.

He appears in Ultimates #3. But yeah he does show up in the opening arc and so on, and he's framed positively or neutrally there. Dubya Bush was quite popular in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Things changed with the War in Iraq. Mark Millar like many limey writers has a weird fixation on America's red states and a general dislike for America's blue states because the former fits his stereotype of America better than the latter does. So when writing for American audiences, he caters to the former thinking that would get more money, so it's perfectly cynical on his part.

[Ultimate Captain America]

Sorry to interrupt the ramblings, but there are actual news. The comic book "Cosmic Ghost Rider Destroys Marvel History" has been revisiting and making fun and parodies of several big moments in the history of Marvel. Issue #5 has just been released, and it makes fun of the initial scene of Hawkeye and Black Widow in the Ultimates. Check this part.

[WebLurker]

How about the actual comics, hmm? Stuff in USM like Peter and Ben having an argument and that being their last conversation (which literally has no precedent in comics), Harry Osborn going to the same high school that Peter did (as is MJ) is very much from the film.

Aren't those all pretty common elements when distilling the franchise into a new adaptation? (I mean, outside of his aunt, Flash and J. Jonah Jameson, most of Spidey's iconic civilian supporting cast was introduced in the college-era of ASM).

Besides, for what it's worth, Peter's last conversation with his uncle plays out very differently in these versions, to the point that I think it's happenstance (unlike how Into the Spider-Verse clearly used the Raimi movies as inspiration for their Peters' backstories).

Sorry to interrupt the ramblings, but there are actual news. The comic book "Cosmic Ghost Rider Destroys Marvel History" has been revisiting and making fun and parodies of several big moments in the history of Marvel. Issue #5 has just been released, and it makes fun of the initial scene of Hawkeye and Black Widow in the Ultimates. Check this part.

I don't get it.

[Ultimate Captain America]

I don't get it.

Ultimates #8. Here's a little reminder.




Have in mind that Cosmic Ghost Rider makes a parody of the whole sequence, not just that one page.