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  1. #31
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    The Ultimate universe was meant to update some characters and also provide a gateway into the comics without the burden of continuity.

    At launch, the comics were huge and sales were massive (it was Marvel’s second highest seller only being topped by Morrison’s New X-men). But it has to be noted that the main Ultimates book was plagued by delays and the second story arc (I,e Ultimates 2) took what...almost 2 years to complete or something (this was a time when a lot of top titles experienced significant delays). In essence, there was never an ongoing main Ultimates book until after Ultimatum. But what really killed the Ultimates was Bendis revamping the main Avengers line. It basically meant that the concept of an updated Avengers book was unnecessary because 616 had done this to huge results (New Avengers, Dark Avengers and even Mighty Avengers were all top sellers).

    Ultimate X-men was the second launch (alongside Ultimate Spider-man). Sales were also high (I believe it was one of Marvel’s top selling X-books for a while) but just like the Ultimates, Marvel did stuff in the main line like Astonishing X-men by Whedon which just overshadowed whatever was going on with Ultimate X-men (I think because of Whedon’s short run on the book and now is infamous reputation people forget just how huge Astonishing X-men was). Another thing that hurt Ultimate X-men was changing creative teams and the uneven quality that came with these changes. Some stuff was just unnecessarily grim dark.

    The crown jewel of the line (IMO) was Ultimate Spider-man which I believe set a record for the longest run by a creative team on a title (i.e Bendis and Bagley). That book is a modern day classic and is probably Bendis best work at Marvel outside of his Daredevil run. This title maintained its quality all the way into the Miles Morales run and was consistently successful until Bendis left.

    Ultimate FF started off ok but quickly derailed with some very strange ideas (hoof footed Dr Doom?) and the book lost sales after its massive first issue sales.

    It has to be noted that most of the ongoing Ultimates books were fairly successful until Ultimatum. Ultimatum was basically a “superhero torture porn” event where many primary characters were permanently killed in the most gruesome ways imaginable. I don’t know what Marvel was thinking here because it was one of the most ill conceived events I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading.It basically broke the Ultimate universe and there was no coming back from this. That was pretty much the death knell of the universe.

    However, the Ultimates success cast a very long shadow over Marvel overall. The MCU (especially Phase 1) was very Ultimates influenced and the first Avengers movie was basically an adaptation of Ultimates 2 with some elements of Ultimates 1 sprinkled in. The Josh Trank FF movie was basically an adaptation of Ultimate FF (although that movie is a story in and of itself), and even MCU Hulk’s origin featured him trying to recreate the supersoldier serum which turned him into a monster which is exactly like the Ultimates version (minus the cannibalistic and rape nonsense).
    Last edited by Username taken; 06-13-2021 at 05:36 AM.

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