Why do people hate Ultimate Marvel?

[Iron Maiden]

Ultimate Doom was terrible. But then I don't know if there's a single Ultimate version of any villain (USM, UXM, Ult, UFF) worth salvaging. Well Ultimate Loki had his moments I suppose. The most enduring villain was The Maker.

The Ultimate Fantastic Four comics had a problem in that it was too similar to The Ultimates in looks, theme, and setting. The problem with Ultimate Marvel was that SHIELD was behind everything and everyone. So in Ultimate FF, the Baxter Building was a SHIELD owned and SHIELD aligned project. What that meant was that everything became a SHIELD story and Nick Fury story, and that made everything feel same-y after the time. You'd have the same images of the Triskellion the same beats of Nick Fury insulting and going alpha-male over people, and then doing something horrible only for that to be justified and glamorized, and then everyone strikes cool poses like the latest action movies (where old classic marvel looked like dated action movies) and it stunk. Everyone worked for Ultimate Fury eventually. Millar's Ultimates was serious and humorless (except for the unintentional kind). The UFF was also serious and humorless. Obviously the failure of Ultimate Fantastic Four to catch on ultimately allowed license to do radical stuff with it like having Ultimate Reed go evil as The Maker, and having Sue and Ben Grimm hook up.

Ultimate Fantastic Four is illustrative of some of the failures of the overall Ult. Marvel project. For all the talk and guff about the idea that Ultimate Marvel was a ground-up 21st Century take on these characters, for the most part you still had at the outset mostly the same WASP looking take on heroes. There were exceptions, Nick Fury being the biggest, but if you look at the Fantastic Four where given a golden opportunity to redo the Fantastic Four in the 21st Century rather than try and introduce diversity like even the ill-advised 2015 tried to do, they basically did the same team of 4 from the same background as the first, only with a Ben Grimm that no longer seemed to be Jewish (!). They transplanted a family dynamic based in the 50s on college-teen kids living in a special private school and it felt sillier than anyhing before. It basically showed that Ultimate Marvel was all surface and flash, just a coating of contemporaneity without any deep thought to it. It wasn't until Miles Morales that they actually did something to what it originally promised.

For some characters there was some positive developments. Stan and Jack's Sue was rooted in the pre-feminist era. She was petulant at times and always needed Reed to tell her how to use her powers. At least the UFF version had her in think tank with the guys. That was the only good update they put in there. They didn't need Ben to be the Thing again or any of the others to have the same powers. So not much originality there. And it was odd that they dropped any ethnic qualities. Why not make Reed a Black man?

[Frontier]

I don't think it's so much that people hate the Ultimate Universe, it was pretty popular back in it's day, but the lackluster direction it eventually went in that kind of defeated the purpose of it's existence and the main 616 universe taking away what worked about the Ultimate Universe just left people migrating back to more traditional or classic takes.

I must be in a minority who really liked this version of the Green Goblin. Physical brute strength was great against Parker.

616 Gobby has brute strength too, though.

[Glio]

I think that it was just too bleak and edgy. The writers confused realism with "everyone is a jerk" and there was no way to empathize with anyone except Spider-man. They took advantage of the freedom to do whatever they wanted to just do it all as a teenage Linkin Park fan.

[Dboi2001]

Ok you have made your point. I understand much of it is subjective so going it piece by piece

- I like SHIELD being behind a lot of the things and how a lot of things are built off each other like the Hulk and Goblin being products of failed Super Soldier recreations. It makes it feel more like a connected universe instead of random characters who happen to exist at the same time. I will admit I’m not a fan of mutants being man made. But if basically every hero is going to live in NYC may as well give an explanation as to why they all come from there

- again opinion. I think most of the Ultimates are fine. I actually like the Pyms way more in the Ultimates than 616. You have yet to provide real examples of them being assholes

- I haven’t read much Ultimate X Men or Ultimates 3 so I will give you that however do you put the same standard on 616? Like do you consider Peter a terrible human being because he punched Mary Jane during the clone saga

- The first scene of the MCU Iron Man is Stark boning a young blonde doe eyed reporter. I guess 2008 seems like such a long time ago. Also as far as I can tell anyone Stark had sex with was consensual not quid pro quo which was what started the whole movement. Oh no he cat calls women what a devil

- That’s just plain false. Cap was the warmest and most pure hearted of the Ultimates. With Widow again I concede that though I still find her turn more interesting than Black Widow normally is

- what is wrong with Banner being an “incel?” He’s a scrawny nerd. And Hulk is suppose to be unlikable he’s a monster. Hank getting second chances? What a f***** joke and pinning it as white privilege is laughable. After beating Jan he was immediately kicked off the Ultimates and even when he begged Fury offering him the Ultron bots for free Fury refused and after the Liberators were defeated he was imprisoned. Quite the opposite of second chances. And Hank was a good man before the breakdown of his marriage. He just kept talking to Jan about how awesome it was to be recruited by SHIELD and to become superheroes. He also admit he was wrong for beating Jan and he deserved the ass kicking from Cap and accepted being locked up for aiding the Liberators which he claimed he was only acting as a double agent

- How is Van Damme cheesy but not Von Doom? Also Victor’s mother was a witch isn’t Romani being involved in witchcraft a bit cliche and stereotype? Even then I doubt anyone considered Dr Doom as a “Romani” character or even knows his heritage same with Ben Grime being Jewish . I thought he was OK in Ultimate F4. Different but still cool. Side note care to name how many Catholic superheroes or villains there are besides Daredevil since diversity is so important?

So you criticize me for comparing the Ultimates to 616 but you do the exact same. It certainly is a loaded question of which version is better 1610 or 616 so I won’t answer that. However I definitely prefer Ultimate Hank and Jan over 616 Hank and Jan as for being “better” that depends on your definition of what is better

[Iron Maiden]

Good. The truth is that the Ultimate Marvel is no longer in the mainstream and the fears that some fans had about it supplanting or overriding the classic idea or that it infects adaptations hasn't proven true. The MCU for instance jettisoned and overturned all the concepts that defined Ultimate Marvel quite quickly. The scene with Captain America and Blob biting the Wasp's ribcage and the Lannisterization of the Maximoff twins are symbolic of a concept that was always off. Because compared to these, Ultimate Marvel hardly has any big positive moment and glorious moment showing these characters in a manner worth admiring.

Let me give you a rundown of the reason people usually dislike Ultimate Marvel
-- In Ultimate Marvel, everything ties to SHIELD, everything becomes a SHIELD story, or a Nick Fury story. The defense might be a simplification of continuity and streamlining, in practice it becomes an oversimplification and homogenization where multiple titles start feeling same-y (Ultimates, Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Fantastic Four). Everything becomes about how Nick Fury secretly had this super secret plan. That takes spotlight away from the people who should be main characters, like the superheroes. I was thrilled when the MCU had its version of SHIELD gutted and destroyed in WINTER SOLDIER because it was a total rejection of the core identity and contribution of Ultimate Marvel in the eyes of Marvel's biggest audience. SHIELD sucks.
-- The characters are all made harder and more unlikable. And don't try and say this isn't true, or that we misunderstand the story. Please just stop that.
--- Wolverine in the Ultimate Marvel continuity is a sexual predator, he seduced a Jean Grey who was years younger than him, and then later tried to kill Cyclops to comfort her. When he switched bodies with Peter Parker, he apparently tried to take advantage of Peter's relationship with Ultimate Mary Jane which doesn't seem to go far but amounts to attempted statutory rape. Let's not get into how he rubs the deaths of Hawkeye's family in his face in Ultimates 3 ("Didn't you used to have kids?").
--- Tony Stark for all his avuncular front in Ultimate Marvel, thinks of nothing of sleeping with his interns and sending assistants to pick conquests by identifying girls off the street. This kind of behavior would get him #MeToo'd stat today and definitely will not fly.
--- Ultimate Captain America hardly seems to smile in Ultimate Marvel and has none of the warmth and friendliness that 616 Cap has. Most of the time he's frowning and serious, and he's a pile of cliches about masculine leadership. Ultimate Black Widow is evil, just pure evil and a walking Russophobic stereotype.
--- Bruce Banner is what we now call "incel" and his Hulk has nothing to recommend. Hank Pym is a creep and a willing traitor who allies with Liberators to invade America and who keeps getting an endless amount of second chances despite all the horrible things he does (which makes him an emblem of the privilege white men have when doing bad behavior for which they are not held accountable), where the original was a neurotic self-destructive mess. The original Hank Pym was a cautionary tale and a tragic story of a good man who destroys the good things in his life. Ultimate Hank is just an a--hole.
--- Doctor Strange is a celebrity sleazebag who seduces wealthy clients and is mostly a charlatan who doesn't seem to be half as capable as the original version.
--- Ultimate Thor is all things considered the nicest of the Ultimates but he's also the least explored corner and mostly quite boring and uninteresting. It also became redundant because the grounded believable contemporary and 21st Century take on Thor ultimately happened in 616 continuity, in the JMS runs and later the Jason Aaron run.

Aside from Ultimate Peter Parker, these are all objectively inferior versions of the original character without any virtues or depth in characterization, without any of the charm of the original characters. There are other reasons of course. I am just scratching the surface of inferiority and mediocrity that defines and plagues Ultimate Marvel.



Doctor Doom shouldn't look "demonic" you know. Ultimate Doom lacks just about everything that made 616 Doom so great. For one thing "Victor Van Damme" is cheesy as a replacement name. Making Doom a descendant of Vlad the Impaler and so on is stupid and offensive. The original Doom was a descendant of Romani, and Ultimate Marvel removes that and makes him the descendant of a man (revisionism notwithstanding) who was a Catholic supremacist and religious fanatic. Ultimate Doom has none of the complexities and elegance that defines 616 Doom, he lacks the heroic and tragic aspects, the many shades of gray that typifies his appeal.

Excellent run down. I can't think of anyone in the Ultimate universe that had any endearing qualities. Maybe Ben?

I'm not positive it's true but the change to the name Van Damme was a cheap joke by either Bendis or Millar....I'm leaning towards Millar. Notice that the Van Dammes are not from Latveria but from Belgium. Jean Claude Van Damme AKA the " Muscles from Brussels" is Belgian and was at the peak of his fame around this time as I recall. So it seems that Warren Ellis is following up on that by showing us the family estate in UFF #7 where Daddy Van Damme (he never gets a full name that I've seen) is rather harshly instructing Victor in the family history. Later he has him recite the family lineage going back for many centuries and beats him until he gets it right. So another polar opposite...Ultimate Doom's father is cruel and sadistic, a far cry from the kindly healer Werner Von Doom. We see nothing of his mother so that remains a mystery.

[Agent Z]

Doctor Doom shouldn't look "demonic" you know. Ultimate Doom lacks just about everything that made 616 Doom so great. For one thing "Victor Van Damme" is cheesy as a replacement name. Making Doom a descendant of Vlad the Impaler and so on is stupid and offensive. The original Doom was a descendant of Romani, and Ultimate Marvel removes that and makes him the descendant of a man (revisionism notwithstanding) who was a Catholic supremacist and religious fanatic. Ultimate Doom has none of the complexities and elegance that defines 616 Doom, he lacks the heroic and tragic aspects, the many shades of gray that typifies his appeal.

Doom's name is already cheesy. Doom's shades of grey have always been greatly overstated by his fans, going into what tv tropes would call "draco in leather pants" territory. And his Romani heritage is handled so stereotypically that it is a thousand times more offensive than making him related to Vlad the Impaler. But then again, superhero comics in general have a lousy track record with Romani representation.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

- I like SHIELD being behind a lot of the things and how a lot of things are built off each other like the Hulk and Goblin being products of failed Super Soldier recreations. It makes it feel more like a connected universe instead of random characters who happen to exist at the same time.

"Random characters who happen to exist at the same time" is closer to the condition of reality than everything being tied and connected directly to one another. In real life Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt all existed at the same time but they were all random people unconnected to each other individually whose own choices and different social structures put them on a collision course in World War II.

A shared universe works only when you bring something unique to the table to share. Otherwise it becomes a common universe where everything's the same.

I will admit I’m not a fan of mutants being man made. But if basically every hero is going to live in NYC may as well give an explanation as to why they all come from there

Why not cultivate a poetic sensibility among readers where the cosmopolitan culturally diverse and adventurous world of real-life NYC finds a metaphor as a superhero city in comics?

- I haven’t read much Ultimate X Men or Ultimates 3 so I will give you that however do you put the same standard on 616?

This is whataboutism and picking at straws and a cheap and childish dodge. You asked about why people dislike Ultimate Marvel right. The fact is that you have to defend and excuse this, rather than cite plenty of countervailing and alternate moments of positive behavior to commend and defend.

- The first scene of the MCU Iron Man is Stark boning a young blonde doe eyed reporter. I guess 2008 seems like such a long time ago.

Actually one of the screenwriters behind Black Panther condemned that and said that it's one of the things wouldn't fly today. And the later MCU movies as per RDJ's request made Pepper Tony's only love interest and had Tony settle with her which isn't the case with the comics at all. RDJ asked for that partly out of friendship with Gwyneth Paltrow to make sure she would have an expanded role in the MCU. That actually went against director's Jon Favreau's original plan to have Happy and Pepper get hitched like in the comics and Tony to jump girl to girl a la James Bond.

That’s just plain false. Cap was the warmest and most pure hearted of the Ultimates.

That was Ultimate Thor (not that it made him interesting) who came off as the nicest of the Ultimates.

And Hulk is suppose to be unlikable he’s a monster.

No he isn't. You literally don't understand the purpose of the character to claim this.

- How is Van Damme cheesy but not Von Doom?

For one thing the names don't flow well. Victor Von Doom has an assonance because of the increased stress of the "O" sound. "or"/"on"/"oom" It flows outward, sonorously. Whereas with Victor Van Damme, "or"/"an"/"am" lacks music, it's a mix of o and a vowels and that breaks the alliterative assonance. There's a reason why Stan Lee used alliterative named and why they work, because the sound it creates conveys a dimension of character. Having a character with a first name "Victor" which is actually a name you would expect of a hero with a surname called "doom" expresses something fundamental about the character that Victor and "Damme" don't and before you say "Damme" means "Damn", the name actually means "of Dam" it refers to Flemish people who live near dams. Where Stan Lee is direct and in your face, Ultimate Doom relies on America's ignorance and lack of knowledge of other cultures to work.

Secondly, the name Von Doom is in fact an allusion and reference to the silent film actor and director Erich von Stroheim, aka the "man you love to hate" who was considered the prototype for the sexy but evil villain in the silent film era and also early sound years, and who in the movie The Grand Illusion (a French movie but also a global box-office success and very popular in America during the boyhood of Stan Lee) played a character called Von Rauffenstein who was injured and had a neck brace and had a friendly relationship with the hero on the other side. Von Stroheim inspired many villains who affected "Von" in the surname and so on, so Stan Lee was alluding to something rich in association. Whereas Van Damme is a cheap and superfluous gag at a Belgian action movie star who played heroes. It doesn't really connect.

Even then I doubt anyone considered Dr Doom as a “Romani” character

The very first origin of Doom in Fantastic Four Annual #2 by Stan and Jack, portrays him as a member of an oppressed and persecuted minority in Latveria.

[Jack The Tripper]

For me, Ultimate Marvel was an interesting take for a while, but lost its edge within a few years. I think, like a lot of people have said, Ultimate Spider-Man is the highlight. I think that's because it kept the core fun of Spider-Man whilst updating it to modern times. Millar being the creative force behind both Ultimates and UXM is what doomed the Ultimate Universe to fail imo. He made everything so dark and edgy/grim and gritty that a lot of it got old fast. I did like these takes intially, but quickly found myself getting bored. Especially seeing as Avengers and X-Men were both kind of getting better stories in the 616 around the early/mid 2000s. Morrison's New X-Men over Millar's Ultimate X-Men any day of the week.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Morrison's New X-Men over Millar's Ultimate X-Men any day of the week.

That's a good example of how Ultimate Marvel never lived up to its promise and how quickly it became redundant. It was supposed to be the edgy 21-st Century "not your dad's Marvel" take but at the exact same time, you had writers like Morrison on New X-Men set in 616 Marvel, go further and beyond what the actual Ultimate version was supposed to do and did it better by a magnitude. Certainly of the Ultimate books, Ultimate X-Men was definitely the weakest version and least influential of the titles.

I mean at the same time of Ultimate X-Men you had the great X-Men Evolution TV Show and that also did the premise of a youth-centered take on X-Men far better than Ultimate X-Men. JMS did Thor better by bringing Asgard to Oklahoma and provided a human grounding to his stories. And of course Ed Brubaker on his run on Captain America in 616 went further and beyond Ultimate Marvel in making Captain America work in the 21st Century and it's Brubaker who had a bigger influence on the MCU.

[TheCape]

And Hulk is suppose to be unlikable he’s a monster

Holy s@#$, you couldn't be more wrong about him, is kind of insulting frankly, i'm not even a Hulk expert and even i know that he isn't supposed to be unlikable, he is tragic monster at his worst and misunderstood hero at his best (at least that how Marvel plays it in adaptaions and some of the comics i had read).

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Holy s@#$, you couldn't be more wrong about him, is kind of insulting frankly, i'm not even a Hulk expert and even i know that he isn't supposed to be unlikable, he is tragic monster at his worst and misunderstood hero at his best (at least that how Marvel plays it in adaptaions and some of the comics i had read).

Here's what Jack Kirby said about the Hulk and the core of the character:

GROTH:The next character, if I remember correctly, was The Hulk. If I remember correctly you drew a six-issue run of that, then it was cancelled for a little while, then Steve Ditko started it in an anthology book called Tales to Astonish. Can you talk a little bit about how you were involved in creating The Hulk?
KIRBY: The Hulk I created when I saw a woman lift a car. Her baby was caught under the running board of this car. The little child was playing in the gutter and he was crawling from the gutter onto the sidewalk under the running board of this car — he was playing in the gutter. His mother was horrified. She looked from the rear window of the car, and this woman in desperation lifted the rear end of the car. It suddenly came to me that in desperation we can all do that — we can knock down walls, we can go berserk, which we do. You know what happens when we’re in a rage — you can tear a house down. I created a character who did all that and called him the Hulk. I inserted him in a lot of the stories I was doing. Whatever the Hulk was at the beginning I got from that incident. A character to me can’t be contrived. I don’t like to contrive characters. They have to have an element of truth. This woman proved to me that the ordinary person in desperate circumstances can transcend himself and do things that he wouldn’t ordinarily do. I’ve done it myself. I’ve bent steel.

Hulk is meant to embody the strength and determination that exists within us that comes out in extreme situations.Cannibalism isn't that at all.

Hulk is meant to be an ambiguous character and that was the core of his popularity in '60s and '70s where he was an anti-establishment hero. It was quite cathartic to see a rage monster go smorgasbord on the military-industrial complex.

[Username taken]

Holy s@#$, you couldn't be more wrong about him, is kind of insulting frankly, i'm not even a Hulk expert and even i know that he isn't supposed to be unlikable, he is tragic monster at his worst and misunderstood hero at his best (at least that how Marvel plays it in adaptaions and some of the comics i had read).

Exactly. As much as I love Ultimates 1 and 2, Millar’s Hulk was awful.

Ewing’s run right now depicts the Hulk perfectly. There are some violent versions of the Hulk but he’s generally a misunderstood hero that actually fights for innocents when he can. Even the current Devil Hulk version is at worst an anti-villain that still protects people even when he’s violently destroying his enemies.

Millar’s Hulk was a murderous, cannibalistic rapist with little to no redeeming qualities. It was terrible.

[dornwolf]

I'm in the parts crowd my self. I was never around for the beginning of the Ultimate line so I missed pretty much all of it. Going back through it ya no. Ultimate Spider-man as mentioned as a through line from Peter to Miles is fantastic, although I wish they'd kept Miles in is own universe just with the ability to hop between because I find he's just there in 616 otherwise. Ultimates, no, I don't need cannibal Hulk that pretty much killed my interest in ever wanting to read it, followed by Captain "this A on my forehead means *******" America. Ultimate X-men, meh I don't need another universe where Logan pines for Jean and lies to get her into bed and with Gambit dead I didn't have a character I liked enough to read it. Ultimate Fantastic Four again meh I liked the normal version although The Maker is a good idea.

It was getting behind Hickmans version until he went to the main universe. I felt at the time he had a good idea in that hey it's a different universe let's do something totally different with it. It's why I liked Earth-2 from DC, until they killed that.

[your_name_here]

There is only one Doctor Doom.

Best thing they did was making Reed The Maker and taking Dooms spot as “big bad” in the UU.

[Shinglepants]

I obviously can’t speak for everyone but I was a big fan of the early Ultimates stuff until Loeb completely derailed it. Outside of Ultimatum....

I think many people have a problem with Millar as he’s not exactly the most nuanced writer. I guess his portrayal of many favourites was too big a departure for many.