Return of the Ultimate Universe?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The Ultimate Universe overstayed its welcome. I never understood Marvel's obsession to create another universe to compete with the 616 universe. The House of M universe was more interesting than the ultimate universe.

Ultimate Marvel was never intended to compete with 616. The idea behind it was that the 21st Century had arrived, but Marvel comics had loads of continuity. They had tried reboots before (heroes reborn, Chapter One) but they didn't work because they were merely trying to retell the classic stories with window dressings updated to the '90s, and that project happened in the middle of the 90s just when the decade was winding down and the references were becoming dated. So Ultimate Marvel wasn't destined to work in and of itself. It was no sure-fire slam dunk. There was something about it that appealed and caught interest when others didn't. The other idea behind Ultimate Marvel was to introduce streamlined versions of characters, to do takes that could easily be translated to the movies since Marvel was quite keen on getting its properties to the silver screen. That's why costume and aesthetic designs are all darker, and more streamlined and so on then before. Ultimate Marvel began in 2000, 2001, 2002 for its major titles and got out front just when the new millennium was starting, so it got the zeitgeist right. It basically caught a new audience who didn't know the classic Marvel characters, the ones who were curious but were put off by continuity issues and baggage that overall was all over the 90s. And to that extent it succeeded very well. House of M for instance is essentially a kind of arty take on continuity doing versions that can't sustain longer than an event or a tie-in title. No more than Gaiman's 1602 could be an actual long-sustaining alternate universe.

Marvel never intended Ultimate Marvel to stick/last. It was never built for that purpose. I mean logically, going in, editors and writers had no ideas/expectations on how long that would last. Bendis believed that Ultimate Spider-Man would last at most for a single miniseries at most. Then it sold well and became an ongoing, and then it eventually went all the way to 200 issues and more. Nobody could have reasonably expected that at the start. And then there's the fact that Ultimate Marvel had comic book time and froze characters to certain tics partly as an experiment, and then it accrued its own continuity and baggage, and because it was so tied to early milennium zeitgeist you couldn't update the characters the way you can, to some extent do with 616. I mean compare Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men to Grant Morrison's New X-Men. Millar's UXM felt like a 90s hangover, and Morrison's 616-set X-Men felt more 21st Century than the Ultimate Marvel take ever did. As did Whedon's run which followed that. Jonathan Hickman's Avengers/New Avengers likewise felt more 21st century than the Ultimates at any time did.

The House of Ideas will always put 616 Continuity first and foremost over anything else. I mean the end of 616 Continuity will be a bigger shock than Crisis of Infinite Earths was. DC for instance wouldn't have hesitated to replace 616 with Ultimate Marvel. They do it all the time, the first time they did it, was called the Silver Age. They introduced or reintroduced characters who were created in the last years of the Depression and during World War II, and updated them for a post-war world, and they said that these characters were in a new continuity separate from the classic one, and that became the default DC universe from the 50s-80s, and then Crisis on Infinite Earths created a new continuity. They tried again with New 52 (which was rather explicitly borrowing from Ultimate Marvel for a lot of concepts) before they bombed that with their incompetence and bad execution leading to the Post-Crisis continuity being revived.

[Ultimate Captain America]

She still wouldn't have carried over to 616, Bendis was told there was already too many Spider-Women (Gwen, Jessica and Silk all had solos at the time). If Miles didn't exist we'd just have one less Spider-Man comic.

Or it could have also mean that one of those, such as Silk, would be removed to make space for Jessica

[WebLurker]

The Ultimate Universe overstayed its welcome. I never understood Marvel's obsession to create another universe to compete with the 616 universe. The House of M universe was more interesting than the ultimate universe.

Well, for some of us, those titles (or one of those titles) are "our" Marvel Universe as far as the comics are concerned.

[Digifiend]

Or it could have also mean that one of those, such as Silk, would be removed to make space for Jessica

The problem is they had ongoing books at the time. If Silk and Gwen didn't have their books, Ultimate Jessica might have come over. The best hope now is that developments in Miles Morales #10 allow her to make a comeback.

[Ultimate Captain America]

Ultimate Marvel was never intended to compete with 616. The idea behind it was that the 21st Century had arrived, but Marvel comics had loads of continuity. They had tried reboots before (heroes reborn, Chapter One) but they didn't work because they were merely trying to retell the classic stories with window dressings updated to the '90s, and that project happened in the middle of the 90s just when the decade was winding down and the references were becoming dated. So Ultimate Marvel wasn't destined to work in and of itself. It was no sure-fire slam dunk. There was something about it that appealed and caught interest when others didn't. The other idea behind Ultimate Marvel was to introduce streamlined versions of characters, to do takes that could easily be translated to the movies since Marvel was quite keen on getting its properties to the silver screen. That's why costume and aesthetic designs are all darker, and more streamlined and so on then before. Ultimate Marvel began in 2000, 2001, 2002 for its major titles and got out front just when the new millennium was starting, so it got the zeitgeist right. It basically caught a new audience who didn't know the classic Marvel characters, the ones who were curious but were put off by continuity issues and baggage that overall was all over the 90s. And to that extent it succeeded very well. House of M for instance is essentially a kind of arty take on continuity doing versions that can't sustain longer than an event or a tie-in title. No more than Gaiman's 1602 could be an actual long-sustaining alternate universe.

Marvel never intended Ultimate Marvel to stick/last. It was never built for that purpose. I mean logically, going in, editors and writers had no ideas/expectations on how long that would last. Bendis believed that Ultimate Spider-Man would last at most for a single miniseries at most. Then it sold well and became an ongoing, and then it eventually went all the way to 200 issues and more. Nobody could have reasonably expected that at the start. And then there's the fact that Ultimate Marvel had comic book time and froze characters to certain tics partly as an experiment, and then it accrued its own continuity and baggage, and because it was so tied to early milennium zeitgeist you couldn't update the characters the way you can, to some extent do with 616. I mean compare Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men to Grant Morrison's New X-Men. Millar's UXM felt like a 90s hangover, and Morrison's 616-set X-Men felt more 21st Century than the Ultimate Marvel take ever did. As did Whedon's run which followed that. Jonathan Hickman's Avengers/New Avengers likewise felt more 21st century than the Ultimates at any time did.

The House of Ideas will always put 616 Continuity first and foremost over anything else. I mean the end of 616 Continuity will be a bigger shock than Crisis of Infinite Earths was. DC for instance wouldn't have hesitated to replace 616 with Ultimate Marvel. They do it all the time, the first time they did it, was called the Silver Age. They introduced or reintroduced characters who were created in the last years of the Depression and during World War II, and updated them for a post-war world, and they said that these characters were in a new continuity separate from the classic one, and that became the default DC universe from the 50s-80s, and then Crisis on Infinite Earths created a new continuity. They tried again with New 52 (which was rather explicitly borrowing from Ultimate Marvel for a lot of concepts) before they bombed that with their incompetence and bad execution leading to the Post-Crisis continuity being revived.

Oh, my. There are so many wrong premises in there...

* Heroes Reborn was NOT a failure. Regardless of its quality, it saved Marvel from bankruptcy. And Marvel wanted to continue it, on the condition that Jim Lee worked on at least one of the comics. He refused, so it was cancelled.
* Ultimate Marvel was not created with films in mind. Let Mark Millar himself explain it. "You have to remember this was 2001 when we were putting this together. The idea that this might become a movie seemed preposterous as Marvel was just climbing out of bankruptcy at the time". "Marvel at this point had these characters scattered across different studios like New Line, Universal and one or two others so a movie was never in consideration. Their single purpose at the time was getting the comic-division back into the black as things had been quite rough for a couple of years. Anything that happened after is just because the material worked well for the mainstream and was described by readers as cinematic. Of course, we didn't realise six or seven years later we were going to see all this start to come together as a movie. Marvel weren't self-financing until 2008".
* It is correct, when he started Bendis was not sure if the project would go past a miniseries... but not because he doubted of his work. His doubt was on the existence of Marvel Comics itself. It was still very close to bankruptcy, there was no Disney savior, nor MCU or film franchises at the time (only the first X-Men film, but it could have very well be Marvel's swan song rather than the begining of a big film franchise). The superhero genre itself was not something that appealed to the mass public, but only to a tiny niche fanbase of nerds similar to the Simpsons' comic book guy. Bendis feared that he would be writing "one of the last -if not THE last- Marvel comics".
* Frozen in comic book time? Is that a joke? Yes, of course that they were... just like the mainstream Marvel Comics. In 616, NOTHING EVER CHANGES, there's only the illusion of change. With some very few limited exceptions (most of them tooking place in Marvel's early years) a character may "grow" in some sense, but it is always an experiment, and it is reverted sooner or later, usually more sooner than later. Jean Grey dies? She comes back to life, because alien reasons. Cyclops got past his grief, found a new love, got married and had a son? His wife becomes a demon, his son is taken to the future and returns as an adult older than him, and he goes back with the resurrected Jean. Odin dies and Thor becomes the new King of Asgard? Odin comes back to life and Thor goes back to be an adventurer. Johnny Storm gets married with Alicia Masters? It was a Skrull! Peter Parker gets happily married with Mary Jane? Let's not get started with that one...
* Or are we talking about comics reflecting small details from real life? Yes, the early Ultimate Spider-Man comics still show him using a camera with film to take photos, as cell phones were not yet the item they would become. But in the later years, things like selfies and instant messenges were incorporated to the plots, and did not really require to change the comic book premise.
* "Jonathan Hickman's Avengers/New Avengers likewise felt more 21st century than the Ultimates at any time did." Actually, I can hardly find such a feel in those comics, as they are completely focused in sci-fi plots that are completely alien to the reader's real life. They are neither modern nor outdated, they are simply atemporal. A conclave of heroes working in secret to prevent a completely made-up event from destroying the planet? Jules Verne could have written that. Earth is under attack by missiles fired from Mars? H.G.Wells could have written that... oh, wait, he did.
* DC's Silver Age is not a similar case to the others. At that point, all their early superhero comics (except for Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) had been cancelled long ago. The concept of a "shared universe" was still a rarity, that wouldn't be properly used until Marvel came along. Until then, every comic book was basically its own universe.

[Digifiend]

Uh, you do realise that Justice League of America predates Fantastic Four, right? Marvel didn't invent the shared universe, they only codified it.

[Ultimate Captain America]

Actually, the first superhero team-up was between The Shield and the Wizard, in Top Notch Comics #5 (1940), by the editorial MLJ Comics. But the implications of it all (that then whatever happens in one comic, also happened off-screen in the world of other comics, meaning, shared universe) were not really explored until Marvel came along.

[Spiderfang]

Actually, the first superhero team-up was between The Shield and the Wizard, in Top Notch Comics #5 (1940), by the editorial MLJ Comics. But the implications of it all (that then whatever happens in one comic, also happened off-screen in the world of other comics, meaning, shared universe) were not really explored until Marvel came along.

I love classic superheroes but I don't recognize those two, the one looks like a Precursor to Captain America.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Oh, my. There are so many wrong premises in there...

No just general consensus view of things which you cherry-pick here and there.

* Heroes Reborn was NOT a failure. Regardless of its quality, it saved Marvel from bankruptcy. And Marvel wanted to continue it, on the condition that Jim Lee worked on at least one of the comics. He refused, so it was cancelled.

That strikes me as ridiculous. Just because one artist wouldn't work on a title, they cancel an entire line of reboots? That doesn't sound like success to me. Heroes Reborn was a failure. It had some initial success but nothing to sustain it. The overwhelming judgment is that it failed.

* Ultimate Marvel was not created with films in mind.

Not at the outset, but eventually yes.

Let Mark Millar himself explain it.

Mark Millar is a major unreliable narrator. There are a lot of reasons to doubt his views on things. Secondly, Ultimate Marvel was a project commissioned by Bill Jemas, then President of Marvel and he definitely had his eyes on media adaptations. The Ultimates coincided with the success of the Raimi movies and the first explosion of Marvel movies where companies which Marvel sold licenses to started options (including the Affleck Daredevil, the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies, the Thomas Jane Punisher, the Ang Lee Hulk) at which point Marvel made a decision to stop licensing characters they retained rights to and so on.

It's no accident that what happened in the 616 Universe, the diminution of the X-Men in favor of the Avengers first took place in Ultimate Marvel, where the mutants were sidelined and gradually over-run by the Ultimates including having them no longer be the natural product of evolution but a government experiment gone wrong. Likewise, the main aesthetic influence of the Ultimates is the artwork by Bryan Hitch, and Hitch more or less created the look, designs and layout independently of Millar's suggestions and he was definitely inspired by cinema and was trying to make it cinematic-friendly.

* Frozen in comic book time? Is that a joke?

Compared to 616 yeah. At least 10 years have passed in Spider-Man's 616 Continuity. 15 has passed in Fantastic Four. And overall 15 have passed across all Marvel titles. Cyclops started as a late teenage hero and is now near mid-30s. Nothing like that has passed in Ultimate Marvel. That much is unarguable.

[Ultimate Captain America]

Mark Millar is a major unreliable narrator. There are a lot of reasons to doubt his views on things. Secondly, Ultimate Marvel was a project commissioned by Bill Jemas, then President of Marvel and he definitely had his eyes on media adaptations. The Ultimates coincided with the success of the Raimi movies and the first explosion of Marvel movies where companies which Marvel sold licenses to started options (including the Affleck Daredevil, the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies, the Thomas Jane Punisher, the Ang Lee Hulk) at which point Marvel made a decision to stop licensing characters they retained rights to and so on.

It's no accident that what happened in the 616 Universe, the diminution of the X-Men in favor of the Avengers first took place in Ultimate Marvel, where the mutants were sidelined and gradually over-run by the Ultimates including having them no longer be the natural product of evolution but a government experiment gone wrong. Likewise, the main aesthetic influence of the Ultimates is the artwork by Bryan Hitch, and Hitch more or less created the look, designs and layout independently of Millar's suggestions and he was definitely inspired by cinema and was trying to make it cinematic-friendly.

Interesting idea... but there is a problem. Why would they even bother then to make Ultimate comics for Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four, who were under other studios? And before going for the films that they eventually made, other characters considered for the MCU at first were Dr. Strange, Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Taskmaster, Luke Cage, Power Pack, Runaways, etc. Some were eventually done years later, other never did. But if they were using Ultimate Marvel as a testing ground of sorts for such projects, why none of them got an Ultimate comic? They all appeared as minor secondary characters, or not at all.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, look at all the MCU solo heroes:

Iron Man only had a mini which was later exiled from continuity, and the Ultimates.
Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Captain America were limited to Ultimates.
Giant-Man and Wasp (Hank and Janet) were also in Ultimates... the other ant themed heroes were cannon fodder (Scott was one of many Giant-Men). Hope/Nadia, of course, has no Ultimate counterpart.
Carol Danvers never got her powers, the Ms. Marvel mantle doesn't exist in 1610 at all and Captain Marvel was Rick Jones.
Black Panther had only cameos - and was mute! Captain America impersonated him in Ultimates3.
Doctor Strange was a background character. Debuted in a Team-Up issue and was killed off in Ultimatum among many other heroes.
The Guardians of the Galaxy don't exist.

Most of the Defenders crew are in the same boat as Carol. No powers.

[Mister Mets]

The problem is they had ongoing books at the time. If Silk and Gwen didn't have their books, Ultimate Jessica might have come over. The best hope now is that developments in Miles Morales #10 allow her to make a comeback.

Given the various conflicts on identity conflicts, I also don't see Marvel dumping a protagonist who is a woman of color to make room for a white character.

Interesting idea... but there is a problem. Why would they even bother then to make Ultimate comics for Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four, who were under other studios? And before going for the films that they eventually made, other characters considered for the MCU at first were Dr. Strange, Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Taskmaster, Luke Cage, Power Pack, Runaways, etc. Some were eventually done years later, other never did. But if they were using Ultimate Marvel as a testing ground of sorts for such projects, why none of them got an Ultimate comic? They all appeared as minor secondary characters, or not at all.

At that point, it does seem that the purpose of the Ultimate comics was to create accessible comics for people who liked the movies, rather than to provide R&D for inevitable films.

Millar also said that Marvel would have preferred Ultimate Wolverine as his second series, but he wanted to do the Avengers, which doesn't fit the idea that they were intended to provide more material for future moviemakers (especially since there was existing material already.)

No just general consensus view of things which you cherry-pick here and there.



That strikes me as ridiculous. Just because one artist wouldn't work on a title, they cancel an entire line of reboots? That doesn't sound like success to me. Heroes Reborn was a failure. It had some initial success but nothing to sustain it. The overwhelming judgment is that it failed.



Not at the outset, but eventually yes.



Mark Millar is a major unreliable narrator. There are a lot of reasons to doubt his views on things. Secondly, Ultimate Marvel was a project commissioned by Bill Jemas, then President of Marvel and he definitely had his eyes on media adaptations. The Ultimates coincided with the success of the Raimi movies and the first explosion of Marvel movies where companies which Marvel sold licenses to started options (including the Affleck Daredevil, the Tim Story Fantastic Four movies, the Thomas Jane Punisher, the Ang Lee Hulk) at which point Marvel made a decision to stop licensing characters they retained rights to and so on.

It's no accident that what happened in the 616 Universe, the diminution of the X-Men in favor of the Avengers first took place in Ultimate Marvel, where the mutants were sidelined and gradually over-run by the Ultimates including having them no longer be the natural product of evolution but a government experiment gone wrong. Likewise, the main aesthetic influence of the Ultimates is the artwork by Bryan Hitch, and Hitch more or less created the look, designs and layout independently of Millar's suggestions and he was definitely inspired by cinema and was trying to make it cinematic-friendly.



Compared to 616 yeah. At least 10 years have passed in Spider-Man's 616 Continuity. 15 has passed in Fantastic Four. And overall 15 have passed across all Marvel titles. Cyclops started as a late teenage hero and is now near mid-30s. Nothing like that has passed in Ultimate Marvel. That much is unarguable.

I agree that it is certainly a stretch to say that boosting sales on four titles saved Marvel from bankruptcy, but Heroes Reborn sold well, at least relative to where the books were earlier.

It succeeded in that way.

Reviews were unkind, and the staff wasn't big fans, for a variety of reasons (major characters were taken out of the Marvel Universe, it could be seen as demeaning to be replaced by people who left years ago because of low sales, the books had an Image sensibility/ were seen as emblematic of a 90s style, it largely rehashed older territory.)

Marvel did make some smart moves in Heroes Return, keeping high sales but bringing the characters back to the standard Marvel Universe with some decent creative teams. This time they had name writers paired with name artists.

[Ultimate Captain America]

I agree that it is certainly a stretch to say that boosting sales on four titles saved Marvel from bankruptcy, but Heroes Reborn sold well, at least relative to where the books were earlier.

It succeeded in that way.

Reviews were unkind, and the staff wasn't big fans, for a variety of reasons (major characters were taken out of the Marvel Universe, it could be seen as demeaning to be replaced by people who left years ago because of low sales, the books had an Image sensibility/ were seen as emblematic of a 90s style, it largely rehashed older territory.)

Marvel did make some smart moves in Heroes Return, keeping high sales but bringing the characters back to the standard Marvel Universe with some decent creative teams. This time they had name writers paired with name artists.

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).

[boots]

does it have to be one or the other? these projects have several people working on them, all with their own motivations and agendas

i can believe that millar was continuing to write in the cinema-esque style made popular by “the authority” without actually intending it to be a how-to-adapt for hollywood execs (if he had been, then writing the team as a scathing commentary on north america probably wasn’t in his best interests) but i can also believe that marvel were instantly thinking about all the different avenues they could chase to capitalise on the book if it was successful. like moofies

[Revolutionary_Jack]

does it have to be one or the other? these projects have several people working on them, all with their own motivations and agendas

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.

i can believe that millar was continuing to write in the cinema-esque style made popular by “the authority” without actually intending it to be a how-to-adapt for hollywood execs

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.